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polished as a table of scagliola, looking, in its invisible speed, like one mirror of gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above, there is a sudden turn in the glen which sends the water like a catapult against the opposite angle of the rock, and, in the action of years, it has worn out a cavern of unknown depth, into which the whole mass of the river plunges with the abandonment of a flying fiend into hell, and, reappearing like the angel that has pursued him, glides swiftly but with divine serenity on its way. (I am indebted for that last figure to Job, who travelled with a Milton in his pocket, and had a natural redolence of "Paradise Lost" in his conversation.)

never be day again-a night to be enamoured of the stars, and bid God bless them like human creatures on their bright journey-a night to love in, to dissolve in-to do every thing but what night is made for-sleep! Oh heaven! when I think how precious is life in such moments; how the aroma-the celestial bloom and flower of the soul -the yearning and fast-perishing enthusiasm of youth-waste themselves in the solitude of such nights on the senseless and unanswering air; when I wander alone, unloving and unloved, beneath influences that could inspire me with the elevation of a scraph, were I at the ear of a human creature that could summon forth and measure my limitless capacity of devotion-when I think this, and feel this, and so waste my existence in vain yearnings, I could extinguish the divine spark within me like a lamp on an unvisited shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimilation to the animals I walk among! And that is the substance of a speech I made to Job as a sequitur of a well-meant remark of his own, that "it was a pity Edith Linsey was not there." He took the clause about the "animals" to himself, and made an apology for the same a year after. We sometimes give our friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our rhapsodies! Most people talk of the sublimity of Trenton, but I have haunted it by the week together for its mere loveliness. The river, in the heart of that fearful chasm, is the most varied and beautiful assemblage of the thousand forms and shapes of running water that I know in the world. The soil and the deepstriking roots of the forest terminate far above you, looking like a black rim on the enclosing precipices; the bed of the river and its sky-sustaining walls are of solid rock, and, with the tremendous descent of the stream-forming for miles one continuous succession of falls and rapids-the channel is worn into curves and cavities which throw the clear waters into forms of inconceivable brilliancy and variety. It is a sort of half-twilight below, with here and there a long beam of sunshine reach--the dull void you find in every landscape of

ing down to kiss the lip of an eddy or form a rainbow over a fall, and the reverberating and changing echoes,

"Like a ring of bells whose sound the wind still alters," maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying at every step with the varying phase of the current. Cascades of from twenty to thirty feet, over which the river flies with a single and hurrying leap, (not a drop missing from the glassy and bending sheet,) occur frequently as you ascend; and it is from these that the place takes its name. But the falls, though beautiful, are only peculiar from the dazzling and unequalled rapidity with which the waters come to the leap. If it were not for the leaf which drops wavering down into the abysm from trees apparently painted on the sky, and which is caught away by the flashing current as if the lightning had suddenly crossed it, you would think the vault of the steadfast heavens a flying element as soon. The spot in that long gulf of beauty that I best remember is a smooth descent of some hundred yards, where the river in full and undivided volume skims over a plane as

Much as I detest water in small quantities, (to drink,) I have a hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. It is, by much, the belle in the family of the elements. Earth is never tolerable unless disguised in green. Air is so thin as only to be visible when she borrows drapery of water; and Fire is so staringly bright as to be unpleasant to the eyesight; but water, soft, pure, graceful water! there is no shape into which you can throw her that she does not seem lovelier than before. She can borrow nothing of her sisters. Earth has no jewels in her lap so brilliant as her own spray pearls or emeralds; Fire has no rubies like that what she steals from the sunset; Air has no robes like the grace of her fine-woven and everchanging drapery of silver. A health (in wine!) to WATER!

Who is there that did not love some stream in his youth? Who is there in whose vision of the past there does not sparkle up, from every picture of childhood, a spring or a rivulet woven through the darkened and torn woof of first affections like a thread of unchanged silver? How do you interpret the instinctive yearning with which you search for the river-side or the fountain in every scene of nature-the clinging unaware to the river's course when a truant in the fields in June

which it is not the ornament and the centre? For myself, I hold with the Greek : « Water is the first principle of all things: we were made from it and we shall be resolved into it.”

CAUTERSKILL FALLS.
FROM THE SAME.

