SIMMS.

HE country residence of William Gilmore Simms is on

THE

the plantation of his father-in-law, Mr. Roach, in Barnwell District, South Carolina, near Midway, a railway station, at just half the distance between Charleston and Augusta. Here he passes half the year, the most agreeable half in that climate, its pleasant winter, and portions of its spring and autumn-in a thinly settled country divided into large plantations, principally yielding cotton, with smaller fields of maize, sweet potatoes, pea-nuts, and other productions of the region, to which the sugar-cane has lately been added.

Forests of oak, and of the majestic long-leaved pine, surround the dwelling, interspersed with broad openings, and stretch far away on all sides. In the edge of one of them are the habitations of the negroes by whom the plantation is cultivated, who are indulgently treated and lead an easy life. The bridle-roads through these noble forests, over the hard white sand from which rise the lofty stems of the pines, are very beautiful. Sometimes they

wind by the borders of swamps, green in midwinter with the holly, the red bay, and other trees that wear their leaves throughout the year, among which the yellow jessamine twines itself and forms dense arbors, perfuming the air in March to a great distance with the delicate odor of its blossoms. In the midst of these swamps rises the tall Virginia cypress, with its roots in the dark water, the summer haunt of the alligator, who sleeps away the winter in holes made under the bank. Mr. Simms, both in his poetry and prose, has made large and striking use of the imagery supplied by the peculiar scenery of this region.

The house is a spacious country dwelling, without any pretensions to architectural elegance, comfortable for the climate, though built without that attention to what a South Carolinian would call the unwholesome exclusion of the outer air which is thought necessary in these colder latitudes. Around it are scattered a number of smaller buildings of brick, and a little further stand rows and clumps of evergreens-the water-oak, with its glistening light-colored foliage, the live-oak, with darker leaves, and the Carolina bird-cherry, one of the most beautiful trees of the South, blooming before the winter is past, and murmuring with multitudes of bees. In one of the lower rooms of this dwelling, in the midst of a well chosen library, many of the works which comprise the numerous catalogue of Mr. Simms's works were written.

Mr. Simms was born April 17, 1806, in the State of South Carolina. It was at first intended that he should study medicine, but his inclinations having led him to the law, he devoted himself to the study of that profession. His literary