floor a dusky ball, probably of yarn ; you might have knitted a pair of black stockings out of it. Standing up, it became a brindled black kitten, who straightway made himself at home, walked nonchalantly to the fireplace, sat down upon the hearth, and began to paw the back part of his ears. I introduced myself to him, became intimate with him, and named him Beelzebub; named him so because of his complexion and because I have a good opinion of Beelzebub,-just as good as Burns, Shelley, and George Sand ever had of the Devil himself. For there was nothing infernal in his disposition-the disposition of Beelzebub, the kitten. On the contrary, he was the embodiment of philanthropy and forgiveness. True, he was as impudent as Paul Pry or Robert Macaire, but he was as cheerful as Mark Tapley, brave as Havelock, and as kind as George Peabody. Being a cat he was necessarily a philosopher, and among the philosophers I ought to have sought for his prototype and namesake. In all history I find but one man like unto him, and that man was Socrates; I now heartily regret and wonder that I did not name him Socrates. Like Socrates he was ugly, lazy, shabby about externals, odd in all his ways, so odd that few understood him, and most thought him distracted; he loved mankind like Socrates, was humorous as Socrates, and in fact had in him Socrates' soul. He had no resentment whatever-toward the human race. Sam and Jinny hated him, and he fought them manfully; every body on the plantation, with the exception of my uncle and myself, hated him, but to their continual kickings, cuffings, and imprecations, he opposed a resolute love that would have done honour to an apostle, a missionary, a martyr. He loved impartially the whole family, and jumped into every body's lap without introduction and without ceremony.. This looked like impertinence, but it was not; it was love. He ever apologized beforehand by a curious explanatory and entreating ejaculation. "R-r-r-ow," and he was in your lap. Knock him down, "r-r-r-ow," he was back again. Throw him out of the window, he reappeared as if by magic,

and "r-r-r-ow" he was in your lap again.

Because I permitted it, he learned to hug me round the neck, and contracted such a fondness for my nose, that I was afraid he would come and eat it while I was asleep. He had a passion for human bed-fellows, and nearly suffocated my uncle Flatback by getting on the pillow and spooning up to the old gentleman's face so closely as to stop respiration. He was always in the way, and though incessantly trod upon, sat down upon, and crushed under the legs of chairs, never profited by the sad experience. Whether this was owing to a want of sense, or to obstinacy, or to absence of mind consequent upon the Socratesian trance, I could never certainly tell. His voice, like everything else about him, was strange. He purred loud enough for two cats and purred all the time. Somehow he got a strange appetite for flies, and would tree them precisely as a dog trees squirrels. The only times I ever heard him cry were when, after repeated efforts, he found he could not leap high enough to catch a fly

he had treed.

He was very unfortunate. In addition to the general unkindness he received at the hands of human beings and which made him a dwarf, he was one day run over by the mules and thoroughly dislocated. He gradually partially rejointed himself, never murmured, but kept up an affectionate and cheerful spirit to the last. It was during his dislocated days that he acquired the habit of occupying chairs and suffered his most crushing sorrows. When sat down upon, he vented himself in a shout, which was less a complaint than an argumentative objection; as if he said, "What possible benefit do you derive from sitting down on me? I can't, I really can not see the use of it." When knocked out of the chair, he would walk off a little ways, not angrily, not moodily, but thoughtfully, as if he was trying to come at the logical meaning of such treatment. The internal debate was ever of short duration, and ended invariably with "r-r--r-ow," "its all a joke, he couldn't have meant anything," and back he came into the chair or the lap of the person occupying it, to be knocked down and knock

ed down, time after time. There was literally no escape from him until he was locked up in the close closet under the stair-case. Let him out in the morning, he came forth with his whole soul beaming in his eyes, the most grateful creature in the world, and the most deliberate, for starvation itself could not put him in a hurry.

Gratitude, indeed, was the cardinal trait in his character. He was foolishly grateful for the smallest favors. Offer him a plate of food, he would never touch it until he had returned thanks to you with a look of ineffable affection and rubbed himself against your legs. Pat him on the head, he would purr as if he were purring a pæan to your generosity, and look at you, oh! how lovingly. Speak to him kindly while he was lying down, he would rise up and contemplate you for a few moments with almost tearful fondness; then he would stick his finger-nails in the floor and pull himself back until his head was nearly lost between his shoulders, still looking tenderly at you; then he would stretch himself limb by limb, with a slow, delicious elongation, that assured you it did him good all over to be so spoken to.

