Imatges de pàgina
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But soon a power beyond mere beauty grows,
And with new life through every feature glows.
Thus the lithe willows by our native stream,
Whose silver leaves in, its bright waters gleam,
Grow to the fancy, till their mournful sweep,
Recalled where'er we wander, makes us weep.
So the rude song that echoes on the hills
Of Switzerland and all her valleys fills,
If haply heard by wandering mountaineer,
In Po's rich vale, or Afric's deserts drear,
Recalls his native mountains to his thought,
Shrouded in mists, with fearful tempests fraught;
Recalls his cot that like an eyry clings,

Where the wild stream from melting glacier springs,
And up the snow-capped mountains to the sky,
Curls its white smoke as if with them to vie :
Ay, and far dearer are the rocks that scowl,
And wintry blasts, that round their summits howl,
Than the mild zephyrs of the Italian grove,
Wafted o'er flowery plains, on wings of love;
And, were he free to choose, he'd fly with joy
Back to the scenes that all his thoughts employ;
Where his loved mountains in rude grandeur stand,
His soul's high teachers, guardians of his land,
And bless the tempests that his home restore,
And love it for its whirlwind storms the more!

S. D. D.

AN ADVERTISEMENT.

I CONSIDER it a bounden duty, through this widely-extending medium, to advértise to the world that there are now floating over its happy surface two Individuals, of that bright order of Being called Woman, whose employment it seems to be to occupy alternately the hearts of their associates and acquaintance.

One of the two is endowed with a spiritual and fervent imagination, of surpassing richness and exquisite variety of thought, and seems limited only in a single train of moral investigation and discovery; that, namely, which leads to an understanding and appreciation of her own rare gifts.

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The other, more balanced in her gracious faculties, acts out more calmly perhaps, if I could bring myself to employ such a term, I should say more perfectly - her own beautiful conceptions of goodness; and with an exacter justice, forms an estimate as well of herself as of surrounding objects. So also is the latter more defined than the former in that precision of outline which marks the space she fills in the imagination of the contemplator; and while the first is, as it were, the rainbow, whose arc is regular, but whose breadth and depth of celestial color no human eye can measure or fathom, the latter is like the planet, whose radiations of light are determined by fixed laws, both in their direction and extent.

I suppose it difficult to fancy, as connected with this life, two Intelligences of greater purity and sweetness; the one in thought and conduct, and the other in conduct and thought. I long very much to call the one my Inspiration; and the other my Development; so precious are the ideas which the one induces, and the other personates; and such is the affinity between the two, that after having been in the

society of the one, I desire excessively to behold the other; from whose presence I would again return to the former, as to a fountain of waters in the leafy shades of deep retirement. The world, and thou too, perhaps, admired chronicler, might, under this description, greatly wonder that I should wish to advértise and disseminate the knowledge of these two Existences. The world, aud thou too no, not thou, but the world — might opine that it were the discreeter, and therefore the better part, to keep unto my single self the pleasurable consciousness of two such treasuries of thought and goodness; or that if, in the elation of my heart, I were forced, like the Barber of Midas, to tell my secret or die, that I should, like him, retire into the fields, and whisper it to the very grass; telling the flowers of earth of these who are born to become hereafter the flowers of heaven.

The reason that I cannot do this, thou wilt, upon ulterior thought, be at no loss to comprehend, when I tell thee that they are frequently about my path, which has now become a downward one; and often, all unconsciously to themselves, perhaps, do they shed rays of light across it, that my heart drinks up, when, as it were, I arrive at the passage over which they appear to my delighted fancy to have beamed; and though I might, for once or twice, go into the woods to ejaculate the expression of grateful feelings, that two such beings have ever been fashioned for man's irradiation and joy, yet beholding them often, and of late, I cannot satisfy myself without thy friendly aid, in order that thy entire world of readers may participate in the knowledge of such existence, if not in the pleasure of such society.

To these thy readers would I address these lines. If of the better sex, be they henceforth happier than ever in the graces of their proper destiny, and in the consciousness of the healing pleasure, the inappreciable delight, which they have power to awaken in the soul, even of the stricken and the departing. If, on the other hand, they be of my own, let them realize the means of increased felicity and virtue which Heaven, in Woman, hath bestowed on man. JOHN WATERS.

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VOL. XV.

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Up! up, arise!-haste, haste! the vernal morn
Purples the orient sky; and see! the rays
Of the young sun the eastern hills emblaze;
Ten thousand pearls their sparkling boughs adorn:
Quick, quick!- the simple robe, the hat of chip —

Let thy loose ringlets flutter in the breeze;

Soft, soft glide down the stairs; thy hand I seize;
Mount we our coursers, and the gale outstrip.

How fresh the air! how mild the early sun!

How ring the wild notes through the neighboring wood!
Dustless the moist earth as we gallop on-

Rattle the pebbles of this shallow run;

Thunders the bridge: ha! ha! in drowsy mood,
Toss on the uneasy down who will

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we, we are flown!

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Speak it not lightly! Oh! beware, beware!
Tis no vain promise, no unmeaning word;
Lo! men and angels lisp the faith ye swear,
And by the high and holy ONE 't is heard:
O then kneel humbly at His altar now,
And pray for strength to keep your marriage vow!
New-York, May, 1840.

