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in their brigand-looking bonnets; and drank hot rum-punch out of little tum

O corpo di Bacco! Howbeit, they were gentlemen, and never borrowed anything-probably because they thought I had nothing to lend— and so I shook their wash-leather gloves kindly at parting.

Well! in the pursuit of health and reform I went on. I think I was at Milan and Turin, and afterwards I was at Genoa. I am quite sure of Genoa, for I saw there the Chevalier Wikoff, ever so high up in a strongly constructed castle with iron-barred windows, for giving chloroform to one Brown, her majesty's consul, or some one else, I don't recollect who.

the grape treatment, so I followed that
advice scrupulously. From Lyons, I
again rushed away to Geneva, where Iblers.
heard the great reformer, M. D'Aubigné,
preach-all to strengthen my own re-
form-the gist of which I communicat-
ed to my sunt; played billiards with
a charming fellow in fawn-colored
gloves-who, I regretted to learn after-
wards, was a bag-man commis. for the
sale of mill-stones-at a trifling sacri-
fice of half a rouleau of louis; then I
wandered over lakes, and clambered up
mountains-ever so many (donkeys and
snow-shoes included) of both-when,
getting a little blasé with Switz in mid-
winter. I implored a delightful Britisher
-Lord Frank Bruton, by card and peer-
age epithet--to take a place with me in a
return veturino over Mount Saint Ber-
nard into Lombardy. He did take the
place-conversed agreeably about his
estates down in Sussex, and planned a
little party to meet me there the follow-
ing summer. But, in the mean while,
one afternoon he got out for a "regular
tramp, you see," near the Devil's
Bridge-so as to get a better view
of that torrent and, so help me
several strong men, that was the last I
saw of his lordship, together with a
greasy billet de banque for five hundred
francs, which he aristocratically be-
guiled me of until he could get his
"confounded heavy drafts cashed by
those rascally banking fellows at
Milan or Genoa."

I rested all night at the hostelry on top of Bernard, and even induced an amiable old monk to send a big old dog, with a bottle of kirsch strapped round his neck, in pursuit of his lost lordship; but the search proved fruitless. The next morning, however, I learned from some travelers, that a person answering to the description of my friend had been seen taking his breakfast at Aldernach, and had hired a conveyance to take him down to the lake. This information relieved my anxiety on account of his lordship's health and safety, and so I continued my journey alone.

At Lago Maggiore I fell in with some capital fellows-officers of the Sardinian army. They seemed to be stationed there solely to intercept and make love to French femmes de chambres and rich old maids; all of them had been wounded at the battle of Novara; they fought duels with broadswords every Sunday morning; wore crimson cocks'-feathers

Then, again, my remembrance is very vivid about giving a modest little supper to seven or eight prime donne, with the contralto and demi-basso of Carlo Felice opera-house, in my rooms at the Albergo Europa; and bless the exuberance of spirits of those warblers, they inspected my wardrobe, costumed themselves in an immense quantity of my elegant white lace chokers-from pretty girl at Boivin's-and absolutely walked off with them after selling me a box apiece for their benefits in Trovatore-which never came off-in advance of the playbills. Very pleasant people I thought them next morning.

I didn't find the cold tramontana winds of Genoa at all conducive to my health, so I embarked one day in a steamer bound for southern Italy. I had an original idea, at first, of going in a felucca over to the island of Corsica, in company with a full-plumed American general, of the six hundred and fortieth regiment of New York State Fencibles, who told me there were the finest black horses there, the grandest scenery and the most picturesque robbers to be seen anywhere. I gave up the project, however, when the padrone of the craft said the signore must sleep on bales of salt fish and soap-boxes in the hold-the latter material being an unknown chemical to the padrone. The general had more pluck, and, after waiting for a wind for three weeks, finally caught a gale which blew him over to Port Mahon, where I presume he is at this present writing.

On board the steamer. I staid on deck all one night to catch the first glimpse of Mount Vesuvius, as we approached Naples. But it rained the

volcano out, and I never saw the first puff of smoke the whole time I staid in its vicinity. In fact, I should have doubted the existence of that mountain entirely, had I not been assured by a lovely fellow-passenger, a dancing wonder of San Carlos-so she stated-who sat with me under an umbrella-mineand assured me the mountain was constantly burning, and illuminated the city always on days of festa. When we went on shore, in return for that valuable volcanic information, the dancer pirouetted off with my umbrella, and that was the last I saw of the pair.

