the lord of Bloomingdale again entered the summer parlor, Mrs. Brander was the fair and happy fiancée of Dr. Smith.

But Fanny, our timid Fanny, was grown into a tyrant. She scarcely spoke to Colonel Roland. She tossed her head disdain- | fully, dressed charmingly, and flaunted wilfully by her guardian, displaying the finest shoulders and most scornful eyes.

Every thing went right with our hero; but Fanny, she seemed bent on coquetry; delighted in torturing him, and concentrated all the arts of her sex upon that unhappy man. At last, growing desperate, he watched his opportunity, and caught her hand as she flitted across his path one evening in her usual tantalizing way.

"You are rude, sir," said Fanny, shrugging her shoulders, and drawing herself up with an air.

"I am sorry you think so; but listen to me."

"I am going out to tea."

"But it is early-and I love you very much."

"So you have told me."

"Well, I tell you again; I am dying for you, actually dying."

Fanny looked at the rosy tips of her fingers as though she had found something of immense importance there.

I

I

"Now, if you cannot make me happy, after all my sufferings, I shall go away. shall go to Europe and never come back. know it is foolish in me to be loving my own ward in this way, who is so young, but I cannot help it, Fanny; indeed, my dear girl, I cannot."

"You have been very chilly of late," said our modest Fanny, actually stumbling awkwardly on a pun.

"Have I? Oh!" the Colonel laughed.

cellar

Just then, John, who was escorting the lovely Julie under the portico, around to the cap, heard the Colonel say, "My own Fanny, my life, my love!" and all that. This was as music from the spheres to John.

"Now, Miss Julie, decide me too," implored the ardent servant-man.

"I must learn my mistress's decision first,” said the lady with the ear-rings. "Don't you hear 'em just overhead, my lovely lady?"

"Pshaw !" said Julie.

"Now listen, do; take my word for it, Miss Julie, it's all right above; just let me salute your hand in token,” implored Mr. Steptoe, ardently. Here John hung on to Miss Julie's hand like a drowning man to a straw, and caressed that charming extremity, covered with brass rings, until he was summoned to get Colonel Roland's cloak, who was going out to tea with Miss Fanny.

There were three weddings at Bloomingdale in the fall; and I am sorry I have no moral to tack on here. The only moral I can find is, that if all handsome ladies were as modest and wise as my heroine, there would be fewer runaway matches, fewer miserable parents, and more happy wives.

Indeed, I congratulate myself on having found a lady who refused the fellow with the guitar and moustaches, and fixed her affections on something more substantial. Where is the lady whose heart could have withstood the neckcloth, the guitar, and the charming moustaches of Mr. Allen Grey! I can only point to my heroine, and say, that, with all those attractions, she thought him no more to compare to Colonel Roland, than Count d'Orsay to General Washington!

To the Editor of the Republic:

SIR-It may not be inappropriate, nor will it, I hope, be thought to savor of conceit, to remark that the cause which has induced me to write you this epistle is an important one. As the affairs and being of a nation like ours are exclusively regulated and maintained by the people in common, it is commendable at all times for those who are, or are to be, the possessors of national suffrage, to consider the state of the nation, and erect such safeguards for its defense as from time to time may be required by existing circumstances, or create new plans whereby the elements which make up its beauties may be enhanced, and those beauties rendered still lovelier in themselves and, more generous for dissemination. If governmental systems like ours are correct, and, when justly enforced, conduce to the happiness of those who construct them; if such systems do not bring themselves into life, but are generated from seeds sown by the pure intellectual spirit of man, as flowers are by the benevolent Spirit of God; if, unlike heavenly nature, man's intellectual purity is equivocal, the system which in his unsulliedness has been planted by him, and fertilized till it has attained the highest state of sublimity, may be wafted away before a blast of passion or scheme of ambition, as the last odors of fall before the wintry gale.

As a rank Democracy, on the one hand, may, from the effects of a too great arbitrariness become anarchical, or overtly assume the position of an Oligarchy; so, on the other, a Republic, through a too great dependence upon the mere name, may become recklessly careless of its true interests and supports, and allow itself to be transformed into a Monarchy. Ours is not a Democracy: it is emphatically a Republic, the only one that ever existed; and this is demonstrable,

though I will not, nor need I, undertake the task. Yet there is one question I will put to my countrymen: Is our Republic secure in itself-secure through the power of whatever is intrinsically valuable in its laws? This admits of discussion, but I shall not discuss it now. My aim in this paper is not to originate any scheme, plan, or principle of action for the adoption of my fellow-citizens, to the end that changes may be wrought in the nation's affairs as laid down in and provided for by her laws. But my desire is to admonish them of important duties which are to devolve upon them ere long in the selection, from among several candidates proposed, of one who will be the most likely to administer the prerogatives of a President with honor to ourselves, and whose works shall command the admiration, or respect, at least, of the entire world.

