CHAPTER III.

A quiet, maiden-like place was Mary's little room. The window looked out under the overarching boughs of a thick apple-orchard, now all in a blush with blossoms and pink-tipped buds, and the light came golden-green, strained through flickering leaves,--and an ever-gentle rustle and whirr of branches and blossoms, a chitter of birds, and an indefinite whispering motion, as the long heads of orchard-grass nodded and bowed to each other under the trees, seemed to give the room the quiet hush of some little side-chapel in a cathedral, where green and golden glass softens the sunlight, and only the sigh and rustle of kneeling worshippers break the stillness of the aisles. It was small enough for a nun's apartment, and dainty in its neatness as the waxen cell of a bee. The bed and low window were draped in spotless white, with fringes of Mary's own knotting. A small table under the looking-glass bore the library of a well-taught young woman of those times. "The Spectator," "Paradise Lost," Shakspeare, and "Robinson Crusoe" stood for the admitted secular literature, and beside them the Bible and the works then published of Mr. Jonathan Edwards. Laid a little to one side, as if of doubtful reputation, was the only novel which the stricter people in those days allowed for the reading of their daughters: that seven-volumed, trailing, tedious, delightful old bore, "Sir Charles Grandison,"--a book whose influence in those times was so universal, that it may be traced in the epistolary style even of the gravest divines. Our little heroine was mortal, with all her divinity, and had an imagination which sometimes wandered to the things of earth; and this glorious hero in lace and embroidery, who blended rank, gallantry, spirit, knowledge of the world, disinterestedness, constancy, and piety, sometimes walked before her, while she sat spinning at her wheel, till she sighed, she hardly knew why, that no such men walked the earth now. Yet it is to be confessed, this occasional raid of the romantic into Mary's balanced and well-ordered mind was soon energetically put to rout, and the book, as we have said, remained on her table under protest,--protected by being her father's gift to her mother during their days of courtship. The small looking-glass was curiously wreathed with corals and foreign shells, so disposed as to indicate an artistic eye and skilful hand; and some curious Chinese paintings of birds and flowers gave rather a piquant and foreign air to the otherwise homely neatness of the apartment.

Here in this little retreat Mary spent those few hours which her exacting conscience would allow her to spare from her busy-fingered household-life; here she read and wrote and thought and prayed;--and here she stands now, arraying herself for the tea company that afternoon. Dress, which in our day is becoming in some cases the whole of woman, was in those times a remarkably simple affair. True, every person of a certain degree of respectability had state and festival robes; and a certain camphor-wood brass-bound trunk, which was always kept solemnly locked in Mrs. Katy Scudder's apartment, if it could have spoken, might have given off quite a catalogue of brocade satin and laces. The wedding-suit there slumbered in all the unsullied whiteness of its stiff ground broidered with heavy knots of flowers; and there were scarfs of wrought India muslin and embroidered crape, each of which had its history,--for each had been brought into the door with beating heart on some return voyage of one who, alas, should return no more! The old trunk stood with its histories, its imprisoned remembrances,--and a thousand tender thoughts seemed to be shaping out of every rustling fold of silk and embroidery, on the few yearly occasions when all were brought out to be aired, their history related, and then solemnly locked up again. Nevertheless, the possession of these things gave to the women of an establishment a certain innate dignity, like a good conscience; so that in that larger portion of existence commonly denominated among them "every day," they were content with plain stuff and homespun. Mary's toilette, therefore, was sooner made than those of Newport belles of the present day; it simply consisted in changing her ordinary "short gown and petticoat" for another of somewhat nicer materials,--a skirt of India chintz and a striped jacconet short-gown. Her hair was of the kind which always lies like satin; but, nevertheless, girls never think their toilette complete unless the smoothest hair has been shaken down and rearranged. A few moments, however, served to braid its shining folds and dispose them in their simple knot on the back of the head; and having given a final stroke to each side with her little dimpled hands, she sat down a moment at the window, thoughtfully watching where the afternoon sun was creeping through the slats of the fence in long lines of gold among the tall, tremulous orchard-grass, and unconsciously she began warbling, in a low, gurgling voice, the words of a familiar hymn, whose grave earnestness accorded well with the general tone of her life and education:--

"Life is the time to serve the Lord, The time to insure the great reward."

There was a swish and rustle in the orchard-grass, and a tramp of elastic steps; then the branches were brushed aside, and a young man suddenly emerged from the trees a little behind Mary. He was apparently about twenty-five, dressed in the holiday rig of a sailor on shore, which well set off his fine athletic figure, and accorded with a sort of easy, dashing, and confident air which sat not unhandsomely on him. For the rest, a high forehead shaded by rings of the blackest hair, a keen, dark eye, a firm and determined mouth, gave the impression of one who had engaged to do battle with life, not only with a will, but with shrewdness and ability.

He introduced the colloquy by stepping deliberately behind Mary, putting his arms round her neck, and kissing her.

"Why, James!" said Mary, starting up, and blushing. "Come, now!"

"I have come, haven't I?" said the young man, leaning his elbow on the window-seat and looking at her with an air of comic determined frankness, which yet had in it such wholesome honesty that it was scarcely possible to be angry. "The fact is, Mary," he added, with a sudden earnest darkening of the face, "I won't stand this nonsense any longer. Aunt Katy has been holding me at arm's length ever since I got home; and what have I done? Haven't I been to every prayer-meeting and lecture and sermon, since I got into port, just as regular as a psalm-book? and not a bit of a word could I get with you, and no chance even so much as to give you my arm. Aunt Kate always comes between us and says, 'Here, Mary, you take my arm.' What does she think I go to meeting for, and almost break my jaws keeping down the gapes? I never even go to sleep, and yet I'm treated in this way! It's too bad! What's the row? What's anybody been saying about me? I always have waited on you ever since you were that high. Didn't I always draw you to school on my sled? didn't we always use to do our sums together? didn't I always wait on you to singing-school? and I've been made free to run in and out as if I were your brother;--and now she is as glum and stiff, and always stays in the room every minute of the time that I am there, as if she was afraid I should be in some mischief. It's too bad!"

"Oh, James, I am sorry that you only go to meeting for the sake of seeing me; you feel no real interest in religious things; and besides, mother thinks now I'm grown so old, that----Why, you know things are different now,--at least, we mustn't, you know, always do as we did when we were children. But I wish you did feel more interested in good things."

