1837.]

Counsel to Idlers The Departure.

223

my adversaries, idleness and irresolution, in this instance, and have come to this point. It is the longest and most arduous task I have ever performed, for it is a work of continued exertion. I have never flagged from it; and the idea that some good inferences may be drawn from these pages, by the young among my own countrymen, so that my life may not pass away without one useful act, one deed of positive good, has supported me.

Let every idler, if he wishes to enjoy one happy hour, set about doing something, no matter what. Let him undertake to commit a chapter in the Bible to memory, or copy some piece of writing, or to make any intellectual exertion; but let it be definite; not take a walk, or a journey, or any thing that requires movement of the body, but still, continued, uninterrupted study and attention. Idlers are the veriest busybodies we know, and always flying about in some shape or other. They are idle with the appearance of industry, and deceive every body but themselves. While the world looks on, and wonders at their diligence, they are passing hours, days, years, of the most insupportable care, the care of finding something to do. I know something of the tedium of this life, and confess, that the hours spent in these records have been the happiest of my life, because I have had an end, an object, constantly in view.

My debts all paid once more, my character again reinstated, my purse well supplied, my wardrobe in the newest fashion, and abundant as I could pack, behold the rustic of a year's standing, the lover, whose heart was broken, getting into the stage for L the place of the celebrated law-school; while Thomas, dressed in the self-same suit in which I had arrived some year before, is packing the trunks on behind. Alas! the association of that event and those pantaloons! Reader, they did put me in mind of the romantic hills and valley of N and then of Alice Clair; though to get to these affecting thoughts, I had to pass through the tailor's shop where they were made. There is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and so backward from the ridiculous to the sublime.

But in the height of my satisfaction in being permitted to take a new start in the world, under such favorable auspices, my lovedisappointment did not weigh very heavily upon my heart. I had already, as I thought, performed all my promises of being a good student, etc., for I wished to, and I took the will for the deed. I wished it so much, that not a doubt or misgiving disturbed the serenity of my mind. I esteemed it a settled matter, that I was, in the first place, to make myself remarkable as a student; and then, without any trouble, to walk directly to the top of the profession. I was a sanguine fool!

This confidence inspired my father with golden hopes; and when we parted, he told me he was the happiest man in the city. Now, my son,' said he, 'you are old enough (I was twenty) to begin to form a character; all your wild oats are sown; the past is forgotten; you have your destiny in your own hands. Write to me often; tell me all your wishes; and (here the devil jogged his elbow) draw upon me, if you want more money. God bless you, my dear boy!' The tears started in his eyes; mine were wet, too. As I got into the stage, (mark the baseness of my heart!) I dwelt mostly upon the words,

'Draw upon me, if you want more money.' My eyes ceased their weeping. I addressed some gay make-acquaintance remarks to a fellow passenger, and as we rattled over the bridge in the velocipede line of coaches, forgot every thing but the beauty of the morning, and only wondered how long it would be before breakfast.

So contemptible is the spirit of youth, in its blind passion for pleasure. All the higher, nobler feelings sink into insignificance, compared with its own selfish enjoyments. Pleasure, love of pleasure, tramples upon the holy influences of home; it steels the heart to filial affection; it saps the juices of youth; and leaves the young body prematurely cold, and lifeless, and insensible, to the natural action of all those relations and sentiments, that reason is intended to draw its moral food from. The mother 'who watched o'er our childhood' is forgotten; the father disregarded, and the sister's face is crimsoned with shame for us, and we ourselves are lost. And for what? For an hour's amusement; a short-lived enjoyment; an empty sound of revelry, and unmeaning mirth.

What inconsistency! Hardly had I got a step from my father's door; hardly had my fingers lost the affectionate pressure of his hand, when the evil genius stepped in, to scatter the impressions which a moment before seemed so fixed.

