THE great social event of Boston, in its last month's history, was a Marine Fete, given on board the OHIO SEventyFOUR, by Mrs. Commodore Downes. We have seen sundry mentions of it in the newspapers, but, a day or two since, we were flattered by the receipt of the following graphic "Your word is sufficient. It shall not be said I ques. tioned the veracity of the son of my old friend Fremic. You look very much like him-you should be an honest man. We will go with you, then, if my daughter has no objections." Marcelle made no reply, but there was a charming smile description of the scene, in a letter from one of the most on her countenance. charming women of the prim city. We give it, entire :Boston, 5th July, 1844. "Vive Dieu! you make me a thousand times happy!" exclaimed Bernard, whose frank and handsome features were radiant with joy. "The vessel in which I have taken my passage will be at L'Orient in two days." "So much the better." "Will you have time to make preparations ?" "Before twenty-four hours, we will be ready." "To-morrow I shall be at L'Orient, and I will secure our places for the voyage. You will find me at the Marine Hotel." 64 Agreed." We passed such a delightful evening, last week, on board the Ohio, my dear sir, that we cannot refrain from commu. nicating to you a small portion of our pleasure, though we are not absolutely aware that you allow bright lights, fair forms, and epaulettes to glide before your magic Mirror. A little knot of friends, we went forth "on pleasure bent," and reached" the stairs," where an orderly asked us if we were for the ship, to which we responded right merrily, "Yes, yes." A nice young midshipman assisted us down these stairs, and a handsome lieutenant placed us "Au revoir, then, M. Kerousere. May you not regret most carefully in a twelve-oared barge, the linings of which your Brittany too much! And you, Mademoiselle Mar-rivalled the whiteness of our dresses; in a moment we were celle, I will pray God that you may find, in the devotion of upon another world, a world of waters! enlivened by the your lover, the happiness you so richly merit." songs of the seamen in the surrounding shipping, the plash. Our country is where we love," replied M. Kerousere. ing of oars, a delightful contrast, indeed, to the dust, and "I shall be happy, I am certain;" replied Marcelle, hold-brick walls of the city. The Ohio's barges were plying to ing out her hand graciously to Bernard. 60 and fro, for the guests, manned by sailors in their prettiest of all costumes. As we sped on our way rejoicing, (a twelve-oared barge being the poetry of motion,) we met a boat, which we were told saluted us. Quite mortified that we did not return the salute, we resolved to do better the M. Kerousere and his daughter accompanied Bernard even to the road to Concarneau. Arrived at the place where they must part, the old man took the hands of his companions, and joining them, said tenderly"Beneath this clear sky, my children, I betroth you. May next time; but the second boat we encountered took no your union be beautiful and gentle, like it." 86 notice of us!—good intentions thrown away! At the ship's "My father takes," said Marcelle, pouting her lips side, on a carpeted platform, we were received by two galcharmingly, a witness and example very changeable. It lant officers who helped us up the ladders, which, on this seems to me I perceive, below there, a dark point of evil occasion, were transformed into good broad steps. We omen." were then ushered into a scene of perfect enchantment-a "It is so," said Bernard, casting his eyes towards the ball-room which Aladdin's lamp might have produced in the horizon; "it indicates an approaching storm." good olden time when we believed and luxuriated in the "A storm!" said M. Kerousere; "then depart quickly, Thousand and one Nights-a ball-room of two hundred my friend-lose not a moment." "Nothing; nothing, my father." feet in length and a hundred in height, composed of the flags of all nations, and presenting such a gorgeous harmony of colouring as quite dazzled our bewildered eyes, enchanting the artist as well as the amateur. The tri-colour of la belle France, the stripes and stars of our own land, the bold lion of England, all mingled together in peace, as it is hoped they ever will. At one end was an orchestra most tastefully decorated in the same way, and, at the other, the top of the captain's cabin was carpeted and draped with flags, and filled with luxurious seats, from which we looked down upon the beauteous room below. The hatchways were surrounded with stands of arms, each musket bearing an innocent wax light!