my eyes fixed upon him, he placed the important document upon the table and took to his pipe.

I waited for him to commence, as I thought I was bound in all politeness to do, but when Antony began to fill his pipe for the third time, I felt obliged to interpose, and gently jogged his elbow. "What now?" said he, looking alarmed.

"Read!" said I sternly.

"Oh!" was the answer-a faint attempt, by the way, to pretend forgetfulness of his walk and seizing the manuscript, he rattled it off with desperate velocity, the perspiration starting out from every pore while he did so. He could not have been more discomposed were he about to address an assembly of thousands. Then having finished, he threw down the paper and rushed from the room without waiting for my criticism, nor did he venture in sight again until the next morning. I felt inclined to laugh, but Claes being asleep, there was no one to make merry with, so reserving my mirth, I took my candle and went to sleep also. In time, Antony improved in his reading, but he has not as yet entirely freed himself from a slight nervous trepidation.

Once, after I had read what was considered a most affecting bit of pathos, Claes awakening from a sound sleep, declared that my work was excellent.

"What part did you like best?" I enquired of him, laughingly. "What part, massa?" the puzzled negro replied, scratching his pate, "what part I like best? All so good, massa, dat I can't really say, unless him be that part 'bout de crow."

And the old fellow popped off into another nap.

Never mind, I had Antony's approval, for though he uttered never a word, yet the warm gentle pressure of his hand, assured me that my labor had not been entirely in vain in imparting pleasure to another.

But little of my past history remains to be told. Antony, at my request, has permanently removed from the city, and settled himself with me. And now he, good old Claes, and myself, live happily together, determined that death alone shall separate us. And, as of old, Zephyr still accompanies us upon our walks, and the little robin yet blithely welcomes us upon our return.

And is this all? Was it for nothing that I have shown how we all met together? By no means. Such is far from my intention. It is probably that in person we may not again be heard from, for our adventures are few, and scarcely worth chronicling. But we are reluctant to separate ourselves entirely from the world, and in resolving upon some means of communication, have dared to think that the trifling pencillings which have cheered our evenings, may not prove an undesirable medium. Some may sneer at the spectacle of two old men attempting to amuse a younger generation in this age of progress. Others may more favorably think of us, and spare us on the score of what they call "dotage." A few may perhaps reward us with an occasional word of encouragement.

Well, since the result is to be yet determined, we will try the experiment, resolved to bear smiles or frowns with ready equanimity. Though the performance may be unworthy, the will is surely good.

And whatever in future may appear dated "from Marschalk Manor," let it be regarded as a token that the robin is as well, Zephyr as frisky, Claes as much addicted to sleep, and Van Noortstrandt and myself as tenderly devoted as ever.

THE END.

GROWING OLD.

BY LILY GRAHAM.

Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hill: the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey.”—Ossian.

They say that Age is dark and drear, a long and gloomy night,
And shadows hide the star of Hope, that makes our youth so bright;
The loveliness of Earth no more hath charms their souls to thrill,
That the lightsome tread is heavy grown, the bounding pulses still.
They say they look upon the flowers with as cold a heart and eye,
As on the Autumn's withered leaves, or snow wreaths drifting by;
That happy streamlets sing no more, and boughs no longer dance,
For with the early bloom of Youth, hath fled its bright romance:
That the snow upon their hoary heads hath made their hearts grow cold;
Who would not dread the passing years-if this be growing old?

The Old have little joy they say, and e'en the blessed Spring,

And the singing of its happy birds, to them no pleasures bring;

For they dread the shadow resting still beneath the blossoming trees,

And shrink with fear at every sweep of the rejoicing breeze,
Lest tidings of some fearful wo, their own impending doom,
Should on its balmy breath be borne, a summons to the tomb.
Strange they should wish to linger on, when all they love has fled,
And all that made life beautiful is buried with their dead;
Methinks it were a blessed thing within the church-yard cold,
To lay the weary form to rest-if this be growing old!

They say the past is but a dream, their future dark and drear,
That Youth's warm-hearted trustfulness is mocked with smile and sneer,
That shining gold hath matchless charms to bind them with its ray,
And its yellow gleam is dearer far than the blessed light of day;

That selfish coldness takes the place of all our warm desires,

And on the altar of the heart die out the holy fires;

That passions fierce and fell revenge, with all the crimes of Youth,
Grown stronger by long years of sin, have quenched the light of Truth;
O! God forbid that we should live till four score years be told,
If such should be His sovereign will-if this be growing old!

O! in our Spring-time it were sad, to lie beneath the ground,
When folded buds are beautiful, and birds are singing round,
'Twere sad to leave this happy Earth with all its pleasant things,
Its sunsets and its quiet dawns, its fair and flowery Springs,
And all that thrills our bounding hearts, in green wood or in dell,
Till we almost tremble with the joy we have no words to tell;
But it were better far to die, in this our early youth,

Ere we have lost our happy trust, in noble deeds and truth,
Than to live on through weary years, until our hearts are cold,
And every hope in life has fled-if this be growing old!

But is it ever thus-that growing old in years

Is but advancing all the while, in crime, and grief, and tears?
Surely the good in joyous youth are happy in their age,
While the fearful record of their sins is an unwritten page.
What though the star of Hope be hid?-theirs is undying light,
That through the drifting clouds of care, still streams serenely bright.
What though their loved have gone before, and left them sad and lone,
They know that they shall join them soon, beside their Father's throne;
And watching in their patient faith, till Heaven's bright gates unfold,
They calmly wait His own good time-happy in growing old!

