open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left. The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak pannel of the latter. "Within that chamber," observed he, "a whole lifetime since, did I sit by the death-bed of a goodly young man, who, being now at the last gasp". Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his companion's hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence, that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light than the moonbeams which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber. It was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In a high-backed, oaken arm chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her breast, and her head thrown back, sat the " Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." The stately dame had fallen on her knees, with her forehead on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor, and the other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of hair, once sable, now discoloured with a greenish mould. As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber, the Old Maid's features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression, that they trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it was only the shadow of a tattered curtain, waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight. "Both dead!" said the venerable man. Then who shall divulge the secret? Methinks it glimmers to-and-fro in my mind, like the light and shadow across the Old Maid's face. And now, 'tis gone!" THE MORALITY OF POVERTY. POVERTY is a comparative term. Between the extremities of pauperism and that moderate competence which the wealthy speak of with contempt as a poor pittance, and which is certainly trifling in comparison with their "unsunned heaps," the interval is very wide. The condition of the very poor we do not take into consideration, at present, as the main topic of our inquiry; though we shall by no means omit to speak of them in turn; but we shall endeavor to present a picture of simplicity and moderation in living, and the advantages of a sufficient competence (paradoxical as it may be thought) over an overgrown and superfluous income. Poverty has many significations, with a wide range, embracing the pauper and the poor gentleman, aye, and the poor noble, in some countries. Kings even have been beggars, and have subsisted on casual bounty. The millionaire thinks all men poor who are not possessed of equal wealth with himself; while the day-labourer regards the small trader and master mechanic as rich men. In towns, one standard of wealth prevails; in the country it is much lower. Thus we find an ever-varying measure of the goods of fortune. Of a nobler species of wealth, it is not so difficult to ascertain the true value. An excellent book is yet to be written for the rich, which should inform them of their duties towards their poorer neighbours; which should resolve the claims the poor have upon them, from the claims of nature, as well as from conventional position; which should confirm them in habits of benevolence and in the practice of "assisting the brethren." By assistance, we refer not merely to alms-giving, that being regarded as a fundamental part of charity; but we also include under that phrase, the giving of wise and disinterested counsel; defending from oppression and slander; persuading to the practice of right and justice; warning from evil, by instilling good principles and generous sentiments; and in the comprehensive language of Scripture, loving our neighbour as ourself, and consequently acting for him as if for ourself. Higher charity than this, is none: a charity the richest may be too poor to bestow; a charity the poorest may prove rich in dispensing. If love abounded, what a rich world would not this planet become! If man was to man a brother and a friend, (at the same time increasing the world's gear not a copper, and neither introducing any fantastical schemes of agrarian equality,) in all the relations of life and family, as master and servant, father and son, brother and companion, artist and artisan, in sickness and in health, at home or abroad, there could be no poverty, no disappointment, and none but natural sorrows. For though many sources of grief would still continue fresh and open, as sickness, death, loss of friends and family, and failure in favourite plans of life and action, yet they would be so mitigated by universal tenderness, and so suffered by a general sympathy, as to lose half their sharpness in losing all their repulsive features. No disappointments could then occur, because sincerity and plain dealing would take the place of falseness and deceit. None but a self-tormentor could then be unhappy, where all would become companions, in good and evil seasons, and through every changing round of fortune's wheel. But this is an ideal not soon to be recognised. A man without a penny has yet what all the world cannot purchase-the human form and the human nature. With these, if he has health and resolution, he may become anything, except what can be reached only by innate genius or a higher order of mental gifts than his own. Give him education, you make him a scholar; breeding, you train him a gentleman; religion and morality, and you fill him with the sentiments of a christian. Let no one say, the poor scholar or the poor gentleman is hurt by his education and manners. Pride often distorts those characters, but they ought to be above pride. A cultivated mind, so far from being trammelled by a narrow income, flies beyond it; and taste, the quality of the fine intellect, is a faculty of selection. The wisest economy is the nicest taste. Profusion is