the work of analysing the processes of thought. That pervading error of drawing a broad line of demarcation between our moral and intellectual nature, instead of recognising the intimate interdependence of thought and feeling, is a fallacy that scarce affects the workings of a woman's spirit. If a gifted and cultivated woman take a thoughtful interest in a book, she brings her whole being to bear on it, and hence there will often be a better assurance of truth in her conclusions than in man's more logical deductions, just as, by a similar process, she often shows finer and quicker tact in the discrimination of character. It has been justly remarked, that, with regard "to women of the highest intellectual endowments, we feel that we do them the utmost injustice in designating them by such terms as 'clever,' 'able,' 'learned,' 'intellectual; they never present themselves to our minds as such. There is a sweetness, or a truth, or a kindness-some grace, some charm, some distinguishing moral characteristic which keeps the intellect in due subordination, and brings them to our thoughts, temper, mind, affections, one harmonious whole." A woman's mind receiving true culture and preserving its fidelity to all womanly instincts, makes her, in our intercourse with literature, not only a companion, but a counsellor and a helpmate, fulfilling in this sphere the purposes of her creation. It is in letters as in life, and there (as has been well said) the woman "who praises and blames, persuades and resists, warns or exhorts upon occasion given, and carries her love through all with a strong heart, and not a weak fondness-she is the true helpmate." Cowper, speaking of one of his female friends, writes, "She is a critic by nature and not by rule, and has a perception of what is good or bad in composition, that I never knew deceive her; insomuch that when two sorts of expressions have pleaded equally for the precedence in my own esteem, and I have referred, as in such cases I always did, the decision of the point to her, I never knew her at a loss for a just one." His best biographer, Southey, alluding to himself, and to the influence exerted on Wordsworth's mind by the genius of the poet's sister, adds the comment, "Were I to say that a poet finds his best advisers among his female friends, it would be speaking from my own experience, and the greatest poet of the age would confirm it by his. But never was any poet more indebted to such friends than Cowper. Had it not been for Mrs. Unwin, he would probably never have appeared in his own person as an author; had it not been for Lady Austin, he never would have been a popular one.' The same principles which cause the influences thus salutary to authorship, will carry it into reading and study, so that by virtue of this companionship the logical processes in the man's mind shall be tempered with more of affection, subdued to less of wilfulness, and to a truer power of sympathy; and the woman's spirit shall lose none of its earnest, confiding apprehensiveness in gaining more of reasoning and reflection; and so, by reciprocal influences, that vicious divorcement of our moral and intellectual natures shall be done away with, and the powers of thought and the powers of affection be brought into that harmony which is wisdom. The woman's mind must rise to a wiser activity, the man's to a wiser passiveness; each true to its nature, they may consort in such just companionship that strength of mind shall pass from each to each; and thus chastened and invigorated, the common humanity of the sexes rises higher than it could be carried by either the powers peculiar to man or the powers peculiar to woman. Now in proof of this, if we were to analyse the philosophy which Coleridge employed in his judgment on books, and by which he may be said to have made criticism a precious department of literature-raising it into a higher and purer region than was ever approached by the contracted and shallow dogmatism of the earlier schools of critics-it would, I think, be proved that he differed from them in nothing more than this, that he cast aside the wilfulness and self-assurance of the more reasoning faculties; his marvellous powers were wedded to a child-like humility and a womanly confidingness, and thus his spirit found an avenue, closed to feeble and less docile intellects, into the deep places of the souls of mighty poets; his genius as a critic rose to its majestic height, not only by its inborn manly strength, but because, with woman-like faith, it first bowed beneath the law of obedience and love. It is a beautiful example of the companionship of the manly and womanly mind, that this great critic of whom I have been speaking proclaimed, by both principle and practice, that the sophistications which are apt to gather round the