A MILE or two back from the mountain-house, on nearly the same level, the gigantic forest suddenly sinks two or three hundred feet into the earth, forming a tremendous chasm, over which a bold stag might almost leap, and above which the rocks hang on either side with the most threatening and frowning grandeur. A mountain-stream creeps through the forest to the precipice, and leaps as suddenly over, as if, Arethusa-like, it fled into the earth from the pursuing steps of a satyr. Thirty paces from its brink, you would never suspect, but for the hollow reverberation of the plunging stream, that any thing but a dim and mazy wood was within a day's journey. It is visited as a great curiosity in scenery, under the name of Cauterskill Falls.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

[Born 1807.]

The

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, a son of the Honourable Stephen Longfellow, of Portland, was born in that city on the twentyseventh of February, 1807. At the early age of fourteen he entered Bowdoin College, and at the close of the usual period of four years, he was graduated, with high honours, and an unusual reputation for moral as well as intellectual elevation. For a few months, in 1825, he was a law student, in the office of his father, but being offered a professorship of modern languages, which it was proposed to found in Bowdoin College, he was relieved from this uncongenial pursuit to prepare himself for its duties by a visit to Europe, and accordingly left home and passed three years and a half, travelling or residing in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and England. He returned home in 1829, eminently fitted for his office, upon which he immediately entered. youthful professor was a great favourite with the collegians; when not engaged in the labours of instruction he was himself a student, or, as sometimes happened, a weaver of those beautiful verses, in which he has exhibited so much both of genius and cultivation; and in a few years he became known through all the country as one of the most graceful poets and most elegant and accomplished scholars of whom we could boast, so that when Mr. George Ticknor, in 1835, resigned the professorship of modern languages and belleslettres, in the oldest and most distinguished of our universities, there was no hesitation in calling to the vacant post Mr. Longfellow, who had already something of the fame of a veteran in teaching, though yet scarcely twentyeight years of age. He now therefore resigned his professorship at Brunswick, and again went abroad, with a view of becoming more thoroughly acquainted with the languages and literatures of the north of Europe. He passed more than a year in Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, and returning to America, in the autumn of 1836, entered immediately upon his duties at Cambridge, where he has ever since resided, except

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during a short visit to Europe, for the restoration of his health, in 1842.

As has been intimated above, Professor Longfellow commenced his literary life, and acquired an enviable reputation, at an early age. Indeed while he was an undergraduate he wrote many tasteful and carefully finished poems, for the United States Literary Gazette, and in æsthetic criticism, he soon after exhibited abilities of a very high order, in various articles which he contributed to the North American Review. In 1833 he published his translation from the Spanish of the celebrated poem of Don Jorge Manrique on the death of his father, with a beautiful introductory essay on the moral and religious poetry of Spain; in 1835 his Outre-Mer, or a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea; in 1839 Hyperion, a romance; in 1840 Voices of the Night, his first collection of poems; in 1831 Ballads and other Poems, (embracing The Children of the Lord's Supper, from the Swedish of Tegnér); in 1842 The Spanish Student, a play; in 1843 Poems on Slavery; in 1845 The Poets and Poetry of Europe, with introductions and biographical notices; and in 1846 two complete editions of his Poetical Works, one of which is beautifully illustrated by the best artists of the country.

As a poet Mr. Longfellow's merits are of a very high though not of the highest order. Nothing can be more graceful and tender than some of his Voices of the Night; or more picturesque and dramatical than some of his Ballads; or more simple, chaste, and beautifully wise than the greater part of his short poems, which seem to be painted experiences of both the mind and heart. They have that stamp of nature which commends them alike to the rudest and the most cultivated. Every one can understand them, and in every one they are sure to awaken some responsive feeling. Yet he seems to want a certain freshness and creative energy, perhaps on account of that absence of self-reliance, which is commonly observable in men, in the formation of whose characters the study of books has had more than a due influence.

The first prose work of Professor Longfellow was a collection of tales and sketches illustrating the impressions of a youthful scholar as he wanders leisurely through southern Europe. Hyperion is in a similar spirit, but has a unity of purpose, and is bolder and more sustained. The scholar, here, with his delicate fancy and extreme susceptibility, is exposed to trials. But his life is in obedience to the impressive motto of the romance, "Look not mournfully into the Past: It comes not back

again. Wisely improve the Present: It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart." Here is the moral, which is wrought out ingeniously and with exquisite taste, though with little constructive talent, for the plot is very simple, and the incidents are barely sufficient to give life to the sentiments. It is a poem, full of beautiful thoughts and illustrations; a painting of conceptions that float in the solitary mind of a man of genius, refinement and feeling.

