she went, and to sleep she went; and while her father listened approvingly to the sound doctrine and well-turned sentences of Mr. Snorer's discourse, the nasal twang and monotonous cadence of the good preacher had their customary lulling effect on the senses of several of the congregation; but I doubt if any one of them was visited with so singular a dream, as occurred to poor Louisa, during her stolen slumbers.

The silly girl had read in one of her French lessons, a certain fanciful story, called the 'Palace of Truth,' and she now fancied the sacred edifice converted into such an abode, and Mr. Snorer's motley congregation subjected to the involuntary betrayal of their inmost thoughts. Even her respected father did not escape. He, good man, listened with profound attention, to be sure; but instead of the spirit of piety, an imp of sectarian intolerance occupied his mind; and all the arguments of the worthy Mr. Snorer were treasured there, as offensive and defensive weapons, wherewith to carry on a wordy war (fighting still under the banner of the Prince of Peace,) with certain of his heretical neighbors. Even in her dream, Louisa felt sorely grieved at her imagined discovery of how very, very far her father's spirit of religious controversy led him from the path of true christianity.

арра

A gentleman who sat in the next pew, was wide awake, and rently attentive; but when his thoughts were laid bare, they were found to consist of interesting calculations touching his earthly stores; while his wife, a notable house-keeper, was laying thrifty plans of domestic economy, her eyes at the same time fixed steadfastly on the minister, whose discourse she seemed to be devouring with both her

ears.

A young lawyer was next subjected to the ordeal, and his mind presented such a medley of incongruous ideas, of shallow learning and vain conceits, that there was no room for devotion; and Louisa was glad to pass him by, and take a peep at the thoughts of his next neighbor, a brother lawyer, and, to casual observers, his counterpart in mental endowments; but there was a great contrast in the inner man. All wandering fancies were banished, and his high intellectual powers were turned attentively to the sermon of good Mr. Snorer, to whom he was listening, as he had often done before, wishing and hoping to draw instruction from his words; something to satisfy the cravings of a religious heart. But he was disappointed, as usual, and fell into criticisms on the preacher; pronouncing him 'dry,' 'phlegmatic,' and wholly uninteresting.'

An old bachelor sat near, a regular attendant on divine service; a religious man; a man who admitted no excuse for those misguided individuals who pass through this weary pilgrimage 'without God in the world. There at least Louisa expected to find a well-regulated mind, properly devoted to the exercises of the day. But it was not so. The good man's heart was wandering after his eyes among the younger and fairer portion of the congregation; though he felt half disposed to quarrel with them for looking so pretty in their Sunday bonnets, that he could not keep his eyes off them. Louisa smiled archly, with malicious glee, when she found which way the old bachelor's thoughts were straying, and she dreamed that he stretched out his hand to

seize her, and take his revenge; but she stepped back, and turned demurely toward a pew, where reclined a gentleman with perfumed handkerchief in one hand, and on the other a kid glove. This young man was one of Louisa's beaux, and she felt curious to know whether Mr. Snorer's preaching produced any effect on his mind. But to her surprise, she could not find that he had any mind. There was a vacuum in its place! It was a mere puppet, dressed up in the externals of good society!

Louisa turned to some young acquaintance of her own sex, and, as she expected, found them with their frivolous thoughts intent upon dress, running up and down the scale of fashion, with the same monotonous perseverance with which young ladies are taught to run their scales on the piano. When their eyes lighted on a new and expensive dress, well garnished with feathers, and furbelows, and all the paraphernalia of fashion, they might be considered at the top scale; and down their silly thoughts ran again, when a dowdy object met their view.

There was one lady, whose handsome face and brilliant eyes had often excited Louisa's admiration. They seemed capable of expressing the pure intellectual sentiments of an elevated mind; but Louisa dreamed that the fine qualities of this beautiful girl were obscured by pride and vanity; and even in church, these prevailed, to the exclusion of feelings better befitting the occasion. Perhaps, thought Louisa, if the preacher's words reached her heart, for a heart she has of innate worth, beating beneath that lovely form, if the preacher's words touched one chord there, it might respond in a nobler strain. But the discourse did not fix her attention, for which it would be hard to blame poor Mr. Snorer; and Louisa found her contemptuously scrutinizing the mean apparel of some humble-looking strangers in a pew before her. Mother and daughter they appeared to be, and were, as Louisa remarked, any thing but well dressed. However, though the outside was mean, there was worth beneath it. In the heart of the old lady dwelt the piety which passeth show;' nor was her daughter destitute of devotional feeling; but at that moment, a sad struggle was going on in her mind. She felt herself meanly attired, in the midst of wealth and fashion. Poverty seemed to hang about her as a garment; and she was striving in vain to conquer this unworthy sense of debasement, by every lesson in favor of meekness and humility, that christianity had taught her. Mortification had entered her young heart, and envy stood in the portal. How can I pray here, thought she, amid looks of scorn, and eyes of cold inquiry? 'Go into thy closet and shut the door;' these words seemed to be ringing in her ears, and she longed for the sanctity of solitude, to relieve her from feelings which were at war with devotion. When she raised her head, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes suffused with tears. It was the blush of false shame; the tears were those of mor tified pride; and as her mother at the same moment raised her head, there was a remarkable contrast in the expression of tranquil resignation in her pale countenance. Louisa was gazing on them both, with much interest, and preparing to search deeper into their hearts, when a bustle in the congregation awakened her. Mr. Snorer had reached the end of his sermon, and very soon he and father Somnus

stalked off together; and Louisa walked silently home. On arriving there, she hastened to her mother's room, and exclaimed as she entered, 'Oh! mother! I have had such a dream!'

