not yet at least, the spiritual thews and sinews of the poet. He had nothing to say, and his book failed; it fell still-born and unnoticed from the press. His friends praised, as usual, which but spoilt the young man more, and served to drive him on in his profitless course.

There is a fascination about book-writing, or newspaper writing, or writing of any sort that is to be printed, which, once experienced, never fails to exercise a power over one. It is like opium-eating, or smoking, or any other delicious pleasure; it can scarcely be given up. To see the slips of paper on which you write emerge from the printer's hands in proofs, and then expand into the full-blown book, is indeed a very delightful process, except, perhaps, to old writers, who may have grown tired of seeing their names in print. But with a young man, and a self-supposed "genius," the fascination is scarcely to be resisted. William Fenning did not resist it; he conceived himself to be born to do the great things that his friends predicted; he aspired to be a great writer.

But here his desultory habits again told against him. With all his reading, he had mastered no subject; and he errs much who supposes that distinction in any department of literature is to be acquired without the hardest application and labour. Even the successful novelist nowadays must have been a hard student: he must have traversed the wide field of general literature, observed largely and minutely men and things, studied the human character in its varied aspects; and be possessed of the power of throwing himself into the situations he depicts, and delineating them with a pen of eloquence and power. Such gifts mark the works of Scott, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, and all our leading successful novelists.

Nor can poetry, as some young men are too apt to think, be thrown off "at a heat." No man can work himself into a poetical frenzy, and throw off a great poem, any more than he can throw off a great history. To write poetry requires a schooling and education of the severest kind; whether it be the poetry of experience, or the poetry of thought. Poetry is an art which has to be perfected by thought and study like every other art; and though all human minds may possess more or less of the inspiration of the poet-of the sense to appreciate, and the power to render the music of the heart which overflows in song,-the gift of large utterance of poetic truth is denied, save to those of intense experience, of enlarged and cultivated taste, and of commanding intellect.

Devoid as William Fenning was in these leading requisites of the true poct, how could he succeed? But his course was taken, such as it was, and he aimed at being a writer. He wrote for magazines, newspapers, for periodicals of all sorts. He tried to be striking. Infected, as most young writers are, by the mystic style of Carlyle, he now wrote in the inverted and convulsive nood. He spoke of "shams," and "thunder-fire," and "battle-strife," and "clothes-philosophy," and was very grand and emphatic in his words. But it would not do: still he was not himself; and his prose was as great a failure as had been his verse. Those who read, were very apt to recognise in the affected roar of the lion, the the voice of a much humbler animal. He tried Emerson's manner next,for with all his short-comings, he had a gift of Imitation; but, while he could use words as Emerson does, he could not summon up the deep and subtle thoughts of that piercing thinker; his essays proved but a sort of Emerson clothes-horse; and these failed too. It was pitiable to see so much useful energy wasted,

To increase his dilemmas, poor William was at this juncture taken captive by a pair of gazelle eyes, and married them, on the faith of a small engagement he succeeded in forming on a provincial paper. It was sadly beneath his dignity, but the thorough-bred has

sometimes to do the hack's work, and even draw an ignoble cart. Not that the life of the newspaper writer and compiler is without its high dignity and value: it is honourable, as all labour is, and more productive of good than many kinds of labour are. But it requires hard work, and steady application; and our young friend had not yet acquired this eminent quality of success. He deemed himself to be thrown away on such gin-horse work; and had aspirations for something much higher, but which he would not take the pains to reach. His efforts were all fitful, and by starts-"genius" disdained dull rules, and he still thought he was a genius. His sweet little gazelle-eyed wife did not contradict him, and, like many loving women, believed him to be all that he professed.