"I _am_ interested in one or two good things, Mary,--principally in you, who are the beat I know of. Besides," he said quickly, and scanning her face attentively to see the effect of his words, "don't you think there is more merit in my sitting out all these meetings, when they bore me so confoundedly, than there is in your and Aunt Katy's doing it, who really seem to find something to like in them? I believe you have a sixth sense, quite unknown to me; for it's all a maze,--I can't find top, nor bottom, nor side, nor up, nor down to it,--it's you can and you can't, you shall and you sha'n't, you will and you won't,"----

"James!"

"You needn't look at me so. I'm not going to say the rest of it. But, seriously, it's all anywhere and nowhere to me; it don't touch me, it don't help me, and I think it rather makes me worse; and then they tell me it's because I'm a natural man, and the natural man understandeth not the things of the Spirit. Well, I _am_ a natural man,--how's a fellow to help it?"

"Well, James, why need you talk everywhere as you do? You joke, and jest, and trifle, till it seems to everybody that you don't believe in anything. I'm afraid mother thinks you are an infidel, but I _know_ that can't be; yet we hear of all sorts of things that you say."

"I suppose you mean my telling Deacon Twitchel that I had seen as good Christians among the Mahometans as any in Newport. _Didn't_ I make him open his eyes? It's true, too!"

"In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him," said Mary; "and if there are better Christians than us among the Mahometans, I am sure I'm glad of it. But, after all, the great question is, 'Are we Christians ourselves?' Oh, James, if you only were a real, true, noble Christian!"

"Well, Mary, you have got into that harbor, through all the sandbars and rocks and crooked channels; and now do you think it right to leave a fellow beating about outside, and not go out to help him in? This way of drawing up, among you good people, and leaving us sinners to ourselves, isn't generous. You might care a little for the soul of an old friend, anyhow!"

"And don't I care, James? How many days and nights have been one prayer for you! If I could take my hopes of heaven out of my own heart and give them to you, I would. Dr. H. preached last Sunday on the text, 'I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen'; and he went on to show how we must be willing to give up even our own salvation, if necessary, for the good of others. People said it was hard doctrine, but I could feel my way through it very well. Yes, I would give my soul for yours; I wish I could."

There was a solemnity and pathos in Mary's manner which checked the conversation. James was the more touched because he felt it all so real, from one whose words were always yea and nay, so true, so inflexibly simple. Her eyes filled with tears, her face kindled with a sad earnestness, and James thought, as he looked, of a picture he had once seen in a European cathedral, where the youthful Mother of Sorrows is represented,

"Radiant and grave, as pitying man's decline; All youth, but with an aspect beyond time; Mournful, but mournful of another's crime; She looked as if she sat by Ellen's door, And grieved for those who should return no more."

James had thought he loved Mary; he had admired her remarkable beauty, he had been proud of a certain right in her before that of other young men, her associates; he had thought of her as the keeper of his home; he had wished to appropriate her wholly to himself;--but in all this there had been, after all, only the thought of what she was to be to him; and this, for this poor measure of what he called love, she was ready to offer, an infinite sacrifice.

As a subtile flash of lightning will show in a moment a whole landscape, tower, town, winding stream, and distant sea, so that one subtile ray of feeling seemed in a moment to reveal to James the whole of his past life; and it seemed to him so poor, so meagre, so shallow, by the side of that childlike woman, to whom the noblest of feelings were unconscious matters of course, that a sort of awe awoke in him; like the Apostles of old, he "feared as he entered into the cloud"; it seemed as if the deepest string of some eternal sorrow had vibrated between them.

After a moment's pause, he spoke in a low and altered voice:--

"Mary, I am a sinner. No psalm or sermon ever taught it to me, but I see it now. Your mother is quite right, Mary; you are too good for me; I am no mate for you. Oh, what would you think of me, if you knew me wholly? I have lived a mean, miserable, shallow, unworthy life. You are worthy, you are a saint, and walk in white! Oh, what upon earth could ever make you care so much for me?"

"Well, then, James, you will be good? Won't you talk with Dr. H.?"

"Hang Dr. H.!" said James. "Now, Mary, I beg your pardon, but I can't make head or tail of a word Dr. H. says. I don't get hold of it, or know what he would be at. You girls and women don't know your power. Why, Mary, you are a living gospel. You have always had a strange power over us boys. You never talked religion much, but I have seen high fellows come away from being with you as still and quite as one feels when one goes into a church. I can't understand all the hang of predestination, and moral ability, and natural ability, and God's efficiency, and man's agency, which Dr. H. is so engaged about; but I can understand _you_, _you_ can do me good!"

"Oh, James, can I?"

"Mary, I'm going to confess my sins. I saw, that, somehow or other, the wind was against me in Aunt Katy's quarter, and you know we fellows who take up the world in both fists don't like to be beat. If there's opposition, it sets us on. Now I confess I never did care much about religion, but I thought, without being really a hypocrite, I'd just let you try to save my soul for the sake of getting you; for there's nothing surer to hook a woman than trying to save a fellow's soul. It's a dead-shot, generally, that. Now our ship sails to-night, and I thought I'd just come across this path in the orchard to speak to you. You know I used always to bring you peaches and juneatings across this way, and once I brought you a ribbon."

"Yes, I've got it yet, James."

"Well, now, Mary, all this seems mean to me, mean, to try and trick and snare you, who are so much too good for me. I felt very proud this morning that I was to go out first mate this time, and that I should command a ship next voyage. I meant to have asked you for a promise, but I don't. Only, Mary, just give me your little Bible, and I'll promise to read it all through soberly, and see what it all comes to. And pray for me; and if, while I'm gone, a good man comes who loves you, and is worthy of you, why, take him, Mary,--that's my advice."

"James, I am not thinking of any such things; I don't ever mean to be married. And I'm glad you don't ask me for any promise,--because it would be wrong to give it; mother don't even like me to be much with you. But I'm sure all I have said to you to-day is right; I shall tell her exactly all I have said."

