encase her dainty person in doublet and hose, that she might wander away to the forest of Arden and find her stray lover, and did not Viola follow suit?

Were I so disposed, I might here take occasion to dilate upon the blessings of paternal love and sisterly affection which consecrate the domestic hearth, and impart to the charities of life a purer and fresher grace, and strew flowers along man's rugged pathway from his birth to his grave; or I might learnedly examine into the causes which give rise to this sentiment, determining accurately how far the sense of beauty is a necessary constituent and how far incidental accomplishments add to its strength; or I might proceed to consider the symptoms of love as they affect the appearance, and the various manners in which it is exhibited; or I might finally suggest a remedy, and by promulgating such a panacea deserve the thanks of unborn millions of the masculine gender-but all these avenues to fame's temple I shall carefully avoid, with the single remark that whatever love may be, and however it enters the soul, I myself, have from time to time become its "wictim." Semel insanivimus omnes is a saying old and true, but I will not seek to shield my tender susceptibilities behind the defense of a musty proverb, for I hold that he who has entered his teens without experiencing a feeling akin to love, is no better than a swindler in petto-an arrant knave in prospective, nor will I seek, by quoting the example of Plato and the more modern instance of Abelard, to give authority to this my confession. Suffice it to say that I suffered love—we loved-how much is implied in that little monosyllable, we, of mutual hopes and common joys, of feelings tuned to harmony, of wishes, of desires, of pursuits all directed to one common center and tending to the same end, the prosperity of the one beloved object-'tis the cement of friendship! the sweetener of life's cup! the demi-Atlas that bears up half our impending ills! we loved then. Let no one expect here a display of anatomical knowledge in the description of a shapely form, or well-proportioned features, but let each imagine before his mind's eye his own ideal perfection of beauty-and that was she-her hair was "of the color God pleased," and for her height she was as "tall as my heart." Even now, as memory unlocks the jewelled casket of past joys and pains, and sweet remembrance brings before me scenes of by-gone happiness, in fancy's vision I behold that fairy form gliding before me in shape as palpable as that it wore when its pure inhabitant, her soul, blessing and blessed, tenanted this poor world, and once more listen to the soft accents of that voice which was music ever to my ear. * (Here the author becoming heroic is supposed to light a cigar for the purpose of dissipating his sadness-melancholy and moschetoes being both driven away by smoke.) 'Tis always uninteresting and might be tedious to describe the progress of our love, whose stream in my case as in that of all true lovers, was "riley." I was obliged once to leave her for a

* *

short time, expecting soon to return, and again to see her. After making my adieu, I turned in, and very composedly went to sleep as I thought, (determined to make my corporal oath the next time I saw her that I had laid broad awake all night,) judge then of my astonishment on awaking the next morning at finding the inkstand upset, and a whole quire of paper blotted over and over-whether in the madness of our separation, I had perpetrated poetry, or whether my evil genius had prompted the desperate act, has ever been a matter of question in my mind. Here it is.

TO ***.

'Tis midnight now! the holy hour,
When Fancy's unresisted power
In magic thraldom leads the soul
With rapid range from pole to pole;
Or wheeling swift, in airy dance,
Roves o'er the pathless blue expanse;
Touches at every blazing light
That gems the canopy of night;
Or quick descending, in a breath,
Uplifts the dampy pall of death,
And gazes on the form below,
The clay cold cheek and pallid brow;
Wildly withdraws, in frantic glee,
The curtain of eternity;

In vision, wanders with the dead
Where only fancy dares to tread;
Explores the doom of every deed,
Of guilt's reward and virtue's meed;
Conjectures oft, and oft rejects;
Is disappointed, still expects;

Still onward starts; still backward rolls,
Bewildered in the world of souls.

Thus Fancy's little, daring sprite,
Sails round in visionary flight,
When not a power disputes her sway
Or checks her in this airy way.

Not so with me; for memory's sigh,
Can fix my thoughts on hours gone by,
And sweetly retrospective, bind,
To past delights, the roving mind.
And if, perchance, my wand'ring eye,
In rambles o'er the azure sky,
Meet with the purest, brighest star,
That studs Orion's belt of war,
I cannot stay in wond'ring gaze,
To ask what worlds enjoy his blaze;

What mighty systems round him roll,
Himself the center, sun and soul,

A happier swell my bosom feels
For mem'ry thy fair form reveals.

Though fair Diana's silvery blaze
In dazzling moonbeams round me plays,
I care not if her hills of snow
Be formed, or not, like ours below;
I care not whether living tread
Across those hills of snow has sped;
Or whether in that shining round
A particle of life be found!

Oh no! I only think that she

Has beamed on all that's dear to me.

