sound in judgment; wise in counsel; warm and true in friendship. He is something of a philosopher withal, and what is more, a Christian. And even this very hour-himself out of the question - he would sweetly discourse of the Divine benignity; sketch to a mournful friend enchanting pictures of the beauty and hope of life, and unveil to the clouded eye a thousand hidden springs of joy covered up along the pathway of every weary traveller of the earth. If I were downcast myself, I would go to him for cheer, who cannot cheer himself.

Poor M ! he is indeed in a sad plight; bent on tormenting himself, and what is worse, making a virtue of his self-castigation. I have tried to convince him that he is not singular in this his malady of soul; that almost every thinker and student, from Ecclesiastes to himself, has passed through the same clouds and the same fearful baptism. I have tried to explain to him that the Flesh and the Devil always wage a long warfare with the Spirit that would mount to light and virtue. I have sought to teach him that they often make their head-quarters the Stomach, and take possession of the digestive organs, as the parts of the man which have been most neglected and abused, and which nevertheless exert a commanding influence upon the citadel of life. I have ventured to suggest to him that hot biscuits and Cuba sweet-meats, which to the maw of a dike-digger would be mere innocent play-things, in the ventricle of the scholar, are often the very van-guard of Satan. I have endeavored, like any physician, to convince him that gloomy fancies and evil thoughts are engendered in the close and bookish atmosphere of the study, and black vapors born under the influence of the flickering midnight taper, which would never assail his mind abroad in the free air, inquiring for wisdom in GoD's immeasurable and various book, under the natural and cheering light of the sun and stars. I have insisted to him that the best soul in the world cannot find satisfaction in forever examining and reflecting upon itself, and indeed is not worth looking at all the time; but must feed itself from other natures, and lose its self-consciousness in tracing and admiring the handiwork and perfections of the CREATOR, and going out sympathetically toward its fellows in the flesh. I have told him, from experience, that it is often better to flee from the busy devil of the mind, when he comes upon one in weakness, like an armed man,' than to sit solitary, and gratify the foul fiend by engaging with him in unequal fight. I confessed, morever, that sometimes, when I had suspected an attack of the adversary, under the advantage of studious. exhaustion, or when I had stumbled upon him while pushing my speculations too far, I had started up suddenly from my chair, overturning table and books in my precipitate retreat, and rushed for protection to the company of some careless being; if it were not a child, then a canary or a dog, or a fly washing himself complacently in the sunshine; with whom straightway my soul joined in league against its pursuer, and felt itself reassured again.

6

And lest all the suggestions of comfort that my own ingenuity could devise should prove of none effect, I took down the book of a thinker, with whom my friend has more sympathy than I have, and read to him how Schiller conducted himself when a similar but more grievous malady had laid upon him its ever-galling burthen.'

At no period of Schiller's history does the native nobleness of his character appear so decidedly as now in this season of silent, unwitnessed heroisin, when the dark enemy dwelt within himself, unconquerable, yet ever to be kept at bay. We have medical evidence that during the last years of his life not a moment could have been free from pain. Yet he utters no complaint. We see him cheerful, laborious; scarcely ever speaking of his maladies. Nay, his highest poetical performances, we may say all that are truly poetical, belong to that era. If we recollect how many poor valetudinarians, Rousseaus, Cowpers, and the like, men otherwise of fine endowments, dwindle under the influence of nervous disease into pining wretchedness, some into madness itself; and then that Schiller, under the like influence wrote some of his deepest speculations and all his genuine dramas, from Wallenstein to Wilhelm Tell, we shall the better estimate his merits.'

I showed him also what Schiller himself said of one in the like condition: Wo to him if his will falter, if his resolution fail, and his spirit bend its neck to the yoke of this enemy. Idleness and a disturbed imagination will gain the mastery of him, and let loose their thousand fiends to harass him, to torment him into madness. Alas! the bondage of Algiers is freedom compared with this of the sick man of genius, whose heart has fainted and sunk beneath its load. His clay dwelling is changed into a gloomy prison; every nerve has become an avenue of disgust or anguish, and the soul sits within, in her melancholy loneliness, a prey to the spectres of despair, or stupified with excess of suffering; doomed as it were to a life in death, to a consciousness of agonized existence, without the consciousness of power which should accompany it.'