"If Aunt Katy knew what things we fellows are pitched into, who take the world headforemost, she wouldn't be so selfish. Mary, you girls and women don't know the world you live in; you ought to be pure and good: you are not as we are. You don't know what men, what women--no, they're not women!--what creatures, beset us in every foreign port, and boarding-houses that are gates of hell; and then, if a fellow comes back from all this and don't walk exactly straight, you just draw up the hems of your garments and stand close to the wall, for fear he should touch you when he passes. I don't mean you, Mary, for you are different from most; but if you would do what you could, you might save us. But it's no use talking, Mary. Give me the Bible; and please be kind to my dove,--for I had a hard time getting him across the water, and I don't want him to die."

If Mary had spoken all that welled up in her little heart at that moment, she might have said too much; but duty had its habitual seal upon her lips. She took the little Bible from her table and gave it with a trembling hand, and James turned to go. In a moment he turned back, and stood irresolute.

"Mary," he said, "we are cousins; I may never come back; you might kiss me this once."

The kiss was given and received in silence, and James disappeared among the thick trees.

"Come, child," said Aunt Katy, looking in, "there is Deacon Twitchel's chaise in sight,--are you ready?"

"Yes, mother."

[To be continued.]

THE AUTOCRAT GIVES A BREAKFAST TO THE PUBLIC.

Before my friend the Professor takes his place at our old table, where, Providence permitting, he means to wish you all a happy New Year on or about the First of January next, I wish you to do me the favor of being my guests at the table which you see spread before you.

This table is a very long one. Legs in every Atlantic and inland city,--legs in California and Oregon,--legs on the shores of 'Quoddy and of Lake Pontchartrain,--legs everywhere, like a millipede or a banian-tree.

The schoolmistress that was,--and is,--(there are her little scholars at the side-table.)--shall pour out coffee or tea for you as you like.

Sit down and make yourselves comfortable.--A teaspoon, my dear, for Minnesota.--Sacramento's cup is out.

Bridget has become a thought, and serves us a great deal faster than the sticky lightning of the submarine _par vagum_, as the Professor calls it.--Pepper for Kansas, Bridget.--A sandwich for Cincinnati.--Rolls and sardines for Washington.--A bit of the Cape Ann turkey for Boston.--South Carolina prefers dark meat.--Fifty thousand glasses of _eau sucrée_ at once, and the rest simultaneously.--Now give us the nude mahogany, that we may talk over it.--Bridget becomes as a mighty wind and peels off the immeasurable table-cloth as a northwester strips off the leafy damask from the autumn woods.

[At this point of the entertainment the Reporter of the "Oceanic Miscellany" was introduced, and to his fluent and indefatigable pen we owe the further account of the proceedings.--_Editors of the "Oceanic Miscellany."_]

--The liberal and untiring editors of the "Oceanic Miscellany" commissioned their special reporter to be present at the Great Breakfast given by the personage known as the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, furnishing him with one of the _caput-mortuum_ tickets usually distributed on such occasions.

The tables groaned with the delicacies of the season, provided by the distinguished caterers whose names are familiar in our mouths as household words. After the usual contest for places,--a proceeding more honored in the breach than the observance,--the band discoursed sweet music. The creature comforts were then discussed, consisting of the various luxuries that flesh is heir to, together with fish and fowl, too numerous to mention. After the material banquet had cloyed the hungry edge of appetite, began the feast of reason and the flow of soul. As, take him for all in all, the bright particular star of the evening was the distinguished individual who played the part of mine host, we shall make no apology for confining our report to the

SPEECH OF THE AUTOCRAT.

I think on the whole we have had a good time together, since we became acquainted. So many pleasant looks and words as have passed between us must mean something. For one person who speaks well or ill of us we may safely take it for granted that there are ten or a hundred, or an indefinite number, who feel in the same way, but are shy of talking.

Now the first effect of being kindly received is unquestionably a pleasing internal commotion, out of which arises a not less pleasing secondary sensation, which the unthinking vulgar call conceit, but which is in reality an increased consciousness of life, and a most important part of the mechanism by which a man is advertised of his ability to serve his fellows, and stirred up to use it.

In the present instance, the immediate effects of the warm general welcome received were the following demonstrations:--

1. The purchase of a glossy bell-crowned hat, which is worn a little inclined to one side, at the angle of self-reliance,--this being a very slight dip, as compared to the outrageous slant of country dandies and the insolent obliquity indulged in by a few unpleasantly conspicuous city-youth, who prove that "it takes three generations to make a gentleman."

2. A movement towards the acquisition of a pair of pantaloons with a stripe running down the leg; also of a slender canary-colored cane, to be carried as formerly in the time when Mr. Van Buren was President.--[_A mild veto from the schoolmistress was interposed._]

3. A manifest increase of that _monstraridigitativeness_,--if you will permit the term,--which is so remarkable in literary men, that, if public opinion allowed it, some of them would like to wear a smart uniform, with an author's button, so that they might be known and hailed everywhere.

4. An undeniable aggravation of the natural tendency to caress and cosset such products of the writer's literary industry as have met with special favor. This is shown by a willingness to repeat any given stanza, a line of which is referred to, and a readiness to listen to even exaggerated eulogy with a twinkling stillness of feature and inclination of the titillated ear to the operator, such as the Mexican Peccary is said to show when its dorsal surface is gently and continuously irritated with the pointed extremity of a reed or of a magnolia-branch. What other people think well of, we certainly have a right to like, ourselves.

All this self-exaltation, which some folks make so much scandal of, is the most natural thing in the world when one gets an over-dose of fair words. The more I reflect upon it, the more I am convinced that it is well for a man to think too highly of himself while he is in the working state. Sydney Smith could discover no relation between Modesty and Merit, excepting that they both began with an M. Considered simply as a machine out of which work is to be got, the wheels of intellect run best when they are kept well oiled by the public and the publisher.

Therefore, my friends, if any of you have uttered words of kindness, of flattery, of extreme over-praise, even, let me thank you for it. Criticism with praise in it is azotized food; it makes muscle; to expect a man to write without it is like giving nothing but hay to a roadster and expecting to get ten miles an hour out of him. A young fellow cannot be asked to go on making love forever, if he does not get a smile now and then to keep hope alive. The truth is, Bridget would have whisked off the table-cloth and given notice of quitting, and the whole establishment would have gone to pieces at the end of No. 1, if you had not looked so very good-natured about it that it was impossible to give up such amiable acquaintance.