-a great relief to some of us who are so แ Let us hasten, child; here comes the storm-I already silly as to hold in terrour muskets without even stock or feel large drops of water." "Yet you but now admired the beauty of the sky." "The sky is like human life-it is clouded over when least expected." And both hastened their steps, silent and thoughtful. The next day, a corpse was found on the road to Concarneau. A ball had been fired through his head. It was recognized as that of a peasant of bad mien, and evil repu. tation, who had been in the service of M. Villebranche. He still held in his hand a double-barrelled fusil, which apparently had just been discharged. The day after, M. Kerousere, Marcelle, Bernard Fremic, and Tom, embarked at L'Orient, on a merchant ship destined for South America. An unknown hand had sent some bags of silver to M. Villebranche. E. P. lock! Coloured lanterns were disposed amidst the draperies looking like diamonds and rubies. We were presented to our elegant and lady-like hostess, and the commodore, all graciousness, conducted us over the ship, even down into the orlop (?) deck. The cleanliness and purity of the ship may be gathered from the fact, that our white satin shoes returned from this expedition spotless. We then peeped out of sundry loop-holes, and beheld a sunset, such as never was surpassed at Venice, where the majesty of light seems to be predominant. It was an admirable arrange. ment-inviting us at seven o'clock! As twilight shades fell, the gradual lighting up of this enchantingly novel scene be. gan, and when it was finished and an air from the opera of "Gustave" issued from the orchestra, we thought it surpassed the famous last scene in the grand opera at Paris. Just then the ship-bell sounded, and we actually began to trem-it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. ble least it might be the manager's call, and the whole Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please would, presto! disappear. The assemblage was composed its touch. When I was a boy, I lived within sight of a because they border on its confines, and are moulded by of youth, middle life, and even old age, a very memorable range of lofty hills, whose blue tops blending with the event in America where the ball-rooms usually look exceed-setting sun had often tempted my longing eyes and wanderingly like disbanded nurseries. Charlestown sent represen- ing feet. At last I put my project in execution, and on a tatives, who looked as if they had never seen battle-grounds, nearer approach, instead of glimmering air woven into though otherwise dangerous! Philadelphia sent its golden-coloured earth. I learned from this (in part) to leave fantastic shapes, found them huge lumpish heaps of dishaired peris, Milton sent its beauties, and Boston its lovely Yarrow unvisited," and not idly to disturb a dream of daughters and lovelier mothers in the "mezzo giorno," on good! whom the rich, warm "rays -Of mid-day sun shone with a summer power. Queen-like they moved with pure and lofty brow, And, redolent of thought, life's wide expanded flower, Had so remained unchanged." Sweet Tasso, the poet of the matrons, has said something like this. What a pity the "mezzo giorno" does not show itself oftener! The "mezzo giorno" that in other lands comes forth and suffers itself to be admired, is in America hidden, perdu, depriving the rising generation of its example and almost of its tradition. The dancing was spirited, and interspersed with frequent visits to a refreshment-room, where abundance prevailed. and many more visits to the gun-deck. Hundreds of cannon bristling and fearful, lined this deck, which was partially illuminated, presenting, by a refinement of good taste in its lighting, a severe contrast to the oriental splendour above; and, in truth, it seemed a remarkably popular part of the ship, the sailors grouped in amongst the guns, adding to the lights and shadows of its immense perspective. The officers devoted themselves to the guests, and we fancied that every woman present had imagined herself an exclusive object of attention (an impression the talent for which rather lies amongst "the buttons," selon nous.) At midnight, after taking a dozen or more LAST looks at the ball-room, we departed, with many grateful thanks for the pleasure we had enjoyed; and, as the magnificent ship receded from our sight, the bright moon above and the blue waters below, and we reflected that not one unkind speech, not one critical remark had we heard in the course of the whole evening, but that all had been harmony, good-will and good fellow-ship, we said and we felt, that not even the sternest of moralists could make an objection to Mrs. John Downes's Marine Fete. WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE. DISTANT objects please, because, in the first place, they imply an idea of space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe them with the indistinct and airy colours of fancy. In looking at the misty mountain-tops that bound, the horizon, the mind is as it were conscious of all the conceiveable objects and interests that lie between; we imagine all sorts of adventures in the interim; strain our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn circle, or to "descry new lands, rivers, and mountains," stretching far beyond it: our feelings carried out of themselves lose their grossness and their husk, are rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten into beauty, turning to" ethereal mould, sky-tinctured." We drink the air before us, and borrow a more refined existence from objects that hover on the brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from the dull sight, we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tinge the hazy prospect with hopes and wishes and more charming fears. "But thou, oh Hope! with eyes so fair, 66 Distance of time has much the same effect as distance of place. It is not surprising that fancy colours the prospect of the future, (as it thinks good,) when it even effaces the forms of memory. Time takes out the sting of pain; our sorrows after a certain period have been so often steeped in a medium of thought and passion, that they " unmould their essence;" and all that remains of our original impressions is what we would wish them to have been. Not only the untried steep ascent before us, but the rude, unsightly masses of our past experience presently resume their power of deception over the eye: the golden cloud soon rests upon their heads, and the purple light of fancy clothes their barren sides. Thus we pass on, while both ends of our mighty stream of tendency" to good in the human mind, existence touch upon Heaven!-There is (so to speak) "a upon which all objects float and are imperceptibly borne along: and though in the voyage of life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is "a tide in the affairs of men," a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which," with sails and tackle torn," the wreck and scattered fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our desires! In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for the deed :—the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is removed, the unites itself to that image of good, which is but a reflection mind recoils from their grasp, recovers its elasticity, and reand configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the long perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and enriched by countless recollections, become interesting; the most painful, broken and softened by time, soothe. How any object, that unexpectedly brings back to us old scenes and associations, startles the mind! What a yearning it creates within us; what a longing to leap the intermediate space! How fondly we cling to, and try to revive the impression of all that we once were! "Such tricks hath strong Imagination." In truth, we impose upon ourselves, and know not what we wish. It is a cunning artifice, a quaint delusion, by which, in pretending to be what we were at a particular moment of time, we would fain be all that we have since been, and have our lives to come over again. It is not the little, glimmering, almost annihilated speck in the distance, that rivets our attention and "hangs upon the beatings of our hearts" it is the interval that separates us from it, and of which it is the trembling boundary, that excites all this coil and mighty pudder in the breast. Into that great gap in our being "come thronging soft desires" and infinite regrets. It is the contrast, the change from what we then were, that arms the half-extinguished recollection with its giantstrength, and lifts the fabric of the affections from its shadowy base. In contemplating its utmost verge, we overlook the map of our existence, and retread, in apprehension, the journey of life. So it is that in early youth we strain our eager sight after the pursuits of manhood; and, as we are sliding off the stage, strive to gather up the toys and flowers that pleased our thoughtless childhood. When I was quite a boy, my father used to take me to the tea-gardens. Do I go there now? No; the place is deserted, and its borders and its beds o'erturned. Is there, then, nothing that can Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and know-wanderings still lives unfaded, or with fresher dyes. A new ledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over sense comes upon me, as in a dream; a richer perfume, brighter colours start out; my eyes dazzĺe; my heart heaves with its new load of bliss, and I am a child again. My of the other senses so accurate and well made out as those of visibe form: what I chiefly mean is, that the feelings belonging to the sensations of our other organs, when accidentally recalled, are kept more separate and pure. Musical sounds, probably, owe a good deal of their interest and romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that of a blind fiddler, who has but one sense left, (if we except the sense of snuff-taking,) and who has that stunned or deaf. sensations are all glossy, spruce, voluptuous, and fine: they wear a candied coat, and are in holiday trim. I see the beds of larkspur with purple eyes; tall hollyhocks, red and yellow; the broad sun-flowers, caked in gold, with bees buzzing round them; wildernesses of pinks, and hot-glowing pionies; poppies run to seed; the sugared lily, and faint mignionette, all ranged in order, and as thick as they can grow; the box-tree borders; the gravel.walks, the painted alcove, the confectionary, the clotted cream:-I think I see them now with sparkling looks; or have they vanished while I have been writing this description of them? No matter; they will return again when I least think of them.ened