tasteless. A man of fine judgment and small income will actually live in a more genteel style, than a rich coarse-minded nabob. He may have fewer articles of expense, but they will be choice and delicate. His style of living will be frugal, yet elegant; which is more pleasing than extravagance without judgment. A genteel taste in living, eschews extravagance, pomp, and all superfluity, as essentially vulgar. There is not a more pitiful sight than a mean-spirited man in a splendid house. His soul is too small for it. On the other hand, the great heart cannot be contained within the most magnificent palace, and yet, may content itself in the most humble mansion. The great and good poor man, in his modest and retired parlour, affords a nobler spectacle than a king or a pyramid. Riches too often excite absurdity of conduct: the giver of the gorgeous feast gets only a rich harvest of ridicule for his pains and anxiety. The master of an immense establishment is little better than the landlord of a great hotel: guests enter and depart; he is pushed aside as a stranger and in the way. All this while his personal gratifications are limited. The poor soul! he lives for others; his wealth is for others: he is nobody himself. But go to the house where the man is greater than the mansion, and you forget the bare walls unhung with admirable paintings, for his face and the countenances of a loving circle are the finest portraits in the world; you tread on a carpet without reflecting it is no Brussels pattern, and you sit easily on a chair that has no satin cushions for the indolent parvenus of fashion. If a man is not rich, how much he avoids; from how many petty distractions is he not free. Plutus is even a severer master than Necessity. In point of respectability the difference is great. Hardly without an exception, the ancient families of America, the descendants of the statesmen and lawyers and heroes of the revolution, (the only real aristocracy,) are poor. The rich class are, in the great majority of cases, sprung originally from the lowest class, who have acquired wealth by cunning and pernicious habits; without education, without sentiment; governed by no laws of courtesy; subservient to no dictates of the Spiritual Philosophy; coarse-minded and coarse-mannered, but clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day. With such as these, poverty of spirit and want of pelf are synonymous terms. The poor rich man and the rich poor man are the most perplexing problems. Authors and professed scholars, excluded as in great measure they are from amassing a fortune, and ill paid for their elaborate labours, are among the objects of especial pity, not to say contempt, (pitiable truly, and returning upon the contemner) of these bloated minions of Dives. They would patronise merit, and condescend to take genius by the hand. Contemptible arrogance! ye meanest of the mean, ignoble souls, whose highest privilege it is to be immortalized to posterity by the classic scorn of the indignant human creature you would protect; the true joys of the scholar, the calm life of the thinker, the grateful occupations of the author, are unknown to you. Thriftless men, who in any other occupation would have succeeded as ill; and incapables, who should as soon have attempted shoemaking as authorship, have managed to reflect a most undeserved odium on those pursuits; which adorn wealth and elevate poverty, which beautify science and invigorate business. Worthily and in sincerity pursued, what occupation is so full of utility as well as of delight, as literature. A mode of life that leads to reflection and self-denial; that fosters humanity and begets an enlarged curiosity; that inclines equally to serious, resolved action, and to a gay, cheerful temper; which teaches to confine our wants and limit our desires, but at the same time to expand the affections, and to fortify the will; a mode of life that consecrates its followers as a select body of liberal spirits; that unites the cultivation of the highest faculties with the performance of the commonest duties; that inspires a sense of reverence in the dullest souls and fascinates the roving eye of pleasure; employments, in fine, which form alone, the worthiest labours of the wisest and best-these constitute the occupations and fill the hours of the scholar. The literary life is never so happily spent, as in a condition of moderate competence and in the enjoyment of social happiness. The wealthy scholar, even if a man of genius, is obliged, from the nature of his position, and to avoid the scandal of meanness or the odium of an unsociable disposition, to live in a manner abhorrent to his tastes and literary habits. He must live splendidly, when he would prefer elegance and quiet; he must entertain the indifferent and the inquisitive, where he had rather be surrounded by the chosen friends of his youth. In a word, the rich scholar must live like a mere rich man, and is in danger of sinking the first character in the second. Wealth has obscured genius, which would have been drawn out by exertion, at least as often as talent has been obscured by misfortune. A great error, though a very frequent one, is, that utter solitude and celibacy are suited to the man of letters. That the greatest works require long meditation and perfect repose is true. No less true is it that the periodical critic and essayist must pursue his labours in a state of serenity and partial retirement. The true literary life is a quiet existence. No genuine scholar ever yet loved a crowd. Yet he loves society for conversation, and masses for observation of manners. He loves chiefly domestic pleasures; the good wife has often assisted, and never yet