Rose and Lydia smiled at the deference and admiration with which even the oldest aristocrat regarded Mrs. Ames.

Dr. Ingersoll arrived to supper. Lydia offered him oysters. 'No,' said he,

'SAVE me from all eating cares,

Wrap me in soft Lydian airs.'

'O Doctor! you know you want some supper. I am too old to be taken in by your poetry.'

So the Doctor ate his oysters, and looked about with twinkling eyes, as he saw Mrs. Pendleton herself helping Mrs. Ames to some delicacy. Mr. and Mrs. Ames, or rather Captain A- and his wife, left Summerfield very soon. Lord John had found something for Captain A to do more fitted to his education than building railroads. We never saw them again; for the unforgiving father, having been called away to account for his own deeds, they went home to England, where they remained.

Lydia went with them, to the life-long regret of Summerfield. She kept up a vigorous correspondence with Rose, who waited patiently for her Gordon, and at length married him, when his profession was promising, and his political prospects (then the great hope and interest of all young Americans of talent) were high. He got to be this and that in the state, all of which pleased Rose much better than if she had married a man of rank, and been borne down

'WITH the burden of an honor,

Unto which she was not born.'

At last came a letter from Lydia, telling Rose of the marriage of Lord John (now Lord C. ) to a lady of rank and fortune. Lydia said she was all they could wish, and her dear nephew was very happy.

'Now, dear Rose,' she wrote, 'I am getting old, and I want to see you before I die. Your old friend, Lord C- and Lady C both wish me to ask you and your husband to spend the summer in England, at his house, where I, a shadow, flit about at twilight, but keep out of the sunlight, as all ghosts do. Come, dear Rose, and gladden your old friend's heart. Geraldine, too, is within a morning's drive, and longs to see you.'

Mr. and Mrs. Lee found it agreeable to themselves to accept this in vitation; and Rose, who had lost her dear old father, thought with tearful eyes of Lydia, who had been, next to him, the best friend of her youth.

When Lord John gave Rose his arm, at the entrance of his stately house, he looked with surprise at her now perfected beauty.

'I think I shall not be ashamed to present my transatlantic friend to Lady C!' he whispered to Rose.

They found Lady C handsome and charming. Secure in her lofty lineage and position, and in her own natural gifts, she felt no annoyance at her husband's admiration for the beautiful American; but cordially assisted him to amuse his guests.

.'s

They drove over the beautiful country. They looked at ruins hallowed by story. They breathed the healthful air. They enjoyed that perfection of liberty, of hospitality-an English country-house. They saw a delightful party of people gathered together in Lord C house, walking, driving, talking, when they pleased; and acknowledged that social life in England was far more perfect than social life in America. But a strong spirit animated them both to return and do what they could to improve their own dear land.

How proud and gratified was Rose, when she heard Gordon talking very well at dinner, in presence, too, of some of the best men of England. He was giving a rapid but graphic picture of the immense possibilities of America. He painted in few but glowing words her silver net-work of rivers, joining her scattered fragments in imperishable union. The wealth, which poured like Dana's shower into the hands of her hard-working people-the splendid pedestal which Industry and Energy were building, on which would some day rest the proud achievements of immortal Art.

Rose stole a furtive glance at Lord C. He was looking at her with a world of meaning in his eyes. He smiled slightly, and gave her a little nod.

SUMMERFIELD has connections now with the nobility. We speak often of our titled friends. Lydia is always mentioned as 'the Honorable Miss Hedd;' and we respect Rose very much more, that she might have been 'My Lady.' Occasionally, some lady, more intrepid than the rest, gets up several side-dishes, with infinite labor and pains, and we have a ladies' dinner.'

By the little gate, beloved, out by the little gate,

I lean, and listen for thy footfall: listen, watch, and wait:
The golden light fades in the west, a shade comes o'er the sky,
The dew-drop gathers on the leaf, the tear-drop fills my eye.

II.

Deep darkness drapes the valley round, and rests upon the hill,
The stars gaze at me mockingly, yet am I waiting still;
Waiting, praying, all for thee; dreaming of the days gone by:
The while, each breeze thy herald seems, and whispers thou art nigh.

III.

A light, a soft, pale, silv'ry light, o'erspreads yon mountain brow;

The cold moon comes, the stars grow pale: where, wanderer, loiterest thou?
Hark! to the step I know so well!-beloved, thou lingerest not;
Be still, my poor, impatient heart, thou art not quite forgot.

M. B.

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND.