Beelzebub's humour was expressed in almost every look and action, but more particularly in the practical jokes he played upon a conceited little duck, and a poor Shanghai rooster, whose toes had been bitten off by the frost. This duck was the smallest duck my aunt Flatback had; her figure was short and comical, the result most likely of curvature of the spine, brought on, not by tight lacing, but by throwing her head too far back while drinking, or by a needless inflation of the lungs in order to display her bust. Spite of her figure, she was the vainest young woman I ever saw. She exasperated me with her airs. I could not go into the back porch to get a drink of water, but here she would come mincing round the corner, with a mock modest gait, but with her head one side and a round, flickering eye turned to me for admiration. Beelzebub would begin by making love to her, and end by driving her in a desperate, waddling flutter of terror all over the

VOL. XXVII-9

yard. This done, he would show his appreciation of the joke by twisting his tail in a manner that he thought peculiarly funny, and by running around in a ring, like a deformed and distracted circus horse. After this, he would take a running start and clamber about ten feet up a locust tree, then jump down and come to me for approbation. I always gave it.

Unable to stand up, the frost-bitten rooster succeeded in sitting down. Beelzebub would draw nigh as if to condole with him, then scare him up and enjoy the poor fellow's wretched efforts to hobble out of the way. By propping himself against the side of the house, Shanghai managed at times to stand, but stood very ticklishly on his pins; a touch would upset him. upset him. Beelzebub knew this, and his delight was to catch him standing, to sneak up behind him and knock him down. I could not countenance such behaviour, and whipped Beelzebub several times about it; but, like the Elephant's nose to the Irishman, the temptation was too strong for him; in my absence, he could never refrain from pitching into the invalid.

Business called me fifty miles or more from my pets. I heard from them occasionally by letter. Sam was fattening daily; Ellen, no better; Beelzebub about the same, everbody still hated him and abused him. At length news came that Beelzebub was gone, had disappeared or died or been spirited away-no one had seen his remains. Some days afterwards I was sitting at my table with my back to the office door, when hearing a rustle behind me, I turned, and lo! there was Beelzebub peering around the counter, his feet on a copy of the New York Herald.

"Why Beelzebub, my son,” I exclaimed in delight, "is that you? Is it possible you have walked fifty miles through the hot sun to see your master? I am really glad to see you. Come here, sir." He regarded me with fixed and stony

There is a delicious freshness in this balmy morning air and the birds are out in fine feather. What a burst of melody sends he forth, that "merry mimic of the grove," and the clear note of the cardinal, and the nonpareil, how joyous, as they skip like winged flowers through the rich green foliage. A superb cluster of the cloth of gold crowns the vine-encinctured column of my neighbour's porch; and covering the lattice fence are umbrageous bowers of Jessamine and nondescript. An evergreen magnolia, with its peerless bloom, rears its stately form above, and there a noble elm lifts its graceful branches in gentle dalliance with the breeze: how their rich luxuriant growth leaps with the noiseless joy of vegetable life: heaven's blessings on the man who plants a tree.

In the city, the great heart of the slumbering multitude begins to throb, and send through its arteries the principle of life; before Aurora, the rosy fingered, had streaked the Orient, or Phoebus had reigned up his fiery steeds at the pearly gates, the breadman's spavined hack had wheeled with his lumbering cart through a hundred streets, and while, as yet faint and indistinct, swells up upon the morning air the distant hum of busy life, his shrill whistle has piped the reveillée to drowsy butlers, and bread is echoed through every garden and gateway from Hamstead to the Battery. Buoyant and babbling now, every thing that has life seems astir; and merry as the morning birds, and varied as their own shades of ebony, are the joyous utterances of those happy rogues, the venders of fish, fruit and vegetables. Little reck Cuffy and Little reck Cuffy and Sambo, maum Dinah there, perched so jauntily in her market cart, or the whole rescued race of Ham, for protective tariffs, or fishery bounties, or international imbroglios; or the struggle for power, or the never-sated greed of gain, that cankers the life of their pharisaical sympathisers; happy in their blessed ignorance of any higher authority, they have learned to acquiesce in the decrees of the great Arbiter of things temporal, and are content.