The above acknowledgments and personal revelations are preliminary to the following more general statement, which will show how they must be qualified.

Every man of sense has two ways of looking at himself. The first is an everyday working view, in which he makes the most of his gifts and accomplishments. It is the superficial stratum in which praise and blame find their sphere of action,--the region of comparisons,--the habitat where envy and jealousy are to be looked for, if they have not been weeded out and flung into the compost-heap of dead vices, with which, if we understand moral husbandry, we fertilize our living virtues. It is quite foolish to abuse this thin upper layer of our mental soil. The grasses do not strike their roots deep in towards the centre, like the oaks, but they are the more useful and necessary vegetable of the two. The cheap, but perpetual activities of life grow out of this upper stratum of our being. How silly to try to be wiser than Providence! Don't tell me about the vain illusions of self-love. There is nothing so real in this world as Illusion. All other things may desert a man, but this fair angel never leaves him. She holds a star a billion miles over a baby's head, and laughs to see him clawing and batting himself as he tries to reach it. She glides before the hoary sinner down the path which leads to the inexorable gate, jingling the keys of heaven at her girdle.

Underneath this surface-soil lies another stratum of thought, where the tap-roots of the larger mental growths penetrate and find their nourishment. Out of this comes heroism in all its shapes; here the enterprises that overshadow half the planet, when full grown, lie, tender, in their cotyledons. Here there is neither praise nor blame, nothing but a passionless self-estimate, quite as willing to undervalue as to rate too highly. The less clay and straw the task-master has given his servant, the smaller the tale of bricks he will be required to furnish. Many a man not remarkable for conceit has shuddered as some effort or accident has revealed to him a depth of power of which he never thought himself the possessor and broken his peace with the fatal words, "Sleep no more!"

This deeper self-appreciation is a slow and gradual process. At first, a child thinks he can do everything. I remember when I thought I could lift a house, if I would only try hard enough. So I began with the hind wheel of a heavy old family-coach, built like that in which my Lady Bountiful carried little King Pippin, if you happen to remember the illustrations of that story. I lifted with all my might, and the planet pulled down with all its might. The planet beat. After that, my ideas of the difference between my will and my muscular force were more accurately defined. Then came the illusion, that I could, of course, "lick," "serve out," or "polish off," various small boys who had been or might be obnoxious to me. The event of the different "set-tos" to which, this hypothesis led not uniformly confirming it, another limitation of my possibilities was the consequence. In this way I groped along into a knowledge of my physical relations to the organic and inorganic universe.

A man must be very stupid indeed, if, by the time he is fully ripened, he does not know tolerably well what his physical powers are. His weight, his height, his general development, his constitutional force, his good or ill looks, he has had time to find out; and he is a fool, if he does not carry a reasonable consciousness of these conditions with him always. It is a little harder with the mind; but some qualities are generally estimated fairly enough by their owners. Thus, a man may be trusted when he says he has a good or a bad memory. Not so of his opinion of his own judgment or imagination. It is only by a very slow process that he finds out how much or how little of those qualities he possesses. But it is one of the blessed privileges of growing older, that we come to have a much clearer sense of what we can do and what we cannot, and settle down to our work quietly, knowing what our tools are and what we have to do with them.

Therefore, my friends, if I should at any time put on any airs on the strength of your good-natured treatment, please to remember that these are only the growth of that thin upper stratum of character I was telling you of. I conceive that the fact of a man's coming out in a book or two, even supposing them to have a success such as I should never think of, is to the sum total of that man's life and character as the bed of tulips and hyacinths you may see in spring, at the feet of the "Great Elm," on our Boston Common, is to the solemn old tree itself. The serene, strong life, reaching deep underground and high overhead, robed itself in April and disrobed itself in October when the Common was a cow-pasture, and observes the same seasons now that the old tree is belted with an iron girdle and finds its feet covered with flowers. Alas! my friends, the fence and the tulips are painfully suggestive. Authorship is an iron girdle, and the blossoms of flattery that are scattered at its feet are useful to it only as their culture keeps the soil open to the sun and rain. No man can please the reading public ever so little without being too highly commended for it in the heat of the moment; and so, if he thinks of starting again for the prize of public approbation, he finds himself heavily handicapped, and perhaps weighted down, simply because he has made good running for some former stakes.

I don't like the position of my friend the Professor. I consider him fully as good a man as myself.--I have, you know, often referred to him and quoted him, and sometimes got so mixed up with him, that, like the Schildbürgers at their town-meeting, I was puzzled to disentangle my own legs from his, when I wanted to stand up by myself, they were got into such a snarl together.--But I don't like the position of my friend the Professor.

The first thing, of course, when he opens his mouth, will be to compare him with his predecessor. Now, if he has the least tact in the world, he will begin dull, so as to leave a wide margin for improvement. You may be perfectly certain that he can talk and write just as well as I can; but you don't think, surely, that he is going to begin where I left off. Not unless we are to have a wedding in the first number;--and you are not sure whether or not there is to be any wedding at all while the Professor holds my seat at the table.

But I will tell you one thing,--if you sit a year or so at a long table, you will see what life is. Christenings, weddings, funerals,--these are the three legs it stands on; and you have a chance to see them all in a twelvemonth, if the table is really a long one. I don't doubt the Professor will have something to tell besides his opinions and fancies; and if you like a book of thoughts with occasional incidents, as well as a book of incidents with occasional thoughts, why, I see no reason why you should not accept this talk of the Professor's as kindly as if it had a fancy name and called itself a novel.

Life may be divided into two periods,--the hours of taking food, and the intervals between them,--or, technically, into the _alimentary_ and the _non-alimentary_ portions of existence. Now our social being is so intensified during the first of these periods, that whoso should write the history of a man's breakfasts or dinners or suppers would give a perfect picture of his most important social qualities, conditions, and actions, and might omit the non-alimentary portion of his life altogether from consideration. Thus I trust that the breakfasts of which you have had some records have given you a pretty clear idea, not only of myself, but of those more interesting friends and fellow-boarders of mine to whom I have introduced you, and with some of whom, in company with certain new acquaintances, my friend the Professor will keep you in relation during the following year. So you see that over the new table-cloth which is going to be spread there may very possibly be a new drama of life enacted; but all that, if it should be so, is incidental and by the way;--for what the Professor wishes particularly to do, and means to do, is to talk about life and men and things and books and thoughts; but if there should be anything better than talk occurring before his eyes, either at the small world of the breakfast-table or in the greater world without, he holds himself at liberty to relate it or discourse upon it.