By-and-by his services were dispensed with; and now William was unprovided for, having dependent on him and his pen, a wife and a growing family. His parents were unable to maintain them. Their own family was large, and, being in comparatively humble circumstances, it is probable that no small portion of what would have gone to form a savings' fund, had been expended by them in maintaining himself while idle for so long a time at home in his embryo state of "genius." In this dilemma he bethought him to write to his brother, whose grimed hands he used to think so mean. Edward had been gradually, but surely, working his way onward in life. He had early learnt the virtue of application, and been well schooled in hard work. He had risen through the various grades of apprentice, journeyman, and foreman, to that of manager of an extensive locomotive manufactory in a large town in one of the northern counties of England. He was thoroughly up to his business, and had mastered it in all its details. He had improved his leisure hours by diligent cultivation of his mind, and besides being a master craftsman, he was well up with the literature of his age. He had been mainly instrumental in founding and establishing an excellent Mutual Improvement Society, in connection with the manufactory in which he worked, but which was also accessible to the working classes of the neighbourhood generally. Of this institution he was the soul and spirit. His employers regarded him with admiration, and looking upon him as one of the mainstays of their establishment, proposed to take him as a partner into the concern. Such was his position when he received a letter from his brother William, asking for his assistance and advice in his present trying, and almost destitute state. The following was Edward's reply:

My dear brother.-What assistance I can give you shall be yours, cordially and freely. Of advice, in your present circumstances, I would be more chary. But, if you will permit me to say how it is that I have succeeded in life, to the extent on which you congratulate me, I would briefly state that it has been by always doing the work set me to do, and sticking to it till I had done it. I do not know that I have any other gift but that of ordinary common sense diligently applied; and I attribute this in no small degree to the fact of my having been set at an early period of my life to the performance of daily work under a good master. I cannot but regret that in your case, the fault arising perhaps from the oversight of our parents, the same valuable habit was earlier formed. But it is not too late-it is never too late to acquire steady habits of industry. Come to me here, and if you are willing, as I believe you to be, you need never look behind you.

Your affectionate brother,

EDWARD FENNING.

not

Years have passed, and William Fenning, acting on his wiser brother's advice, who succeeded in obtaining for him the situation of clerk, diligently applied himself to work, and is now a rising man in the same thriving and

THE "FRIEDHOF," OR THE COURT OF
PEACE.

[In Germany the Churchyards are poetically and truly termed, "The Courts of Peace."-Vide "Sketches of Bohemia," by HENRY REEVE, Esq.]

THE Court of Peace! the Court of Peace!
There toil, and care, and suff'ring cease;
And there, no more by ille opprest,
The "heavy laden" sink to rest.

How silent are its moss-grown walls,
How softly there the sun-beam falls;
How dirge-like floats the evening breeze
Thro' the tall grass and linden trees!

How brightly bloom the flow'rets there,
The sward how green, the paths how fair,
How sweet the pensive vesper-chime
That sighs adieu to parting time.

Sweet, too, the red-breast's soothing lay
There chaunted at the close of day;
And sweet the tender twilight gloom
That hovers round each lonely tomb.
The Court of Peace the Court of Peace!
How fast its denizens increase!

The babe new-born, the palsy'd erone,
The blooming bride, the widow lone,
The strong man in the pride of health,
The rich rejoicing in his wealth,
The poor who hath no earthly friend-
All in that solemn Court attend.

So still, so calm, so passion-free,
Full envy'd may the inmates be
By those who, midst the woes of life,
Wend on their way in storm and strife.
A narrow house which none molest,
A lowly couch, a simple vest,
A turf, a cross, a sculptured stone,
"Tis all they want-'tis all they own.
Q'er them the Summer's garlands wave,
O'er them the winds of Winter rave;
Suns rise and set, and tempests sweep,
Yet, undisturb'd, they soundly sleep.
No mourner's sigh breaks on their ears,
Their eyes behold no mourner's tears:
Not theirs to weep, to watch, to wait,
And tremble for the morrow's fate!
Their journey sped, their dangers o'er,
Nor love nor hate shall vex them more;
Wrapt in their shrouds of mould'ring clay
Till heaven and earth shall pass away
The Court of Peace! the Court of Peace!
There toil, and care, and suff'ring cease,
And there, no more by ills opprest,
"The weary" softly sink to rest.

ELIZABETH S. CAREY.