'A dream, Louisa?' said her mother, in an incredulous tone. ‘I cannot think you have been sleeping in church again!'

6

That was a matter of course, I am sorry to say,' replied Louisa ; 'but my dream, dear mother; will you hear my dream?'

Silence gave consent, and Louisa recounted her silly vision, as related above; at the conclusion of which, her mother yawned several times; and then remarked, that if dreams were any criterion of the disposition of the dreamer, Louisa must stand accused of great want of charity in her interpretation of her neighbors' thoughts.

STANZAS

WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF AN INVALID IN ITALY.

BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

LAND of the mighty past!

Land of the sword and harp, the loved and brave,

Of gifts too bright to last,

Land of Art's trophies, and of Glory's grave!

Of thee a boon I seek!

Not for wealth's minion, or the heir of power,
But for the pure and meek,

A wounded bird, a sorrow-stricken flower.

From a cold, craggy strand,

Freedom's last haunt, she courts thy genial sky;
O wake the zephyrs bland,

To round her cheek, and light her drooping eye!

By the devotion true

Of him who hath her vows - his being's joy,
By the clear eye of blue,

And graceful ringlets of her eldest boy :

By the soft, winsome smiles,

And cherub archness of her second born,
And by the loving wiles

Of the young babe, her play-thing night and morn:

Restore the fond and fair,

Whose brow hath kept undimmed its light divine,
Whose locks of auburn hair

Have swept no altar-stone but nature's shrine.

What though the senseless air
Lists not to mortal call, but vagrant flies,
Regardless of my prayer,

To bring chill breezes and tempestuous skies?

Hope, lady, to the last!

Let votive faith thy constant solace be;

Time's bondage soon is past,

And heaven doth ever cherish such as thee!

SLEEPY HOLLOW.

BY GEOF PREY CRAYON, GENT.

HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to historic importance, under the pen of my revered friend and master, the sage historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence of the place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its odd name, and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning it, have rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the Lubber Land of mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for doubt, in consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich, to his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed a little from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very probably, by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a certain lurking taint of romance, whenever any thing connected with the Dutch was to be described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable error, on the part of my venerable and venerated friend, by presenting the reader with a more precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though I am not sure that I shall not be prone to lapse, in the end, into the very error I am speaking of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.

I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name, and the idea of something mystic and dreamy connected with it, that first led me, in my boyish ramblings, into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed to answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over it; it had not awakened to the stir of improvement, which had put all the rest of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good old long-forgotten fashions; the men were in homespun garbs, evidently the product of their own farms, and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard of sprawling, gnarled apple trees, and a garden, where the rose, the marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had its prolific little mansion, teeming with children; with an old hat nailed against the wall for the house-keeping wren; a motherly hen, under a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant chickens; a cool stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended to the long balancing pole, according to the antediluvian idea of hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel humming within doors, the patriarchal music of home manufacture.

The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed there from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had become so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As the families had grown larger, the farms had grown smaller, every

new generation requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming from the native hive. In this way, that happy golden mean had been produced, so much extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold, and very little silver. One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up this amiable mean, was a general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had read in their Bible, which was the only book they studied, that labor was originally inflicted upon man as a punishment of sin; they regarded it, therefore, with pious abhorrence, and never humiliated themselves to it, but in cases of extremity. There seemed, in fact, to be a league and covenant against it, throughout the Hollow, as against a common enemy. Was any one compelled, by dire necessity, to repair his house, mend his fences, build a barn, or get in a harvest, he considered it a great evil, that entitled him to call in the assistance of his friends. He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee,' or rustic gathering; whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid, like faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men, eager to overcome a job; and when it was accomplished, fell to eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing, for very joy that so great an amount of labor had been vanquished, with so little sweating of the brow.

Yet let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across the valley, and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant. The pigeon season had arrived! Every gun and net was forthwith in requisition. The flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade rusted in the garden; the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was to the hill side, and stubble-field, at day break, to shoot or entrap the pigeons, in their periodical migrations.

So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats upon the river; setting great stakes, and stretching their nets, like gigantic spider-webs, half across the stream, to the great annoyance of navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she equalizes rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely industrious with the fowling-piece and fishing net; and whenever a man is an indifferent farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For catching shad and wild pigeons, there were none throughout the country to compare with the lads of Sleepy Hollow.

As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name, that first beguiled me, in the holiday rovings of boyhood, into this sequestered region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought its retired haunts, far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico winds its wizard stream,' sometimes silently and darkly, through solemn woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders, in fresh green meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights, under the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the Pocantico. In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling. I loved to loiter along it, with rod in hand, watching my float as it whirled amid the eddies, or drifted into dark holes, under twisted roots and sunken logs, where the largest fish are