I suppose the Professor will receive a good many letters, as I did, containing suggestions, counsel, and articles in prose and verse for publication. He desires me to state that he is very happy to hear from known and unknown friends, provided they will not mistake him for an editor, and will not be offended if their communications are not made the subject of individual notice. There may be times when, having nothing to say, he will be very glad to print somebody's note or copy of verses; I don't think it very likely; for life, is short, and the world is brimful, and rammed down hard, with strange things worth seeing and telling, and Mr. Worcester's great Quarto Dictionary is soon coming out, crammed with all manner of words to talk with,--so that the Professor will probably find little room, except for an answer to a question now and then, or the acknowledgment of some hint he may have thought worth taking.

* * * * *

--The speaker shut himself off like a gas-burner at this point, and the company soon dispersed. I sauntered down to the landlady's, and obtained from her the following production from the papers left by the gentleman, whose pen, ranging from grave to gay, from lively to severe, has held the mirror up to Nature, and given the form and pressure of his thoughts and feelings for the benefit of the numerous and constantly-increasing multitudes of readers of the "Oceanic Miscellany," a journal which has done and is doing so much for the gratification and improvement of the masses.

_A Poem from the Autocrat's Lose Papers._

[I find the following note written in pencil on the MSS.--_Reporter Oc. Misc._]

This is a true story. Avis, Avise, or Avice, (they pronounce it _Arris_,) is a real breathing person. Her home is not more than an hour and a half's space from the palaces of the great ladies who might like to look at her. They may see her and the little black girl she gave herself to, body and soul, when nobody else could bear the sight of her infirmity,--leaving home at noon, or even after breakfast, and coming back in season to undress for the evening's party.

AVIS.

I may not rightly call thy name,-- Alas! thy forehead never knew The kiss that happier children claim, Nor glistened with baptismal dew.

Daughter of want and wrong and woe, I saw thee with thy sister-band, Snatched from the whirlpool's narrowing flow By Mercy's strong yet trembling hand.

--"Avis!"--With Saxon eye and cheek, At once a woman and a child, The saint uncrowned I came to seek Drew near to greet us,--spoke and smiled.

God gave that sweet sad smile she wore All wrong to shame, all souls to win,-- A heavenly sunbeam sent before Her footsteps through a world of sin.

--"And who is Avis?"--Hear the tale The calm-voiced matrons gravely tell,-- The story known through all the vale Where Avis and her sisters dwell.

With the lost children running wild, Strayed from the hand of human care, They find one little refuse child Left helpless in its poisoned lair.

The primal mark is on her face,-- The chattel-stamp,--the pariah-stain That follows still her hunted race,-- The curse without the crime of Cain.

How shall our smooth-turned phrase relate The little suffering outcast's ail? Not Lazarus at the rich man's gate So turned the rose-wreathed revellers pale.

Ah, veil the living death from sight That wounds our beauty-loving eye! The children turn in selfish fright, The white-lipped nurses hurry by.

Take her, dread Angel! Break in love This bruised reed and make it thine!-- No voice descended from above, But Avis answered, "She is mine."

The task that dainty menials spurn The fair young girl has made her own; Her heart shall teach, her hand shall learn The toils, the duties yet unknown.

So Love and Death in lingering strife Stand face to face from day to day, Still battling for the spoil of Life While the slow seasons creep away.

Love conquers Death; the prize is won; See to her joyous bosom pressed The dusky daughter of the sun,-- The bronze against the marble breast!

Her task is done; no voice divine Has crowned her deed with saintly fame; No eye can see the aureole shine That rings her brow with heavenly flame.

Yet what has holy page more sweet, Or what had woman's love more fair When Mary clasped her Saviour's feet With flowing eyes and streaming hair?

Meek child of sorrow, walk unknown. The Angel of that earthly throng, And let thine image live alone To hallow this unstudied song!

LITERARY NOTICES.

_Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time, with other Papers._ By CHARLES KINGSLEY, Author of "Hypatia," "Two Years Ago," etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

This collection of Mr. Kingsley's miscellaneous writings is marked by the same qualities of mind and temper which have given celebrity and influence to his novels. An earnest man, with strong convictions springing from a fervid philanthropy, fertile in thought, confident in statement, resolute in spirit, with many valuable ideas and not a few curious crotchets, and master of a style singularly bold, vivid, passionate, and fluent, he always stimulates the mind, if he does not always satisfy it. The defects of his intellect, especially in the treatment of historical questions, proceed from the warmth of his temperament. His impulses irritate his reason. Intellectually impatient with all facts and arguments which obstruct the full sweep of his theory, he has an offensive habit of escaping from objections he will not pause to answer, by the calling of names and the introduction of Providence. He is most petulantly disdainful of others when he has nothing but paradoxes with which to oppose their truisms. He has a trick of adopting the manner and expressions of Carlyle, in speaking of incidents and characters to which they are ludicrously inapplicable, and becomes flurried and flippant on occasions where Carlyle would put into the same words his whole scowling and scornful strength. He frequently mistakes sympathy with suffering for insight into its causes, and an eloquent statement of what he thinks desirable for an interpretation of what really is. He has bright glimpses of truth, but they are due rather to the freedom of his thinking than to its depth; and in the hurry and impatient pressure of his impulses, he does not discriminate between his ideas and his whims. He seems to be in a state of insurrection against the limitations of his creed, his profession, and his own mind, and the impression conveyed by his best passages is of splendid incompleteness. It would be ungracious to notice these defects in a writer who possesses so many excellences, were it not that he forces them upon the attention, and in their expression is unjust to other thinkers. His intellectual conceit finds its vent in intellectual sauciness, and is all the worse from appearing to have its source in conceit of conscience and benevolence.

In spite of these faults, however, Mr. Kingsley's reputation is not greater than he deserves. He is one of the most sincere; truthful, and courageous of writers, has no reserves or concealments, and pours out his feelings and opinions exactly as they lie in his own heart and brain. We at least feel assured that he has no imperfections which he does not express, and that there is no disagreement between the book and the man. He is commonly on the right side in the social and political movements of the day, if he does not always give the right reasons for his position. His love, both of Nature and human nature, is intense and deep, and this gives a cordiality, freshness, and frankness to his writings which more than compensate for their defects.

