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clasped it in mine, and with that most common and coldest of forms, without a single word, Anna Carlton and I, who used to chat together from morning till night, separated for ever. I left the cottage with the wish, that as with me pollution had entered, it might follow me thence again, and reached town, my spirits ill according with the merry and gorgeous preparations for the coming wedding.

• Lynde, a weak man in his devotion to the elegancies of life, would fain show the world that he approved of his daughter's marriage. He was resolved that his fair and favorite child should celebrate her nuptials in all the splendor he could command. Fanny Lynde herself moved through the scene like a queen receiving her dues ; her personal beauty and graceful wit had given her a kind of conventional ascendancy; she conversed with all, but, as it were, descended to converse with them. Her father would, time and again, take her hand, and charge her playfully to do him credit at the Court of St. James; to which a glance of her dark eye, or the scornful turn of her lip, was her only and perhaps best reply..

'I joined in the gayety which was going forward, and watched the splendor which was preparing, apparently with considerable interest.

• At last the month was gone, and the festivities were at hand. Congratulations poured in — thanks were returned – ceremonies were performed ; and little was talked of, but the wedding and our departure. The day before the marriage was to be solemnized, Lynde was sitting in my office, explaining for the hundredth time a certain course I was to pursue, after having officially gained the ambassador's confidence, when a man brought me a letter in a familiar hand, with a black seal.' The magistrate urged me to thrust it away for the time; but I had involuntarily broken it open, and — oh God! that letter, and its consequences !' .

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I do not much regret that my friends record breaks off thus abruptly. Perhaps, unconsciously interested in the circumstances, I have already extracted more than was fitting. But I shall have little to add. The letter commenced with the most affectionate advice from the widow; she commended him to the blessing of Heaven with a mother's fervor, and feeling from her increasing weakness that they should never meet again in this world, she besought him, in memory of younger days, and more boyish pleasures, to be a good

Such a tone of perfect mildness and forgiveness as marked that letter, I never before listened to. It reverted a little to old times and old companions; recalled one or two early adventures, which of a winter's evening at home used to send the laugh round the circle, and besought her son to seek with his best zeal the glory one day to be revealed. From the trembling hand which traced them, these words fell with a burning heat. All at once, the weak hand-writing ended, and, evidently written at a later date, was the following:

God did not permit your dear mother to transmit to you this last memento of her affection. She sank away calmly and unexpectedly, and expired last evening, with your name upon her lips. ANNA Caelton.

So suddenly, and from such a source, did poor Egerton learn this sad news.

There were many shakings of the head, when it was told through the village that the widow Egerton was dead. Many had said that she was dying of neglect, and many more would not like to charge their consciences with Egerton's coldness to a certain young friend, and prophesied no good of a marriage, which, truth to tell, it were better should not take place.

I have often thought these latter good people spoke with a fair degree of shrewdness. The nuptials were decently delayed, and that delay postponed them for ever. Only a few weeks after the above letter, Fanny Lynde received an injury on an equestrian party of pleasure, and was brought senseless to her father's house. Of Lynde's agony and disappointment, a less haughty man can hardly conceive; so many bright visions, and paternal hopes, dispelled in a moment! He insisted, however, on Egerton's retaining his situation; possibly he could return, and find her improved. Ambition once more conquered ; and when in a few months Charles Egerton sailed for England, his bride had scarcely the consciousness to bid him farewell.

It is rather fashionable now-a-days to make light of affairs of the heart, and to talk coldly about the nonsense of pining for disappointed love. Perhaps in some cases these notions may be sincere ; but Anna Carlton knew nothing of them. She had loved Egerton with all her affections, and never once thought of concealing it. We often see a man, when the regard he has trusted totters to the ground, gather strength from the fall, and again be stern and daring. But the delicate hopes and affections of woman are sadly shattered by the jarring.

When the widow's household was broken up, Anna Carlton found a home with as kind a friend. Perhaps a stranger would have thought her daily duties cheerfully performed; and so they were, but not heartily. She was willing to live for others; but for herself, she prayed every night to meet the widow in heaven

for those on earth, whom her prayer might avail.

I will not linger on the remainder of this sketch. Sometimes a neighbor would strive to make the young orphan happy, and when in their simple merry-meetings a smile used to sit on Anna's cheek, they fancied her spirits were returning. But her heart was en- : shrined within an inner temple, the threshhold of which, joy never passed. Not a word of repining ever escaped her, nor was a moment given to idleness; and thus she gently and hourly declined. A few months of sorrow and solitude, and close beside the spot where the widow Egerton was buried, the sod was composed over the

grave of her young friend, Anna Carlton. When the world dazzles, or interest leads astray, I love to wander to that rural burial-place. The unostentatious record of her purity, who is now beyond the reach of all human disappointment, to me is full of meaning, and I take my place again among men, with a kindlier sympathy for the erring, and better guarded against temptation.

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HYMN.

WRITTEN FOR THE LATE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS, AT NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT.'

HERE then, beneath the green-wood shade,

His altar first the pilgrim made;

"T was here, amid the mingled throng,
First breathed the prayer, and woke the song.

The same low sounds are in our ears,
Which echoed in those early years;
'T was this same wave, with gentle reach,
Came rippling up the shingled beach.

