recent bereavements, would rise up for an instant before me and then float away into dim distance. I was prostrated with a severe fever, through which I was tenderly watched and nursed by my faithful Chloe, aided by friends whose approach I could not now repel. After long delirium and unconsciousness I awoke at last to reason, and for several days bore reluctantly with what I fancied was Chloe's needless caution in keeping the room almost wholly darkened. At last I would bear it no longer; I wanted to see the sunlight once more, and insisted that the windows should be opened. Poor Chloe, after trying in vain to satisfy me, obeyed in silence, and then hid her face in the bed-clothes and cried like a child. The curtains were rolled up, the blinds wide open; I knew it, for I could dimly see the sun shining through the rose-tree and the white spire of the church, with its golden vane, but all was dim and faint and indistinct as before. I heard Chloe weeping; I put out my hand and felt her head as she kneeled by the bedside, and slowly the dreadful truth forced itself upon me—I was going blind; I was almost blind then, and soon, perhaps, I should be entirely so. I should never see the sunshine or the flowers or a human face again. All my life I must be a helpless, dependent creature-a burden to myself and oth ers. "I remembered then the words I had spoken on thanksgiving-day-'I have nothing to be thankful for '—and felt that the Lord had justly smitten me for my ingratitude. Day after day I felt the last rays of light going out to me, till at length I could not see even in the broad sunshine; but, sitting in that outward darkness, a great light dawned upon my soul. I found Jesus, and, leaning upon him, I felt that I was better in my blindness than when I walked alone with my proud heart. "My chastening was severe, but the Lord was better to me than my fears; for, after months of almost total blindness, the result of long-continued nervous excitement, my sight was gradually restored. "I went back again to my old post of teaching, for I was compelled to make use of some means of support, and think I can say from my heart: 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted, for before I was afflicted I went astray.' It was a great relief to me when your father offered me a home here, for a teacher's life is a wearisome one, but now that I must go back once more to it, I go with full trust in the goodness and mercy that will never suffer me to be tried above what I am able to bear. Do you remember those beautiful lines we were reading together but a few days ago: For I believe that He who heeds And stains the maples green and gold, His gracious ear to me and mine. star.'" The hands of the clock were slowly creeping past the midnight hour; the leaping flames were gone; in their place were only embers glowing redly under the white ashes, even as hope will live and glow in a strong heart under all the smoldering ashes of disappointment. Maggie rose from her seat and folded her arms about her cousin, saying softly: "Tribulation worketh patience! I pray God to teach me that lesson now and spare me such a life-long chastening as you have met!" They went forth in a few hours, each to her appointed lot-one to the sunshine, the other to the shade-and the angels looked down upon them both. Years have passed, and Lucy Wardwell, the loving, the beloved, has gone up to her Father's house where the many mansions be. She is at rest from her labors and her works do follow her, for many cherish her memory among their heart's best treasures. Maggie Howard still lives, and if she is ever tempted to murmur at any teaching of the Divine hand, she remembers that night at the old homestead and whispers to her doubting heart: "Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed." "Better to stem, with heart and hand, The roaring tide of life, than lie, The baffling present may endure, The heart's desires beyond the halting steps of deeds.” SENTIMENT THE FALSE AND THE TRUE. How much fine sentiment there is wasted in our strange world! I have seen a young lady in raptures of admiration over a flower which was to deck her hair in the ball-room, who would turn away, with a look of loathing, from the proffered kiss of her baby brother; and I have heard lovely lips, all wreathed in smiles, and breathing tones of joy over a pretty shell, a shining insect, or even a gay ribbon, say cold and cruel words to the best friend-ay, the mother-who was wearing her life out to promote the happiness of her ungrateful daughter. H. NEW CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. man, who, for duly preparing it for publication, should have half the profits, if any. The worthy bookseller gave it to Mr. Cooke. The work was POVERTY. "POVERTY! thou half-sister of death, thou published, and the profits were thirty