The present volume of his miscellanies contains not only his essays and reviews, but his four lectures on "Alexandria and her Schools," and his "Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers." Of the essays, those on "North Devon" and "My Winter Garden" are the best specimens of his descriptive power, and those on "Raleigh" and "England from Wolsey to Elizabeth," of his talents and accomplishments as a thinker on historical subjects. The literary papers on "Tennyson," "Burns," "The Poetry of Sacred and Literary Art," and "Hours with the Mystics," are full of striking and suggestive, if somewhat perverse, thought. The volume, as a whole, is read with mingled feelings of vexation and pleasure; but whether provoked or delighted, we are always interested both in the author and his themes.

_A Journey due North: Being Notes of a Residence in Russia._ By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

Although the matter of this brilliant volume is of intrinsic interest, its charm is due more to the mode of description than even to the things described. It gives us Russia from a Bohemian point of view. The characteristics of Mr. Sala are keen observation, vivid description, lively wit, indomitable assurance, and incapacity of being surprised. To his resolute belief in himself, in what he sees with his own eyes and conceives with his own brain, the book owes much of its raciness, its confident, decisive, "knowing" tone, its independence of the judgments of others, and its freedom from all the deceptions which proceed from such emotions as wonder and admiration. The volume is read with a pleasure similar to that we experience in listening to the animated talk of an acquaintance fresh from novel scenes of foreign travel, who reproduces his whole experience in recalling his adventures, and gives us not merely incidents and pictures, but his own feelings of delight and self-elation.

The three introductory chapters, describing the journey to St. Petersburg, are perhaps the most brilliant portions of the book. The delineations of his fellow-passengers, in the voyage from Stettin to Cronstadt, especially the portraits of the swearing Captain Smith and the accomplished Hussian noble, are admirable equally for their humor and their sagacity. The account of the landing at Cronstadt, the scenes at the Custom-House, the author's first walk in St. Petersburg, and his first drive in a droschky, are masterpieces of familiar narration, and fairly convert the readers of his hook into companions of his journey. The description of the manners and customs of the Russian people, the shrewd occasional comments on the policy of the government, and the thorough analysis of the rascality of the Russian police, are admirable in substance, if somewhat flippant in expression. In power of holding the amused attention of the reader, equally by the pertinence of the matter and the impertinence of the tone, the volume is unexcelled by any other book on the subject of Russia.

_The New Priest in Conception Bay_. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1858. 2 vols. 12mo.

The southeastern portion of the island of Newfoundland, as may be seen by a glance at the map, may be well described by that expressive epithet of "nook-shotten," which in Shakspeare is applied to the mother-island of which it is a dependent. The land is indented by bays and estuaries, so that it bears the same relation to the water that the parted fingers of an outstretched hand do to the spaces of air that are between them. One of these inlets bears the name of Conception Bay; and it is around the shores of this bay that the scene of this novel is laid. Everything in it suffers a sea-change; everything is set to the music of the winds and the waves. We find ourselves among a people with whom the sea is all, and the land only an appendage to the sea,--a place to dry fish, and mend nets, and haul up boats, and caulk ships. But though the view everywhere, morally and physically, is bounded by the sea, and though one of the finest of the characters is a fisherman, yet the moving springs of the story are found in elements only accidentally connected with the sea, and by no means new to novel-writers or playwrights. The plot of the novel is taken from, or founded upon, the peculiar relations existing between the Roman Catholic priesthood and the female sex; and, with only a change in costume and scenery, the events might have taken place in Maryland, Louisiana, or France.

The novel is one of a peculiar class. To borrow a convenient phraseology recently introduced into the language, its interest is more subjective than objective,--or, in other words, is derived more from marked and careful delineations of individual character than from the march of events or brilliant procession of incidents. With a single exception,--the abduction of the fisherman's daughter,--the occurrences narrated are such as might happen any day in any small community living near the sea. Novels constructed on this plan are less likely to be popular than those in which the interest is derived from a skilfully-contrived plot and a rapid and stirring succession of moving events. To what extent the work before us may be popular we wilt not undertake even to guess; for we have had too frequent experience of the capriciousness of public taste to hazard any prediction as to the reception a particular book may meet with, especially if it rely exclusively upon its own merits, and be not helped by the previous reputation of the writer. But we certainly can and will say that to readers of a certain cast it will present strong attractions, and that no candid critic can read it without pronouncing it to be a remarkable work and the production of an original mind. The author we should judge to be a man who had lived a good deal in solitude, or at least removed from his intellectual peers,--who had been through much spiritual struggle in the course of his life,--who had been more accustomed to think than to write, at least for the press,--and whose own observation had revealed to him some of the darker aspects of the Roman Catholic faith and practice.

There is very little skill in the construction of the plot. Most of the events stand to each other in the relation of accidental and not of necessary succession, and might be transposed without doing any harm. Many pages are written simply as illustrations of character; and a fair proportion of the novel might be called with strict propriety a series of sketches connected by a slight thread of narrative. But it would be unreasonable to deal sharply with an author for this defect; for the faculty of making a well-constructed story, in which every event shall come in naturally, and yet each bring us one step nearer to the journey's end, is now one of the lost arts of earth. But this is not all. A considerable portion of it must be pronounced decidedly slow. We use the word not in its slang application, but in the sense in which Goldsmith used it in the first line of "The Traveller," or rather, as Johnson told him he used it, when he said to him,--"You do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude." But the slowness of which novel-readers will complain is not mere commonplace, least of all is it dulness. It is the leisurely movement of a contemplative mind full of rich thought and stored with varied learning. Such a writer _could not_ have any sympathy with the mercurial, vivacious, light-of-foot story-tellers of the French school. The author of "The New Priest in Conception Bay," we surmise, has not been in the habit of packing up his thoughts for the market, by either writing for the press, or conversing with clever and nimble-witted men and women, and thus does not always distinguish between cargo and dunnage. The current of the story often flows with a very languid movement. It happens, rather unluckily, that this is particularly true of the first seventy pages of the first volume. We fear that many professional novel-readers may break down in the course of these pages; and we confess ourselves to have been a little discouraged. But after the ninth chapter, and the touching account which Skipper George gives of the death of his boys,--a story which the most indifferent cannot peruse without emotion,--the reader may be safely left in the author's hands. They will go on together to the end, after this, on good terms. And the prospect brightens, and the horses are whipped up, as we advance. The second volume is much more interesting, in the common sense of the word,--more stirring, more rapid, more animated, than the first.

