now beckoned me to sit by her on the sofa. We conversed of America. She asked me if General Washington was dead. Yes maʼam, ... he is... I found my knees close together, and the hat twirling about with rather a circumgyratory movement. And then she inquired if the roads to America were bad. I said they were occasionally a little rough. And next the news from Paris. They were much interested ma'am, when I left, in a battle just fought by the army in Africa.' This was a sentence of a suffocating length. 'Oh, dear,' said she, apparently a good deal frightened, I hope there has been nobody killed' And then setting one leg to ride upon the knee of the other- she has a beautiful, aristocratic little foot- she complained of having sprained the ankle, in alighting from the coach; there is always such a crowd about the opera door; and then asked me if my parents were English. Yes, ma'am, said I, they came over to Pennsylvania, with William the Conqueror'- William Penn having miscarried altogether in the confusion. But by degrees I began to be relieved from my embarrassment, so great was her affability. Indeed it is a characteristic of the higher English nobility, to be exceedingly plain and familiar in their intercourse with persons of inferior rank; and when one knows them awhile, one feels as easy in their company as an old shoe. She referred again to the sprained ankle, removed the slipper, and bewailed the pain. I felt it gently between finger and thumb, and manifested such sympathy as in the flutter of interrupted respiration I could express; and having recovered at last my reflection, sufficiently to ask the favor of repeating the visit, which she kindly granted, in a few minutes I breathed again the free and ventilated air of Regent-street.

On meeting my Gallic friend, whom I already half-suspected of a cheat, he informed me that this woman, so pretty and ignorant, was the Duke of B-'s mistress!

My advice to all persons born in Schuylkill county, is, that they stay among the lambs and turtle doves of their native hills, and not come hither to expose their innocence to the abominable men and women of these European towns. The entire night I passed out in gambling houses, and other houses, and in curious rencounters and adventures, designed for this letter, but postponed for want of room. Affectionately yours. Good night!

THY mantle white is on the senseless earth,
Spirit of Winter! - Old Eolus rude,

Pipes from his northern home, in fiercest mood,
And o'er the crispéd wreaths, with shouts of mirth,
And chiming bells, and laughter ringing free,

Glide the swift sleighs, while merry urchins play,
Tossing the frozen balls in heartfelt glee,

Or forming uncouth shapes of monsters grim,
To melt, like youthful hopes, when next the ray
Of noontide streams on each misshapen limb.

The naked branches wear a spotless vest,
And through the window, infant faces peep
Lured from their downy beds, and early sleep,
Wondering to mark the earth, in wintry garments drest.

New-York, November.

M. N. M.

1839.)

INVOCATIONS.

"Oh! le voir, entendre sa vojx une fois ; une derniere fois encore.'

I've wandered through the paths where we have strayed,
When melancholy winds a murmur made,
And where we paused to mark the moonbeams quiver
Through the long branches on the tranquil river,
And asked if thou wouldst let the waters bear
One tone of thine, on the soft whispering air:

Thou wouldest not!

VII.

And yet I know that thou art ever near;
A voice which others hear not, I can hear :
A gleam amid the darkness, and a form
Which other eves behold not, yet all warm
With hues of light and beauty, comes between
My sorrowing spirit, and the world unseen :

And it is thou!
Neu-York, October.
VOL. XIV,

59

J. C.

SCHOOL DAYS: FROM 'A JOURNAL IN FLOWERS.'

EY L'ABEILLE.

THERE are some faded rose leaves on the first page of my journal, so much changed from their original beauty, that it would puzzle the herbalist to arrange their petals, or even to dignify them by name. Their bright color has long since faded, and the odorous spirit has vanished from its beautiful resting place. I have used them as characters to italicize a line in the dull history of a school girl's hours; and they are such faithful chroniclers, that if I were better read in the mysteries of the Pythagorean philosophy, and its ideal world, I would crave for them the same indulgence that the believer in the sublime theory of the metempsychosis has awarded to souls. Flowers are among the bright things of paradise; and why may not the fragrant spirit of these leaves, in its transmigratory state, be yet wandering over the rich gardens of the Fountain of Roses,' or sparkling in the drop of ottar which the bright-eyed Persian consigns to the Haidees of her golden Sachet?

'There is some rust about every one at the beginning.' Mackenzie has given it to his 'Man of Feeling;' and if we understand the sentiment, it is that yielding sensibility which corrodes and darkens under the ordinary influences of life; clings to us in youth, but which a few hard rubs with fortune is known to dissipate. I well remember when the gloomy oxyde first stole over my sensibilities, from a little cloud in the atmosphere of feeling, that shadowed anticipation for a moment. I was a school-girl, and as such still occupied that obscure and unregarded nook of life, which attracts but little attention, and from which we are permitted the glorious privilege of the poet, to view society in the distance; to peep at such a world,' and to invest it with all the pageantry of imagination. I had not climbed the rocky 'hill of science,' yet I stood quite high enough in my own good opinion. Friendship, sincerity, lasting attachments, and all the diversified scenery of the affections, were spread like a universe around me; and though it is true, in some of my friendly fields, thorns were already planted, and some of my 'eternal' attachments had already proclaimed their evanescence, yet the love I bore to my pen and paper, hung like an unclouded firmament over a rough and treacherous world. I never shone there a star, and my flashes were as harmless and unnoticed as those of a midsummer's night; looked upon for an instant, and as instantly forgotten. Oh! how often have I wandered from my playmates, during the hour of intermission, to some lonely corner of our play-grounds, where, with my pencil and the leaf of some neglected writing-book, I have poured my whole soul, as I thought, on its blue-ruled page; unmindful, while wandering through the long and sober avenue, that the bell had rung, and all was order and quiet again in our school-room, and I a mere adjective belonging to schoolbooks and my instructor.

