THE BLUE STOCKING.

"Quota hora est ?" earnestly demanded a grim bearded pedant of a harmless passer by.

Oux dida," (don't know) was the unexpected answer.

"So late as that! I must be off!" ejaculated the pedagogueand he hurried on muttering to himself, "Who the deuce expected that fellow to speak latin?" Now this is a very old story, but it defines a male blue-stocking better than ever could have done even Samuel Johnson, L. L. D., himself. Change the gender, or rather shave off the pedants beard and you have the subject of my discourse.

Let others "hurrah for the bonnets of blue," but give me bluestockings, blue, blue, deep celestial, indigo, archindigo. Of all things-they are neither masculine nor feminine-of all things, I do doat upon them, admire, love them, as I love a quiet hearty laugh. When I've the blues, administer to me a genuine blue stocking, (to clear out spleen and bad humor, they surpass the blue pill itself,) one whose yarns are of the deepest die, whose texture is strangely intricate, knit with the knottiest materials, whose depth is fathomless, whose sole is firm, and I will cry out with the sailor boy: "I ask nothing more."

It is refreshing to see stitches of learning endlessly threaded out upon a patch of flimsy stuff, gathering up, and hemming in fresh plaits of wisdom at every turn; to hear a harmless comment on the times twisted into matter of most serious and deep discussion; to watch the strong mind attempt to dive headlong beneath the surface of things which have no cubic measure. Like the traveled mouse, we wonder and admire, though we do not comprehend. To hear, hammered down like cobblers pegs, at every pause, citations from the ancients is also gratifying; it shows the speaker's veneration for antiquities-perhaps she herself is one-and a proper estimation of old age is laudable. Cicero hath said it. Quotations too! it is so modest thus to acknowledge one's own inability in mind and speech to express what one would say! amiable plagiarism of thought and words. And then how flattering to one's vanity is causeless sarcasm from a lady's tongue! It proves her confidence in the temper and politeness which she provokes, and which forbid retort. Besides it indicates such stores of kindly wit in her from whom it emanates. And philosophy, metaphysics, logic, how soft they sound, when, sweetly and strangely intermingled, they flow from two coral lips, e'en as smoke is wafted from the bowl, not tangible it is true, but very graceful. One feels like embracing at once the science, not to say y organ. But to

complete the charm, all these mental jewels should be chased in a dozen stranger tongues, besides the one granted by kind nature. I repeat it, give me blue stockings, a whole city-full, and do away with vile tedious schools and colleges, as useless trumpery. Every visit would be a lesson, every ball-room a course of lectures. How delicious! stern brow'd and iron-fisted education melting away, abashed, before the tuition of such charming wrap-ankles, calf-hides! So much cheaper too and yet so dear t'would be!

"To go or not to go"-that is the question, soliloquized I with Hamlet-like uncertainty, twirling between the thumb and index, a boldly written invitation to honor with my company, the house of Madame Gregoriana Smallclothes.-Prudence loudly urged the negative, ennui whispered in the affirmative. Listening to the still small voice, I went. Eight muffs in the hall, fourteen overshoes, five hoods and an umbrella. "Walk in sir:" I doffed my wrap-rascal, and stumbling on the threshold performed a species of Turkish salam, and ushered in amidst a dozen petticoated sages, stood abashed, overawed and offusticated by the musty smack of learning with which the air was pregnant. Six times with ghastly smiling effort, I broached the weather, and thence six times the conversation, like Newton's thoughts, flew from light to deep, from deep to deeper and to deepest. Barometers, thermometers, hydrometers, chronometers, were but incidents by which astronomy, astrology, geology, theology, conchology, and every heavenly, earthly and aquatic science was introduced; then stalked in as a natural consequence, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Socrates, Euripides, Themistocles, Sophocles, Demosthenes, and an hundred other heathen bores, until having esed ourselves on this score, we sank by retrograding steps, deep into the dark, dreamy, dismal abism of the chaos and accompaniments. Each one groping, like creeping things, amidst the confused elements, analysed, dismembered, dissected without conscience, blindly hoping to separate light from darkness,-obscurity thickened solidly around, and the chaos was doubly chaos'd. Retailed wisdom was wedged in at every opening of the conversation, splitting and cracking it into driest formless chips; bold assertions, webbed and entangled in words of long vibrating syllables were thrown in like kindling wood, and the blaze of eager aspiration setting all on fire, the room grew heated with crackling, hissing, roaring arguments, disquisitions, discussions and disputes. Puffing and outpouring the unsmelted minds' ore, like furnaces in full blast, each dame with index on the palm, or thumb beside the nose, held forth most manfully.