NOTE. The above is extracted from the old gentleman's diary. What effect the advice of my good grand-father produced upon his dyspeptic friend, does not directly appear; but as M- is frequently alluded to in other pages of the diary, and sometimes in connexion with employments and relaxations that pre-suppose a healthy and happy mind, I have no doubt that he lived through his dyspeptic troubles, as thousands have done before and since, and became as cheerful and well as could be expected of one who, my grand-father more than hints, was over fond of hot biscuits and Cuba sweet-meats.'

HOSPITALITY.

In the Memoires' of De Tott, a story is told of the hospitality of the Tartars, which is worthy of being wrought with threads of gold on silken tablets, and hung up at the fireside of every house. The exact words of the original have escaped my memory, but their purport is not to be forgotten.

The French resident to the Khan of the Tartars, while travelling through Tartary, on his route to Constantinople, having arrived, toward dusk, at a village in Bessarabia, was surprised to find the proprietor of every house standing at his door. He selected for his host a venerable

old man, whose amiable appearance attracted him, and begged an explanation of the custom which had excited his curiosity.

OLD MAN. Our eagerness to show ourselves at our doors is only to prove to the traveller that our houses are inhabited. The uniformity of our tenements puts us all on a footing of equality. No building is outwardly more inviting than another, and therefore I count that my good star alone has procured me the happiness of having you for my guest. We all consider the exercise of hospitality as a privilege.

FRENCHMAN. But, pray tell me, would you treat all travellers with the same humanity?

OLD MAN. The only distinction we make is, that if the traveller be rich, our delicacy to one another and to him prompts us to wait motionless at our doors until he has made his own selection of a resting-place; but, if he be poor and miserable, we all run out to meet him, as soon as he appears in sight- for poverty often renders men timid and dif fident; and in this case, the pleasure of assisting him is the right of the person who reaches him first.

FRENCHMAN. The law of Mohammed cannot be followed with greater exactitude.

OLD MAN. Nay, we do not believe that in exercising our hospitality we obey this divine law. We are men before we are Mahometans. Humanity has dictated our customs, and they are more ancient than the law.

In reading such a story as this, one cannot help feeling very deeply the sad effect which an advance of civilization has produced upon the excellent virtue-hospitality. Whatever advantages and additional graces have followed in the train of what is called 'progressive refinement,' society has undeniably been leaving behind one of the most precious of the heart's ornaments, and of the most natural, noble, and useful manifestations of benevolence. When the covering of the hut was thatched, and the floor of trodden clay, the door was always open, and the stranger welcome. The measure of our hospitality seems to contract in proportion to the enlargement of our accommodations and means for exercising it. Rich carpets must not be soiled by the dusty feet of the way-farer. Marble halls are for the admiration of the rich. The more spacious and splendid the house, the more exclusive the entertainment; the more select the circle that can find admission. We could share our pallets of straw with the weary, but beds of down are not for way-worn limbs. We build hospitals and alms-houses, that we may keep our houses and tables to ourselves; that the sick and miserable may have a place where to lay their heads, which it would be so inconvenient and unhandsome to shelter and tend under our own roofs. To the extent of visiting the sick and imprisoned, our humanity can stretch; but whose charity swells to the breadth of taking the stranger in?

'Hospitality,' said an old writer, 'was once a relique of gentry, and a known cognizance to all ancient houses, and great mansions were at first formed so spacious to relieve the poor and such needful passengers as travelled by them. But now, they are of no use save as way-marks

to direct them.' He might have added, and as great staring signs to show them where they must not halt.

-

An early English poet, whose heart was as great as his wit, complaining of a similar degeneracy in the rich country gentlemen of his time, speaks of the towered chimneys' of their mansions, as having originally been what he thinks they ought to be always the windpipes of good hospitality.' We can easily imagine the delight of the tired pilgrim of old, when he came within sight of these towered chimneys,' with their blue flags waving free welcome to warm firesides, where there was a seat waiting for him, and to loaded tables where there was bread enough and to spare. But pilgrims have changed since those hospitable days. So too have the gentry and their gentle daughters, who used to be their entertainers. We find little that is romantic, although occasionally something of the picturesque, in the itinerant begger of the nineteenth century, and not overmuch of which the wandering minstrel would love to sing, in the 'manor lords' of this age of economical philanthropy and fastidious mercy.