THE VILLAGE OF AUTEUIL.

FROM OUTRE-MER.

THE sultry heat of summer always brings with it, to the idler and the man of leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of the country. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city, the movement of the crowd, and the gossip of society, with the silence of the hamlet, the quiet seclusion of the grove, and the gossip of a woodland brook. As is sung in the old ballad of Robin Hood,

"In somer, when the shawes be sheyn, And leves be large and long,

Hit is full mery in feyre foreste,

To hear the foulys song;

To se the dere draw to the dale

And leve the hilles hee,

And shadow hem in the leves grene,

Vnder the grene wode tre."

the inmates of the rural hospital met on common ground, to breathe the invigorating air of morning, and while away the lazy noon or vacant evening with tales of the sick chamber.

The establishment was kept by Dr. Dentdelion, a dried-up little fellow, with red hair, a sandy complexion, and the physiognomy and gestures of a monkey. His character corresponded to his outward lineaments; for he had all a monkey's busy and curious impertinence. Nevertheless, such as he was, the village Esculapius strutted forth the little great man of Auteuil. The peasants looked up to him as to an oracle; he contrived to be at the head of every thing, and laid claim to the cre dit of all public improvements in the village; in fine, he was a great man on a small scale.

It was within the dingy walls of this little potentate's imperial palace that I chose my country residence. I had a chamber in the second story, with a solitary window, which looked upon the street, and gave me a peep into a neighbour's garden. This I esteemed a great privilege; for, as a stranger, I desired to see all that was passing out of doors; and the sight of green trees, though grow

It was a feeling of this kind that prompted me, during my residence in the north of France, to pass one of the summer months at Auteuil, the pleasantest of the many little villages that lie in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. It is situated on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, a wood of some extent, in whose green alleys the dusty citing on another's ground, is always a blessing. enjoys the luxury of an evening drive, and gentlemen meet in the morning to give each other satisfaction in the usual way. A cross-road, skirted with green hedgerows, and overshadowed by tall poplars, leads you from the noisy highway of St. Cloud and Versailles to the still retirement of this suburban hamlet. On either side the eye discovers old châteaux amid the trees, and green parks, whose pleasant shades recall a thousand images of La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière; and on an eminence, overlooking the windings of the Seine, and giving a beautiful though distant view of the domes and gardens of Paris, rises the village of Passy, long the residence of our countrymen Franklin and Count Rumford.

I took up my abode at a maison de santé; not that I was a valetudinarian, but because I there found some one to whom I could whisper, "How sweet is solitude!" Behind the house was a garden filled with fruit trees of various kinds, and adorned with gravel-walks and green arbours, furnished with tables and rustic seats, for the repose of the invalid and the sleep of the indolent. Here

Within doors-had I been disposed to quarrel with my household gods-I might have taken some objection to my neighbourhood; for, on one side of me was a consumptive patient, whose graveyard cough drove me from my chamber by day; and on the other, an English colonel, whose incoherent ravings, in the delirium of a high and obstinate fever, often broke my slumbers by night; but I found ample amends for these inconveniences in the society of those who were so little indisposed as hardly to know what ailed them, and those who, in health themselves, had accompanied a friend or relative to the shades of the country in pursuit of it. To these I am indebted for much courtesy ; and particularly to one who, if these pages should ever meet her eye, will not, I hope, be unwilling to accept this slight memorial of a former friendship.

It was, however, to the Bois de Boulogne that I looked for my principal recreation. There I took my solitary walk, morning and evening; or, mounted on a little mouse-coloured donkey, paced demurely along the woodland pathway. I had a

favourite seat beneath the shadow of a venerable oak, one of the few hoary patriarchs of the wood which had survived the bivouacs of the allied armies. It stood upon the brink of a little glassy pool, whose tranquil bosom was the image of a quiet and secluded life, and stretched its parental arms over a rustic bench, that had been constructed beneath it for the accommodation of the foot traveller, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap of the martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breeze whispered among its branches, it seemed to be holding friendly colloquies with a few of its venerable contemporaries, who stooped from the opposite bank of the pool, nodding gravely now and then, and gazing at themselves with a sigh in the mirror below.

