MRS. WARE: If you think the enclosed lines deserve a place amid the variegated blossoms of your Bower, you will please accept them.

TO CONSTANCE.

Like a vision from heav'n was my lovely maid,
Or an angel from yonder blue sky-

Or a flow'r that blush'd as it lonely stray'd
From its native bower-the pride of the glade;

She smil'd and passed on from my watching eye,
When a voice breathed soft as the notes of the grove,
I sigh'd-and I felt 'twas the sigh of love.

"Twas heaven that lighted that sacred flame,
At her shrine, and its pure steady ray,
Burns brightly to honor her virgin name-
My hearts fond oblation her virtues shall claim;
And its fervor can never decay!

For my bosom to know has just began,
That a heav'n on earth may be won by man.

Hail! rosy power of love divine!

Reciprocal be thy sacred bliss,

Lead on a fond pair to thy hallow'd shrine,
And with Hymen the nuptial wreath entwine,
As a boon of our earthly happiness!
Farewell sweet girl-yet true to thee
Until we meet this heart shall be!

A FRAGMENT.

THADDEUS OF ERIN.

Which oft we laugh at in a giddy boy;
Where unreflecting and unthinking mind
Grasps not a substance, but a shadow.
He sees upon the topmast shaken bough,
A beauteous bird; and longs, within his hand
T'obtain it. He makes full many attempts,
But all in vain; at least, with murd'rous aim,
He points the deadly weapon, Down at length
The lovely victim falls, beauteous no more.

• Of joys departed, never to return, how painful the remembrance!'

Flow on, sweet stream! flow gently on!
Thy flowery banks seem proud of thee;
Thy waters mingle many a charm,
But oh! they mingle none for me!

Roll onward to thy final doom,

Through nature's grots, sublime and free,
O'er tow'ring cliff, through fields of bloom,
To the deep bosom of the sea.

Time was, when on thy banks so fair,
With one beloved I used to stray,
And listen to thy murmurs there-
But ah! those hours have pass'd away.

Oh why, Alphonso, didst thou roam?
Thy absence teaches me thy worth-
Make not a foreign land thy home,
Thou dear companion of my youth!

Yet though by Heaven it is decreed,

That we on earth should part forever,
When we from this dark world are free'd,
Our souls shall meet, no more to sever!

DREAMS.

'We retrace

All early time in dreams; and hear the low,
Deep cadences of prayer, and press the hand
That led us to our happy slumbers then.
We look on riper seasons with the eye
That painted them all sunshine, and forget

That we have found them shadows; and we trust
Life's broken reed as lightly, and repeat

Our first young vow as movingly, again.
Such dreams refresh the feelings, like a pure
And high communion; for the spirit wears
No fetter of a poor, particular world,
And waits no cold and selfish reasoning,
To measure out its fervor, but goes back
Upon the purer memories, and lives o'er
The brighter past, alone; and when the heart
Hath buried an affection, it unclothes
Its image from the drapery of the grave,
And wins it to its olden tenderness.'

Willis.

RUSTICIA

TRAVELLING by night affords a sighing of the night breezes that pleasure, which in some degree are heard murmuring among the compensates for the interruption distant hills; there are few who occasioned to observation by dark-have not enjoyed watching these ness and obscurity. The outside progresses of the day, but rare it of a mail-coach is the best of all is that we find any one equally asituations for enjoyment of this pleasure; and while journeying rapidly in such a manner through the heart of the midland countries, he must be a strangely insensible creature who is incapable of feeling the changes, which, from the first fresh hour of morning, to the deepest repose at night, are continually occurring. The revelry of noontide, rich and joyous, as if the elements had agreed to club their sweetest influence to heighten it; the tempered warmth, the soberer gladness and the beauty of the afternoon hours; and then the eventide, sparkling with something of the morning's brilliancy, and only contrasted with it by the

VOL. I.

live to the solemn pomp and language of the night as it passes on from one silent watch to another. Nothing, however, can be finer than the calm and silent manifestations of nature working under its deep shadows, and carrying on the great mystery of being independent of man's intervention or control. As the evening dies away into a cold clear twilight, the huge world seems gathering up itself and settling into repose; then the broad heavy shadows, that lay like a folded up curtain in the valleys, are spread out over hill and plain; the hush of the wide universe becomes deeper and deeper, and the midnight comes in the

45

fulness of its hours, brooding over the earth, like a mighty spirit of embodied time. As this watch of the night wanes away, hour after hour produces some change in the face of nature, in the floating sounds of the air, the hues of the overhanging clouds, or the forms of the shadows; and we feel that nature is finishing her work of renovation and preparing again to unveil herself. There is a mystery of beauty in these changes of night, that awakens many a sweet and solemn thought; and when aided by any circumstances of individual feeling, produces sensations of the most exquisite kind. In travelling, also, as we have said, the changes of the road are sure to present some object to heighten the feelings thus awakened, and to give the heart a vent for the deepened and hallowed stream of its humanity.