intellects of men, clouding their vision, are best cleared away by that spiritual condition more congenial to the souls of women, the interpenetrating the reasoning powers with the affections. Coleridge taught his daughter that there is a spirit of love to which the truth is not obscured; that there are natural partialities, moral sympathies, which clear rather than cloud the vision of the mind; that in our communion with books, as with mankind, it is not true that "love is blind.' The daughter has preserved the lesson in lines worthy of herself, her sire, and the precious truth embodied in them: Passion is blind, not love; her wondrous might GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD Was born at Machias, Maine, September 22, 1808. He was educated at the Boston Latin school, of which he afterwards published some curious reminiscences. He entered Harvard, where his name appears in the catalogue of graduates in 1828, and where, in the senior year of his course, he was one of the editors of the college periodical, The Harvard Register. He next passed to the law school of the college and the office of Charles P. Curtis, where he pursued his legal studies, and soon became an accomplished member of the Suffolk bar. In 1833 or 1834 Mr. Hillard was, with Mr. George Ripley, a conductor of the weekly lev. 8. Holland S. In Unitarian newspaper, the Christian Register. 1835 he delivered the anniversary address on the Fourth of July before the city authorities. Tie has been a member of the city council, the State Legislature, the Constitutional Convention of 1853, and also U. S. Attorney in Mass., 1866-71. The literary occupations with which Mr. Hillard has varied an active professional life are numerous. He edited in 1839 a Boston edition of the Poetical Works of Spenser, to which he wrote a critical introduction. In 1843 he was the Phi Beta Kappa orator at Cambridge. In 1847 he delivered twelve lectures, in the course of the Lowell Institute, on the genius and writings of John Milton, which remain unpublished. Having made a tour to Europe in the years 1846 and 1847, he published in 1853, some time after his return, a record of a portion of his journey, entitled Six Months in Italy. It is a book of thoughts, impressions, and careful description of objects of history, art, and of social characteristics of a permanent interest. In 1852 Mr. Hillard was chosen by the city council of Boston to deliver the public eulogy, in connexion with the procession and funeral services of the thirtieth of November, in memory of Daniel Webster. His address on this occasion was marked by its ease, dignity, and eloquence. Besides these writings, Mr. Hillard is the author of a memoir of Captain John Smith, in Mr. Sparks's series of American Biography. As a contributor to the best journals of his time articles from his pen have frequently appeared on select topics. He was one of the body of excellent writers attached to Mr. Buckingham's New England Magazine, where he wrote a series of Literary Portraits, the articles Selections from the Papers of an Idler, etc. To the North American Review and Christian Examiner he has occasionally furnished critical articles. In addition to the addresses already enumerated we may mention discourses on Geography and History, read before the American Institute of Instruction, Boston, 1846; on the Dangers and Duties of the Mercantile Profession, before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, in 1850; and an oration before the New England Society of the Pilgrims of New York, in 1851. ** Mr. Hillard in later years has edited a volume of Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor, 1856; prepared a series of graduated Readers, and written a pamphlet on the Political Duties of the Educated Classes, 1866. He is the author of three privately printed Memoirs: of H. R. Cleveland, James Brown, and Jeremiah Mason. His Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan appeared in 1864; and in 1873 he had in press The Life of George Ticknor. RUINS IN ROME-FROM SIX MONTHS IN ITALY. The traveller who visits Rome with a mind at all inhabited by images from books, especially if he come from a country like ours, where all is new, enters it with certain vague and magnificent expectations on the subject of ruins, which are pretty sure to end in disappointment. The very name of a ruin paints a picture upon the fancy. We construct at once an airy fabric which shall satisfy all the claims of the imaginative eye. We build it of such material that every fragment shall have a beauty of its own. We shatter it with such graceful desolation that all the lines shall be picturesque, and every broken outline traced upon the sky shall at once charm and sadden the eye. We wreathe it with a becoming drapery of ivy, and crown its battlements