pounds. In a letter to Dr. Laurence, dated 22d of May, 1795, another very great writer alludes to his pecuniary difficulties: "What I wrote was to discharge a debt I brought to my own and my son's memory, and those ought not to be considered as guilty of prodigality in giving me what is beyond my debts, as you know. The public-I won't dispute longer about it—has overpaid me; I wish I could overpay creditors. They eat deep on what was desgined to maintain me." It is possible that men, in their sympathy for "the fate of genius," as they may phrase it, may lament over the sight of a man like Edmund Burke, thus feeling the ordinary inconvenience of straitened circumstances. But it seems to me that genius, so far from having any claim to favor when it neglects the common precautions or exertions for securing independence, is doubly inexcusable, and far less deserving of pity than of blame. Burke ought to have earned his income in an honest calling. Every man of right feeling will prefer this to the degrading obligations of private friendship, or the precarious supplies, to virtue soperilous, of public munificence. He chose rather to eat "the bitter bread of both these bakings" than to taste the comely, the sweet, the exquisite fruit, however hard to pluck, of regular industry. A lieutenant in the Royal Navy had written a political pamphlet, but, being called to his duty, was not able to see it through the press. He therefore placed it in the hands of a bookseller, desiring that he would give it to some literary He was then at Brow, sea-bathing quarters, in very bad health. Indeed, in fourteen days after its date, he was a corpse. In 1780 Crabbe, buoyed up with the hope of bettering his fortunes by his verses, in London, adventured on the journey thither, with scarcely a friend or even acquaintance who could be useful to him, and with no more than three pounds in his pocket. This trifle being soon expended, the deepest distress awaited him. Of all hopes from literature he was speedily disabused; there was no imposing name to recommend his writings, and an attempt to bring out a volume himself only involved him more deeply in difficulties. His poverty had become obvious to the persons with whom he resided, and no further indulgence could be expected from them; he had given a bill for a debt, which, if not paid within the following week, he was threatened with a prison. In this extremity of destitution, "inspired by some happy thought in some fortunate moment,' he ventured on an application to Burke. He had not the slightest knowledge of that gentleman, other than common fame bestowed; no introduction but his own letter, stating these circumstances; no recommendation, save his distress; but, in the words he used in the letter, "hearing that he was a good man, and presuming to think him a great one," he applied to him, and, as it proved, with a degree of success far beyond his most sanguine expectations. The young poet was established under his roof, at Beaconsfield-under his eye, "The Library" and "The Village" successively issued from the press; and Reynolds and Johnson, in a word, all Burke's intimate friends, partook of his interest in his protegé. Under similar circumstances Johann Gottlieb Fichte wrote a similar manly letter to Kant. In requesting the loan of a small sum of money he offered for security and guarantee of subsequent payment all that he had to give in such a casehis honor and integrity as a man. "I know no one," continued he, "except yourself, to whom I could offer this security without fear of being laughed at to my face. It is my maxim never to ask any thing from another without having first of all examined whether I myself, were the circumstances inverted, would do the same thing for some one else. In the present case I have found that, supposing I had it in my power, I would do this for any person to whom I believed to be animated by the principles by which I know that I myself am now governed." and After the death of his wife, Wycherly became much reduced in worldly affairs, and at length was thrown into the fleet, where he languished during seven years, utterly forgotten by the gay lively circle of which he had been a distinguished ornament. In the extremity of his distress he implored the publisher, who had been enriched by the sale of some of his works, to lend him seventy pounds, and was refused. Stow, the antiquarian, suffered much in his old age from the ailments that attacked him, and also from poverty. In the very absoluteness of his need the poor old man determined to apply for relief to the country for which he had done so much. He got the formal consent of James I that he might go "a-begging" through thirty-six counties. To this effect a paper was regularly drawn up, signed and sealed by the king, addressed to "all and singular, archbishops, bishops, deans, and