"To your seats, ladies;" bade the hostess's voice. I was the only real male person there, and yet when gazing on the throng before me, I could not but think that it had been more appropriate to exclaim: "sit down sirs." Forming a circle around the table with the other gentlemen-the other ladies-the other sages I would say, I opened with an inward prayer the volume beside me. Oh horror! It was Dante! a new light broke in upon me, dark

ening every hope within my breast. I had been to Italy, spoke the language, and for my sins was expected here to play the teacher in an Italian conversazione. Speak it! yes, but could not read! up I sprang to make an honorable exit; a detaining hand grappled my unfortunate skirt, and there I stood, as the law hath it, "seized in tail, with possibility of issue extinct." Like a parting lover on the threshold of his lady's door, I stood a moment irresolute, but just about to tear myself away, a tug and pull brought me to my seat. Mrs. Gregoriana Smallclothes, Esq., however, anxious to open the scene at once, yet having some vague suspicions of her own inability, and an exalted idea of my knowledge in the tongue, muttered a modest prelude, mumbled a short preface, and then bold as Orpheus of old or more modern Telemachus, rushed into the hell of Dante without ever wincing, harping on each line and word, or paralyzing with her tongue's music, harmony, poetry and common sense, and sing-songing in the most drowsy drawling English accent that ever twanged on sensitive tympanums. Following this potent soporific, came Miss Amelina Scipio, and from her horrible execution, it was evident that she had duly fumbled over the painful task before; in fact, I know it must be so, upon the same principle that the doctors' pupil judged his patient had devoured a horse, from discovering beneath the bed a saddle and bridle, for lo and behold amidst the gaping dogeared leaves which we were to explore, peered the corner of a card to mark the place. An inward laugh was just gurgling in the regions of my thorax, when came my turn, and the rising flood of hilarity quickly ebbing was choked in a gasping rattle. Escape was impossible. Eight pair of rounded eyes were sternly bent upon me; eight pair of wide sttetched ears were stiff erected to catch my genuine accent; eight pair of parted lips were ready silently to repeat after me every word for word. Hoarseness, severe cold, weak eyes, all and each of these pleas I set forth jointly and severally, but they demurred and I was non-suited. Mrs. Smallclothes, blessed by nature with two eyes, not particularly fond of each others company, directed one flaming orb at my person, throwing at the same time the other with an expression of concentrated impatience toward the ceiling. Miss Scipio grimly gnashed her crumbling mouth bones; the two Misses Plutorias' hemmed whole volumes of dissatisfaction, and my next neighbors briskly drummed a spasmodic tattoo upon the table. Forced on by duresse, I heaved a heavy sigh, and attacked, neck and heels, a passage. .... No, I won't swear,-t'is like a thing of tradition, now gone, past, and only in the memory-I bungled through my task floundering like a school-boy at his A, B, C's, and wished over and over again Dante at the veriest bottom of his own creation. Shame, vanity, and despair, like flaming darts thrown into the sides of a bull, drove me blindly mad and madly blind. Words, lines, whole paragraphs danced wildly before my dizzy eyes, and reeled and wavered like Imp's creatures as they

were.

A's, O's, and U's, like lovers' hearts, seemed blended into one, and, fabricating of the whole concern a thing of vilest compound, I threw my auditors into a perfect state of dismay at my execution, while I myself melted even as an empaled Christmas turkey. Let fancy, heated with every stimulus, picture such a situation, and yet imagination's figures would sink dull and flat beside the dire reality.