by his own villanous noises! Shakspeare says, All that I have observed since, of flowers and plants, and grass-plots, and of suburb delights, seems, to me, borrowed from that first garden of my innocence"-to be slips and scions stolen from that bed of memory. In this manner the darlings of our childhood burnish out in the eye of afteryears, and derive their sweetest perfume from the first heart-felt sigh of pleasure breathed upon them, "like the sweet south, If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a kitchengarden too, and for the same reason. If I see a row of cabbage-plants or of peas or beans coming up, I immediately think of those which I used so carefully to water of an evening, when my day's tasks were done, and of the pain with which I saw them droop and hang down their leaves in the morning's sun. Again, I never see a child's kite in the air, but it seems to pull at my heart. It is to me "a thing of life." I feel the twinge at my elbow, the flutter and palpitation, with which I used to let go the string of my own, as it rose in the air and towered among the clouds. My little cargo of hopes and fears ascended with it; and as it made a part of my own consciousness then, it does so still, and appears "like some gay creature of the element," my playmate when life was young, and twin-born with my earliest recollections. Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes, are remembered longer than visible objects, and serve, perhaps, better for links in the chain of association. The reason seems to be this: they are in their nature intermittent, and comparatively rare; whereas objects of sight are always before us, and, by their continuous succession, drive one another out. The eye is always open; and between any given impression and its recurrence a second time, fifty thousand other impressions have, in all likelihood, been stamped upon the sense and on the brain. The other senses are not so active or vigilant. They are but seldom called into play. The ear, for example, is oftener courted by silence than noise; and the sounds that break that silence sink deeper and more durably into the mind. I have for this reason a more present and lively recollection of certain scents, tastes, and sounds, than I have of mere visible images, because they are more original, and less worn by frequent repetition. Where there is nothing interposed between any two impressions, whatever the distance of time that parts them, they naturally seem to touch; and the renewed impression recalls the former one in full force, without distraction or competition. The taste of barberries, which have hung out in the snow during the severity of an American winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of many years; for I have met with no other taste, in all that time, at all like it. It remains by itself, almost like the impression of a sixth sense. But the colour is mixed up indiscriminately with the colours of many other berries, nor should I be able to distinguish it among them. The smell of a brick-kiln carries the evidence of its own identity with it: neither is it to me (from peculiar associations) unpleasant. The colour of brick dust, on the contrary, is more common, and easily confounded with other colours. Raphael did not keep it quite distinct from his flesh-colour. I will not say that we have a more perfect recollection of the human voice than of that complex picture, the human face; but I think the sudden hearing of a well-known voice has something in it more affecting and striking than the sudden meeting with the face; perhaps, indeed, this may be because we have a more famifiar remembrance of the one than the other, and the voice takes us more by surprise on that account. I am by no means certain (generally speaking) that we have the ideas "How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night!" It has been suggested, in explanation of this passage, that it is because in the daytime lovers are occupied with one another's faces, but that at night they can only distinguish the sound of each other's voices. I do not know how this may be: but I have, ere now, heard a voice break so upon the silence, "To angels' 'twas most like," and charm the moonlight air with its balmy essence, while the budding leaves trembled to its accents. Would I might have heard it once more whisper peace and hope, (as erst when it was mingled with the breath of spring,) and with its soft pulsations lift winged fancy to heaven! But it has ceased, or turned where I no more shall hear it!