by what simple means such an object is attained-the simpler the better.

The next morning enriched us with a large party from North Carolina. Fortunate is the State that can send forth such citizens to represent it. Intelligent and kind-hearted, simple and direct in their manners, with that evident self-respect resting on the immovable foundation of intrinsic respectability, and the modesty and deference that springs from a faith in the worth of others—a faith which is the well-spring of life to humanity. There was one young. person of this party who was the centre of general interest. She was not beautiful, but she had a power to rivet and charm the eye beyond a regular and reigning beauty. There was a languor in her movement, and an abstractedness in her expression, as if for her the soul of life was gone, or as if (for she was suffering from ill health) she were listening to the strain, "Sister-spirit, come away!" But when a voice she loved struck upon her ear, or a word touched her heart-chords, she raised her heavy eye-lids, and a world glowing with sunshine, warmth, and beauty, was revealed at a single glance. It reminded me of the child's pretty fancy, that "the stars were holes cut to let the glory through." The morning after her arrival one of her party asked her to sing, and her father-of all the admirers of her music the most enthusiastic (as he should be )-brought her guitar. She took it, and without any prelude of affected modesty, or fluttering anxiety, or real and painful bashfulness, she played Irish melodies, Scotch airs, and old English songs, such as "The harp that once through Tara's halls," the "Ingle-side," and "Oft in the stilly night," those household words, domestic treasures, holy spells that conjure up the dead, and pour melody over the soul from voices long silent. When she began to sing it was some hour or two after breakfast, the hour of general dispersion. Her voice was a signal for a general recall. The ladies came from their cells, and the gentlemen poured in from the piazzas, till the drawing-room was filled. There was not the slightest change in her manner. While there were murmurs of applause, sighs, and eyes wet from memory's opened fountains, while those who only tolerate Italian music were betrayed into spontaneous admiration, she sang as if she were singing at twilight in her own mother's parlour, as unconscious of listeners, and as sweetly, as the wood-thrush in its deep solitude. Sure, thought I,

"Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air,
To testify his hidden residence."

And within that breast, as I afterwards found, was one of the most loving and trusting hearts ever made perfect through suffering. After a while the drive, the ride, the inviting savor of Barhyte's

trout, were too strong for the music. Say and do what we will, our English blood is not native to the manner',-we must have more substantial pleasure-something that smacks of the roast-beef and plum-pudding of life. And in their diurnal pursuit of these, the audience of our sweet singer dispersed, but not till a leisure hour had been redeemed from vanity and vacuity.

Strangers reproach us with sectional prejudices,' amounting in their virulence to that natural hatred so patriotically cultivated for some centuries between the French and English. If they actually do exist, Saratoga should be considered as a sort of Jerusalem, and the annual gathering there a national jubilee, when we are emancipated from something worse than physical slavery,-for these sectional prejudices are chains and manacles to kindly feelings-dark prison-houses to generous thought. Many a leisure hour is well employed on that neutral ground of Saratoga, when the social sympathies are linking the hearts of the fair rivals of rival cities, and "smoothing the raven down" of that deepest darkness in our Republic, political animosity,-when the warmth and eloquence of the southerner melts the ice of the northern man, and finds and feels the generous current that flows beneath it-when the erudite Bostonian quotes the science and even repeats the puns of the Philadelphian,— and when New-York fashionables beg patterns of caps and capes from Baltimorcans. These are the genial offices of acquaintance, and before its influence sectional prejudice' vanishes as night vapors melt in the eye of the sun.

I have long more than doubted the curative effect of satire,-that most bitter of medicines. It is certainly a more gracious task to discover a life-sustaining plant, than keenly to detect a poisonous herb; and far pleasanter to gather flowers than to point out obtruding weeds; and most wise is it, like the wise man, to idealize the cheerful countenance, and, like the good vicar, to "love to look upon happy human faces." This being my faith, I would not advise any to waste their leisure hours at Saratoga upon such hacknied subjects as manœuvring mammas and their puppet daughters, parvenus, mustachioed dandies, and self-created foreign nobility. Indeed, with one or two exceptions, these races appeared nearly extinct. I remember, though, one exquisite thing-a shadowy presentment of humanity, made up of curls and essences, that held its embroidered kerchief à la mode, and waltzed hat in hand; that "disabled all the benefits of his own country, was out of love with his nativity, and almost chid God for making him that countenance he wore,”-so that some lively girls, taking pity on his out-of-place doublet and hose, subscribed, from their own stores, a suit of suitable apparel for him. I know not if it were sent, but I saw the list,-including ear-rings, hair-pins, and papillottes.