In this quiet haunt of rural repose I used to sit at noon, hear the birds sing, and "possess myself in much quietness." Just at my feet lay the little silver pool, with the sky and the woods painted in its mimic vault, and occasionally the image of a bird, or the soft, watery outline of a cloud, floating silently through its sunny hollows. The water-lily spread its broad, green leaves on the surface, and rocked to sleep a little world of insect life in its golden cradle. Sometimes a wandering leaf came floating and wavering downward, and settled on the water; then a vagabond insect would break the smooth surface into a thousand ripples, or a green-coated frog slide from the bank, and, plump! dive headlong to the bottom.

I entered, too, with some enthusiasm, into all the rural sports and merrimakes of the village. The holydays were so many little eras of mirth and good feeling; for the French have that happy and sunshine temperament,—that merry-go-mad character, -which renders all their social meetings scenes of enjoyment and hilarity. I made it a point never to miss any of the fêtes champêtres, or rural dances, at the wood of Boulogne; though I confess it sometimes gave me a momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all those innocent amusements which cheer the labourer's toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to the wheel of life, and help the poor man along with his load of cares. Hence I saw with no small delight the rustic swain astride the wooden horse of the carrousel, and the village maiden whirling round and round in its dizzy car; or took my stand on a rising ground that overlooked the dance, an idle spectator in a busy throng. It was just where the village touched the outward border of the wood. There a little area had been levelled beneath the trees, surrounded by a painted rail, with a row of benches inside. The music was placed in a slight balcony, built around the trunk of a large tree in the centre; and the lamps, hanging from the branches above, gave a gay, fantastic, and fairy❘

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look to the scene. How often in such moments did I recall the lines of Goldsmith, describing those "kinder skies" beneath which France displays her bright domain," and feel how true and masterly the sketch,

"Alike all ages; dames of ancient days

Have led their children through the mirthful maze,
And the gray grandsire, skilled in gestic lore,
Has frisked beneath the burden of threescore."

Nor must I forget to mention the fête patronale, -a kind of annual fair, which is held at mid-summer, in honour of the patron saint of Auteuil. Then the principal street of the village is filled with booths of every description; strolling players, and ropedancers, and jugglers, and giants, and dwarfs, and wild beasts, and all kinds of wonderful shows, excite the gaping curiosity of the throng; and in dust, crowds, and confusion, the village rivals the capital itself. Then the goodly dames of Passy descend into the village of Auteuil; then the brewers of Billancourt and the tanners of Sèvers dance

lustily under the green-wood tree; and then, too, the sturdy fishmongers of Brétigny and SaintYon regale their fat wives with an airing in a swing, and their customers with eels and crawfish; or, as is more poetically set forth in an old Christmas carol,

"Vous eussiez vu venir tous ceux de Saint-Yon,
Et ceux de Brétigny apportant du poisson,
Les barbeaux et gardons, anguilles et carpettes
Etoient à bon marché
Croyez,

A cette journée-là,

Là, là,

Et aussi les perchettes."

I found another source of amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach below his calves. A little foraging cap, that had long since seen its best days, set off an open, good-humoured countenance, bronzed by sun and wind. He was led about by a brisk, middle-aged woman, in straw hat and wooden shoes; and a little bare-footed boy, with clear, blue eyes and flaxen hair, held a tattered hat in his hand, in which he collected eleëmosynary sous. The old fellow had a favourite song, which he used to sing with great glee to a merry, joyous air, the burden of which ran "Chantons l'amour et le plaisir !" I often thought it would have been a good lesson for the crabbed and discontented rich man to have heard this remnant of humanity, poor, blind, and in rags, and dependent upon casual charity for his daily bread, singing in so cheerful a voice the charms of existence, and, as it were, fiddling life away to a merry tune.