DEAFNESS:

as a large amount of deafness exists of a partial kind, and in nine cases out of ten entirely curable, I think I shall be doing a public service by speaking of deafness in this more generalized sense, particularly as it is one of my strongest personal convictions, that diffusion of informa tion on the two great subjects of Vital Statistics and Physiology is profoundly connected, both in a popular and in a scientific sense, with such progress of the people as will furnish new data to the historian, and necessitate great advantageous changes in the province of the legislator.

To illustrate the causes of this class of disease I would, if practicable, place before my readers those maps which appended to some of the Reports of the Sanitary Commission and to the works of the continental physiologists, give at once to the eye, through the agency of colour, those portions of cities which are the nurseries of fever, of cholera, of a low moral and vital condition, and show by the same process of reasoning, that precisely from the same districts, arise two-thirds of the cases of partial deafness, which appear so numerously on the books of public Institutions. It cannot be otherwise. One line of physical laws reigns supreme, and the same fetid, thickened atmosphere, the same want of water for purposes of cleanliness, and the same low condition of the vital powers, which give birth to and propagate the typhoid class of fevers, are equally destructive of a healthy condition of those nerves which receive and convey the impressions of outward sounds to the brain.

The human ear is one of the most exquisitely formed portions of the body, and whilst a favourite simile with poets in all ages, the anatomist and the sculptor have both expended on its description and delineation their highest powers. It is divided by anatomists into three portions; the external, the middle, and the internal ear. This external ear takes its name from the circumstance of its situation on the side of the head, and is so formed as to collect and transmit the currents of air into the passage which leads to the middle ear, called the tympanum or drum. This consists of a thin skin or membrane stretched out on four small bones, and which by its vibrations conveys, through the medium of the nerves, the sensation of sounds; and the third division, or internal ear (called by anatomists, the real ear, or ear proper,) is a pulpy mass in which beautifully expands the great auditory nerve, which gathers up the vibrations, made as we have seen, by the action of the external air upon the tympanum or drum, till, at last, through this expansion, the impressions of outward sounds are conveyed to the brain, where memory and association complete the process, and show the relation which exists between the external agent and the internal impression. It follows, then, that as hearing is a sense, the effect of undulations of airs or fluids, or of vibrations of solids upon a special nerve, that hearing must be largely affected by the condition of the air which undulates upon the drum or tympanum, and the nerves which stamp the impression on the brain. If the one be vitiated and thickened, it cannot strike upon the drum of the ear with the same acute power; nor can the nerves, diminished in vitality by the same operating causes, be agents of acute impressions to the brain. But, beyond these immediate effects of the operation and the conveyance of sound, the auditory nerve is sympathetically connected with one of the most wonderful nerves of the human body, namely, the great sympathetic nerve of the stomach, and thus is

REMEDIES.

A MOST charming paper on a subject rarely touched upon except professionally, that of Deafness, was contributed by Miss Martineau to Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, in 1834. Its purpose was to give advice and a sort of philosophic consolation to the incurable, and it thoroughly fulfilled its intention in a sweet and humane spirit; but

from diseases of the stomach. Thus, the same causes have direct and indirect effects. For the same vitiated air which deadens outward impressions, and lessens the vitality of the immediate operating nerve, does not supply sufficient oxygen (the vital property in air) to the lungs, and thus the intermingled venous blood (the blood deprived of nutrition during its oirculation through the

body) and chyle (the juice formed in the intestines from digested food) flow into the left ventricle of the heart without being in that healthy condition which due nutriment of the body requires. Again, the stomach injured and weakened in its powers by intemperance, inaction, injudicious food, want of cleanliness, and a relative action of the skin becomes diseased, and is incapable of the great function of digestion; and the great sympathetic nerve immediately responding to the impression, organs which, upon first consideration, seem too remote for relative action, are intimately connected, and cannot exist in opposite conditions of health and of disease.