with long grass, which gives a voice to the wind that waves it to and fro. We set it in a becoming position, relieve it with some appropriate background, and touch it with soft melancholy lightwith the mellow hues of a deepening twilight, or, better still, with the moon's idealizing rays. In Rome, such visions, if they exist in the mind, are rudely dispelled by the touch of reality. Many of the ruins in Rome are not happily placed for effect upon the eye and mind. eye and mind. They do not stand apart in solitary grandeur, forming a shrine for memory and thought, and evolving an atmosphere of their own. They are often in unfavorable positions, and bear the shadow of disenchanting proximities. The tide of population flows now in different channels from those of antiquity, and in far less volume; but Rome still continues a large capital, and we can nowhere escape from the debasing associations of actual life. The trail of the present is everywhere over the past. The forum is a cattle-market strewn with wisps of hay, and animated with bucolical figures that never played upon the pipe of Tityrus, or taught the woods to repeat the name of Amaryllis. The pert. villa of an English gentleman has intruded itself into the palace of the Cæsars-as discordant an object to a sensitive Idealist as the pink parasol of a lady's-maid, which put to flight the reveries of some romantic traveller under the shadow of the great pyramid. The Temple of Antoninus Pius is turned into the custom-house. The mausoleum of Augustus is encrusted with paltry houses, like an antique coin embedded help of a guide. The beautiful columns of the Theain lava, and cannot even be discovered without the tre of Marcellus-Virgil's Marcellus-are stuck upon the walls of the Orsini Palace, and defaced by dirty shops at the base. Ancient grandeur is degraded to sordid modern uses. Mummy is become merchandise; Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams." To most men, ruins are merely phenomena, or, at most, the moral of a tale; but to the antiquary they are texts. They have a secondary interest, founded upon the employment they have given to the mind, and the learning they have called forth. We value everything in proportion as it awakens our faculties, and supplies us with an end and aim. The scholar, who finds in a bath or a temple a nucleus for his vague and divergent reading to gather around, feels for it something like gratitude as well as attachment; for though it was merely a point of depart ure, yet, without it, the glow and ardor of the chase would not have quickened his languid energies into life. Scott, in his introduction to the "Monastery," has described with much truth as well as humor the manner in which Captain Clutterbuck became interested in the ruins of Kennaqhair-how they supplied him with an object in life, and how his health of body and mind improved the moment he had something to read about, think about, and talk about. Every ruin in Rome has had such devoted and admiring students, and many of these shapeless and mouldering fabrics have been the battle-grounds of antiquarian controversy, in which the real points at issue have been lost in the learned dust which the combatants have raised. The books which have been written upon the antiquities of Rome would make a large library; but when we walk down, on a sunny morning, to look at the Basilica of Constantine or the Temple of Nerva, we do not think of the folios which are slumbering in the archives, but only of the objects before us. THE PICTURESQUE IN ROME-FROM SIX MONTHS IN ITALY. sees the sun go down behind the dome of St. Peter's, and light up the windows of the drum with his red blaze, and the dusky veil of twilight gradually extend over the whole horizon. In the moonlight evenings he walks to the Colosseum, or to the piazza of St. Peter's, or to the ruins of the Forum, and unidealizes all that is impressive, may call up the spirit of the past, and bid the buried majesty of old Rome start from its tomb. To these incidental influences which train the hand and eye of an artist, indirectly, and through the mind, are to be added many substantial and direct advantages, such as the abundance of models to draw from, the facility of obtaining assistance and instruction, the presence of an atmosphere of art, and the quickening impulse communicated by constant contact with others engaged in the same pursuits, and animated with the same hopes. If, besides all these external influences, the mind of the young artist be at peace,-if he be exempt from the corrosion of anxious thoughts, and live in the light of hope, there would seem to be nothing wanting to develope every germ of power, and to secure the amplest harvest of beauty. HUGH MOORE, Every young artist dreams of Rome as the spot where all his visions