their officials, parsons, vicars, curates, and to all spiritual persons, and also to all justices of the peace, mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, churchwardens, etc." The grant concludes thus: "We wish and command you, and every of you, that at such time and times as the said John Stow, or his deputy, shall repair to any of your churches or other places, to ask and receive the charitable benevolence of our said subjects, quietly to permit and suffer them so to do; and you, the said parsons, etc., for the better stirring up of charitable devotion, deliberately to publish and declare the tenor of these letters-patent unto our said subjects, exhorting them to extend their liberal contributions in so good and charitable a deed." At times the pecuniary affairs of William Penn were so deranged that he was afraid of his creditors. He contrived an aperture at his house in Norfolk-street, by which he could see any one at his door without being seen. A creditor having sent in his name, waited a long time for admission. "Will not your master see me?" said he at last to the servant. "Friend," replied the domestic, "he has seen thee, but does not like thee." Bishop Hall, during his latter days, suffered so much from poverty and harsh treatment that they wrung from him a book of complaint called "Hard Measure." At Bologna, in the "University Library," is a manuscript of the "Images of Philostrates," in the handwriting of Michael Aspostolicus, a Greek refugee from Constantinople, bearing this inscription: "The king of the poor of this world wrote this book for his bread." Ion Thorlakson, the translator of "Paradise Lost" into Icelandic, composed the following lines, in allusion to his poverty: "Ever since I came into this world I have been wedded to Poverty, who has now hugged me to her bosom these seventy winters save two; and whether we shall ever be separated here below is only known to Him who joined us together." In the early part of his career as an author, Marmontel translated Pope's "Rape of the Lock" into French, and sold it to a publisher for about fifteen pounds. Upon this sum he assures us that he subsisted for eight months. This nearness of circumstance was as nothing compared to that of Ulrick Von Hutton, one of the greatest writers Germany has produced, and one of the harbingers of the Reformation. He was, during part of his life, in great distress. He begged his way through the country, knocking at the doors of peasants' huts to beg a piece of bread and shelter, and when denied, as he too often was, he had to sleep on the bare ground. He died when he was only thirty-six years old in a lamentable plight. Zuinglius says that "he left nothing of the slightest value. He had no books, no furniture, except a pen." Almost equal to Von Hatten, at least in respect to poverty, was Saint Simon, the author of "The Reorganization of European Society," etc. The Frenchman was so "pinched by poverty" that during the whole of a severe winter he denied himself fuel, in the hope of being enabled to defray the expenses of publication; nay, he often endured the pangs of hunger. "For fifteen days," he writes, "I have lived upon bread and water, without a fire; I have even sold my clothes to defray the expenses of copying my work." One day his courage, resignation, and energy forsook him; he forgot his Creator, and attempted to terminate his life. He however recovered from the guilty attempt, and resumed his labors and his hopes. Tradition says that in Ben Jonson's last illness King Charles sent him a small sum of money. "He sends me so miserable a donation," said the expiring satirist, "because I am poor and live in an alley; go back and tell him his soul lives in an alley." Ben told Drummond of Hawthornden that "the Irish having robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his house, and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped; and after he died for lack of bread in King-street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex, and said, 'He was sorry he had no time to spend them.'" In Depping's "Reminiscences of a German's Life in Paris," I have found the following anec dote of Llorente, the enlightened, talented, and persecuted historiographer of the Inquisition: Among the individuals whom chance threw into my way in Paris, was Llorente. I frequently paid him a visit, and found him to be an extremely well-read scholar. On one occasion I met him in the street, early in the morning; upon asking him where he was coming from, he replied, “I hired myself last night to watch a dead man's body. How little did I dream, when a canon at Toledo and a privy counselor at Madrid, that I should ever be forced to earn my daily bread by mounting guard over a defunct Parisian!" Soon after this occurrence poor Llorente was ordered to leave