Would it not be well at the next election for President, as at every election of whatever person to whatever office, to inquire with regard to the candidate, "Is he honest, virtuous, devoted to his country, firm; or rain, proud, ambitious of distinction however obtained, absorbed in himself?" Never did times more than the present urgently demand of us the proposal of these interrogatories. It should be borne in mind we are not a nation wholly American, but that there is within us a hidden fire of destructive power, which is collecting secretly as does the fuel that feeds the volcano. Do I, sir, express myself too harshly when I thus liken the millions of aliens among us to so dangerous a natural phenomenon? Were it not for their habitation among us, possessed with their new ideas of what is right and wrong, ideas springing from an education too lately administered to them, and differing entirely from those which have been taught the indigenous mind of our people

up from its youth to maturity-were it not, I say, for the habitation of the alien among us, and not only so, but a habitation endowed with power, POLITICAL power, and with their new ideas of right and wrong, we might elevate almost any one of our countrymen to the chair of state without so much as a question as to his abilities to wield his assumed prerogatives to the interest of his constituency-the nation. But as our social circle stands to-day, as it is heterogeneous in every element that divides the world into different nations-heterogeneous in physical forms, habits, inclinations, mental force, sympathies, disposition, and passions-is it reasonable to attach, as we do, so little importance to the peculiar traits of the character of one who may be presented for public suffrage, whether those traits be either virtuous and honest, or vicious and disreputable? How many years have passed since we deemed a pure character to be the truest qualification of our national administrators? No record, I apprehend, has been kept of those years; they have glided swiftly by us, and with them as swiftly the integrity of political manhood. If those years had tongues, they would tell us of the speculative exchange into which our national policies have been turned; how fortunes have been made from the sacrifice of our country's honor; and how built up measures and laws whose tendencies are to weaken instead of strengthen the foundations of our civil and religious polity. Hundreds upon hundreds swarm about us, roll along in splendid vehicles through our cities, the means whereby they have come at such luxuries having been acquired solely at an expense and loss of political honesty. But some there are who have not fattened, as the blood-sucker upon the slime of the stagnant pool, off the traitories and stratagems which lie upon the stream that latent patriotism gives birth to; and these are who lend their willing minds to the considering of whatsoever seems fruitful of comparative mishaps during the present moment, or calculated to involve positive evils in and for the future. Yet these

men are few; we do not see them stationed at every cross-path of our life, and with their wands of wisdom telling us the way to wend our steps; we will see them only here and there, in the obscure corners of not much frequented by-ways, whence they can observe but not be observed, sketching in their unmolested solitude every transaction as they pass before their view; and when their folios are full, the silent paths with their solitude are deserted, and forth come the folios to the world-wide light; the telegraph takes them, the press takes them, and wings them far and near to the people; the people read the warnings copied from those folios, but they are forgotten, or, if not forgot, neglected, as soon as read. Why is this? That hidden fire of which I spoke above sways the press; the press, through the columns of its editors, always contemns him who utters an alarm for what is the country's good, lest the disfavor of the alien be provoked; and the people, too much absorbed in the business of gain to contemplate advice founded upon correct observation, give countenance to the contemner of him who warns against national vice, rather than credence to the warner whose lashes sting the contemner so deeply. Those men who make it one of their especial duties to notify their countrymen of the dangers continually increasing around them, have seen, with sentiments of the sincerest regret, that chiefest of all the qualities of man, VIRTUE, so much lost sight of in the selection of persons to occupy offices, whether of comparative or extreme responsibility and trust. It would appear, from this great sin of ours, that we never let our thoughts recur to the days of old, when our good forefathers did seek out men for official position who, if famed for any one property especially, it was that of virtue and honesty combined. Burke says, "People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors."

And let me ask, sir, what are our administrators doing for posterity? If we may judge from the concessions already made and being made daily to the alien, we can

truly say, reversing the sentence quoted above, those who never look forward to posterity never can have looked back to their ancestors. Why, it is provable beyond controversy that the manner in which we are moving in our political affairs will bring us suddenly upon the quicksands of ruin. I do not intend to enumerate any of the evils which have resulted from heretofore wicked partisanship, or to arise from similar wicked-| ness; but I do most earnestly urge my countrymen to make the great excellence of a to be recipient of republican suffrage to consist directly in his virtue and honesty. There are so many among us who would sacrifice every thing to their desires for fame, that it has become a positive requirement of us to probe to the very bottom of one's character before we place him beyond our reach. Our people should recollect, sir, at all times, that "he only is a great man who can neglect the applause of the multitude, and enjoy himself independent of its favor." When you will find such a man in the political circle, you may almost always write him down an honest and a virtuous man; but where you find one such now-a-days, you find hundreds of the opposite cha

racter.

As I have before observed, we are upon the eve of an important election. Its importance, however, is not attributable to any great home measure; we have no tariff, bank, sub-treasury, or compromise proposition to come up as all-absorbing questions for the next administration: those measures, I conceive, have been laid to rest; but that election is important from the attitude as

gregate in myriads, and whose clamorous tongues are loud for national reform, national impartiality; which latter is nothing more nor less than a demand for equality of the alien with the native-born, and which last, if granted, would become that very means by which what we now call liberty would be transformed into monarchism: a consummation as devoutly wished for by the Old World as it is little thought of by this Republic.

Is it not well, then, sir, considering the present aspect of affairs throughout Christendom, to weigh well and deliberately the character of him of whom we are to expect much-the defense of our system of government in the face of and against the world? One word more, sir, and I have done. You as well as myself know what party spirit is. We have seen it raise its incipient ills among those from whom we would least have expected them-Americans, all Americans. Addison remarks, that

"A furious party spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; rally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and, when it is under its greatest restraints, natuand a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancor, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity."

Although neither civil war nor bloodshed may result from the next campaign, still animosities may be engendered which may wait only for a channel through which to vent themselves; and whether by civil war or by party avoidance of what is right, or wilful doing of wrong, such as gifts of national trust to the undeserving or aliens, our liberties may be jeopardized and irrecoverably sent along a stream downward to destruction. I do hope, sincerely hope, sir, that we will never see the day when it shall

be one of our sorrowful occupations to deplore our lost freedom, and to say, with Ovid,

"When first I heard

That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue, speechless, pale, I stood;
Grief chill'd my breast and stopp'd my freezing blood;
No sigh to rise, no tear had power to flow,
Fix'd in a stupid lethargy of woe."

M.