which were gladsome, when I knew them, yet seem not gladsome now. Would that my hiding place were lonelier, so that the past might not find me! Get ye all gone, old friends, and let me listen to the murmur of the sea,—a melancholy voice, but less sad than yours. Of what mysteries is it telling? Of sunken ships, and whereabouts they lie? Of islands afar and undiscovered, whose tawny children are unconscious of other islands and of continents, and deem the stars of heaven their nearest neighbours? Nothing of all this. What then? Has it talked for so many ages, and meant nothing all the while? No; for those ages find utterance in the sea's unchanging voice, and warn the listener to withdraw his interest from mortal vicissitudes, and let the infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul. This is wisdom; and, therefore, will I spend the next half-hour in shaping little boats of drift-wood, and launching them on voyages across the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of five hundred tons, and launch them forth upon the main, bound to 'far Cathay.' Yet, how would the merchant sneer at me! And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Methinks I could find a thousand arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock, mid-deep in the surf-see! he is somewhat wrathful-,he rages and roars and foams-let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise my oratory like him of Athens, who bandied words with an angry sea and got the victory. My maiden speech is a triumphant one; for the gentleman in sea-weed has nothing to offer in reply, save an immitigable roaring. His voice, indeed, will be heard a long while after mine is hushed. Once more I shout, and the cliffs reverberate the sound. Oh, what joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary, that he may lift his voice to its highest pitch without hazard of a listener! But, hush!-be silent, my good friend!-whence comes that stifled laughter? It was musical,-but how should there be such music in my solitude? Looking upwards, I catch a glimpse of three faces, peeping from the summit of the cliff, like angels between me and their native sky. you may make yourselves merry at my eloquence, turn to smile when I saw your white feet in the pool! each other's secrets. Ah, fair girls, but it was my Let us keep The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will come and haunt me, if I tarry longer here, in the darkening twilight of these grey rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind. Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink, gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep, where we have been, what few can be, sufficient to our own pastime-yes, say the word outright!-self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the recess now, and dreary too,-like all other spots where happiness has been! There lies my shadow in the departing sun-shine with its head upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a hit! I clap my hands in triumph, and see! my shadow clapping its unreal hands, and claiming the triumph for itself. What a simpleton must I have been all day, since my own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries! Homeward! homeward! It is time to hasten home. It is time; it is time; for as the sun sinks over the western wave, the sea grows melancholy, and the surf has a saddened tone. The distant sails appear astray, and not of earth, in their remoteness amid the desolate waste. My spirit wanders forth afar, but finds no resting place, and comes shivering back. It is time that I were hence. But grudge me not the day that has been spent in seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been my companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has told me his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around me in my hermitage. Such companionship works an effect upon a man's character, as if he had been admitted to the society of creatures that are not mortal. And when, at noontide, I tread the crowded streets, the influence of this day will still be felt; so that I shall walk among men kindly and as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but yet shall not melt into the indistinguishable mass of human kind. I shall think my own thoughts, and feel my own emotions, and possess my individuality unviolated. But it is good, at the eve of such a day, to feel and know that there are men and women in the world. That feeling and that knowledge are mine, at this moment; for, on the shore, far below me, the fishing-party have landed from their skiff, and are cooking their scaly prey by a fire of drift-wood, kindled in the angle of two rude rocks. The three visionary girls are likewise there. In the deepening twilight, while the surf is dashing near their hearth, the ruddy gleam of the fire throws a strange air of comfort over the wild cove, bestrewn as it is with pebbles and sea-weed, and exposed to the 'melancholy main.' Moreover, as the smoke climbs up the precipice, it brings with it a savory smell from a pan of fried fish, and a black kettle of chowder, and reminds me that my dinner was nothing but bread and water, and a tuft of samphire, and an apple. Methinks the party might find room for another guest, at that flat rock which serves them for a table; and if spoons be scarce, I could pick up a clam-shell on the beach. They see me now; and-the blessing of a hungry man upon him!