HEIRSHIP. Little store of wealth have I; Built of towers of fretted stone. Toss for me their manes of snow. I have neither pearls nor gold, Massive plate, nor jewels rare; Broidered silks of worth untold, Nor rich robes a queen might wear In my garden's narrow bound Flaunt no costly tropic blooms, Ladening all the air around With a weight of rare perfumes. Yet to an immense estate Am I heir by grace of God,-Richer, grander than doth wait Any earthly monarch's nod. Heir of all the Ages, I Heir of all that they have wrought, All their store of emprise high, All their wealth of precious thought. Sheds its lustre on my way By their passion and their tears, On whose wings they soared to heaven; Heir of every hope that Time To Earth's fainting sons hath given? Aspirations pure and high, Strength to dare and to endure, Heir of all the Ages, I Lo! I am no longer poor? ** MARY CLEMMER AMES, THE daughter of Abram Clemmer and Margaret Kniel, was born in the town of Utica, New York. Her father's ancestry was of a French and a German stock, while her mother was descended from a Celtic family of the Isle of Man, which, through many generations, was notable for its unworldliness, devout piety, and fondness for books. Mary Clemmer as a child manifested extreme sensibility, a ceaseless attachment to her friends, a passion for books, pictures, and music, and a love for nature which made all beautiful objects living beings. And as early as six years of age, she was known to have sung her little sister to sleep with songs of her own making. She was married in extreme youth to Rev. Daniel Ames, of Massachusetts, and devoted the spare moments of a purely domestic life to literary studies. Mory Clemmer Ames Mrs. Ames began her career as a writer by the composition of many poems, and the contribution of occasional letters to the Utica Herald and the Springfield Republican. In 1865, Victoire, an anonymous novel, was published, a larger part of which had been written before her twenty-first year. It was a dramatic illustration of the text, "He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." In the following year, she began a famous series of letters from the National Capital to the New York Independent, under the title of "A Woman's Letters from Washington." These exhibited a keen perception of character, a clear analysis of public men and measures, and a strict devotion to truth. In 1870, the exigencies of fortune led her to adopt journalism as a profession. She entered the editorial staff of the Independent and the Brooklyn Union, binding herself by written contracts to furnish an article every week-day for three years. This onerous gagement she fulfilled to the letter. Her first printed work was a quiet, purely-written volume of prose, Silverwood, a Book of Memories, which was commended as an exponent of a true culture. Her early fugitive poems are to be chiefly met with in the Southern journals of ante-war times. Beechenbrook, a story in verse of the late struggle, was issued in Baltimore in 1865. By its tender pathos and strong Southern sympathies, it reached an eighth edition within a year, and was read from the Potomac to the Gulf Among its pathetic pieces are Slain in Battle, and Stonewall Jackson's Grave. A second volume of Mrs. Preston's poems apen-peared in 1870, entitled Old Song and New; and deservedly won high praise from leading critics. The New York Evening Post characterized her poetry as belonging "to the school of Mrs. Browning," and stated: "No American woman has evinced a truer appreciation of what the poet owes to the art of poetry, and the reader will not find on the three hundred pages of this volume, one careless line or one trivial thought. There is great variety in the contents of this book. From the most unstudied expression of sensibility to the beautiful in the external world, and to the dramatic presentation of ideal or historic characters, they touch the whole circle of art." This book contains poems from Hebrew and Greek story, as well as ballads and verses on domestic themes, sonnets, and religious pieces. Her second novel, Eirene; or, A Woman's Right, a plea for the womanliness of woman, and an argument, couched in scenes of social life, for her right to make the freest use of her intellectual powers, appeared in 1870. It was followed three years later by her Memorial of Alice and Phabe Cary. This worthy tribute of affection to the lives of these two estimable sisters, was written at the request of their executors. Its author was admirably qualified for the task by her personal intimacy with those lady poets, as she had resided at several periods in their cultured home in New York city. She has since edited two posthumous volumes of their poems for publication, 1873-4. "As a The poems and letters of Mrs. Ames, which cover ten years of emotion, thought, and labor, have not yet been made the basis of a single volume. To quote her own words: worker, my impulse and purpose is, first, to fulfil every obligation of my personal life; next, to serve my generation, so far as I am able, by meeting the demand of every hour. To do these, is more than I can do perfectly, without making the futile attempt, in this era of many and vociferous voices, to speak to posterity." She has lately issued: Ten Years in Washington: Sketches of Life in the National Capital; and Outlines of Men, Women, and Things, 1873; and has nearly ready for publication a novel bearing on a vital question of the times, entitled His Two Wives. Mrs. Preston, upon the recent illness of the Prince of Wales, wrote a poem, Sandringham, which, when reprinted