-Hence, also, we see what is the charm of the shepherd's pastoral reed; and why we hear him, as it were, piping to his flock, even in a picture. Our ears are fancy-stung! I remember once strolling along the margin of a stream, skirted with willows and plashy sedges, where the monks of former ages had planted chapels and built hermits' cells. There was a little parish-church near; but tall elms and quivering alders hid it from my sight, when, all of a sudden, I was startled by the sound of the full organ pealing on the ear, accompanied by rustic voices and the willing choir of village-maids and children. It rose, indeed, "like an exhalation of rich distilled perfumes." The dew from a thousand pastures was gathered in its softness; the silence of a thousand years spoke in it. It came upon the heart like the calm beauty of death: fancy caught the sound, and faith mounted on it to the skies. It filled the valley like a mist, and still poured out its endless chaunt, and still it swells upon the ear, and wraps me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy tumult of the world! A nearer and more familiar acquaintance with persons has a different and more favourable effect than that with places or things. The latter improve by being removed to a distance, for we have no interest in backbiting them: the former gain by being brought nearer and more home to us, and thus stripped of artful and illnatured misrepresentations. Report or imagination very seldom raises any individual so high in our estimation as to disappoint us greatly when we are introduced to him: prejudice and malice constantly exaggerate defects beyond the reality. Ignorance alone makes monsters or bugbears: our actual acquaintances are all very common-place people. The thing is, that as a matter of hearsay or conjecture, we make abstractions of particular vices, and irritate ourselves against some particular quality or action of the person we dislike:whereas individuals are concrete existences, not arbitrary denominations or nicknames; and have innumerable other qualities, good, bad, and indifferent, besides the damning feature with which we fill up the portrait or caricature in our previous fancies. We can scarcely hate any one that we know. An acute observer complained, that if there was any one to whom he had a particular spite, and a wish to let him see it, the moment he came to sit down with him, his enmity was disarmed by some unforeseen circumstance. Suppose, again, your adversary turns out a very ugly man, or wants an eye, you are baulked in that way:-he is not what you expected, the object of your abstract hatred and implacable dis gust. He may be a very disagreeable person, but he is no longer the same. If you come into a room where a man is, you find, in general, that he has a nose upon his face. "There's sympathy!" This alone is a diversion to your unqualified contempt. He is stupid, and says nothing, but he seems to have something in him when he laughs. You knew that he was a virulent party-writer; but you find that the man himself is a tame sort of animal enough. He does MILES BLESSINGTON. not bite. That's something. In short, you can make nothing of it. Even opposite vices balance one another. A It must not be deemed absurd in us-the placing in juxtaman may be pert in company, but he is also dull; so that you cannot, though you try, hate him cordially, merely for position with the world one individual item of it; or, if a the wish to be offensive. He is a knave. Granted. You feeling of astonishment should arise at the proximity, we learn, on a nearer acquaintance, what you did not know trust that a word of explanation will suffice to repress it. before-that he is a fool as well; so you forgive him. On If Miles, that is, Miles Blessington, had estimated the the other hand, he may be a profligate character, and may world by his own standard of human perfection, it is more make no secret of it; but he gives you a hearty shake by the hand, speaks kindly to everybody, and supports an aged than probable that the world would have suffered by the father and mother. Prejudice apart, he is a very honest estimate. Or if Miles Blessington had computed the world's fellow. You are told that a person has carbuncles on his value by a subtractive rule, he would have concluded, that face; but you have ocular proofs that he is sallow, and pale to take Miles Blessington from the world nothing remains. as a ghost. This does not much mend the matter; but it Or if Miles, to demonstrate even to a greater extent than blunts the edge of the ridicule, and turns your indignation against the inventor of the lie; but he is an editor; so you that, his own intrinsic value, had multiplied the world by are just where you were. I am not very fond of anony-himself, he would have made any ordinary world like ours mous criticism; I want to know who the author can be: but the moment I learn this, I am satisfied. Even would do well to come out of his disguise. It is the mask only that we dread and hate: the man may have something human about him! The notions, in short, which we enter tain of people at a distance, or from partial representations, or from guess.work, are simple, uncompounded ideas, which answer to nothing in reality: those which we derive from experience are mixed modes, the only true, and, in general, the most favourable ones. Instead of naked deformity, or abstract perfection "Those faultless monsters which the world ne'er saw" two by the multiplication. Thus it may be inferred, that any commonplace item of humanity, placed alongside of Miles Blessington, would have been as the animalcula to the microscope; and consequently imperceptible, unless some magnifying process had been