Cleaving the liquid air above us, post haste for the first discarded sheep's head, that privileged individual, enshrined in the museum and labelled in classic literature, "Cathartes atratus," but popularly known as the buzzard, leads his eager phalanx to a democratic banquet at the market place, illustrating many of the dogmas of that respectable and influential party, by practical demonstrations, that "to the victors belong the mutton," "might makes right," "power is always stealing from the many to the few.""Squatter sovereignty, or the right to soil and spoil," &c. How like a witches' dance are their droll but not ungraceful movemeuts! Bob, my neighbour's valet, over the way, yawns, and stretches himself lazily; he is an amateur musician, and "vexes the drowsy ears of night" with his minstrelsy; how many of his vulgar imitators have grown rich, and set up establishments in other latitudes with a smaller musical capital than Robert; but Bob is major domo, as was his now retired, but venerable and respected sire before him, and has inherited the same indulgence from, and devotion to his master, which so distinguished his predecessor. There is my neighbour, in slippers and gown, and in his accustomed easy chair, he is not old, but time has left unmistakable traces upon his manly frame. Bred to the bar, my neighbour had early achieved a flattering measure of success; gifted with rare intellectual endowments, possessing a commanding presence, easy, graceful and ready in debate, he was a rising champion of his party in the political arena; in the opposite ranks was one in no respect his inferior; they had been early friends, party spirit ran high; brother, in some instances, stood arrayed against brother, father against son, friend opposed friend; the code of honour was the received tribunal for the settlement of real or imaginary wrongs; slight cause when the blood is up sufficeth for deadly strife; my neighbour and his quondam friend met, the usual punctilio was observed, the fatal drama was enacted and the survivor returned to his home, but the sun went

down upon him a raving maniac. It was some time before reason resumed its sway, meanwhile a golden link had dropped from the severed chain which binds the family group, and a bright and beauteous child had passed away. Smitten, but tranquil, his wife bore her grief alone, antil at length her pure spirit, like the polished blade which has worn through its case, exhausted the feeble frame in offices of love, and is at rest; now in the saddened yet grateful retirement which he seeks and finds in the society of a widowed daughter, my excellent neighbour devotes a large portion of his time and his fortune to the happiness of his fellow-creatures, and has made munificent provision for the nearest heir of his unfortunate but lamented victim.

Who is that lovely creature? Ah, you know her now, she sits her thorough-bred with a matchless grace; well she may, she inherits that accomplishment from both father and mother; when on the plantation in the winter season, the whole family may sometimes be seen following the dogs in full cry; the father is an old member of the jockey-club, and delights in the purest blood whether of man or beast; whilst the mother, when in the city, is the centre of a charming society; that young gentleman, her brother, you perceive, bestrides the late winner of the handy cap; that mixture of live oak and catgut upon which old Scipio brings up the rear, is a marsh tackey: they have just returned from a gallop among the sequestered groves of St. Andrews, where she has gathered that rose-bloom upon her cheeks, having crossed Ashley river bridge before the first antlered stag of the parish had shaken the dew drops from his flanks. Ah it was she, who so enamoured our young Spartan from Georgia at the Moultrie House. "Sparta has no worthier son than he."

His prompt exhibition of self-forgetfulness and personal courage, in rescuing our little friend, when the receding waves had swept him beyond his depth, whilst bathing in the surf near the Fort, was an act worthy the ground consecrated by the heroism of Moultrie and of Jasper.

That antiquated gable you perceive a short way along the street, festooned with the luxuriant Wisteria, once sheltered from the obtrusive gaze of the world the domestic life of one who subsequently filled no mean place in the history of our republic. You may discover through the foliage the mutilated remains of the family arms, there yet is the uplifted hand, grasping the broken sabre, as if still resisting the encroachments of the last enemy, time; and like a guardian genius defying the attacks of paint, or the innova tions of progress. In the roistering days of that "first gentleman of England," this was the rendezvous of some of the rebel compatriots of Washington: a frac ture in the wall chronicles a very inopportune missile from one of his majesty's vessels; upon the wainscotted walls within, still hang a few of the family portraits by Copley and Sir Joshua, in which may yet be seen traces of beauty that were not surpassed in the famous court of Charles the Second. The unwritten history, which the records of that obscure building alone could furnish, would afford material for fame and fortune, for a modern pictorial historian; and, in faithful hand, would fix the stamp of infamy upon the front of the wretch, who owes his position to the defamation and abuse of Southern heroes and statesmen.

But come, we must heed that tiny tintinabulum, and join the family circle in the parlour, preparatory to our morning meal.

CHARLESTON, June 1858.