It is but putting our criticism into another form to say that the novel is too long, and, as a mere story, might with advantage be compressed into at least two-thirds of its present bulk. There are, especially, two departments or points to which this remark is applicable. In the first place, the conversations are too numerous, too protracted, and run too much into trivialities and details. In the second place, the descriptions of scenery are too frequently introduced, and pushed to a wearisome enumeration of particulars and minute delineation of details. In this peculiarity the author is kept in countenance by most respectable literary associates. This sort of Pre-Raphaelite style of scenery-painting in words is a characteristic of most recent American novel, especially such as are written by women. Every rock, every clump of trees, every strip of sea-shore, every sloping hillside, sits for its portrait, and is reproduced with a tender conscientiousness of touch wholly disproportioned to the importance of the subject. When human hearts and human passions are animating or darkening the scene, we do not want to be detained by a botanist's description of plants or a geologist's sketch of rocks. The broad, free sweeps of Scott's brush in "The Pirate" are more effective than the delicate needle-point lines of the writer before us.

We think, too, that too much use is made of those strange and uncouth dialects which have to be represented to the eye by bad spelling. We have the familiar Yankee type in Mr. Bangs, and a new form of phraseology in the speech of the Newfoundland fishermen. A little of this is well enough, but it should not be pushed to an extreme. The author's style, in general, is vigorous and expressive; it is the garb of an original mind, and often takes striking forms; but in grace and simplicity there is room for improvement, and we doubt not that improvement will come with practice.

There are many passages which we should like to quote as specimens of the imaginative power, forcible description, and apt illustration which are shown in this work. Whether the author has ever written verse or not, he is a poet in the best sense of that much-abused word. To him Nature in all its forms is animated; it sympathizes with all his moods, and takes on the hues of his thought. There are very few of these paragraphs that are easily separable; they are fixed in the page, and cannot be understood apart from it. Besides, many of these beauties are minute,--a gleaming word here and there,--but making the track of the story glow like the phosphorescent waters of the tropics.

We give a few paragraphs at random:--

"Does the sea hold the secret?

"Along the wharves, along the little beaches, around the circuit of the little coves, along the smooth or broken face of rock, the sea, which cannot rest, is busy. These little waves and this long swell, that now are here at work, have been ere now at home in the great inland sea of Europe, breathed on by soft, warm winds from fruit-groves, vineyards, and wide fields of flowers,--have sparkled in the many-colored lights, and felt the trivial oars and dallying fingers of the loiterers, on the long canals of Venice,--have quenched the ashes of the Dutchman's pipe, thrown overboard from his dull, laboring _treckschuyt_,--have wrought their patient tasks in the dim caverns of the Indian Archipelago,--have yielded to the little builders under water means and implements to rear their towering altar, dwelling, monument.

"These little waves have crossed the ocean, tumbling like porpoises at play, and, taking on a savage nature in the Great Wilderness, have thundered in close ranks and countless numbers against man's floating fortress,--have stormed the breach and climbed up over the walls in the ship's riven side,--have followed, howling and hungry as mad wolves, the crowded raft,--have leaped upon it, snatching off, one by one, the weary, worn-out men and women,--have taken up and borne aloft, as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree when it stood in the Northern forest.

"These waves have rolled their breasts about amid the wrecks and weeds of the hot stream that comes up many thousands of miles out of the Gulf of Mexico, as the great Mississippi goes down into it, and by-and-by these waves will move, all numb and chilled, among the mighty icebergs and ice-fields that must be brought down from the poles."

* * * * *

"She asked, 'Have you given up being a priest, Mr. Urston?'

"'Yes!' he answered, in a single word, looking before him, as it were along his coming life, like a quoit-caster, to see how far the uttered word would strike; then, turning to her, and in a lower voice, added, 'I've left that, once and forever.'"

* * * * *

"He stood still with his grief; and, as Mr. Wellon pressed his honest, hard hand, he lifted to his pastor one of those childlike looks that only come out on the face of the true man, that has grown, as oaks grow, ring around ring, adding each after-age to the childhood that has never been lost, but has been kept innermost. This fisherman seemed like one of those that plied their trade, and were the Lord's disciples, at the Sea of Galilee, eighteen hundred years ago. The very flesh and blood inclosing such a nature keep a long youth through life. Witness the genius, (who is only the more thorough man,) poet, painter, sculptor, finder-out, or whatever; how fresh and fair such an one looks out from under his old age! Let him be Christian, too, and he shall look as if--shedding this outward--the inward being would walk forth a glorified one."

* * * * *

"As he mentioned his fruitless visits, a startling, most repulsive leer just showed itself in Ladford's face; but it disappeared as suddenly and wholly as a monster that has come up, horrid and hideous, to the surface of the sea, and then has sunk again, bodily, into the dark deep, and is gone, as if it had never come, except for the fear and loathing that it leaves behind. This face, after that look, had nothing repulsive in it, but was only the more subdued and sad."

The author's mind so teems with images, that he does not always discriminate between the good and the bad. Occasionally we find some that are manifestly faulty and overstrained.

"It is one on which the tenderness of the deep heart of the Common Mother breaks itself; over which _the broad, dark, silent wings of a dread mystery are stretched_."

* * * * *

"Her voice had in it that tender _touch_ which _lays itself, warm and loving_, on the heart."

* * * * *

"And then her voice began _to drop down_, as it were, _from step to step_,--and _the steps seemed cold and damp, as it went down them lingeringly_:--'or for trial,--disappointment,--whatever comes!'--and at the last, _it seemed to have gone down into a sepulchral vault_."

We do not admire any one of the above,--least of all the last, in which the human voice is embodied as a sexton going down the steps of a tomb. Why, too, as a matter of verbal criticism, should the author use such words as "tragedist," "exhibitress," and "cheaty?"