Yet, in spite of all the abstractions and mischances it drew around me, it once redeemed me from the anathema of stupidity. Few can imagine the utter scorn with which that mingled yarn of good

1839.]

School Days.

and evil,' a school-class, regards the hapless individual emphasized Active faults a dunce. I had always a strong antipathy to the name. have some redeeming colors, but the neutral tint of stupidity even now appals me. I remember the day well; and a better day could not have been chosen, to cloud one's hopes, and give the heart a little of that rust with which I commenced this chapter; capricious and showery; half sunshine, half gloom; just such a day as will frolic with the nerves of the hypochondriac, and hang them, like Shakspeare's sailor boy, 'on the slippery clouds,' or toss them in a gale It was such a day, when I had gathered to 'teter' on a sunbeam. all the paraphernalia of rhetoric, belles-lettres, etc., that crowd the requisitions of a boarding-school prospectus. I closed the front door, and went unwillingly to school.' Oh! how presentiment flitted over my bosom with the clouds above me! A mist hovered over nature, and wrapped me in its shroud. It seemed as if a universal sympathy bound me, for an instant, to all creation; yet envy clung to the assimilation, like a worm to a rose-leaf; for every thing seemed happier than I. The little milliner girls passed me: they were free, and I envied them, with their band-boxes on their arms, and their cares all bound up in their ribbons. Trouble seemed to have left them, and to have ran to me like a pet kitten: and I saw a sweep perched like a black-bird on the chimney top, and I even envied him. And why not? He had risen by hook and by crook,' but then he had reached the height of his ambition, and could laugh at the trammels that at first impeded his progress.

But I had reached my school. The long rows of bonnets and shawls that were slumbering on their pegs, and the perfect quietude that reigned among them, convinced me it was long past the hour that tolled the death of freedom. Every thing looked reproachful. The dark green wall frowned, the bonnets pouted, and the very knob of the door turned snappingly, as I entered. While making my congeé, the buzz of an hundred voices rushed upon me: French rigmarole and orthography floated through the atmosphere, or fluttered over the limbs of erudition, like so many wounded songsters. Large benches, painted green, that ominous color, were ranged around the room; and many a languid living thought rested inert and unemployed on its mathematical line. In one corner, tall, gaunt, and toothless, sat the vicegerent, a second officer in our republic. Oh, what 'a mighty little mind,' as they say in Richmond, was hers! Its highest aspirations were bounded by a button-hole, and all she knew of ambition, nestled in a work-basket. She always occupied one corner in our school-room; and her chair seemed to have belonged to it. When I left her presence in the afternoon, and found her again in the same place in the morning, in the same costume, and with the same unaltered physiognomy, I used to wonder if she had been there ever since I left the room. Her favorites were generally her carrier pigeons. But I, alas! no darling, was never sent to the sanctum of her bed-room for her spectacles, or the envious dis tinction of adjusting her cushion. Sometimes, when entering the room with a most peculiar shuffle, (poor soul! it was her own,) I have been stigmatized as the author of all the mischief that agitated our commonwealth. It was I who turned the blinds so often, to admit the air, and acquired so rapidly a movement she had taught my com

peers, in an English quadrille, that it ever after affected my retreating footsteps. Although this reckless mirth made me enemies, there were a few laughter-loving spirits that clung closer to me, and liked me better for these very reproaches.

But on this eventful morning, neither her prejudices nor her predilections disturbed or entered once into my speculations for the day. My anxieties were alone dependant on the master spirit, the genius of our little world; and now, even from the distance of years, would I waft a blessing on that gentle one, whose kindness fell alike on the understanding and the heart; who, hy the influence of example, and the discipline of herself, trained each heart in the way it should go,' without any harsher appeal than to its own reason and affection. She was standing, when I entered, in the recess of a folding door, and my class, like the twelve signs of the Zodiac, were ranged around her. But the sign was in Libra, and the scales were poised, when I entered to be weighed and found wanting. A new theory had been started. When will theorists let the world alone? It was urged on Mrs. —, and she adopted it experimentally. Some judicious parent had suggested it, and begged the trial. Violent exercise of the memory, it was maintained, would increase its power. This might apply where correspondent strength of mind required great exertion to develope a weight of intellect, that called for a mighty grasp; but as such is not the every day character of the human mind, the rule of course can only apply partially. A pigmy, in mind or body, can never be stretched beyond its altitude. Mrs. turned to me, in her affectionate manner: ‘I will ask you a number of questions, my dear girl; and without waiting a reply to each, I will require an an. swer to all, when I have finished, in the same order in which they were asked. Make the effort; if you succeed, I shall be gratified, and you will be amply compensated by the improvement of your memory

* By what names are the secular kings of Hindostan known? To whom do the Hindoos render homage ? Where are the purest pearls found? Where the richest diamonds ? — and what curiosity do the Tartars boast of ?'

I was overwhelmed. Either question I could have answered singly; but to remember the question to fit the answer - and well I knew it must appear in no homespun dress required a mind like Napoleon’s. The girls looked to me with an appealing expression. They had in vain essayed it. Mrs. fixed her dark eye on me, but I was silent.

Again were the queries repeated, but all in vain. I could have answered the first and the last; but the others were skipping around my mind, forgetting their places, like so many city belles in a contra dance. Again other questions were put, with like numerical disappointment; and now I refused even the effort, and dispirited and offended, we sought our seats. My place in our class had often vacillated, and I in its opinion perhaps as often; but if I had ever queened it, my transit from a throne to a very common place in their heraldry, was as sudden as any despot's on record. One of the sweetest girls in the whole world—the only one I could see above me in the class, and yet feel reconciled — was deputed to ask the text for our next day's composition. It was asked, and answered : 'What is the use of acquiring lessons, if you do not understand them? No