"T is not the noisy babbler, who displays,
In studied phrase, and ornate epithet,

And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts,
Which peep from out the cumbrous ornaments
That overload their littleness. Its words
Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break
Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full
Of all that passion, which, on Carmel, fired
The holy prophet, when his lips were coals,
His language winged with terror, as when bolts
Leap from the brooding tempest, armed with wrath,
Commissioned to affright us and destroy.

Well I remember, in my boyish days,

How deep the feeling when my eye looked forth
On Nature, in her loveliness, and storms.

How my heart gladdened, as the light of spring
Came from the sun, with zephyrs, and with showers,
Waking the earth to beauty, and the woods
To music, and the atmosphere to blow,
Sweetly and calmly, with its breath of balm.
O, how I gazed upon the dazzling blue
Of summer's Heaven of glory, and the waves,
That rolled, in bending gold, o'er hill and plain;
And on the tempest, when it issued forth,
In folds of blackness, from the northern sky,
And stood above the mountains, silent, dark,
Frowning, and terrible; then sent abroad
The lightning, as its herald, and the peal,
That rolled in deep, deep volleys, round the hills,
The warning of its coming, and the sound
That ushered in its elemental war!
And, oh! I stood, in breathless longing fixed,
Trembling, and yet not fearful, as the clouds.
Heaved their dark billows on the roaring winds,
That sent, from mountain top, and bending wood,
A long hoarse murmer, like the rush of waves,
That burst, in foam and fury, on the shore.

Nor less the swelling of my heart, when high
Rose the blue arch of autumn, cloudless, pure
As Nature, at her dawning, when she sprang
Fresh from the hand that wrought her; where the eye
Caught not a speck upon the soft serene,
To stain its deep cerulean, but the cloud,
That floated, like a lonely spirit, there,
White as the snow of Zemla, or the foam
That on the mid-sea tosses, cinctured round,
In easy undulations, with a belt,

Woven of bright Apollo's golden hair.

Nor, when that arch, in winter's clearest night,
Mantled in ebon darkness, strewed with stars
Its canopy, that seemed to swell, and swell
The higher, as I gazed upon it, till,
Sphere after sphere, evolving, on the height
Of heaven, the everlasting throne shone through,
In glory's full effulgence, and a wave,
Intensely bright, rolled, like a fountain, forth
Beneath its sapphire pedestal, and streamed

Down the long galaxy, a flood of snow,

Bathing the heavens in light, the spring that gushed,

In overflowing richness, from the breast

Of all-maternal nature. These I saw,

And felt to madness; but my full heart gave

No utterance to the ineffable within.

Words were too weak; they were unknown, but still

The feeling was most poignant: it has gone,

And all the deepest flow of sounds, that e'er

Poured, in a torrent fullness, from the tongue
Rich with the wealth of ancient bards, and stored
With all the patriarchs of British song

Hallowed and rendered glorious, cannot tell

Those feelings, which have died, to live no more.

Percival

Wool Gathering and Mouse Hunting.

Here we stop for the night. You are shown into a room that has not been opened since its occupant left it, and is unsavory and untidy to the last degree. An appeal to the gentlemanly clerk secures a change for the better; but there is a hole by the fireplace in Number Two that looks suspicious. You cross-examine the porter, who assures you that it has no significance whatever. A inouse in that room is an event of which history gives no record Nevertheless, you take the precaution to stuff the hole with an ol New York Herald, and are awakened at midnight by the dreadful rustling of paper. A dreadful gnawing succeeds the dreadful rustling, and away goes a boot in the direction of the sound. There is a pause broken only by heart throbs! Then another gnawing, followed by a boot till the supply is exhausted. Then you begin on the pillows. A longer pause gives rise to the hope that order is about to reign in Warsaw, and you are just falling asleep again, when a smart scratching close to your ear, shoots you to the other side of the room with the conviction that the mouse is running up the folds of the curtain at the head of your bed. In a frenzy you ring violently, and ask through the door for a chambermaid.