This truth, therefore, leads me to the point I have in view, namely, that all remedies in relation to partial deafness must be grounded on the inductive process, that is, that all the varying causes of the disease be as nearly as possible considered, and the remedy adjusted to the result of this consideration. I wish to impress this necessity upon the minds of such of my readers as are interested in this topic; for quackery has beset this class of diseases and their cure to an extent almost without parallel in the history of surgery. At one time every possible disease of the ear was to be cured by a newly invented pair of forceps; at another by an instrument for passing up the nose; at a third by cutting away certain glands of the threat; but people might as well attempt to find one exclusive remedy for the evils of government, one golden panacea for poverty, or one wholesale method for making mankind virtuous and happy; Dean Swift, when in his heartiest satiric vein, never imagined anything finer ti an some of the curatives for deafness which quacks have propounded.

Is it reasonable, that the poor, pale dressmaker, whose class is so largely subject to diseases of the ear, can be benefited by precisely the same remedy, as would operate favourably in the case of a plethoric butcher, who has become deaf from an exactly opposite set of causes; for, in the ascertained statistics of deafness, butchers rank high? Yet, unhappily for thousands, whose hearing was a precious thing to them, this one remedy, successful in some few instances, because bearing relatively on the case, has proved worse than none at all by hopelessly confirming their disease. The truth is, if there be a class of general remedies, it lies within the province of better food, better air, more exercise, and less mental anxiety. These are general principles, and only these. "A large proportion of the poor," says Mr. Harvey, the eminent surgeon of the Royal Dispensary for Diseases of the Ear, "residing in the low, damp, confined districts of Westminster, Whitechapel, and Bethnal Green, have very imperfect hearing, a fact, doubtless, referable to the unhealthy places of their abode, and to their general inattention to the laws of health. Now, as long as these causes of disease are suffered to remain, spreading misery and death all around them, the medical art is capable of little more than palliating evils which are inevitable; but once let vigorous measures for securing the public health be adopted, and we should soon find, in the diminished applications to hospitals and dispensaries, and still more decisively by the decreasing mortality, cheering proofs of an improved condition of the more numerous classes."

These truths have been evidenced more or less in the sanitary reports which have appeared from time to time; and in continental cities, such as Paris, we have direct testimony in this particular. During its great political revolutions, when this city has heaved up upon its social surface a class of population, whose very cxistence has been unsuspected, except by the police, and unnotified except upon their registers, hundreds have been observed whose half-articulated speech and coarse voices have betrayed the dulness of their sense of hearing; so much so, as almost to bring them within the class of deafmutes, or those deaf from birth. Deafness also exists to

a large extent in the low, unsunned valleys of mountainous countries, whilst higher up in the mountain ranges, the inhabitants are remarkable for their acute sense of hearing; a well-known instance of which is that of the Swiss guides, who catch sounds and the tones of voices at incredible distances. Again, to prove the influence of pure air upon the sense of hearing, it is mentioned by Humboldt, and by the Jesuits who have travelled largely in these regions, that on the Pampas, or vast plains of South America, across which sweep the great air currents of the Pacific, deafness is a disease unknown; whilst in our own prisons, and those of North America, the schoolmasters and ministers of religion have often the greatest difficulty in instructing juvenile criminals, through the reason of imperfect hearing; such children being, invariably, the offspring of low and intemperate parents. The other common causes of deafness seem to be wet feet or clothes, sleeping in damp rooms and unaired beds, and constipation of the bowels; whilst, in young children, exposure to cold and damp,-the effects of scarlet fever,-the washing of very young infants in cold water, and tying up their heads in caps which flatten the ear, thus altering its natural power and position, rank high in the list of predisposing causes.

In an interesting visit, which I had the pleasure of making, during the past summer, to one of the metropolitan dispensaries for diseases of the ear, I was struck immediately by an irresistible fact, that there was not one patient out of some thirty or forty whom I saw examined for various diseases of this organ, that had not lost general health; as was evidenced by the lustreless eye, the pallid, bloodless skin, and that anxious, restless cast of the whole countenance, which is one of the sure signs of impaired digestion. Nor was there the smallest doubt, that scarcely one of the cases, though the relative ages varied from ten to forty years, that would not have been benefited, nay, in the majority, I will say cured, by a three months' summer rambling, with good food and lodging out on Salisbury Plain, or on the shores of Devonshire.