At Naples, I took a banqueting hall in a grand hotel of Princes on the Chiaja. It was a saloon as big as a barn, and dark as pitch, until it was lighted by eight wax candles-which I noticed the waiters extinguished, and touched off new ones every time I went out of the room. I had, besides, a carriage all to myself; fourteen beggars, from four months old up to four score, in constant pay, like a diseased bodyguard; two rival punchmen under my balcony while shaving, a fellow who pottered about in a bowl and howled, and I was next-door neighbor to His Eccellenza Ex-President Van Buren. Waiters, however, were incensed at my distinguished compatriot, because, they said, he dato'd them solamente due carlini il giorno. I, of necessity, was forced to make good the losses of these varlets roundly.

In the course of a week, a short puffy man, who wheezed the sweetest Italian accent through the medium of the Tedesco idiom, presented me with a slip of paper two yards long. He said, "zat ze zecetario of Albergo mush like monish, as vas kostomary wis voyageurs." I said "Si," but on going to see, I discovered that there was but part of a rouleau of those dear little jaunets of Naps left in my exchequer-not quite half the amount of that long roll of carlini items so kindly furnished me by the inan with the sweet Italian accent. My first impulse was to go down on my knees to the ex-president, and negotiate a loan; but I changed my mind, and asked for the American minister. "He lif, signor, at Cavi, tree hours by ze rail-way." This expedition was at once nipped in the bud; but I bore up and got a direction to the consul's. It struck me at the time, that the sweet Italian tongue became a trifle harsh and doubtful, as I

slowly descended from my piano on the first floor. Getting into my barouche, my painful position flashed upon me, for I was not upon intimate terms with the fat young Neapolitan Rothschild; I had not letters of credit or any other negotiable property by which I could communicate with my aunt, and, in short, I felt very desolate and uncomfortable. When my body-guard of beggars surrounded me with their usual plaintive griefs, and displayed their bones and sores, I whacked the wretch with the seven stumps of thumbs on one hand, until he shook his natural fist at me with rage.

I stopped a moment to exhibit myself to the handsome fat woman of the Café Europa, and swallow some peachpit prussic acid of absinthe-for my health-when I said boldly, “Go to the Consul Americano." Turning sharp off from the Strada Toledo, we drove down a narrow split in the housesvicos they call these alleys-and on tho coachee stopping, I looked straight up in the air at a blue ribbon of sky, and, almost out of sight, I saw the red-barred shield and the American eagle, with claws clutched as if in the last collapse of colera Asiatica, beneath a window. I descended in the midst of a small ambulatory market of jackasses and greens -chiefly of the cabbage and radish genus-and, entering a sombre portcochère with a dark, well-like court-yard where the view was obscured by washed clothes, I halted.

Communing with myself, I said"Now you are here, Mr. Veese, what are you going to say to the consul? You know consuls are always associated in your mind with two dollars apiece for viséeing passports; besides, they are as poor as church-rats, and what brings you here? But will you starve Monsieur Henri in your present precarious health, when wholesome food and delicate wines are essential to you?" This train of reasoning decided me, and I went up ever so many dirty stone steps, until I pulled the bell attached to the consul's precincts. I was shown through the ante-room to the bureau, where I found myself in the presence. It was that of Consul Hammet. He was by no means a Mahomedan, as his name might seem to indicate, but a large cheerful old American, who had been appointed by some of the antediluvians. General Washington, Patrick

Henry, or Mrs. Madison, I forget which. He wore a pair of short white trowsers, the upper button somewhere in the region of his umbilicus, and a loose shirt without any buttons at all. Consul said, "Humph!” I said, “Fine paintings these around the walls."

66

Humph! you want to buy any?" I immediately bought five Madonnas della Seggiola, at twelve dollars apiece, and, if the consul hasn't sold them, they are there yet, Fact is, I forgot to pay for them.

"Consul," I began again, "the truth is, I am in want of a little money, and being a stranger in Naples I came to seek your advice and a-"

"Where's your letter of credit?" says he, shaking himself down into his trow

sers.

"I haven't any, sir, I thought—" "Dammit," cries Hammet, "no letter of credit ?"

It was painful to hear an old gentleman, of his time of life, objurgate in that profane manner, but I thought I would try a new tack and give him some insight into the respectability of my family connections, and, perhaps, by that means induce him to relieve my necessities; so I went on modestly"You see, my dear sir, my grandfather fought in the Revolution-"

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stick, and stout shoes. He proceeded to punch consul in the shirt, spoke ill of the country, the police, the beggars, and the fleas, and finally declared his intention of going away in the first vapor bound to Sicily.