"Can't have no chambermaid this time o' night," drawls the porter sleepily.

"Then send up a mouse-trap."

"Aint no mouse-trap in the house."

"Then bring a cat!"

"Dunno nothin' about it," and he scuffs his slippered feet down the long gallery, growling audibly, poor fellow, half suspecting evidently that he is the victim of a joke; but alas! it is no joke.

You mount sentry on the foot of the bed, facing the enemy. He emerges from the curtain, runs up and down the slats of the blind in innocent glee, flaunts across the window-seat, flashing every now and then into obscurity; and this is the worst of all. When you see him he is in one place, but when you do not see him he is everywhere. You hold fast your umbrella, and from time to time make vigorous raps on the floor to keep him out of your immediate vicinity, and so the night wears wearily away. Your refreshing sleep turns into a campaign against a mouse, for which agreeable entertainment you pay in the morning three dollars and a half; and

the gentlemanly clerk, with a pitying smile, informs you, 'O, we cannot help that! There are mice all over the house!"

Moral reflection: If ever the education of a soaring human boy be intrusted to my care, I will endeavor to model his manners on those of a clerk in a hotel. For conscious superiority, tempered with benevolence and swathed in suavity; for perfect self-possession; for high-bred condescension to the ignorance and toleration of the weakness of others; for absolute equality to circumstances, and a certain grace, assurance, and flourish of bearing, —give me a clerk in a hotel. We may see generals, poets and philosophers, indistinguishable from the common herd; but a true hotel clerk wears on his beauteous brow, and in his noble mien, the indubitable sign of greatness.

From Albany to Niagara is a pleasant day's journey, and the Niagara mice are not quite so large, nor quite so lively, as those of Eastern New York., They do not appear till the second day. Then, resting quietly after a walk, you see a mouse creep timidly from under the bureau. You improvise a sort of pontoon bridge to the bell, out of your chairs and tables, and, as it is day-time, secure a chambermaid and superintend a mouse hunt. She whisks about the room enthusiastically, peers under all the furniture, assuring you the while that it is four years now she has been in the house and never saw a mouse in the chambers, though she confesses to having seen them in the kitchen, and, being hard pressed, well, she has seen them in the passages; but in the chambers, no! never and you are led to believe that, though a mouse might stand shivering on the brink of your room, he would fear to step foot over the threshold. No, there is no mouse here, not a sign of a mouse.

"No sign of a mouse, except the mouse itself," you suggest. "Ah! but you must have been mistaken. It was a shadow. Why" (with a grand flourish of the valance with her right hand, and in the air with her left), "you can see for yourself there is no mouse here," — and she thinks she has made her point.

You look at her, debating within yourself whether it is worth while to attempt to acquaint her with the true province of negatives, the proper disposition of the burden of proof, and the sophistry of an undue assumption of the major premise, and decide that it is not.

Moral and philological reflection: We see now the reason why trunks and traveling-bags are called traps. Synecdoche: Because the mouse-traps are the most important part of your luggage. Gail Hamilton.

A Legend of Bregenz

Girt round with rugged mountains,

The fair Lake Constance lies;

In her blue heart reflected

Shine back the starry skies;
And, watching each white cloudlet
Float silently and slow,
You think a piece of Heaven

Lies on our earth below!

Midnight is there: and Silence,
Enthroned in Heaven, looks down
Upon her own calm mirror,
Upon a sleeping town:
For Bregenz, that quaint city

Upon the Tyrol shore,

Has stood above Lake Constance
A thousand years and more.

Her battlements and towers,

From off their rocky steep,
Have cast their trembling shadow
For ages on the deep:
Mountain, and lake, and valley,

A sacred legend know,

Of how the town was saved, one night,
Three hundred years ago.

Far from her home and kindred,

A Tyrol maid had fled,

To serve in the Swiss valleys,

And toil for daily bread;

And every year that fleeted

So silently and fast,

Seemed to bear farther from her

The memory of the Past.