M. N. M.

OUR VILLAGE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN IN PARIS, LETTERS FROM LONDON,' ETC.

NUMBER TWO.

WITH your leave, gentle reader, I will continue my efforts to entertain you with random sketches of Our Village. The better to execute this task, I have scrambled up the steep of the Sharp Mountain, ascending abruptly from the Schuylkill, to near the summit; where a gray and fretted rock-work, bearing on its flanks the motley weatherstains of a thousand damp and frozen winters, and hot summers, commands an extended view of the prospect; where, snugly sequestered in a nook, one can look out unobserved upon the varied scene; its mountains, its valleys, and villages, and its busy mortals, moving about in their several employments. Come, if you are a pretty maid, and sit by me. Poets have come hither to dictate their first sonnets, to exchange their first vows of mutual affection. I forgive mother Eve, with my whole heart, for the several penalties she has entailed upon us; among others, for the season's difference.' May, as a kind friend after absence, as good fortune after gloom and adversity, has returned with a pleasurable influence, that had been forever unfelt under a monotony of eternal Springs; and the rosy-footed Month, (I ask pardon of her younger sister, who is more rosy than she,) has to-day put on her sweetest smiles, with her robe of green; and a genial spirit breathing in the air invites to enjoyment. Come, then, dear lady; the perfume of the cedar is deliciously fragrant; a tufted pine, its hair dishevelled, and gently curled by the breeze, offers you protection from the sun; now and then a bird carrols overhead its dainty lay; Zephyrus has set loose the trickling rivulets, and Flora has unbuttoned the little flowers. I have prepared a seat for you of moss. I know a lady who will be glad to sit on it, if you will not.

That's a good girl! Now tuck up your frock,* and I will show you all that is prettiest upon the disc of this charming landscape. To a lady's perfections, it is necessary that a good portion of her time should be spent in the country. She should be set out as the flowerpots from the hot-house, in the spring. Not only the mind is fed here on better thoughts, but the limbs receive the exercise requisite to beauty, and the nerves are fortified against the hurricanes that break in through the key-holes of city parlors, bearing rheums, catarrhs, and consumptions, on their deadly wings.

That huge pile, which seems to prop up the heavens, bounding the view northwardly, eight miles distant, and running parallel, is the BROAD MOUNTAIN. The smaller hills intervening, some of them turning up their noses as if they were mountains, shaded with grizly underwood, and ever-green pine and hemlock, and waving like the troubled sea, are the depositories of the coal and iron which give the region its commercial worth and dignity. Traversing this valley, not

* A CLASSIC imitation: Componere togam-succincta toga;' a succinct way the Latins had of saying, 'Attend!'

twenty years ago, the traveller often stood still in wonder at the immense waste of creation; disposed, especially, to find fault with the bad economy, when obliged to seek one of these steeps, of a hot day. Improvident mortal! how little imagining the treasures laid up by Nature's bounty for him and his posterity, in the bosoms of these heaving ridges and mountains!

The coal was indeed long ago discovered; but a score or two of years elapsed while philosophers were showing the impossibility, and fools finding out the means, of burning it; and as many more, while the learned were demonstrating the deleterious effects of carbonic gasses upon human health and food. The first burning of this fuel was forbidden in England by an edict of parliament, and by a much more absolute authority in America-public opinion. Ladies' hair fell off, or was turned red, and complexions and furniture were ruined; influenzas and bronchitis multiplied; and multitudes, of all sexes and conditions, perished; wives scolded, servants ran away, and grates were tossed into the street. In a word, the household gods were smoked, cracked, and shattered, and kitchen hearths made desolate. Coal, however, prevailed, after many struggles, and is now the universal fuel of the great cities, with no undue increase in the bills of mortality. The domestic charities are restored; the poker, also, to its legitimate functions; ladies' heads are reinvested with their tresses, blonde, auburn and jet; and there has been a regular improvement in the female complexion and gastronomy.

The river which you see making its way toward the south, with a fall of eight hundred feet to the tide, upon a hundred miles, and designed to convey the minerals of this region to market, is the SCHUYLKILL. To be prompt and convenient to this function, it has carved for itself a channel, as you see, through the solid mountain, by a process very puzzling to human wit. A little sand confines the ocean, and the mountain rock has here yielded to a rivulet! There is an infinity of subjects before us for the geognosophist, that would keep him in innocent employment for a long life-time, making him as learned in cosmogony as Whiston, or Burnet, or Buffon, who ended their days by knowing nothing about the matter. By what process was it, indeed, that great Nature rolled up the surface of the earth into these multitudinous waves, and impregnated them with minerals, so necessary to human uses?

These numerous 'shanties,' which you see sprinkled over the hills, lonely or in groups, are the homes of the miners, to which, coming out of the ground, they resort to pay their respects to their sturdy little wives; and the openings in the flanks of the hills, gaping so hideous, are the mines, from which men, black as the imps of another region, carry out coal. A hundred miles of rail-road intersect the valleys, or tunnel the hills, upon which long trains of cars, with their conductors, and a woman occasionally seated on them, roll along the gently declining plane, with no visible power of motion; horses trotting after; and now and then a locomotive comes blustering up, like a great bully, making music with the puffing and suffocating engines of the mines and furnaces. One more revolution of the year will present you an uninterrupted rail-road of ninety miles to Philadelphia: a third part only is remaining to be accomplished; and all this where

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