But instead of these oft-recorded denizens of the watering-place,

there were, for those of the Vicar's taste, husbands and wives apparently so contented with their lot, that they cared not whether the law of the land allowed divorce to all who wished it, like the reformed code of Prussia, or denied it to all who craved it, like certain other codes, so they were permitted to wear their easy yoke together. There were mothers whose delighted eyes followed their younger selves, and who seemed to have no design for them more heinous than securing their present innocent enjoyments. There were beautiful girls untrammelled, as all American girls are, self-relying, and most safe in their self-reliance, who betrayed no impatience to transfer their allegiance from parent to husband. There were travelled ladies from Paris, who had come home with improved tastes, stored memories, and hearts full of love for their country, and with as simple, chaste, and elegant a toilet, as if the Paris milliners were all dead and buried, and refined women had taken the apparelling of their persons into their own hands. There were elderly single ladies, who neither gossipped about other people's affairs, nor obtruded their own. One or two of these I noted, with tempers so cheerful, and sympathies so warm and active, that it was plain they had not needed the sanative relations of wife and mother to keep them in good humor, and preserve the fountain of their affections living and flowing. And there was-O rara avis-a millionaire uncourted, and unobtruding. And lastly, (the order of our enumeration resembles that of a child's of his dinner,-pies, tarts, flummery, and roast beef,) lastly, there were men from the highest professional, official, and commercial walks of life, who had cast their cares behind them, and come there to recreate in their leisure hours,and of some among them I may add, most gratefully, to redeem and enrich the leisure hours of others.

And what a life-time is in those leisure hours! A resident of two wecks has seen generation after generation appear and pass away,he has made acquaintance and forgotten them,-perchance has ripened friendships and sighed over their decay. Happy are the few who escape the doom of most human things-oblivion.

AN INCIDENT AT SORRENTO.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

[The following lines relate an incident which occurred two or three years since in Italy.]

Fair is thy site, Sorrento! green thy shore!
Black crags behind thee pierce the clear blue skies,
The sea, whose borders ruled the world of yore,
As clear, and bluer still, before thee lies.

Vesuvius smokes in sight, whose fount of fire,
Out-gushing, drowned the cities on his steeps;
And murmuring Naples, spire o'ertopping spire,
Sits on the slope beyond, where Virgil sleeps.

Here doth the earth with flowers of every hue
Heap her green breast, when April's sun is bright,—
Flowers of the morning-red, or ocean-blue,
Or like the mountain frost of silvery white.

Currents of fragrance from the orange tree,
And sward of violets, breathing to and fro,
Mingle, and wandering out upon the sea,
Refresh the idle boatman where they blow.

Yet even here, as under harsher climes,
Tears o'er the loved and early lost are shed,
That soft air saddens with the funeral chimes,
Those shining flowers are gathered for the dead.

Here once a child, a playful, smiling one,
All the day long caressing and caressed,
Died, when his little tongue had just begun
To lisp the names of those he loved the best.

The father strove his struggling grief to quell;
The mother wept, as mothers use to weep;
Two little sisters wearied them to tell

When their dear Carlo would awake from sleep.

Within an inner room his couch they spread,
His funeral couch; with mingled grief and love,
They laid a crown of roses on his head,

And murmured, "brighter is his crown above."

They scattered round him,

on his

snowy sheet, Laburnum's strings of sunny-coloured gems,

Sad hyacinth and violet dim and sweet,

And orange blossoms on their dark green stems.

And now the hour is come,--the priest is there,—
Torches are lit,-the bells are tolled,-they go,
With solemn rites of blessing and of prayer,

To lay those dear remains in earth below.

The door is opened-hark that quick glad cry-
"Carlo has waked--has waked, and is at play!"
The little sisters leap and laugh, and try
To climb the couch on which the infant lay.

And there he sits, alive, and gaily shakes,
In his full hands, the blossoms blue and white,
And smiles with winking eyes, like one who wakes
From a deep slumber at the morning light.

THE CANADA QUESTION.

This event

Civil war in the British North American Provinces! has come upon the people of the United States with something of apparent suddenness and surprise; and yet, to those who have attentively observed the progress of opinion in the two Canadas, the proceedings of the Assembly of Lower Canada, the discussions on the subject in the British Parliament, and the agitation of the Canadians themselves, the actual collision between the mother country and her colonies has been a matter neither strange nor unexpected. Indeed, if there be any thing remarkable in the fact, it has been, that, situated as the British Provinces are, in close contiguity with the United States, and exposed, as they thus have so long been, to the salutary contagion of democratic institutions and democratic principles, they have been content until this time to remain the subject colonies of Great Britain.

While, however, it has been apparent, of late especially, that a