At the sound of his voice I gave one jump, seized him by the back of the neck, and evinced my joy by choking him in a friendly manner. "Why. Dick, my old boy, don't you know me? I never was so glad to see a fellow in my life." Dick let fall the club he had raised to demolish me with, at the first outbreak of my joy, and hugged me to

his bosom.

“Do you know that youth?” exclaimed Hammet, as he again became uneasy in his nether integuments. "Know him!" cried Dick, "af! licked him many a time at school. But how's your health, Harry, and where are you going?"

"He's going to the devil," suggested consul, as fast as four horses and the opera-girls can drag him? He came here to borrow money.

"Yes!" said I, " Dick, I'm as clean as a whistle. Have you any?"

Dick pulled out a square little book, and, unfolding a bluish-tinted letter, pointed out to me that the individual who signed that document priéd all his correspondents, in all parts of the habitable globe, to honor his drafts to the tune of the £. s. d. hereunto appended. "Humph!" said consul, there's a pair of you." Consul was good and kind-hearted, but he was poor, so we shook him cordially by the hand -not omitting the little attention of dollars for passports, and went our way.

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WE KNEW IT WOULD RAIN.

WE knew it would rain, for all the morn,

A spirit, on slender ropes of mist,
Was lowering its golden buckets down
Into the vapory amethyst

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-
Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,
Dipping the jewels out of the sea,

To sprinkle them over the land in showers!

We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves-the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind-and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!

THE FOUR SEASONS.

OUR fathers of old-pagans though

they were looked upon nature as children do who love to read in their mother's eye the sweet affection that dwells there forever; and to them there was no event in the wide creation more wonderful and more adorable than the change of the seasons. Now, alas! our glance crosses the ocean, and dwells in the vast spaces of the universe; but our thoughts have lost the childlike simplicity of earlier days, and the mind that labors no longer to solve riddles full of sweetness and blessings, but to "know good and evil, even as the gods," has gained knowledge and lost faith. Not so our fathers. They lived with nature, and felt every throb of their great mother's pulse; they honored her acts and loved her features. Revering her powers as so many emblems of the Most High, every outward change recalled to their minds, at once and with irresistible force, similar changes in their own life, and their duties and their joys went ever hand in hand with the duties and joys of nature. How few among us, on the other hand, watch still, with simple, faithful wonder, the marvelous changes that the seasons work in the world around us! Thousands, we fear, are never aware of the charms of spring, and boast that they know not the "rigor of winter." To them, all the year is but one busy scene of city turmoil or study's unbroken silence. Still, we are taught that change is the very soul of nature, that it is the source of her eternal youth. An ever even temperature, an unbroken spring would be the cessation of life-the ruin and end of the whole world. Even paradise could but in the poet's fancy possess an everlasting spring; for spring would at once cease to be what it is--the transition from winter to summer-the resurrection of nature from silent death to the fullness of a rich and beauteous life. Change alone can permanently please the heart of man, and that change only which is ever repeated so as to bear witness of eternity. Our longing for spring itself rests not more upon an innate desire for change than upon our firm faith in the better days that are sure to come.

What, then, is the cause of the momentous changes which now deck our earth in brightest colors, and now cover it with the

now

white pall of apparent death? A slight angle in the position of our globe; for it is well known that, instead of standing in the same upright position as the sun, it is somewhat inclined towards the centre of its magnificent universe. Hence the light of the sun cannot always illumine the same half of the earth from pole to pole, but now shines with full splendor upon the north pole, leaving the southern half buried in night, and turns its glorious face towards the south. It is this change of light and heat which, in a single word, gives our earth its life. Thus we see that the seasons are the magnificent effect of an insignificant cause, the rich source of all organic life, and the very condition of our own existence. Upon a slight angle of the axis of the earth rests the whole varied beauty of spring and summer, of autumn and winter, the unfolding of countless flowers, and the ripening of life-giving fruits, the welcome of birds and their farewell, and all the ever changing colors of the bright carpet that covers the globe. And as man is lord of creation, and yet dependent, in his bodily existence, on the very dust from which he was created, the seasons may well be said, in their influence on plants and animals, to be the cause even of man's well-being, in fact, of all true life upon earth.