In the delineation of character the author shows uncommon power and is entitled to high praise. His portraits are animated, life-like, and individual. Father Terence is drawn with a firm and skilful touch. The task which the author prescribed to himself--to present an ecclesiastic without learning, without intellectual power, without enthusiasm, and with the easy habits of a careless and enjoyable temperament, and yet who should be respectable, and even venerable, by reason of the soundness of his instincts and his thorough right-heartedness--was not an easy one; but in the execution he has been entirely successful. We cannot but surmise that he has met sometime and somewhere a living man with some of the characteristic traits of Father Terence. Father Ignatius, the conventional type of the dark, wily, and dangerous ecclesiastical intriguer, is an easier subject, but not so well done. He is a little too melodramatic; and we apply with peculiar force to him a criticism to which all the characters are more or less obnoxious, that he is too constantly and uniformly manifesting the peculiar traits by which the author distinguishes him from others. Father Debree and Mrs. Barré are drawn with powerful and discriminating touch, and we recognize the skill of the writer in the fact that we had read a considerable portion of the novel before we had any suspicion of the former relations between them. We may here say that we think that the women who may read this work will want to know, a little more fully and distinctly than the author has seen fit to tell, what were the causes and influences which led to the severing of those relations. We cannot state our meaning more clearly, without doing what we think should never be done in the review of a new novel, and that is, telling the story, and thus removing half the impulse to read it. Skipper George and his household, and the smuggler Ladford, are very well drawn,--not distinctly original, and yet with distinctive individual traits, which sharp observation must, to some extent, have furnished the author with.

But to our commendation of the characters we must make one exception: we humbly and respectfully submit that Mr. Bangs is a portentous bore, and we heartily wish that he had been drowned before he ever set his foot upon the shores of Newfoundland. It is possible, however, that in this case we are not impartial judges; for we confess, that, for our own private reading, we are heartily weary of the Yankee,--we mean as a literary creation,--of the eternal repetition of the character of which Sam Slick is the prototype,--which is for the most part a caricature, and no more to be found upon the solid earth than a griffin or a centaur. And in our judgment the theological discussions between this worthy and Father Terence are not in good taste. The author surely would not have us suppose that the wretched, skimble-skamble stuff which the latter is made to talk is any fair representative of the arguments by which the Church of Rome maintains its dogmas and vindicates its claims. A considerable amount of literary skill and a quick perception of the ludicrous are shown in the ridiculous aspect which the good Father's statements and reasonings are made to assume in passing through Mr. Bangs's mind; but we doubt whether such exhibitions are profitable to the cause of good religion, and whether the advantage thereby secured to Protestantism is not purchased at the price of some danger to Christianity. It is not well to teach men the art of making mysteries ridiculous.

But we take leave of our author and his book with high respect for his powers,--we do not know but that we may say his genius,--and with no small admiration for this particular expression of them. The very minuteness of our criticism involves a compliment. It has been truly said, that many men never write a book at all, but that very few write only one. We think that the author of "The New Priest in Conception Bay" must and will write more. A mind so fruitful and inventive, a spiritual nature so high and earnest, and an observation so keen and correct, cannot fail to accumulate materials for future use. We predict that his next novel will be better than this,--that it will have all its substantial and essential merits, and will show more constructive skill and a more practised hand in literary artisanship. His gold will be more neatly wrought, and not less pure and abundant.

_Summer Time in the Country._ By Rev. ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT. London and New York: George Routledge. Square 12mo. Illustrated.

We first made the acquaintance of this work in a shilling volume, a "railway-library edition," and were charmed with its genial tone, its nice appreciation of rural scenery, its agreeable and unpedantic learning. It is a diary for the summer months, with notes upon the changing aspects of Nature, reminiscences from the poets, and appropriate comments. We are glad now to welcome the book in this form, wherein satin paper, careful typography, delicate engravings, and handsome binding have been employed to give it an appropriate dress.

_Annual Obituary Notices of Eminent Persons who died in the United States during the Year 1857._ By NATHAN CROSBY. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 8vo. pp. 430.

The object of this work is best stated in the words of the author, as being "the result of a long and earnest desire to give a more permanent and accessible memorial to those who have originated and developed our institutions,--those whose names should be remembered by the generations to come, as the statesmen, the soldiers, the men of science and skill, the sagacious merchants, the eminent clergymen and philanthropists,--those who have brought our country to the prosperity and distinction it now enjoys."

Eulogies, funeral sermons, and obituaries soon pass out of remembrance, and an annual compilation like this cannot fail to be of service. The work appears to have been done with impartiality and care.

_The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with an Original Memoir._ Illustrated by F. R. PICKERSGILL, JOHN TENNIEL, BIRKET FOSTER, FELIX DARLEY, and others. New York: J. S. Redfield. 8vo. pp. 250.

The poems of Poe have taken their place in literature; it is too late to attempt anything like a contemporaneous criticism, too early to anticipate the judgement of posterity. But whatever were the faults of this gifted and erratic genius, much that he has written has become a part of the thought and memory of the present generation of readers, and will doubtless go to our children with equal claims.

In this volume it would seem that the arts connected with book-making have culminated; paper, typography, drawing, and engraving are all admirable. There are no fewer than fifty-three wood-engravings, of various degrees of excellence, but all exquisitely finished. The lovers of fine editions of poetry will find this a gift-book which the most fastidious taste will approve. If we could add that this mechanical excellence was from American hands, it would be much more grateful to our national pride.

_Black's Atlas of North America._ Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.

Nothing could well be more convenient than this series of twenty maps. They are carefully executed, of a size not too large for easy handling, and bound in a thin, light volume. They are preceded by some introductory statistical matter which is very useful for purposes of ready reference, and accompanied by an index so arranged that one can find the name he seeks on any map with great facility. We have seen no maps of North America which seemed to us, on the whole, at once so cheap and good.

* * * * *

Among the announcements of illustrated works in press, we notice "The Stratford Gallery, comprising Forty-five Ideal Portraits described by Mrs. J. W. Palmer. Illustrated with Fine Engravings on Steel, from Designs by Eminent Hands."

In one vol. 8vo. Antique morocco. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

* * * * *

The many admirers of the "AUTOCRAT" will learn with pleasure that a fine edition of his charming volume is in preparation, with tinted paper, illustrated by Hoppin, and bound in elegant style. Probably no holiday-book will be in such demand this season.