LETTER TO MR. LEON BRUYS D'OUILLY.

You ask me, my dear friend, how, in the midst of my agricul tural labors, of my philosophical studies, of my travels, and of the political movement which carries me sometimes within its tumultuous and passionate sphere, there can remain to me any freedom of spirit, any hours of audience for that poesy of the soul which speaks only in a 1 w voice, in silence and solitude. It is as if you should ask of the soldier or the sailor, if there remains to him a moment to think of the one whom he loves, and to pray to God in the noise of the camp or the agitation of the sea. Every man has in himself a marvellous faculty of expansion and of concentration, of yielding to the world without losing himself, of

quitting himself, and finding himself, alternately. Do you wish me to tell you my secret? It is the division of time; its hour to each thing, and a thing to each hour. Understand that I speak of the man who lives like us, at a hundred leagues from Paris, and ten leagues from any city, between two mountains, under his oak or his fig tree. And since you wish the true and confidential recital of one of my days in the country, which you find so full, and which I feel so empty, hold, behold it; take and read, as said solemnly the great poet of confessions, J. J. Rousseau. But first remember that to live thus double, it is necessary to go to bed early, and that your lamp be extinguished when the lamp of the weaver and the spinner is yet burning, as the stars fall to the earth, across the branches, on the dark sides of the hills. One hears in sleeping, the distant songs of the young villagers who return from the nightly rendezvous in the ox stalls,

Suadent que cadentia sidera somnos.

Our friend and master, Virgil, knew all that. When the political year is ended, when the chamber, the general councils, the elections, the harvests, the vintage, the seed-time, leave me two months alone and free in this dear old ruin of Saint-Point, which you know, and where you have dared to sleep several times under a tower which trembled at every gust of the west wind, my poetlife begins again for a few days. You know better than any one, that it has never been in all more than a twelfth of my real life.

Poetry to me has been only like prayer, the most beautiful and the most intense of the acts of thought, but the shortest, and the one which robs the least time from the labor of the day. Poetry is the song of the inner heart.

What would you think of a man who should sing from morning until evening? I only make verses as you sing in walking when you are alone, overflowing with strength, in the solitary paths of your woods. It marks the steps and gives cadence to the movements of the heart and of the life, voila-tout.

The hour of this song for me, is the end of autumn; the last days of the year which dies in the mists and in the sadness of the wind. Nature, rough and cold, then thrusts us back upon ourselves; it is the twilight of the year; it is the moment when the action ceases without, but the action within never ceases; it is very necessary to employ at something, this superfluous force which would convert itself into a dreaming melancholy, into despair and madness, if we breathed it not out in prose or verse! Blessed be the one who invented writing, this conversation of man with his own thought, this means of lightening the weights of his soul! It has prevented many suicides.

At this period of the year, I rise long before the day. Five o'clock in the morning has not yet sounded on the dull and harsh bell of the steeple which commands my garden, when I quit my bed, fatigued with dreams, light again my copper

lamp, and put fire to the vine branch which warms my watch in this little vaulted tower, silent and isolated, like a sepulchral chamber still inhabited by the activity of life. I open my window, I take a few steps on the worm-eaten floor of my wooden balcony.

The

I look at the sky and the dark notches of the mountains, which carve themselves distinct and sharp on the pale blue of a winter firmament, or bathe their summits in a heavy ocean of mists; when there is wind, I see the clouds run over the last stars which shine and disappear by turns, as the pearls of the deep which the wave covers and uncovers in its undulations. dark and naked branches of the walnut trees of the church-yard, twist themselves, and complain under the tempest of air; and the nocturnal storm gathers and rolls their heaps of dead leaves, which come roaring and gushing up at the foot of the tower, like water. Amid such a spectacle, at such an hour, in such a silence, in the midst of this syin pathetic nature, of these hills where we have grown up, where we should grow old, at ten steps from the tomb where reposes, awaiting us, all which we have wept on earth, is it possible that the soul which awakens and which bathes itself in this air of the nights, experiences not an universal shuddering, joins not itself instantly to all this magnificent intimacy of the firmament and of the mountains, of the stars and of the meadows, of the wind and of the trees, and that a rapid and bounding thought flashes not from the heart to mount to the stars, and from the stars to mount to God? Something escapes from me to confound itself with all these things; a sigh brings me back again to all that I have known, loved, lost in this house and elsewhere; a hope, strong and evident as the Providence in nature, carries me back to the bosom of God, where all will be found again; a mingled sadness and enthusiasm are infused into several words, which I articulate aloud without fear that they will be overheard, except by the winds which carry them to God. The cold night seizes me; my steps crackle on the hoar frost; I shut my window and reënter my tower, where the burning faggot sparkles, and my dog awaits me.

What's to be done then, my dear friend, during these three or four long hours of silence, which must pass away, in November, between the awakening and the movement of the sun and of the day? All are sleeping, in the house and in the court; we sometimes hear a cock, deceived by the shining of a star, throw out a faint cry, which he seems half ashamed of himself; or the ox, sleeping and dreaming in the stable, gives out a sonorous lowing, which causes the herd to start from their sleep. One is sure that no domestic disturbance, no inopportune visit, no business of the day will come to surprise one for two or three hours, and distract one's thoughts. One is calm and confident in one's leisure. For the day belongs to man, but the night belongs to God.

This sentiment of sweet security is of itself voluptuousness.