I was one morning called to my window by the sound of rustic music. I looked out and beheld a procession of villagers advancing along the road, attired in gay dresses, and marching merrily on in the direction of the church. I soon perceived that

it was a marriage-festival. The procession was led by a long orang-outang of a man, in a straw hat and white dimity bobcoat, playing on an asthmatic clarionet, from which he contrived to blow unearthly sounds, ever and anon squeaking off at right angles from his tune, and winding up with a grand flourish on the guttural notes. Behind him, led by his little boy, came the blind fiddler, his honest features glowing with all the hilarity of a rustic bridal, and, as he stumbled along, sawing away upon his fiddle till he made all crack again. Then came the happy bridegroom, dressed in his Sunday suit of blue, with a large nosegay in his button-hole; and close beside him his blushing bride, with downcast eyes, clad in a white robe and slippers, and wearing a wreath of white roses in her hair. The friends and relatives brought up the procession; and a troop of village urchins came shouting along in the rear, scrambling among themselves for the largess of sous and sugar-plums that now and then issued in large handfuls from the pockets of a lean man in black, who seemed to of ficiate as master of ceremonies on the occasion. I gazed on the procession till it was out of sight; and when the last wheeze of the clarionet died upon my ear, I could not help thinking how happy were they who were thus to dwell together in the peaceful bosom of their native village, far from the gilded misery and the pestilential vices of the town.

On the evening of the same day, I was sitting by the window, enjoying the freshness of the air and the beauty and stillness of the hour, when I heard the distant and solemn hymn of the Catholic burial-service, at first so faint and indistinct that it seemed an illusion. It rose mournfully on the hush of evening, died gradually away, then ceased. Then it rose again, nearer and more distinct, and soon after a funeral procession appeared, and passed directly beneath my window. It was led by a priest, bearing the banner of the church, and followed by two boys, holding long flambeaux in their hands. Next came a double file of priests in their surplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other, chanting the funeral dirge at intervals, now pausing, and then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind of bassoon, with a dismal and wailing sound. Then followed various symbols of the church, and the bier borne on the shoulders of four men. coffin was covered with a velvet pall, and a chaplet of white flowers lay upon it, indicating that the deceased was unmarried. A few of the villagers came behind, clad in mourning robes, and bearing lighted tapers. The procession passed slowly along the same street that in the morning had been thronged by the gay bridal company. A melancholy train of thought forced itself home upon my mind. The joys and sorrows of this world are so strikingly mingled! Our mirth and grief are brought so mournfully in contact! We laugh while others weep,-and others rejoice when we are sad! The light heart and the heavy walk side by side and go about together! Beneath the same roof are spread the wedding-feast and the funeral

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pall! The bridal-song mingles with the burialhymn! One goes to the marriage-bed, another to the grave; and all is mutable, uncertain, and transitory.

It is with sensations of pure delight that I recur to the brief period of my existence which was passed in the peaceful shades of Auteuil. There is one kind of wisdom which we learn from the world, and another kind which can be acquired in solitude only. In cities we study those around us; but in the retirement of the country we learn to know ourselves. The voice within us is more distinctly audible in the stillness of the place; and the gentler affections of our nature spring up more freshly in its tranquillity and sunshine.-nurtured by the healthy principle which we inhale with the pure air, and invigorated by the genial influences which descend into the heart from the quiet of the sylvan solitude around, and the soft serenity of the sky above.

SPRING.

FROM HYPERION.

Ir was a sweet carol, which the Rhodian children sang of old in spring, bearing in their hands, from door to door, a swallow, as herald of the

I season;

"The swallow is come!

The swallow is come!

O fair are the seasons, and light
Are the days that she brings,
With her dusky wings,

And her bosom snowy white."

A pretty carol, too, is that, which the Hungarian boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the returning stork in spring;

"Stork! stork! poor stork!
Why is thy foot so bloody?
A Turkish boy hath torn it;
Hungarian boy will heal it,

With fiddle, fife, and drum."

But what child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, where spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails, and the misty pennon of the eastwind nailed to the mast! Yet even here, and in the stormy month of March even, there are bright warm mornings, when we open our windows to inhale the balmy air. The pigeons fly to and fro, and we hear the whirring sound of wings. Old flies crawl out of the cracks, to sun themselves; and think it is summer. They die in their conceit; and so do our hearts within us, when the cold sea-breath comes from the eastern sea; and again,

"The driving hail

Upon the window beats with icy flail." The red-flowering maple is first in blossom, its beautiful purple flowers unfolding a fortnight before the leaves. The moose-wood follows, with rose-coloured buds and leaves; and the dogwood, robed in the white of its own pure blossoms. Then comes the sudden rain storm; and the birds fly to and fro, and shriek. Where do they hide themselves in such storms? at what firesides dry their feathery cloaks? At the fireside of the great,

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