The sun which lends its gladness now,
Lay bright upon the pilgrim's brow;
And this same wind, here breathing free,
Curled round his honor'd head in glee.

How peaceful smiled that Sabbath sun!
How holy was that day begun!
When here, amid the thick woods dim,
Went up the pilgrim's first low hymn!

Hush'd was the stormy forest's roar,
The forest eagle screamed no more;
And, far along the ocean's side,

The billow murmur'd where it died.

The young bird, cradled by its nest,
Its matin symphony repress'd;
And nothing broke the silence there,
Save the low hymn, or humbler prayer.

The red man, as the blue wave broke
Before his dipping paddle's stroke,
Paused, and hung list'ning on his oar,
As the hymn came from off the shore.

Look now upon the same still scene!
The wave is blue, the turf is green;
But where are now the wood and wild
The pilgrim and the forest child?

The wood and wild have pass'd away;
Pilgrim and forest child are clay;
And here, upon their graves, we stand,
The freed-men of a mighty land!

And lo! our goodly heritage,

A busy scene, a prosperous age;

Here Commerce spreads her snowy wings,
And Art, amid her labor, sings.

Far as the spreading gaze is given,
A fruitful soil, a glowing heaven;
Contentment all the valley fills,

While peace is piping from the hills.

And here, where hearth nor home might bless,
Once, in the woody wilderness,

Like spring, young Love now decks the year,
And Sharon's sweetest rose is here.

Supposed to be sung on the spot where the pilgrims landed, and held their first public Sabbath worship.

IT has lately been well and truly said, 'There are two kinds of wisdom in the one, every age in which science flourishes surpasses, or ought to surpass, its predecessor; of the other, there is nearly an equal amount in all ages. The first is the wisdom which depends upon long chains of reasonings, a comprehensive survey of the whole of a great subject at once, or complicated and subtle processes of metaphysical analysis: this is properly philosophy; the other is that acquired by experience of life, and a good use of the opportunities possessed by all who have mingled much with the world, or who have a large share of human nature in their bosoms. This unsystematic wisdom, drawn from personal experience is termed properly the wisdom of ages.' The writer from whom we quote, goes on to state, that this notion furnishes a solution of the wisdom of the Proverbs of Solomon, which are, on this account, equally applicable to all periods. Indeed it is the writing from these real sources of knowledge, action and observation, that makes the popularity of Æsop, the excellence of Bacon, and the immortality of Shakspeare. But forms and customs, the science of getting on in the world, change.

The justice' of our historian is not the justice of one day universally. The character he has hit upon to embody the fifth age' is not, perhaps as applicable now, as it was then. But Shakspeare himself was a 'justice,' when he wrote the ages, not though as he painted him. It is his own age that, in our view, he fails to describe with perfect truth. But it has almost passed into an axiom that no man can write the history of his own times or of his own life. Then how can a justice describe a justice ? No American could at this time write the history of the administration of Andrew Jackson with impartiality; and it is satisfactory to think, that the life of John Quincy Adams will be written by some one in the next generation.

The man looks with truth upon his boyhood, his loves, and his battles, but he does not know himself. The justice' is the age of wisdom, but not the wisdom of its own nature and time, but of the past.

A man may be a fool at thirty, and yet die a sage. Let him who has gleaned no knowledge at forty, who is a dupe, a bigot, and a sneak at this age, keep as much out of sight as possible. His case is hopeless. It is told as a great wonder in the history of mind, that Sheridan was a dull boy. Now he is called a dull boy who does not get his lessons at school, who hates books; and it is precisely those minds that are not easily trammelled and harnessed by false systems of education, that are most likely to turn out well. Why expect the fruit before the harvest ? Why look for wisdom in the ages of experience ? Byron's early poetry was perhaps justly ridiculed. He who is a wonder as a boy, is rarely distinguished as a man. The boyhood of

, a distinguished man may be made to become a wonder, when read by the light of his manly deeds ; wben we have the key of his character at hand to decipher the riddle of his waywardness or dullness in his youth. The fruits that are early ripe are often wormeaten and unsound, and the minds that are precocious and forward, never arrive at perfect strength. Let him who is cosseted in his early years as a genius, content to stand upon the sandy foundation of a pretty thought, or a flowery college exercise, beware of neglecting the common; beware of neglecting those paths to wisdom which lie open to be trod in the market places of mankind.

The steps to the justice' or age of wisdom, are regularly progressive. A man may not jump the 'lover' or the soldier' with’impunity. This is the reason why some are never wise, because they are never boys, lovers, and soldiers, in a natural way; they are hurried, by ambitious and impatient parents, who always look at their children through magnifying glasses, over the early disciplinary

ages. A boy is a lover when he should be playing ball; he passes into action when he should be sighing like furnace, and he becomes a long, lean, lank 'justice,' with no portliness nor'wise saws in which to play his part.

Many poets who have been worshipped, were not men in independence, self-reliance, and resolution. Like the wandering harpers, the minstrels of old, they have been welcome in castle hall, in lady's bower. They have had the freedom of the world granted to them ; and by common consent have been supposed to be free from the rules and obligations which bind working, every-day men. Their excesses have been pardoned as venial eccentricities, and all their

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