adopted to make the discovery. After this brief computation of Miles Blessington's value, perhaps, it would be satisfactory to know in what way the world was benefited by such an astonishing acquisition to its bulk. Unfortunately, however, for the benefit of the world in this instance, it has a too jealous regard for its own greatness; and any individual effort of a whole world's "the web of our lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not; and our vices would despair, if they were not encou-magnitude to rival it, may be supposed to have been looked raged by our virtues." This was truly and finely said long upon by it with a jealous eye. Whether it was from this ago, by one who knew the strong and weak points of hu- very probable cause or not, it so happened that the world man nature; but it is what sects and parties and those phi- and Miles never came in direct contact, and it is more than losophers whose pride and boast it is to classify by nick-probable that it was not willing to test its weakness by names, have yet to learn the meaning of! WE have received several pieces of poetry, from a youthful hand, that seems to us wanting in only a little more flesh and blood, to become one of great power among minstrels. He dates from Jackson, Mississippi, where there is another youthful mind, (of the other sex,) equally promising. We hope that favoured town knows and appreciates its brace of Castalians. We have room at present for but one of the pieces by "D. H. R." ASPIRATIONS. On I have thought that if the might If I could bring from shade and night Instead of notes so cold and dull If the dark chain my bosom bounds If I could tell, with this my lyre, Oh I have thought if God would dower I would but ask of life one hour, And yield it freely then! such a giant's strength. Occasionally, Miles commingled with the congregated mass of humanity; and when he did so, it may be an object of curiosity to know in what way he enjoyed the ordinary pastimes of life. We say pastimes, for we would not undertake a review of the more serious moments of his career. There was, certainly, a mark upon all his actions which distinguished him as a prodigy among the ordinary race of mortals. One of Miles's favourite pleasures was dancing. In going through it, he showed, to the entire satisfaction of the company, that the human frame was susceptible of the most extraordinary and unique displays of agility. Not in the Ravel-family style, it is true, but for amateur effect of the most wonderful and extraordinary kind. He evidently thought that dancing could be carried to a degree of perfection which it had never attained; and that Miles Blessington was the perfect model to be looked up to (or down to,) as the great perfecter of the art. We know not which movement Miles prided himself upon being the most perfect in. If we should be too warm in our admiration of one part of his body, we fear that we should do signal injustice to the other. Thus we are precluded from giving our unbiassed opinion for fear of being considered invidious. If we commend too highly the legs in their various attitudes, we fear we should overlook the rapid, pendulum motion of the arms. The same objection presents itself in contemplating the various other graces which presided over every motion he made. To contribute to the perfect freedom of the body in turning round, he performed that movement with a velocity which trampled upon every foot around him. In crossing over, the same sacrifice of clumsy feet was made to graceful movements, which regarded them as a legitimate part of the floor-to be stood upon. All these various actions, com bined with the natural and indissoluble magnificence of the THE following beautiful old-fashioned lines have lain man, rendered him an object of palpitation to every femi- || longer in our copy-drawer than we intended. Though they nine heart that beheld him! Miles Blessington's improvement of the present age was not confined to dancing. He displayed an equal genius in the adornment and improvement of the present trite style of conversation. He never spoke to a lady without having every phrase from the beginning down, prepared by a studious collocation of the most difficult words in the English language. To such an extent did he carry this improvement in style that it was rather incomprehensible to those to whom it was addressed; inasmuch as they could not recognize, in the new dress he gave to ideas, anything in connection with what Miles himself would call "ordinary sense." Whatever might have been the import of the ideas thus mysteriously clothed we know not, but it was a degree of compensation to the uninitiated to know that they were uttered with the most fastidious regard for delicately-formed ears, and with a precision that rendered the mouth which spoke them an object of the most interesting curiosity. come late, our readers will thank us for them not the less. ΤΟ Beneath the sun's meridian ray, The flowret droops and dies away; Invades the young and tender shoot; 8. B. We shall give next week some extracts from a small voMiles Blessington was such an indispensable