may be realized; and it would indeed seem that there, in a greater degree than anywhere else, were gathered those influences which expand the blossoms, and ripen the fruit of genius. Nothing can be more delicious than the first experi-der a light which conceals all that is unsightly, and ences of a dreamy and imaginative young man who comes from a busy and prosaic city, to pursue the study of art in Rome. He finds himself transported into a new world, where everything is touched with finer lights and softer shadows. The hurry and bustle to which he has been accustomed are no longer perceived. No sounds of active life break the silence of his studies, but the stillness of a Sabbath morning rests over the whole city. The figures whom he meets in the streets move leisurely, and no one has the air of being due at a certain place at a certain time. All his experiences, from his first waking moment till the close of the day, are calculated to quicken the imagination and train the eye. The first sound which he hears in the morning, mingling with his latest dreams, is the dash of a fountain in a neighboring square. When he opens his window, he sees the sun resting upon some dome or tower, grey with time, and heavily freighted with traditions. He takes his breakfast in the ground-floor of an old palazzo, still bearing the stamp of faded splendor, and looks out upon a sheltered garden, in which orange and lemon trees grow side by side with oleanders and roses. While he is sipping his coffee, a little girl glides in, and lays a bunch of violets by the side of his plate, with an expression in her serious black eyes which would make his fortune if he could transfer it to canvas. During the day, his only difficulty is how to employ his boundless wealth of opportunity. There are the Vatican and the Capitol, with treasures of art enough to ọccupy a patriarchal life of observation and study. There are the palaces of the nobility, with their stately architecture, and their rich collections of painting and sculpture. Of the three hundred and sixty churches in Rome, there is not one which does not contain some picture, statue, mosaic, or monumental structure, either of positive excellence or historical interest. And when the full mind can receive no more impressions, and he comes into the open air for repose, he finds himself surrounded with objects which quicken and feed the sense of art. The dreary monotony of uniform brick walls, out of which doors and windows are cut at regular inter vals, no longer disheartens the eye, but the view is everywhere varied by churches, palaces, public buildings, and monuments, not always of positive architectural merit, but each with a distinctive character of its own. The very fronts of the houses have as individual an expression as human faces in a crowd. His walks are full of exhilarating surprises. He comes unawares upon a fountain, a column, or an obelisk-a pine or a cypress-a ruin or a statue. The living forms which he meets are such as he would gladly pause and transfer to his sketch-book ecclesiastics with garments of flowing black, and shovel-hats upon their heads-capuchins in robes of brown-peasant girls from Albano, in their holiday boddices, with black hair lying in massive braids, large brown eyes, and broad, low foreheads-beggars with white beards, whose rags flutter picturesquely in the breeze, and who ask alms with the dignity of Roman senators. Beyond the walls are the villas, with their grounds and gardens, like landscapes sitting for their pictures; and then the infinite, inexhaustible Campagna, set in its splendid frame of mountains, with its tombs and aqueducts, its skeleton cities and nameless ruins, its clouds and cloud-shadows, its memories and traditions. He A SELF-EDUCATED man, and practical printer, was born in Amherst, N. H., Nov. 19, 1808. He served his time as an apprentice with his brother-in-law, Elijah Mansur, at Amherst; published Time's Mirror, a weekly newspaper, at Concord for a short time, in the autumn of 1828; commenced the Democratic Spy at Sanbornton, October, 1829, which was removed to Gilford in 1830, and discontinued in June, the same year. He was afterwards editor of the Burlington Centinel, and at one time connected with the Custom House in Boston. He died at Amherst, February 13, 1837. The New Hampshire Book, which gives two specimens of his poetical pieces, which were written when he was quite young, speaks of his death as occurring when he was "about entering upon a station of increased honor and responsibility." OLD WINTER IS COMING. Old Winter is coming again-alack! A mighty old fellow for glee! He is wild in his humor, and free! Old winter is blowing his gusts along, From morning 'till night he will sing his song- Old Winter's a tough old fellow for blows, As tough as ever