Delightful moon! and hast thou shone Upon that fairest, dearest one, Whose smile can light a cheerful glow On Melancholy's faded browCan hush the tumult of the breast, And bid each troubled passion rest. Oh, I have felt that angel-smile, So sweetly sorrow's pang beguile! Oh, as it turned its heaven on me, It lapped my soul in ecstacy!

Sweet moon! perhaps thy softest rays
May slumber round that dearest face,
And slightly tinge with mellow beam,
The forms that in fantastic dream
Trip lightly o'er the sleeping lids
In elfin dance, as fancy bids.
Or if, at large, her wakeful eye
Surveys the star-bespangled sky,

Thy silvery charms may check the glance
That transient roves thy gemm'd expanse,

And fix awhile the lingering sight

Upon thy wondrous eye of light;
And memory then, in whisper soft,

May venture to repeat how oft,
Beneath thy sweetly soothing power,
We've passed in bliss the peaceful hour.

Oh! Fanny, were that mirror mine, That mirror of the sage divine, Whose magic of reflected light

On Luna's paly disk would write,

The gazing world should start to see

The moon hold converse sweet with thee,

And Dian's purity should pay

To thine a tributary lay;

And then, perchance, in secret place,
Thine eye some mystic line should trace,
Some line to vulgar sight unknown,
Perceptible to love alone,
Whose characters should tell, aright,
Of rapture chaste and pure delight,
That virtue's self could ne'er reprove;
The bliss of soul, the heaven of love.

But ah! dear ***, that mirror's gone,
The hand which could preserve alone
Its magic polish bright and clear,
Has ceased its office many a year.
If, then, within that secret place,
Thine eye no mystic line can trace,
Yet think of him who's far away,
And fancy what that line should say ;
And he shall think of thee again,
And wish that time would speed amain
That happy hour, whose finish'd race
Shall give thee to his fond embrace.

Man of dyspepsia! get thee into love-'tis a rare condiment of the appetite, and a marvelous improver of the digestion. Hypochondriac patient! get thee into love-'tis the true elixir vita, the most potent exorciser of blue devils, the veritable philosopher's stone, whose touch transmutes the baser humors and affections into the fine gold of sensibility. Idle man! get thee into love-'tis a pretty and a teasing occupation to pick up a lady's kerchief, or to fan her when necessary, and if thou canst find no better mean of action, take to that.

FRIENDSHIP.

FRIENDSHIP! what is't? a flitting dream of love!
An hour in which, like summer's gorgeous eve,
Each cloud of Time is purpled for a while
With imagery most beautiful, then vanishes:
Or else-a flick'ring light, which helps to cheer
Along the steep and rugged path of life,
But suddenly expires.

THE VALUE OF DICTION IN THE POETICAL ART.

THE lover of letters in his study of the models of style, will, especially if he be unpracticed, find his discernment severely exercised in discovering how far their points of excellence are peculiar, and in tracing the line between the two classes of matter and manner into which their intrinsic merits resolve themselves. Increased familiarity will, perhaps, surprise him by revealing how much is due to the manner in point of character and power. Even in the great masters eminent for vigor of intellect of whatever cast, close observation may detect much studiousness of some or other of the graces of expression; least of all need we except those who professedly discard art; such aim at the refinement of art and the perfection of all style.

These facts speak for themselves in favor of the cultivation, as an art, of all that gives form and perpetuity to the creations of the mind or the deductions of reason, and so little room does there seem for question concerning the essential character of diction in a literal sense, as the convenient vehicle of thought, to say nothing of it as the constant medium in the common interchange of ideas, that it were needless to remark how much higher must be the importance attached to it in the most comprehensive of the fine arts, and how various are the degrees below perfection, of which it is even there susceptible. For diction is only rightly estimated when considered in reference to poetry, as is the embodying of conceptions and creations by colors or by marble to the sister arts of painting and sculpture. The analogy though striking at first thought, may seem too remote to be of interest. True it is neither natural nor easy to conceive thought and language disunited, great as is the distance between the conception just struggling into light and the medium that shows it in symmetry and fullness to another mind. With the man of genius, highly cultivated, viewed in his matured productions, thought and its expression seem as early and intimately associated as soul and body and as essential to each other's existence; while with the painter there intervenes between the conception and the labor of his art, an ideal Venus, a being of light and shade, and to the sculptor an ideal Apollo, before the elastic form is seen springing into life beneath his chisel. Still whatever is the process to that absolute perfection which seems attainable in the imitative arts, as it exists it is a standard of the high-wrought completeness which we would see impressed on the loftier creations of poetic imagination, through the transparent material on which the art of the poet is exerted.

I have been led into these reflections by an opinion which hardly needs corroboration, that diction the substance of the art of poetry,