impeded, the occupations of her husband. The inmates of his dwelling learn to respect his hours of solitude and study. A judicious disposal of his time will leave the master his own master, and the experiences of domesticity will prove more rich and abundant than the knowledge of the hackneyed courtier or politician. Privacy may boast of its heroes and heroism that a public scene cannot display. We look in a wrong place for truly great characters; we seek them in high stations, but seldom find them there. Magnanimity, like eloquence, is often found where we least expect it. There are more heroical actions occurring every day in the retirement of private life than are to be seen on the great public stage of the world. There is more of fortitude exhibited, more of patience in suffering, more true benevolence, a nobler charity, a wider and wiser generosity, deeper affection, and higher aims than the mind of a mere worldling can conceive. The reason is plain. The greatest intellects seek repose from the vain struggles of ambition and inefficient plans of improvement. The gravest business of life, rightly viewed, is a mere farce; and those pleasing labours and endearing adversities, that make up a private life of contented trial and consequent happiness, are in fact higher and of more real importance. Domestic life is the only field for a certain class of virtues, by no means the least in value. These are of the softer and milder kind, amiable and attractive. Home is the school of the affections, as the world affords the test of the will and intellect. In that embowered valley bloom the sweet flowers of hearts-ease and contented joy. The life of Wordsworth might be proposed as a model to the author who loves letters rather than a literary reputation, who prefers fame to fashion-not only to the poet, but to the humblest prose writer, do we propose it. His fine maxim should be engraven on the heart of every true student-" Plain living, and high thinking." De Quincy, who published his recollections of the late poets some years since, in Tait's Magazine, has described the life of the Miltonic Bard, as simple to frugality. He resided in a small cottage with his wife and sister; his guest was conducted into the largest room in the house, smaller than an ordinary bed-room, and which had another occupant, Wordsworth's eldest boy. The common sitting room was half parlour and half kitchen. The great poet, like a good man, a lover of simple pleasures, delighted in his kettle's "faint undersong." His library was very small within doors, but without, what immense folios were his daily readingthe grand mountain scenery of his neighbourhood. Nature is Wordsworth's library, or at least wisest commentator. Were he never so rich he could possess no pictures like the landscape around him. Even his friend, the fine painter, Sir George Beaumont, might only copy this original. And for company, what more needed he, to whom grand thoughts in rich abundance came flocking at his call; who possessed such an admirable sister and so excellent a wife. Southey was but a few hours' journey distant. Coleridge was sometimes his guest. There, too, came Hazlitt and Charles Lamb; and there ever abided, guardian angels of the poet, the spirits of humanity and philosophy, in strict alliance with the Genius of Poesy! None but a poor-spirited fool ever esteemed a man the less for his poverty; and pity, in such cases, is insult. The compassion is a glozing apology for the indulgence of purse-pride, the meanest form of Satan's favourite sin, and which he must heartily despise. He who devotes a life to letters, cannot expect wealth: competency is the most he can look for,-a thorough education in its widest sense for his children, and a comfortable, though confined maintenance for those dearest to him and least fitted to struggle with misfortune. A fair example and an honourable fame is a richer legacy than a large fortune without either. Most fortunate he, who can unite all. But the spirit of study is adverse to the spirit of accumulation. A man with one idea, and that of money-making, can hardly fail, from one dollar, of realizing a million. But a man of many ideas, of a comprehensive spirit, and of aspiring views, can never contract his manly mind to the circumference of a store or factory. In his fixed and awful gaze at the wonders of creation, or in his rapt ecstacy at the celestial harmony of poesy, opportunities of profit will slip by, the golden moments of barter escape! His purse is lighter, it must be confessed; but he has gained a richer accession of fancies and feelings, than the world can give or take away. TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS. BY J. R. LOWELL. GREAT Soul, thou sittest with me in my room, Yes! the few words which, like huge thunder-drops, THE CARTOUCHEANS IN FRANCE. CARTOUCHE was a splendid highwayman in France, in the days when ambassadors transported themselves across the country with great quantities of specie in travelling carriages, when fine ladies were encumbered with jewels, and gentlemen wore watches set with rubies. In those times of brilliant pomp, when the court of Louis XIV., and subsequently the regent Duke of Orleans, cherished expense and luxury among the higher class, and set the example for the better support of monarchy; when gambling and dissipation were carried to perfection; when the government itself turned gamester, and recalled and adulterated the currency at will; when the old system of the country, its wealth and honours, were fast falling into decrepitude, there arose as fungi out of a corrupted soil, a band of depredators, rogues, thieves, and assassins. The evils of the state are written in its police reports. For