Feebly and faintly this has been felt, from days of old, by all nations and races, and every age has seen endeav ors to give this consciousness an outward expression. Far away, on the Syrian coast, where first, in southern regions, a change of seasons is clearly perceived, in those mysterious countries which border upon the land of the fearful battle between the hot breath of Typhon and the life-giving Nile-there history shows us the earliest efforts made to represent in festive symbols the varying changes of the year. There storms, mild to the son of the north, but fierce and fatal to the native, break with incomprehensible power the ever youthful beauty of the year, coming no one knows whence, and sweeping over flowers and fruits no one knows whither. Then the poet comes and sings of Adonis, the lovely youth, the favorite of his Astarte, the fair image of summer, and, alas! the wintry boar falls upon him

and tears him with brutal force. All the land mourns his death, and his daughters, unable to bear the unspeakable grief, fill the air without ceasing with their maddening “Ai li nu!" Woe is us! How they sigh and sob, how they search in vain for the lost friend, how they weep oceans of tears for their lost master! But they despair not; they still hope that the spring like beauty of the year will rise again from the grave of winter. So they plant leeks and other quickly sprouting herbs in little Adonis-gardens that are carried about in their arms, and, indeed, these plants hardly assume the green livery of spring, when Adonis himself is in full life again. On the day of the solstice they celebrate his resurrection, and, as a short while before nothing but frightful howling and wild lamentations were heard in the land, so now unmeasured joy and jubilees sound on all sides. Men and women are seen running through the streets, wearing garlands of flowers and crying, "Our Adonis lives! Adonis is returned to us!" Soon the land, far and near, is covered with crocuses and lilies, with the narcissus and tulip adorning the bright green carpet. The winter sleep of the lord of the sun is forgotten, like a short, unpleasant dream, and with it the sorrow of his spouse, the earth.

Sweet and lovely is the climate of Greece, but it calls upon man to labor for his support. The great festivals of the year are here, therefore, festivals of labor also, and each is adorned with scenes from actual life. The powers of nature are worshiped in mystery, and a marvelous, monstrous drama is enacted before the eye of the wondering multitude; for. however man may labor, without the mysterious aid of the heavenly powers, no blessing can be obtained. Labor is the mystic drama's beautiful theme, but the beginning and the end is an ever hidden act of grace of the gods. The tiny seed-grain, the daughter of our mother earth, is carried off by the master of the lower world to secret nuptials. The fair daughter of Ceres, herself the goddess of corn and harvest, is chosen as the emblem of life-sustaining grain, and grim Pluto bears her in his arms to his dark realm, as the seed is intrusted to the dark ground under the glebe. Fasting and weeping, her fair votaries, the wives of free-born Athenians, sit on the VOL. IX.-24

ground and lament the unhappy mother, who long seeks mournfully for her lost Cora. At last she finds the poor child. Hades is forced to surrender its prey; as Persephone, the germinating, she breaks her chains and once more glides joyfully over field and meadow. But he, who has once tasted the food of the lower gods, is bound by their laws, and when her time is past, Persephone is seen no more for the other half of the year.

More toilsome, though more pleasing also in its results, is the labor of the vine-dresser. If even sowing and harvesting are not performed without a hard struggle with the dark powers, the life of the vine is still more constantly threatened by their sullen warfare. Greater, therefore, is the triumph, and louder, nay, boundless, the joy, when the rosy buds first appear, when the vine is loaded with fragrant blossoms, and when, at last, the golden liquid is ripe in its transparent home. When roses and violets shine amid dark leaves to greet the conqueror, spring, the great Dionysian festivals gather around their altars exulting crowds of worshipers. The beauteous son of Zeus, even Bacchus himself, pursued by the giants of summer heat and wintry frost, rises triumphantly from a short overthrow, and soon the swelling buds, in their rosy garments, pierce, as with horns, their dark grave, and, announcing new joy and new happiness, pass, with song and dance, through the wide world. When the grapes are gathered, the lesser Dionysian feasts bring, in autumn, a calm, cheerful retrospect, and early in spring the new wine is drunk for the first time.

Only in Greece, however, could the seasons be thus brought into harmony with the labors peculiar to each change. As we approach nearer to the poles, the year is seen more and more to be divided only into two great extremes, of life during summer and death during winter, until, in broad contrast with the Syrian coast, a short respite from fatal frosts interrupts, for a while only, the melancholy reign of winter. Few, therefore, are here the traces of festive meetings at different seasons. All the German nations know but a single one. High up in the north, where winter is master, and almost the only season of the year-where the children of men count their years by

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