That man has missed for himself a choicer happiness than he has failed to impart, who has never seen the smiling gratitude of the destitute adorning his family board; who has never heard the homely though often wise converse of the aged and the unfortunate, as they have warmed themselves at his pleasant fireside; who has not watched with delight the eager appetite of the children of the poor who have feasted upon his stores; who has never stood like an angel of welcome at his door, when the way-farer has knocked for admission; who has never consecrated his house by the ready and cordial entertainment of strangers; who, if he have wasted any of his goods, has wasted them upon the rich rather than upon the poor.

It is remarkable how a single word, unaffectedly uttered, will sometimes reveal to us, more fully and strikingly than many books, the deep and long experiences of human distress. Not long ago, a friend of ours invited a small party of orphan children from a neighboring asylum to spend an afternoon at his house. They manifested, each in the way that nature prompted, or education allowed, the most eager delight. It was evidently a rich treat to them all. It would have done any body's heart good to have seen and heard them.

As he was distributing among them the contents of a basket of fruit, he overheard one of the little girls whisper to a companion who was standing at her side, 'I know why Mr. has invited us to his house. It is because we have n't any friends. I haven't had a friend come to see me for five years.' Merciful heaven! Only twelve years old, and not have seen the face of one friend for five long years!

We have heard many a sad tale of orphanage, and thought that we felt pity for the homeless before, but we never heard words that made so palpable the dreariness of the lonesome days and nights that heavily follow one another, unenlivened by a single smile or kindly tone from one living being with whom the heart can claim kindred. We thought, too, that we knew, of old, something of the value of our friends; but never before did our natural relatives seem so precious; never did the heart clasp them with such a tenacious embrace, as since the simple

words of that poor fatherless child have given us an insight into the unutterable melancholy which is the portion of the friendless.

Would it not repay us a thousand fold, if we would open our doors more frequently to those who have no home; if we would sometimes 'make a dinner or a supper for the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind;' if we would distribute our kindly sympathies more freely to those who hunger and thirst for words of affection and looks of friendship?

Boston, Mass.

C. R.

THE correspondent to whom we are indebted for the opening review in the 'Literary Notice' department of the present number, (Mr. CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED, of Trinity College, Cambridge, England,) sends us the following lines by ALFRED TENNISON, which he had been permitted to read in the manuscript of the author. TENNYSON,' says the writer, 'is yet young, scarcely thirty-five; so that it may reasonably be hoped that we have not even yet seen the best of him.' We can imagine nothing more striking than the contrast between the still country and its associations of love and pleasure, and the turmoil of the great metropolis, with its' dizzy influences,' which is presented in these truly admirable lines. ED. KNICKERBOOKER.

VOL. XXV.

OH that it were possible,
After long years of pain,

To find the arms of my true love
Around me once again!
When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
Of the land that gave us birth,

We stood tranced in long embraces,

Mixed with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than any thing on earth!

A shadow flits before me,

Not thou, but like to thee;

Oh, CHRIST! that it were possible,

For one short hour, to see

The souls we love, that they might tell us
What and where they be!

It leads me forth at evening,

And lightly winds and steals
In a cold white robe before me,
When all my spirit reels

At the shouts, the leagues of light,
The roaring of the wheels!

Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after

The hand, the lip, the eyes,
The winsome laughter;

And I hear the pleasant ditty

That I heard her chaunt of old;
But I wake - my dream is fled!
Without knowledge, without pity,
In the shuddering gray behold,
By the curtains of my bed,
That dreadful phantom cold.
Pass, thou death-like type of pain!
Pass, and cease to move about;

'Tis the blot upon the brain,

That will show itself without.

Now I rise; the eave-drops fall,
And the yellow vapors choke

63