Deafness being thus, as it were, a disease growing out, for the larger part, from the course of life, and the neglect of sanitary regulations incident to our present early stage of civilization, it not only follows, as I have before said, that eight-tenths of such diseases may be classed as curable, but that also, as wiser sanitary laws become enforced by legislators, as the moral life of the population is improved, as true education spreads, as new discoveries are made by anatomists in relation to the brain, as the laws of electricity and nervous action are more developed and explained, and the deductions therefrom give new light and stimulus to the art of medicine, a large portion of the diseases which at present affect the organs of sight and hearing will disappear, and deafness become, at least entire deafness, as rare, as gaol fever and ague are at the present day. Still, at the same time, individuals may do so much for themselves, in respect to temperance, cleanliness, and the regulation of the digestive functions, as often to relieve the physician of half his responsibility. Beyond this, the deaf have two great facts to bear in mind, to attempt no self cure, and whilst not delaying the best advice they can procure at the earliest stage of their disease, to be rightly suspicious of all remedies that proceed by violent methods, and which do not, as almost a first law, take into consideration their general health, in relation both to the stomach, the lungs, or the existence of rheumatic affections. Again, parents, especially those in poorer life, cannot be too careful of, or too prompt to detect disease and gain advice for their chilren in respect to complaints of the car. Small complaints in relation to an organ so delicate and beautiful as the human ear are almost always, if neglected, the forerunners of severe and incurable disease; and there is scarcely now a town, however remote or small, in Great Britain, not

containing some practitioner who has made diseases of the ear more especially his study, and who can do no other than give gratuitous advice to the needy and su fering. But in large towns, and at distances accessible, advice is best sought at large dispensaries, or of those whose practice is related to such institutions; for large experience can only truly educate and give the practitioner ability in reference to the diseases of so complicated an organ as the ear. But this advice when given, when it is the result of a due enquiry into the patient's occupation, period of disease, presumed cause, and other questions of the same relative kind, should be rigidly followed by the patient or the parent, and no nostrums made use of, either previously or during the period of medical care, for hearing is too precious a faculty to be tampered with, with impunity. Neither should acoustic instruments, or instruments for improving hearing, be unheedingly resorted to, for they almost always injure rather than benefit. "Acoustic instruments," says Mr. Harvey, like surgical operations, should always be the last things resorted to; hundreds have permanently lost their hearing through using instruments, who might, by proper treatment, adopted early and adhered to, have been restored to the full possession of that important and valuable function. Instruments ought not to be employed without great caution, particularly in incipient deafness, or in discharges from the ear. It is impossible to lay down rules which would be generally applicable to the choice of instruments, for that which might suit one person might prove worse than useless to another. It cannot be that one of the size of a seve 1-shilling piece can prove of any service whatever, without reckoning the cost which poorer patients can so ill afford." In relation to deafness as the result of disease, the poor and rich have relative duties, the one in calamities of this nature to endeavour to bear onward with cheerful and earnest hope in the attention given, and in the humane care bestowed; whilst it becomes a part of the Christian duty of the rich to support by their bounteous and timely aid institutions, which like the Ophthalmic and Aural Hospitals of London, and other great towns, are not only priceless in the blessings which they can bestow upon poverty and suffering, and upon those whose bread depends upon labour, in two of the most formidable calamities which can afflict humanity, but also as institutions which open the sources of profound knowledge both to the man of science and to the legislator.

To my own thinking, the province of medical statistics is even yet too much neglected, though it boasts amongst its investigators, first-class men like Mr. Neison, and Drs. Guy and Holland of Sheffield. A masterly induction might be drawn as to the actual vital condition of the population, by the comparison of the statistics to be found in these metropolitan hospitals and dispensaries for diseases of the eye and ear, and one of the best services which could be rendered to the Early Closing Movement, would be this sort of induction made in its behalf, and drawn from a comparison of the documents referred to. Much better, however, will these things be done, when the governments of various countries unite in one effort to draw from the comparison of their several classes of statistics, new methods and new laws for the furtherance and development of social and physical benefit; for as M. Quetelet says, "Isolated man sees his actions enclosed within too narrow a circle for him to dream of collecting all the materials to compose the edifice: he must, to ensure success, have recourse to the generous intervention of Governments."