I had been for some time enjoying such reflections as these, as the changes of the night progressively took place. It was now a little past one in the morning, and I had arrived near the place at which it was necessary for me to leave the mail, and wait for a conveyance to pursue my route on a different road. The country about here happened to be more thinly inhabited than any of the surrounding districts, and it was only here and there that a cottage was to be seen, and that far off among the fields. I looked forward as well as the dim light of the atmosphere would let me, on each side of the road, but I saw nothing that indicated the presence of a single living thing. The little quiet hovels that I every now and then saw, were all hushed, and sharing in the same repose as those we had before passed; and I left the vehicle to pursue my path in perfect loneliness.

I was once travelling by the mail, through a part of the country, whch being only famous as I had walked for about half a an agricultural district, afforded mile down one of those narrow little to amuse one unacquainted country roads which lead from one with any of the signs that foretell village to another, when at the whether crops will be good or distance of a field or two, I caught bad. There was, however, among the glimpse of a light glimmering the objects of rural life that it through the unshuttered window presented, a sufficient degree of of a cottage. I was not displeassimple picturesque beauty to con- ed at first at finding I had not the sole me for the absence of other whole world to myself, but as I and less familiar sights; and as contrasted the appearance of the we passed rapidly through little little dwelling I was looking at, slumbering villages, or by the with the deep slumbering peace of door of some lonely cottage on the others I had seen, there was the road-side, a variety of pleasing something almost unnatural in its images presented themselves, that look, and a hundred conjectures my heart seized on as the types arose in my mind to account for of human happiness in its least the watchfulness of its inhabivariable forms. Deep and un-tants. The idea, however, which broken was the repose of these took strongest hold of me was, quiet spots; not a foot was stir- that sickness, or perhaps death, ring near them, nor a waking had invaded the humble family; sound to be heard; peace had and, as I had not been altogether smoothed the pillow of the peas-unaccustomed to the cottage fireant, and was now keeping her side in such seasons as this, and watch round his habitation. had an hour or two on my hands,

I jumped over a stile hard by, and the present meeting of friends and walked up the narrow pathway to neighbors, and the reason of the the dwelling. As I tapped at the late hour to which they prolonged door, I heard the sound of two or their stay. It was the last day three voices speaking in a tone of his furlough, and as he was adifferent to that we are used to bout to set off before the first hear in a sick room; and when I peep of morning, his parents had entered, in answer to the saluta- determined on keeping up the tion of 'come in,' I found myself merriment of their cottage till in a snug little kitchen, as light as the very moment of his leaving the day, with the blaze of a fine them. wood fire, and presenting every appearance of having been the scene of an evening's merry-mak-ing a stranger, I had an opportuing.

As the kind-hearted friends of the young man began to forget my be

nity of observing the different The cause of my intrusion was manner in which their feelings soon told, and some inquiries as to were occupied. The father was my nearest way, and the time at as glad at heart as man could be, which the coach passed the place at seeing his neighbors looking I was walking to, as quickly an- contented with their cheer, and swered by an invitation to stay at spoke of his son's departure with the cottage during the intervening such a happy hope of seeing him hour or two. I was not backward come back to them safe and well, in accepting the civil and kind of- that he must have been sadly disfer thas given and I drew a chair posed to melancholy who could into the rustic circle with no mis- have doubted it would certainly givings as to the sincerity of my be so. The mother and her fewelcome. I now looked round at male neighbor turned themselves the little party of which I had so to me to inquire about the coununexpectedly become a compan- try to which the young man's region. It consisted of the master iment was going, and listened to and mistress of the cottage, two every thing I could remember ahale ruddy looking people, whose bout it, as if life and death were free and contented hearts had evi- in my words. The object of all dently made the toils of life easy; this solicitude was, in the mean a man and his wife from a neigh-time, closely engaged with the boring village, near whom sat a fair girl whose pretty form I had pretty girl, their daughter, whose observed on entering, and who bright blue eyes, and innocent was obviously his sweetheart; and countenance, fitted her to be the the sister was silently and busily heroine of any rural romance; next employing herself in tying up in a to her was a young man in a sol- handkerchief a variety of little ardier's dress, the son of my good ticles which her affection for her hosts, and his sister; who with brother had induced her to rantwo or three children that lay sack together. As the time, howsleeping in the chimney corner, ever, for taking leave approached, made up the entire party. every individual in the party seemed less inclined to talk, and I even felt myself partaking of the disinclination. Youth and age were before me, sharing in the same common hopes and common dread; suffering from the same sadness of

It was some little time before my new friends felt sufficiently at home with me to resume their discourse, and I therefore addressed myself to the young soldier, from whom I learned the occasion of