France. He had scarcely regained his native soil when he fell a prey to wretchedness and destitution. During the latter years of his life, the poet Camoens was compelled to wander through the streets a wretched dependent on casual contribution. One friend alone remained to smooth his downward path and guide his steps to the grave with gentleness and consolation. It was Antonio, his slave, a native of Java, who had accompanied Camöens to Europe, after having rescued him from the waves, when shipwrecked at the mouth of the Mccon. This faithful attendant was wont to seek alms throughout Lisbon, and at night shared the produce of the day with his poor and broken-hearted master. But his friendship was employed in vain; Camöens sank beneath the pressure of penury and disease, and died in an alms-house. THREE LAST DAYS OF HUMBOLDT. HREE famous men-the Emperor Napoleon I, the Duke of Wellington, and Baron Alexander Humboldt-born in the same year, 1769, have successively departed from the stage of time, leaving only a few tottering stragglers behind them, now in age and feebleness extreme, of the many millions who had a cotemporaneous nativity. The great crowd has passed into entire oblivion. No chronicle commemorates their deeds or enshrines their names. But those of the three mentioned will live to the remotest ages in the memory of posterity, in every civilized community on the page of history in every written tongue. The first, who influenced for a time the destinies of Europe, captured its capitals, plundered its cities, ravaged its fields and reddened them with blood, died an exile on a solitary rock of the Atlantic, in 1821, after little more than half a century of life-a memorable example of vaulting ambition overleaping its aim and reaching a tremendous catastrophe. The second, his final victor, eminent alike on the field of battle and in the councils of the state, remarkable also for self-abnegation in the record of military exploits, survived to upward of fourscore years, finishing his course in 1852 somewhat characteristically, at Walmer Castle, on the coast of Kent, as if keeping watch and ward over the country for which he had fought on the adjoining continent. The third, a man of universal science, who made the universe his study, and sketched it with a master hand on the enduring canvas of the lettered page, in 1859 ended his career in the city of his birth, Berlin, at the patriarchal age of eighty-nine years, seven months, and a few days, affording evidence that powerful mental exertion and active bodily labor are, when united, conducive to long existence. While the two former were wielding the sword, the latter devoted himself to the peaceful task of interrogating the visible creation, embracing its near and distant, minute and imposing, living and lifeless objects, from microscopic animalcule, tiny mosses, and blanched cavernous vegetation, to snow-crowned hights, the subtile atmosphere, and ethereal circuits studded with glittering stars. He communed with rocks and mountains, valleys and volcanoes, rivers and forests, plants and animals; determined elevations, noted temperatures, and directed a penetrating glance to the boundless expanse of heaven, the depth of the ocean, and to landscapes where Nature alone ruled, uninfluenced by men and their civilization. Eminently, his "Joy was in the wilderness, to breathe On the swift whirl of the new-breaking wave Of river-stream, or ocean, in their flow." We shall not attempt a record of the life and labors of Humboldt. It will suffice to remark that, in youth, he plunged deeply into the study of chemistry, geology, mineralogy, natural history, and galvanism, and acquired extraordinary command of almost every department of physical and political science. Thus qualified for enlightened observation, he conducted researches in the equinoctial regions of America, in company with the naturalist, M. Aimé Bonpland, between 1799 and 1804. During this journey he determined astronomically the position of more than three hundred places; ascertained the bifurIcation of the Orinoco, and its connection with the Amazon; studied the phenomena of earthquakes; marked the forms of animal and vegetable life in the great rivers and forests; five times crossed the icy ridges of the Andes; and scaled the side of Chimborazo to the hight of 19,300 feet above the sea, the greatest altitude that had then been attained by man. Having surveyed the elevated regions of the new world, it was the earnest desire of Humboldt to become familiar with the still loftier summits of the old. But though he never saw the colossal masses of the Himalaya, yet, in 1829, when a sexagenarian, he again took the pilgrim's staff in hand, and proceeded into Central Asia as far as the frontiers of China. The two journeys enabled him to compare the auriferous deposits of the