SILVERPEN.

A PROFOUND knowledge of life is the least enviable of all species of knowledge, because it can only be acquired by trials that make us regret the loss of our ignorance.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART.
There is a love that speaketh,

But is not heard aloud;
Its sacred language breaketh
Not on the busy crowd.
'Tis heard in secret places

Its sorrow to disguise;
'Tis writ in anxious faces,
And meditative eyes.

It ever comes to render

Kind thoughts when fond ones part;
Its tones are sweet and tender,
'Tis the language of the heart.

No art of man can teach us

This secret speech of love;
Though here its tones may reach us,
They echo first above.
'Tis heard in gen.le praises,
In pleadings soft and weak;
It tells in silent gazes,

What lips could never speak.
With strong electric fleetness,
Its holy breathings start,
No speech can match in sweetness
The language of the heart.

ROBERT H. BROWN.

THE PLANTER'S INVENTORY.

I.

BоTH paused at the entrance of the oak wood which led to the road to Montgomery. "I must not go farther," said the young girl, "my father is ill, and may be looking for me. We must part;" and her tears fell upon the hand of the youth, in which that of the fair American was fondly clasped.

The

"Do not weep, my gentle, my darling Mary; you unman me, and I have need of all my courage. If you knew what misery it is to me to go, and how long I hesitated when Mr. Jackson spoke to me of the situation at Boston. But I was obliged to yield to reason. affairs of your father are more embarrassed than he is himself aware; his illness is increasing every day, and you may be left, I know not the moment, utterly without resource. By accepting the offer made to me, I secure a competence for us both; I have at once a home to which I can take you; and, in a few months at the utmost, we shall be united for ever. Mary, is not this a happy thought?"

"Ah! William !" was the only answer of the girl, as she threw herself into the arms of her betrothed, who pressed her tenderly to his bosom, imprinting a long kiss upon her tearful eyes.

Adieu!" exclaimed he; "adieu, my beloved! my wife." Again he pressed her to his bosom; again embraced her; then tearing himself away, he hurried along in the direction of Montgomery.

Long did Mary remain standing in the same spot, gazing after him, to catch through the trees one more last adieu. At length, when no longer able to catch a glimpse of him, she remembered her father, and slowly took the way to the settlement.

She was yet at a little distance from it, when she perceived Mr. Jackson coming to meet her. For a mon.ent she looked around, as if to find some means of avoiding him, but seeing that it was impossible, she determined to go forward.

This first impulse of Miss Mackenzie requires some explanation, and we hasten to give it.

Mr. Jackson, the proprietor of a neighbouring plantation, for which its numerous cotton plants had acquired it the name of White Crown, was a man of about forty, of tall figure, and marked countenance. He was a native of Ireland, and had been forced to quit it for some acts

of violence, of which the accounts were various. Having arrived in this part of Alabama with the first emigrants, he had for a long time lived there the life of danger and hardship of the pioneers, knowing no law but his will no right but that of the strongest. His youth had passed in perilous enterprises amidst the Creeks and the Choctaws, of whom he had been by turns the friend and the enemy. They told a thousand tales of him which proved his courage, but still more the fierce energy of his passions. Many were the desperate combats, the incredible adventures, the bloody revenges which had marked his career. Twice had he carried off from Choctaw chiefs their favourite wives, and had fled with them into the forests. The dangers he had incurred in these two adventures were fearful; but nothing did Jackson ever suffer to stand in the way of the gratification of his passions. He had mixed with the civilized of every country, and had borrowed from all whatever could aid him in his objects. His mind, cultivated from early youth, wanted neither natural nor acquired power; his language had often an elevation of style rarely met with, save in books-and his manners the refinement of the saloon: but under all this lurked the determined, the unyielding, inflexible will of the savage. He had learned from the tribes, in the midst of whom he had lived so long, the patient cunning and the silent perseverance by which they were wont to carry their point.

"And why ?"

"Because Miss Mackenzie is too beautiful and too well. educated to pretend to nothing more than sharing the fate of this poor man."

"Methought I heard you predict just now that Mr. Hamilton would make his fortune?"