—one of them sends up a hospitable shout-halloo, Sir Solitary! come down and sup with us! The ladies wave their handkerchiefs. Can I decline? No; and be it owned, after all my solitary joys, that this is the sweetest moment of a Day by the Sea-Shore. THE DYING CHILD. BY MRS. C. E. DA PONTE. Ah, yes, the spirit's glow is gone, Ah, yes, the spirit's glow is gone,- The color to that brow! 'Tis all in vain; no human power I feel at last can save, Flower of sweet loveliness, 'tis thou Art singled for the grave. And I! what dreams I had for thee Of life, and future years, Without a shadow in their course, Or grief's destroying tears! Thoughts, dreams, and visions, what are they! Fond mockeries of the brain, Hopes, o'er whose momentary light, The heart must weep in vain! Pale child, I dare not number o'er Imploring, sought relief, How many watching hours were thine, Mid loneliness and fears, With only God and me to mark Thy agony and tears! And now the spirit's glow is gone, As 'mid its wreck of loveliness, "Twill be a weary hour, I know, And silently and coldly falls The earth upon thy bed! When rude and careless men have borne I could not see them shut thee from I bury thee! how strangely falls My God, who strikes this bitter blow, LEISURE-HOURS AT SARATOGA. BY THE AUTHOR OF "HOPE LESLIE," &c. I REMEMBER Once to have been startled by a sermon on the right employment of our leisure hours. I had fancied, in common with most of the world, that if the set time of business (by that imposing name we all grace our occupations) was diligently employed, our leisure hours were not to be included in the great account, but rather thrown in like remnants by a generous dealer,-sunny hours all, taking no shadow from the past, and casting no shadow before,-golden hours, snatched from that wrinkled hag Care, who sits brooding over our anxious days. But the preacher told us,-and I have ever since been haunted by the idea,-that our leisure hours were precisely those for which we should be held to the strictest account. With this sermon on my conscience, I went to Saratoga. One of my first thoughts, when I looked round upon the busy crowd of idlers (we are all vigilant over others' duties) was, how in the world those people were to answer for ten consecutive days, three weeks, or a month of leisure hours! Were they not throwing away the stuff that life is made of!-without a thought of the account accumulating upon them! Here were the old, just finishing the voyage of life, and the young, just entering upon it,-all gliding rapidly down the stream, and all seeming to fancy that the shores are passing them, not they the shores. I was awakened from my reverie by my friend Mrs. J. . . ., whose ideas seem to be generated in the clear healthy atmosphere of her heart. "Look there," she said, "the benevolent can find a field every where, even in a Saratoga drawingroom!" I followed the direction of her eyes, and saw one of the loveliest of all the young and fashionable that graced that drawingroom. She had broken away from a knot of girls and young men, (leaving her lion's-portion of their attentions to escheat to her companions) and joined a poor lady who actually appeared to be aching with her solitude in that lively crowd. She had come to Saratoga two or three days before, with the prime necessity of woman's life, a male adjunct, who appeared as regularly as the knives and forks at meal times, and left her side as soon as he had reconducted her to the drawing-room; where she would slink into a corner, and remain like a bit of drift-wood, that has been whirled into an eddy, and there stops, while every thing is joyously floating past. Her name and condition were known to be respectable, but her dress was rather grotesque, and her hair, which no stretch of the imagination could change from red to auburn was,-now when every head is simply and classically arranged-drawn up to the top of her crown, where it stood like the leaning tower of Pisa. Then she looked so painfully still, so sorry that she was there, so wistfully towards every one that had a companion to speak to, that she had moved -'s compassion, and she went on her errand of charity. Scarcely had half-a-dozen sentences of the common currency of introductory conversation been exchanged, when the solitary lady looked like a new creature. She was no longer a stranger and an alien, but linked in with her fellow creatures, part and parcel of the cheerful world about her; and when offered her arm, and strolled up and down the room with her, giving her that important information which she had been burning to acquire, but dared not ask, the name of that tall gentleman, and this short lady, she appeared like one taken off a desolate island, on board a ship sailing under his own country's flag, with ship-mates speaking his own language. "You were right," said I to my friend, "even this is a field of benevolence, and has gleaned a scattered ear." And well redeemed, I thought, a leisure hour, for she has made a fellow creature happy; no matter |