Another reader, and another sputtered uncouthly on, solemnly blundering through page after page, murdering Italian, even as Macbeth murdered poor innocent sleep. Oh could the genius of Italy have found a tongue, it had cried to each dame separately: "Ah! no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me." "Twas not that they loved Italian less, but themselves more; and so, Brutus-like, they poignarded it. Poor Dante, how wert thou mangled!

Again it was the turn of the fair Miss Scipio. She had arrived at the end of her prepared stock, and oh Momus! trembling with fear and agitation, began to lunge and carve in verses which she had not seen. Following each line with her finger's end, she plied her utmost powers to decipher the labyrinth before her. Clipping words and syllables, mistaking vowels, reading backwards and retracing whole paragraphs; she stumbled over the divers parts, four words at a time, with a stop in the middle of each half line, and a double period at the commencement of every verse. Unlike Peter on the house-top, she slew and ate unmercifully, making clean work of all that lay upon the outspread sheet. Dante! Dante! rest thy shade content. Indeed this time at least, thy poem was in every sense a comedy divine! Wiping off the cold drops of horror which coursed down her cheeks, as dripping rain falls from a roof, the lady thrust the book at me; griping it with an icy tremor thrilling to my very marrow, I cast one glance upon the page-could it be?-Fickle and amiable goddess of the wheel, all thanks! I had fallen on a piece which I knew by heart. A luminous idea flashed through my brain. Summoning hastily a quizzical leer, I poured out the harmonious tones with full feeling and accentuation, gliding from verse to verse with easy and fair transition, uttering the whole tirade with my most dulcet voice, then, with a careless smile, passed on the book.-Silence reigned sovereign; the volume remained untouched; a scarlet blush tinged every cheek. "The assembly had been quizzed and I had been laughing at them in my sleeve; the first display was but a bait to lure them on to ridicule!" "Oh no!" I answered; but that no implied a knowing yes. My reputation as a scholar was tremendous-the real truth never leaked out. Hurra for blue stockings give me one for wife, so that I may lead a merry laughing life.

A LEGEND OF THE ISLANDS OF THE MOHAWK.

BY MISS A. A. GODDARD.

As the traveller ascends our highlands, and gazes up and down the peaceful valley of the Hudson, he participates but feebly in the stirring emotions that, only a few years ago, throbbed in the bosoms of the inhabitants, whose lone dwellings, here and there sent up their curling smoke to mingle with the clouds of heaven. Far as the eye can reach, stretches the majestic stream, whose clear surface then reflected but the mountain tops, garnished with bending trees, whose waving foliage danced merrily as their shadows were reflected in the silvery mirror below; or, sent back to heaven an image of its own beauty in the reflected light of another moon and myriads of stars. Now, its peaceful shores resound with the ring of the hammer, and its clear waters bear along in rapid succession boats and barges, laden with the products of the soil.

The mind, as it reverses the wheels of time, and stands, or dreams it stands, and overlooks the same stretch of landscape in 1777, marks in the distance the glitter of bayonets, and listens to the roll of the drum, varied by the mingled notes of fife and bugle. Around the brow of a lofty summit winds an army, whose course is marked by order, and whose measured tread betokens one heart beating in hundreds of bosoms.

As we trace their course, we observe a cluster of islands at the junction of the Mohawk with the Hudson, and remember the order given them to retire trom Fort Edward to these islands. This, then, is the gallant army of the north, whose deeds of valor are written in blood. It is a painful reverie we are indulging, yet fraught with consequences they neither measured nor comprehended. We but dream; they experienced the bitterness of reality; yet their souls shrank not from the awful trial, with half the horror with which our minds recoil, as we but conjure up the same in fancy.

Now, smiling plenty sits at every door; then, famine, fire and blood marked the course of ruthless savages, as they desolated the fair heritage of the sons of freedom. The gallant army, whose windings were but now traced, has dared to stand foot to foot and shoulder to shoulder in defence of desolated hearths; and now, after days of toil and nights of fear, they retire to recruit their stores as well as strength. The booming of cannon is in their ears; for but yesterday they fought at the cannon's very mouth. The groans of the wounded, too, they hear, and visions of ghastly faces, distorted in their death agony, dance before their minds; each dimly haunted with the consciousness that a like fate ere