every vice in the rich and educated, there is a crime in the illiterate and the poor. private gambler was waylaid by the robber as he turned homeward rich with his midnight spoils, and the financiering government was betrayed into the hands of speculators. The Cartouche had gained his early laurels in the provinces; with his band he infested the neighbourhood of Orleans, the high road to Italy, and the woods of Fontainbleau ; but Paris, with its central wealth and prodigal vices, offered higher prizes for boldness and ingenuity, and he turned to the capital. The insecurity of the streets offered a tempting field for the display of the courage and dexterity of a man like Cartouche. He robbed in the very centre of Paris, upon the Pont Neuf itself, where the neighbourhood of the Seine offered a convenient means of sending an unwelcome witness out of the way. But the crowning glory of Cartouche's genius and legerdemain grew out of the famous Mississippi scheme; and his story, with that of some of his friends, may show how productive a mismanaged government may be of private villany. It affords a lesson which should not be forgotten, a lesson not without its parallel in more recent events. Law and the Regent debased the currency by their schemes of monopoly and banking for the benefit of a race of speculators and pickpockets. Society has since grown more civilized, and men of talent apply their genius in a different way. Instead of highwaymen and burglars, we have defalcators and forgers. We have recently lighted upon a scarce tract, by De Foe, which gives a picture of the iniquities of this period in France. It purports to be a translation from the French, (though the idiom and verisimilitude of De Foe's style are stamped on every page,) and to give a narrative of the murder of some English gentlemen near Calais, in 1793, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity; with the detection of the band of robbers, and various details, and Newgate Calendar anecdotes of their previous villanies. They were a gang brought up in the school of Cartouche, and with some shades of difference, growing out of different temperaments and education, approved themselves worthy disciples of that great captain. The character of Cartouche was developed in his policy and ingenuity; one of his chief successors was a coarser villain, a man of butchery and blood; another afforded a beautiful exemplification of the military system, by the readiness with which he would strip the fallen, and secure his booty by stabbing the wounded. He was a professed and accomplished suttler of the camp. We confess it is not to our taste to follow such fellows in their career of crime; though the study even of their wickedness would not be without its uses in a knowledge of political history. We read of torture being applied to urge confessions and facilitate the discovery of accomplices, which is simply mentioned as "the ordinary question;" something as familiar to the court, as the asking the prisoner to hold up his right hand, and then to take it down again. Then there are the final inhuman tortures of the wheel, when the culprit was dislocated limb from limb, and lay exposed to a lingering death, with his face in mockery turned to the heavens, until justice, in its humanity-a humanity in signal cases withheldextended the merciful coup de grâce, and released the poor wretch from the miserable social system under which he suffered. It will always be evident, that the inhumanity of a punishment never will deter from crime; yet there are living legislators in the state of New York at this moment, who vindicate the use of capital punishment, who, with Mr. Dennis the hangman, think it a peculiarly simple and beautiful remedy for the diseases of the state. Washington Irving, in his sketch of the Great Mississippi Bubble, has recently traced the progress of Law's financial schemes, and the rapid public demoralization which ensued. He might have drawn still further anecdotes of the system from this little tract of De Foe. The great market of exchange was held in the Rue Quincampoix, and thither resorted not only the stock-jobbers of Paris, but foreign speculators from Germany, Switzerland, and other parts of Europe. Much booty fell into the hands of the robbers by the way; and those who were plundered and returned home, it was remarked, fared much better than those who were so unfortunate as to get safe to Paris; the former lost only their ready funds; the others, in the excitement and bewilderment of the stock exchange, mortgaged house and lands, and were stripped of everything. This was called the Quincampoix fair. Irving has drawn a vivid picture of the doings of a single day. A stock exchange was established in a house in the Rue Quincampoix, and became immediately the gathering-place of stockjobbers. The exchange opened at seven o'clock, with the beat of drum and sound of bell, and closed at night with the same signals. Guards were stationed at each end of the street, to maintain order, and exclude carriages and horses. The whole street swarmed throughout the day like a bee-hive. Bargains of all kinds were seized upon with avidity. Shares of stock passed from hand to hand, mounting in value, one knew not why. Fortunes were made in a moment, as if by magic; and every lucky bargain prompted those around to a more desperate throw of the die. The fever went on, increasing in intensity as the day declined; and when the drum beat and the bell rang at night, to close the exchange, there were exclamations of impatience and despair, as if the wheel of fortune had suddenly been stopped, when about to make its luckiest evolution." Here Cartouche suddenly made a fortune of many |