Ural Mountains and of New Grenada; the porphyry and trachyte formations of Mexico and the Altai; the savannas of the Orinoco and the steppes of Siberia; the banks of the Obi and of the Amazon. It deserves remark, as an instance of sagacity, that while at St. Petersburg, before starting, he told the Empress of Russia she might expect some diamonds obtained from the dominions of the Czar on his return, so convinced was he that the same district contained them which yielded gold and platinum. Accordingly, on reaching the Urals, he visited the gold-washing districts, and a diligent search for the precious gem was instituted. It was not crowned with immediate success, and the traveler pursued his course. But a few days after his departure, Paul Popoff, a boy of fourteen, one of Count Polier's serfs, found the prize in the mines of Bissersk, and obtained freedom as his reward. This was the first-discovered Russian and European diamond, the mines being on the European side of the mountains. Another was soon obtained at the same site, which, being forwarded to Humboldt, enabled him to fulfill his promise to the Empress on returning to the capital. For a few years after his last scientific tour, Humboldt enjoyed cheering intercourse with his elder brother, William, the scholar, critic, and diplomatist, who resided on the family estate, at the château of Tegel, seven miles from Berlin. This brother, to whom he was tenderly attached, died in his arms in the year 1835. "Think often of me," he remarked in his last moments, "but always cheerfully. I have been very happy. To-day was also a happy day for me, for love is the greatest happiness. I shall soon be with your mother, and comprehend the laws of the higher world." The survivor severely felt his loss; and, not being a family man, the event was peculiarly desolating. "I did not think," he observed, in a letter to a friend, "my old eyes could shed so many tears." From this period Humboldt withdrew more and more from public life, though consulted to the last upon political questions by his sovereign, and on subjects connected with science by the savans of Europe and America, while busy with the composition of his "Kosmos," the fourth and last volume of which he left in an unfinished state, as if to remind us of the transient nature of all worldly pursuits. Every line of this remarkable production, which may be called his literary legacy to the world, bears testimony to the unrelaxing energy and perennial clearness of his intellect, though written at a time of life when to most men the " grasshopper is a burden;" and it will remain a monument of intellectual greatness more enduring than the road of the Simplon, which commemorates the physical power of a great cotemporary. As undisputed monarch in the realm of physics, the highest honors were paid to Humboldt at home and abroad. He lived in the closest intimacy with the King of Prussia, had apartments assigned to him in the royal palaces at Berlin and Potsdam, enjoyed a pension from the government, was made a councilor of state of the Prussian order, "Pour le Merite," while foreign countries forwarded to him their complimentary distinctions. Courted by princes, and attracting to himself the greatest men at the head of every science, he was respected and beloved by all for probity of character, benevolence of spirit, and simplicity of manners. As one of the least selfish of men, he was ever ready to lend his assistance whenever and wherever it was needed, fostering the rising generation of naturalists at the expense of a heavy correspondence. A liberal in politics, he was through life the uncompromising foe of slavery. In the hey-day of prosperity, he did not forget his former traveling companion, Bonpland, in his misfortunes, with whom he had botanized on the plains of Venezuela and the slopes of the Andes. This eminent man had gone to Buenos Ayres in the year 1818, as professor of natural history, but was for some time lost to the knowledge of the civilized world, and no certain clew could be obtained as to his fate. At last it was ascertained that, in the course of an expedition into Paraguay, he had been seized by a party of soldiers, under the orders of the tyrant Francia, and carried off a prisoner. He was confined chiefly in Santa Martha, but allowed to practice as a physician. Humboldt applied in vain for the liberation of his friend. It was not granted till the death of Francia, in 1841, by which time Bonpland had become attached to the scene of his exile. Flowers, shrubs, and trees, of his own planting, had grown up, and were luxuriantly flourishing around his cabin. He resolved, therefore, to remain where he had lived so long, and survived to the summer of 1858, when Humboldt received a joyous letter from him. He died, soon afterward, in his eighty-fifth year, and his old com |