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND was born in Philadelphia on the fifteenth day of August, in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-four. His every-day life has doubtless been that which characterizes our unromantic age; and as with most intellectual men, marked rather by the gradual development of his ideas than by the astonishing strokes of his fortune. Mr. Leland passed through an honorable collegiate career at Princeton, and graduated in the year eighteen hundred and forty-five. Immediately after taking his first degree, he embarked for Europe, and passed the flower of his youth, like a scholar of the middle age, either in wandering from one great university to another, pursuing various courses of study at his different resting-places, or in gathering that peculiar knowledge of men and things which comes only from the changing scenes of travel. Such a life must have been strictly in accordance with Mr. Leland's tastes; and by the longing looks which he sometimes casts behind him, we should infer that he abandoned his studentlife with no common regret. After some years, however, he returned to America, adopted the profession of the law, which he soon abandoned for the more genial pursuits of literature. With whatever success Mr. Leland's career in the law might have been attended, we are of the opinion that he chose wisely; for nature designed him rather as a curious scholar, and a skilful literary teacher, than as an ordinary legal drudge.

The American who adopts literature as a profession, can certainly be influenced by no sordid motives. He must look to the exercise of his art as the only recompense for his labor. There is no country under the sun, as far advanced in civilization, in which literary reward, both in fame and pay, is so slight as in America. The reasons for such a state of things lie all around us, and are too obvious to need more than a passing remark. As our literature offers few inducements either to ambition or to avarice, the vocation of the writer has sunk so low, in the estimation of a people morbidly addicted to both these passions, that a professed literary man is looked upon with the same pitying contempt that humanity gives to the strolling mendicant. Indeed the profession of the writer is considered to be no profession whatever; and the man who has the hardihood to utter a volume, is glad to shelter himself from the jeers of his friends behind his law books, or his vials, or his merchandise, or his completed fortune, and there blush for the hapless venture of his wits. It is in vain to point, by way of extenuation, to certain Americans who have gained both reputation and money by their writings, while the country really affords no such thing as a distinct class of literary men. Apart from the editors of newspapers, where shall we find a body of men, however innumerous, who earn their daily bread by the pen alone? Summon a meeting of American authors, and whence do they come? Bryant drops the editorial paste and scissors, Longfellow rises from the professor's chair, Prescott and

Bancroft issue from their drawing-rooms; some bounce up from lawyers' desks, others leap down from merchants' stools, or appear in the robes of the priest, or in the apron of the mechanic; but nowhere can we recognize one who bears about him those unmistakable marks of his calling by which a literary man is so easily distinguished in France or Germany, or even in money-loving England. If we might by accident light upon any one incautious enough to declare himself a professed litterateur, the distinctive badge of his occupation would probably be a thread-bare coat, or a shirtless back, or any other strong mark of peripatetic pauperism; instead of the neat array of the well-dressed, full-bearded, opera-going gentleman, of London or Paris, who drives his brougham down to a publisher's shop, and exchanges his intellectual wealth for the coarser necessities that are represented by gold and silver. We have no desire to sneer at the few miserable types of American authorhood, whose inner and outer wealth contrast so strangely; on the contrary, we are filled with shame and indignation at their deplorable condition, and at the legislative stupidity that offers them up as victims to the niggardly reprinters of a rival literature. We only state facts which no spectator can deny. The remedy lies upon the very face of the evil. But while this indiscriminate reproduction of modern English literature is thrust upon us - as that which must and shall form the staple of our reading-all hopes of literary dignity, and of literary nationality, may as well be abandoned in America. Why this should be allowed is a mystery to us. Why Americans should tamely imbibe the very essence of aristocratic ideas; ideas which we assume to regard as explodedrather than encourage

a new growth of republican letters, is only to be accounted for by supposing our intellects to be still under British servitude, and desperately in need of a second declaration of mental independence.

The previous remarks have naturally occurred to us, while turning over the critical and miscellaneous works of the author who forms the subject of this article. His writings, which cover a large circle of literature, from the most abstruse philosophical criticism, to the lightest essays and the most dashing poems, are of striking originality both in form and in spirit. If we were called upon to give a list of authors whose works least resemble any of the present generation, Mr. Leland's name would certainly stand among the first. The wonderful amount and variety of his learning, and the facility with which he uses it on all occasions, and for all purposes, belong to a race of writers whose last genuine type departed with the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy.' This class has afforded but very few specimens. The fathers of the style were Rabelais in France, and Burton in England. Between their time and Southey's, a period of nigh three centuries, scarcely a name of any distinction can be mentioned. Those who won reputation in the Rabelaisan field were, at the best, but mere imitators of their great master. Burton himself had too much of the Classic, and too little of the Gothic element in his composition, to stamp him as a true disciple; while Southey's Doctor,' in spite of his ostentatious display of learning, was evidently written by one who assumed a style, for the nonce, to which he was not accustomed, and it therefore lacked