in England, elicited an autograph letter of thanks from the Princess of Wales. A number of art-poems printed in the leading magazines, such as Victoria Colonna to Michael Angelo, and Mona Lisa's Picture, have been regarded with special favor by readers of high culture. Some ballad-like pieces, illustrative of the teachings of the old legends The Bishop's Ban, St. Gregory's Supper, and Dorothea's Roses - and through the Pass, a tender monody on Matthew F. Maury, have had a wide popularity. ** RHODOPÉ'S SANDAL FROM OLD SONG AND NEW. As on a lover's breast the head A maiden, stealing on with furtive step Who fears invasion of her callow brood. a heron's O'erhead, the sunset crooning of a dove, Then, unafraid, she loosed her sandals off, And from her virgin waist unbound And scattering sparkles all about, (Her fate beneath his wings,) swooped And snatched her sandal silver-webbed, A king sit on his judgment seat; As if some wingéd thing sought shelter there. Of zephyr or of goddess fair Was fashioned in such dainty wise, As never yet beseemed a mortal maid's. "Now search the land!"-the monarch cried amain; "Twelve years ago to-day: how short it seems! “Ah, so like a man, And leaves its sharp, incisive characters My inconclusive, sweet philosopher! Down in my scroll of life, that Tenth of June?" "That you gave It me before our greeting, I remember! I hide with jealous care, a torn, white glove. Your glove with tremulous fingers on your hand, I love to feel the flutter of your wings I could not shake you from your chosen perch. Stand in your still unclaimed and girlish grace Free, in the porch of Thorncliffe Church again." "So would not I:- - For me these years have wrought To their full round, all woman's experiences, Wifehood most blessed, - precious motherhood: And so with leave to choose, I would not be, From queen to peasant, aught else than what I am. And yet the gift of gifts is youth: I scarce Was twenty then At times on edge, "And twenty cannot be Full-sunned, heart-savour'd, mellow as thirty-two. For youth's acerbities can set the teeth At times on edge, its alternating airs Of gust and calm, most easy to be borne By lovers in patient faith, may yet become Siroccos unto husbands; its weak gauge "But see, the veil of woven gold pales off The sunset hills; and now before our Madge Comes clamoring for her nightly cradle-song, Or Harry with his tangled paradigms Beseeches furtherance with amo, amare, Let loose your fingers on the ivory keys, And sing the snatch I scribbled you yesterday." "Fill the jewel-crusted beaker From the earliest vine; Gather grapes, ambrosia-fruited, "Honey'd, lucent, amber-tinted; With a foam whose beaded opals "When did ivy-crown'd Bacchanté Round a Ganymedian chalice? "Sometimes crave a racier vintage, For that wondrous, witching essence, Orient muscadine, "Balmed with immemorial richness, Like a royal line, Such as slumbrous decades ripen Through their long decline. Chas. D. Warnen than the ponderous biblical commentary, the half-dozen biographies of eminent and austere divines, and the shelf or two of inflexibly Calvinistic treatises, which formed, until within the last quarter of a century, the whole library of so many remote New England households. In 1842 he removed, with his mother, to Cazenovia, in central New York. At that place better opportunities for an education were open to him, and he attended, for several terms, the Oneida Conference Seminary. During these school years he supplemented his classical studies by a zealous and extended reading of English authors, and acquired a maturity of literary taste which afterward gave him distinction at college. He received his bachelor's degree at Hamilton College in 1851, writing the successful English prize essay of that year. " While still an undergraduate he contributed articles to the Knickerbocker, and, at a later period, to the first series of Putnam's Magazine. He also prepared in 1853, for a publication-house at Cazenovia, the Book of Eloquence, a minor compilation of the "Elegant Extracts sort, which not only evinced his familiarity with English and American literature, but displayed a critical and appreciative judgment. Soon afterward he went to the West, his mind filled with literary plans, among them a projected monthly at Detroit, which miscarried by reason of the unexpected failure of the publisher. Forced to abandon for a while the path of letters, he joined a surveying party on the Missouri frontier, and during the year 1853-4 became familiar with the varied phases of border life. He then returned to the East, devoted some months in New York to literary investigation at the Astor library, engaged in the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar at Philadelphia in 1856, receiving the diploma of the Law Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Warner practiced his profession at Chicago until the spring of 1860, when he became assistant editor of the Press, an evening newspaper at Hartford, Connecticut, of which, at the outbreak of the civil war, in the following year, he assumed the chief control. Under his management it speedily acquired a high reputation for its sagacious comments on political matters, but particularly for its literary and critical articles a reputation since transferred to the Hartford Courant, one of the oldest of New England journals, with which the Press was consolidated in January, 1867. His letters to the Courant — of which he is part proprietor-from the White Mountains and the Adirondacks, during his summer vacations, as well as from Europe, where he passed fourteen months in 