"Doubtless, some fifty years hence! But I trust Miss Mackenzie has too much good sense to condemn herself to an existence of privations, care and toil, when she can secure, at this very instant, all the pleasures of opulence." "I have but little ambition," answered the young girl.

Surely you at least aspire to be happy, and you know not what is to be endured before independence can be attained. You have seen the toils, the weary days and sleepless nights that it has cost our emigrants to clear away enough of the forests to let in the daylight. How has the arm hung powerless when repeated blows with the axe have exhausted both strength and spirits! Well, believe me, this is light labour compared with that which awaits you in a struggle with the world. There, instead of trees you have men, and for your axe your will-a bad instrument which is constantly losing its edge or turning back against yourself. Believe me, Miss Mackenzie, the savages are right when they say, that corn in the ear is always good corn, and ready-made nests the best nests." "

His wealth had given to Mr. Jackson great influence in Alabama. His talent, as a man of business, was highly extolled, while his vices were glossed over or lightly dwelt upon, as is the wont with the world while men are useful in it. He possessed many hundreds of blacks, and so great was the cruelty with which he treated them, that the most terrible threat to a slave was to tell him that he should be sold to Mr. Jackson. However, as this proverbial cruelty had become to the planter a source of riches, far from lessening the consideration in which he was held, it increased it.

Without knowing Mr. Jackson fully, Miss Mackenzie felt for him an instinctive repugnance. She experienced in his presence that kind of thrill which the timid dove feels near the bird of prey. The visits of the planter of White Crown to her father's had always been disagreeable to her, but more especially so since they had become frequent-nay, almost constant. This meeting, then, with the former pioneer was, especially at this instant, most embarrassing and vexatious. He joined her, however, and after the customary civilities had been exchanged, both went on in the direction of Mr. Mackenzie's abode. There was a moment's silence. At length Jackson said, "I see by the tearful eyes of Miss Mackenzie that she has been taking leave of William Hamilton."

The young girl blushed, and asserted by a slight bow. "Do not be uneasy." replied the planter, "I have recommended him to a house where every clerk has made his fortune."

"Mr. Hamilton will then owe to you his success," stammered Mary, "and I ought to have thanked you

"Thank me above all for sending him away." "How?"

"Yes, I hope that Hamilton's absence will allow Miss Mackenzie time for reflection, and induce her to renounce this matrimonial project."

Jackson gazed in momentary wonder at the young creature who could thus surmount those prejudices of the south, where all labour is regarded as a misfortune-all exertion as a degradation to a female; then believing that her fortitude was but the offspring of ignorance, he said— "You little know what you will have to encounter in joining Hamilton at Boston; you little know the Northern States. What your negroes are here, you will be there; for with our abolitionist brothers, the rich man is the master, the poor man the slave, and the wife of a poor man is the slave of a slave. There, wealth is acquired, not by the arm of another but by your own; the gold you earn is earned by the sweat of your brow;" and taking the soft white hand of the young girl in his, he went on with rather a tone of raillery-"Will you be content to give those taper fingers, to be galled and chafed with coarse packing-cloths-those hands, whose heaviest office has been the gathering flowers, to weighing out of groceries, and grinding spices. have always enjoyed the luxurious repose of the women of Alabama-will you condemn yourself to servile employments that are here left to slaves?—to toils to which theirs are light-for you will have mental burdens-and we take good care that, however our rascals may work their bodies, their minds shall not have many ideas to weigh them down. The man that would dare to teach them to read, or give them a Bible, or any other book, had need to look well to his back if a negro, or his purse if a white-two hundred stripes or two hundred dollars. Surely, dear Miss Mackenzie, you will not expose yourself to all those vicissitudes, those chances of fortune?"

You

"I shall be quite content to submit to the habits of any country in which I may be obliged to reside."

With an impatient gesture, the planter replied in a tone, the affected gentleness of which was full of menace, "Beware, Miss Mackenzie; reflect before you decide; remember your father is in question here as well as you."

The young girl gazed at him in astonishment.

"Mr. Mackenzie, when beginning his plantation here,