Since the time of my mother's death, I never had passed the door of the chamber where she died, without thinking of the evening when I visited her corpse, alone a pure boy, free from all vice, all contamination and then drawing the comparison between the present and the past. Such reflections always gave me pain, and summoned up all the resolution I was master of. I am convinced, that, if I had had a mother until my mind had acquired strength and firmness, I should have been a better and a happier man.

A father's love acts upon us later in life, but a mother leads us up to God. She bends and moulds our tender minds to her purposes so gently, that we are hardly aware of the pressure; but the father admires, and praises, and waters the more vigorous branches of our growth.

Our reading, our studies, sermons, nature, observation, tend to give to the mother a poetical interest in our hearts, in after years, when she is dead. She is the nucleus about which gather some of the most beautiful associations of our manhood. When we ourselves have children, we find out what is the nature of parental affection, and we look back with regret that we did not know and estimate it better, so that the homage of our love might have been more devoted, for what is so worthy of being repaid.

THE RED MAN.

I LOVE the Indian. Ere the white man came,
And taught him vice, and infamy, and shame,
His soul was noble. In the sun he saw

His God, and worshipped him with trembling awe.
Though rude his life, his bosom never beat
With polished vices, nor with dark deceit.

A SKETCH FROM LIFE. BY THE REV. THOMAS DALE.

AN ingenious friend, who has a saturnine cast of complexion, maintains with great zeal, that dark eyes are indicative of a higher order of intellect than those of other colors. This doctrine meets with great favor from every one whose eyes are black, while those that are blue, hazel, or gray, kindle with indignation at such monstrous absurdity. Our friend borrows a very happy illustration from nature, and says, that as the wildest and most vivid flashes of lightning burst from the blackest clouds, so do the most brilliant emanations of mind glare from the darkest eyes. Whether there be any truth in this doctrine, or not, it must be admitted, that our friend has the authority of the poets on his side. From immemorial time, they have been sonnetizing dark and black eyes, to the almost utter neglect of all others. Your novelists never in painting a heroine, say she has gray eyes; but all their poetical fictions see with those that are large, languishing, lustrous, and dark.

The vividness of an eye's expression is not dependent on its color. The eye is most expressive, whose owner has the most thought and feeling. The eye expresses the language of the mind and heart; and whether light or dark, wherever there is strong emotion, it manifests it. A man is a better reader of the meaning of a woman's eye, than he is of one of his own gender; and a lady discovers more indications in the eyes of the opposite sex, than can the most scrutinizing man.

The eye is the most poetical of features; and ample testimony

VOL. X.

29

has been borne, in all time, to its superiority in this particular. There is much poetry in the smile of one we love; but there is more in the gleaming kindness of an eye from which the concentrated rays of feeling, thought, and sentiment, are looking forth. Did you never look into the tranquil depths of an eye, and see the shadows of thoughts winging their flight onward? Did you never read whole chapters about the sympathy of souls in them? If not, your observation has not been acute, nor your love very devout.

The sublime science of astrology, which once commanded the faith of the learned, has been laughed at by the wisdom or scepti cism of more modern times. The doctrines and the devotion of those old readers of the stars have been discarded; and to the human eye the only relict of astrology now on earth has been confided. Lovers are the sole inheritors of the romantic doctrines bequeathed by elder astrologers to posterity. They do not cast devout looks toward the bespangled firmament, at night; but to them, the brow of a beloved being is a heaven, and the eye is the star that unfolds to them the shadows of their coming destinies. Their ancestors read the decrees of fate in the glittering watchers of the night-season, and they forsee the mysteries of the future in the expressions which shift and play upon the eye. If the eye of his mistress sparkles at his approach, it is the precursor of after joy. If the murky shadow of a frown rests upon it, it is the foreshadowing of the woe to come. To the lover, the eye of his mistress is ever eloquent, of hope or fear, of triumph or defeat. It is the polar star of his hope, the cynosure of his faith; and the complexion of the future changes, as her eye wanes into shadow, or waxes into the light of day.