1868-9, were widely copied, and displayed the same comic humor and sportive satire which has since become familiar to a larger circle of readers. He was married in 1856 to Susan S., daughter of William Elliot Lee of New York, and resides in a pleasant suburban home at Hartford. He is a frequent contributor to the leading magazines and literary weeklies of the day, and has taken an active part in the treatment of some questions of social science in Connecticut, such as those connected with advanced education and prison reform. His occasional addresses have been mostly pleas for a higher individual and national culture, for an enlargement of our collegiate courses, and for an improvement of our collegiate methods. The most noteworthy of them are those delivered at Hamilton College in 1864, before the convention of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, on "Individual Character in the State;" at Bowdoin College in 1871, on Higher Education;" and again at Hamilton College in 1872, on "What is your culture to me?" In the spring and summer of 1870, Mr. Warner wrote for the Courant a series of weekly sketches, lightly and humorously depicting the experiences of an amateur gardener, with which were ingeniously interwoven caustic hits at some of the foibles of social and political life. These sketches were directly afterwards published, with a prefatory note by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, under the title of My Summer in a Garden. The amusing descriptions of domestic incidents in this volume, its droll glimpses of the woes and delights of the horticulturist, and the freshness of color with which it invests the most commonplace topics, gave it an immediate popularity with the American public, and led to its speedy republication, by two different houses, in England. It was followed, in 1872, by Saunterings, reminiscences of the author's European trip, portions of which had previously appeared in the Courant and in the Old and New of Boston. They are the sauntering notes of an atten tive, cultivated traveller, made principally in the picturesque cities of the Low Countries, among the Alps, at Munich and in Italy, in which especially the incidents of a winter's sojourn in the midst of the orange groves, the sunshine and the poetical associations of Sorrento, are portrayed with vivacity and vividness, and with all the writer's wonted pleasantry. Mr. Warner's latest production is Backlog Studies, a collection of essays of the highest class, a part of which were first published in Scribner's Monthly, and which, while retaining some of his earlier peculiarities of manner, evince a notable growth in vigor of expression and thought. The style exhibits greater ease and care, the purity and clearness of diction often recalling the best school of English essayists, while the subjects extend over a wider range and are treated in a higher speculative spirit than in either of his previous volumes. The book is a panegyric of the kindly influences clustering around the old-time, open hearth-fire, before which the author seats himself and about which he groups his characters the whole fireside circle discussing current social topics in a vein both of humor and good humor, inspired by the cheerful blaze, the lively crackling of the faggots and the fervid glow of the embers. The opinions expressed, always, however, without any trace of subserviency, show that their author belongs in the advanced ranks of American thinkers.* I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables, and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative anatthe science of omy and comparative philology, comparative vegetable morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. And, if life-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purpose to begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am responsible. I will.not associate with any vegetable which is disreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moral growth. I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or the dead-beats. Fortunately I can cut down any sorts I do not like with the hoe, and, probably, commit no more sin, in so doing, than the Christians did in hewing down the Jews in the middle ages. This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as it should be. Why do we respect some vegetables, and despise others, when all of them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table? The bean is a graceful, confiding, en *Professor Willard Fiske, to whose scholarly pen we are indebted for the above article, is a native of Ellisburgh, New York, where he was born of New England parents, November 11, 1832. He studied at Hamilton College, whence he went to the University of Upsal, Sweden, where, and at Copenhagen, he spent some years in the study of Icelandic and the other Scandinavian languages. On his return in 1853, he was, during six years, assistant librarian of the Astor library. He edited the Chess Monthly at New York from 1857 to 1860, and in 1859 the Book of the American Chess Congress. In 1862 he was temporarily connected with the United States legation at Vienna, under Minister Motley. He was general editor of the Syracuse Daily Journal in 1865-6, and of the Hartford Daily Courant in 1867. IIe visited Italy and the East in 1868, and was elected the same year professor of North-European languages and librarian in Cornell University, which positions. he still holds. He has written many articles for the New American Cyclopædia, beside contributions to various periodicals in this country, Sweden, and Germany. |