you see! He will trip up our trotters, and rend our clothes, A cunning old fellow is Winter, they say, He peeps in the crevices day by day, SPRING IS COMING. Every breeze that passes o'er us, O'er some loved and faithless one; Roam thou where the flowers are springing, Rouse thee, hoary man of sorrow! Though you now weep tears of sadness, As the Winter's keenest breath; B. B. THATCHER. BENJAMIN B. THATCHER was born in the state of Maine in the year 1809. His father was a distinguished lawyer, and for many years a representative in Congress. The son, on the completion of his course at Bowdoin College in 1826, commenced the study of law, and was admitted to practice at Boston, where he resided during the remainder of his life. He was a constant contributor to the leading literary periodicals of the day, and in 1832 published a work entitled Indian Biography, which forms two volumes of Harpers' Family Library. He afterwards prepared two volumes on Indian Traits, for a juvenile series, "The Boys' and Girls' Library,' issued by the same house. He also wrote a brief memoir of Phillis Wheatley. In 1838 he visited Europe for the benefit of his health, but returned HANNAH FLAGG GOULD is the daughter of a soldier of the Revolution, who fought in the battle of Lexington, and served in the army throughout the war. She was born at Lancaster, Vermont, but removed soon after to Newburyport, Mass. While yet a child she lost her mother. Her father survived for several years, his declining age being tenderly cared for and cheered by his constant companion, his daughter, whose subsequent poems contain many touching traces of their intercourse. Hannah Flagg Goul D Miss Gould's poems, after a favorable reception in several periodicals, were collected in a volume in 1832. By 1835, a second had accumulated, and a third appeared in 1841. In 1846, she collected a volume of her prose contributions, entitled Gathered Leaves. Miss Gould's poems are all in subject, form, and expression. ral, harmonious, and sprightly. short, and simple They are natuShe treats of the patriotic themes of the Revolution, and the scenes of nature and incidents of society about the ordinary path of woman; and her household themes have gained her a widely extended audience. Some of her prettiest poems were written for children, with whom they are favorites. In 1850, she published The Youth's Coronal, a little collection of verses of this class. THE FROST. The Frost looked forth one still, clear night, I will not go on like that blustering train, Then he flew to the mountain, and powdered its crest; He lit on the trees, and their boughs he drest In diamond beads-and over the breast Of the quivering lake, he spread A coat of mail, that it need not fear He went to the windows of those who slept, Most beautiful things; there were flowers and trees, All pictured in silver sheen! But he did one thing that was hardly fair He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there 66 Now, just to set them a-thinking, I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he, MARY DOW. "Come in, little stranger," I said, As she tapped at my half-open door, While the blanket pinned over her head, Just reached to the basket she bore. A look full of innocence fell From her modest and pretty blue eye, I think you'll not find it too much ; And ready to light with a touch." I asked, "what's your name, little girl?" ""T is Mary," said she, Mary Dow." And carelessly tossed off a curl, That played o'er her delicate brow. "My father was lost in the deep, The ship never got to the shore; And mother is sad, and will weep, When she hears the wind blow and sea roar. "She sits there at home without food, She paid all her money for wood, "For every time that she tries, Some things she'd be paid for, to makę And lays down the baby, it cries, And that makes my sick brother wake. "I'd go to the yard and get chips, But then it would make me too sad; To see men there building the ships, And think they had made one so bad. "I've one other gown, and with care, We think it may decently pass, With my bonnet that's put by to wear To meeting and Sunday-school class.. "I love to go there, where I'm taught Of One, who 's so wise and so good, He knows every action and thought, And gives e'en the raven his food. "For He, I am sure, who can take Such fatherly care of a bird, Will never forget or forsake The children who trust to his word. "And now, if I only can sell The matches I brought out to-day, I think I shall do very well, And mother 'll rejoice at the pay." Fly home, little bird," then I thought, It snows! it snows! from out the sky But now the wind comes whistling loud, Or giant phantom in a shroud; It spreads! it curls! it mounts and whirls, And then, away! but, where, none knows, "Tis shade and shine!-It snows! it snows! |