ingredient lume just published by " John Allen, 139 Nassau," called to society, that if he was ever absent from a ball or party," WORKING A PASSAGE, or Life in a Liner." It gives the he was more missed by the ice-cream and frozen-punch (two articles to which he paid particular attention) than by either the ladies or the gentlemen. But Miles never so far disregarded the object of his supposed creation, as to sepa. rate himself from the pleasures of life. On the contrary, he possessed a ubiquity of presence, which rendered him here, there, and everywhere. If he was ever disposed to vary his attentions from those favourites we have mentioned, it was to the champagne, an article for which he had an inde. scribable admiration. Miles Blessington was a great admirer of beauty, and to such an extent did this passion possess him, that he carried his conquests from the ball-room to the church. From some unaccountable circumstance, Miles was almost always an hour or so after the hour, which caused him to get there just as the preacher was about to ascend the pulpit. An earnest desire to profit by the distinct sound of every word uttered, possibly induced Miles to make for one of the most conspicuous pews in the church. If such was the case, it certainly showed a magnanimous instance of selfhumility, for he might have been accommodated without walking three steps from the door! experience of a young man suddenly left without money in Europe, while on his travels, and shows an educated man's view of the sailor stratum of life, suddenly descended to for a living. It is somewhat in the same style as Dana's admirable "Two Years before the Mast," but in no degree imitative. It is a book written with such absolute good sense, and withal absolute beauty of style, that we predict for it no little present celebrity and a classic niche to repose in. TWO OR THREE LITTLE MATTERS. THERE is no struggling against it-we have a need to pass the summer in some place that God made. We have argued the instinct down-every morning since May-daywhile shaving. It is as cool in the city as in the country, we believe. We see as many trees, from our window, (living opposite St. Paul's churchyard,) and as much grass, as we could take in at a glance. The air we breathe, outside the embrasures of Castle Garden, every afternoon, and on board the Hoboken and Jersey boats, every warm evening, are entire recompences to the lungs for the day's dust and stony heat. And then God intends that somebody shall live in the city in summer-time, and why not we? By the time this argument is over, our chin and our rebellious spirit are both smoothed down. Breakfast is ready,-as cool fruit, as delicious butter under the ice, and as charming a vis-a-vis over the white cloth and coffee-tray, as we should have in the country. We go to work after breakfast with passable content. The city cries, and the city wheels, the clang of the charcoal-cart and the importunities of printer's impall blend in the passages of our outer ear as unconsciously and fitly as brook-noises and breeze-doings. We are well enough till two. An hour to dinner-passed in varnished boots and out-doors-inesses-somewhat a weary hour, we must say, with a subdued longing for some earth to walk upon. Dinner-pretty well! Discontent and Sorrow dwell in a man's throat, and go abroad while it is watered and swept. The hour after dinner has its little resignations also,-coffee, music and the "angel-visit" from the nursery. Five o'clock comes round, and, with it, Nature's demand We regret that we have not been enabled to learn to for a pair of horses. (Alas! why are we not centaurs, to what extent Miles Blessington carried his depredations have a pair of horses when we marry!) We get into an among the tender hearts, but if any possible computation, omnibus, and as we get toward the porcelain end of the should be made of it, we promise to give it, with all due city, our porcelain friends pass us in their carriages, bound commiseration, to the public. J. E. T. out where the earth breathes and the grass grows. An ir Of all the various forms adopted by people to set out the church ceremony, the most preferable to Miles was that of beholding the ladies at prayer. We have known some people, who, doubtless to show the perfect tranquillity of their consciences, have selected the time of preaching for sleep. To do this with perfect comfort, they convert their pew into a bed-room and its cushion into a pillow. Some again, to display their extravagant love for music, keep their eyes intently fixed upon the choir; while their heads are undergoing this proof of elevation, ten chances to one that they don't divert the attention of all around them from their devotions. || But, of all these novel modes of worship, Miles Blessington manifested a decided preference for witnessing the effect of humility upon the female heart. Though it might be supposed that at such an hour their thoughts would not recur to any earthly divinity; yet, if they chanced to move their heads in the direction of Miles, he would instantly conclude, that he was the object of their especial adoration. |