A WHOLESOME lip is a thing to be loved. People are too much in the habit of regarding lips as mere appendages to the 'human face divine' ornaments, like ear-rings, to set off its beauty. This is to detract from their true use and excellence. They serve other purposes, and are indices of character.

A wholesome lip is of the complexion of a morello cherry. It pouts like a rosebud, and might lead a bee astray, as the grapes of Zeuxis did the birds. When kissing was in fashion, gallants of taste showed a flattering preference for lips of this kind. There was a flavor about them ambrosia, on which young Love fed and grew fat. The disciple of Socrates was feminine in the matter of lips, for bees hovered over them; and the judgment of a bee, in this respect, is scarcely inferior to that of a bachelor under thirty.

In general, people are disposed to think their noses of more importance than their lips, and many saucy noses seem to be of the same way of thinking; since we see them turning up with an expression of high disdain, as if the lips were so inferior as to merit scorn. Nogenteel,' well-behaved nose, is guilty of such dastardly effrontery. Such an one, it is true, may at times flap its nostrils, and crow lustily over its neighbors, as if it were cock of the walk;' but there is a soft insinuation about an eloquent lip, that cuts the comb of the braggart, and tames the monarch down to a mere republican.

6

Our maiden aunt Sally wore a lip, which, like her matrimonial

chances, was rather shrivelled. It was a mere streak along the horizon; an indistinct margin along an ocean of mouth; a strip to tell you where her teeth were. My aunt died husbandless. If she had wedded, her bridal kiss would have been interesting. She saluted my cheek once, when, like Fanny, I was younger than I am now, and prettier- of course!' I thought the sensation like a gentle bite. Instead of soft, spongy flesh, her lips seemed like scraps of flesh, iron-bound. Sometimes she puckered them up like the orifice of her reticule; and this was an infallible precursor of a coming storm. Xantippe had a thin, bluish, unwaving lip. Beware of such!

My nurse was a grizzly-headed negro woman; and her gift of underlip was stupendous. It poured down, a real cataract of lip. It was without model, although not without shadow. She was deficient in chin, and her lip circled over her lower jaw-bone, in shape and size resembling a half-grown grey-hound's ear. At a distance, you might have mistaken it for an extra allowance of tongue, which her mouth could not contain. It was awful! That is, to think of kissing such a thing! When the old woman bustled about, it shivered like a sheep in shearing-time; and when she jumped, it flapped over her under-jaw like the wing of a squat pigeon.

Among the ladies, there are two orders of lips. the nectarine and the vinegarish. The former swell out like the heave of a deep sigh; the latter are sharp, and make you smack your mouth when you look on them. The first denotes amiability, the second acidity. Everlasting spring lives in the blossoms of a nectarine lip, and eternal winter dwells upon the vinegarish, along which no rill of blood ever strays.

The lips of one's sweet-heart are a volume of poetry. Smiles fling a ray like the flush of morning upon them, and they are glorious in their brightness. They are an oracle, and from them comes the voice of destiny. They are a shrine, and around them the breath of inspiration ever lingers. It would be vain to talk of kissing any thing so sacred, when the mere thought overwhelms one in unspeak

able bliss!

T. H. S.

WHAT is life, but a vision! The forms which have spread
Their enchantment around us, and gladdened our day,

Like the vanishing vapors of morning have fled,

Or like eve's sun-gilt clouds, they are passing a way.
And when Youth's cherished hopes shall have faded and gone,
And this turbulent dream of existence is o'er

When life's sparkling current hath ceased to flow on,

And the place which now knows me will know me no more →→
Then bright on this page be engraven my name,

And long may it live, when my being is past;

Let others contend for a loftier fame,

No nobler, no dearer, no other, I ask.

Here perchance shouldst thou see it, forgotten, unknown,
Oh hallow that name with the dew of a tear!

Far sweeter the tribute, than tale-telling stone,
Which Pride, or Ambition, or Folly might rear.

J. H. B.