arrival, suffered no diminution, while their playing together of course brought to the treasury large receipts. It must not be forgotten that it was many years after Cooke's death that he achieved his high reputation as William Tell, Virginius, Damon, Ordono in " Remorse," as well as in several parts of comedy,-Charles Surface, The Liar, Petruchio, Leon, Duke Aranza, and others.

Cooper's powers of locomotion, however, were sometimes independent of animal aid; for we find that, in 1802, he undertook to walk to Baltimore, 104 miles, in less time than a friend could ride there without change of horse. This wager he won with little exertion, arriving in fit condition to act that evening. It is probable that he owed much of his uncommon health to his frequent journeys and change of air.

A strong proof of his skilful firmness occurred during his New York management, on occasion of producing the pantomime of Cinderella. Much labour and expense were lavished upon this beautiful dumb piece, which relying solely on music and action combined, demanded nicety and care. The band, however, had, on several occasions, exhibited the most insolent neglect of the rehearsals, and Cooper placed a notice in the music-room, to the effect, that all absentees from rehearsal would in future suffer such fines and forfeits, as were designated by the orchestra rules and their several contracts. The appeal was in vain; the fines were exacted, and a conspiracy determined on. On the "first night of Cinderella," an audience, forming a receipt of fifteen hundred dollars, was assembled, and on ringing the orchestra bell for the overture, Mr. Hewitt, the leader, was informed by the ringleader, that the whole orchestra was determined not to play a note, until the whole sum forfeited by their absence should be refunded. Here was a situation! He rushed almost speechless to Cooper's room, and unfolded the plot. Cooper coolly asked, "Can you play the music?"

"Why yes, sir; I have been practising it before your eyes for three weeks; but how am I to get through a pantomime without aid ?”

"We shall see," said Cooper. He at once went before the audience, stated the full particulars, with much regret at the position in which

the theatre was placed. He then frankly proposed two alternatives for the decision of the audience: the first, to receive back their entrancemoney, if desired; the next-and a droll one it was-that as there was so large an audience, and many, doubtless, were unwilling to be deprived of their amusement, by the freaks of underlings. he offered to them Cinderella, led and played solely by Mr. Hewitt; with the assurance that on its next representation, the orchestra should be full and certain. This proposal caused a momentary titter, but was followed by a good-natured acquiescence on the part of the public. He also promised the dismissal of all the offenders; and rigidly fulfilled it. The piece was then withdrawn for two or three days, and reproduced, with a splendid band, to a long series of full houses. Few instances can be found of more tact and propriety, or of the performance of a musical piece with one violin, and that satisfactorily to the audience.

From the moment of his last return from England, although cherished as usual by the public, it was evident that Cooper felt his power declining; and decided on retiring from the stage. After several splendid benefits in New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Boston, he made his last bow to the audience. His destiny, however, seemed to be public to the last. The marriage of his amiable and accomplished daughter to Mr. Robert Tyler, afforded him the advantage of presidential patronage, and in Nov., 1841, he was appointed military storekeeper to the arsenal, Frankford, Pa., with the pay and perquisites of a captain of infantry; which office was soon after discontinued, as unnecessary. He was, however, amply compensated for this loss, by the lucrative office of surveyor of the port. At the close of this appointment he was made one of the inspectors, first at Philadelphia, and afterwards at New York, a situation he held until a short time before his death, which took place at Bristol, under all the affectionate care and attention of Mrs. Tyler. It would be unjust to the memory of Mr. Cooper, to omit the creditable fact, that, in all his official situations, he evinced the same pure devotion to his duties, as marked his dramatic career. Punctuality and rigid correctness pervaded his whole life.

"Он, man alive! did you ever do any courting?" was the sudden question put by a handsome young naval officer to a pale and grave young clergyman. They were sitting in a little group gathered on the portico of a sea-shore hotel, chatting pleasantly in the moonlight, while they watched the waves breaking lightly on the smooth beach before them. Beside the young divine sat one, whom Lieutenant Mertoun had mistaken for his sister, who could have testified that he had done a good deal of the work in question.

"It is a cruel business, sir. It is the hardest work that ever a man bent his back to. I declare, it starts the cold drops on my forehead just to think of it."

Lieutenant Mertoun's quiet little wife cast down her modest eyes, and looked as if she need not have proved so hard a conquest. "Oh, Charlie!" she faintly remonstrated, but he went

on.

"Such new suits as it cost me! such hair-cutting, and combing, and curling! When I had been an hour under process of aggravation, I used to hurry down the street, with my cap set jauntingly on one side, for no earthly purpose but to take it off with a flourish, and display my handsome locks in a passing bow to my lady at her window. There were no free-and-easy summer jackets for a fellow then-no comfortable cigars, smoking was a bliss out of the question. Why, bless you, sir, a man must not even spit!"

"Oh, Charlie!" was this time more successful; but I may as well go on to tell what I afterwards learned were the real difficulties which had been overcome in this uncommonly severe case of courtship.

Adah Willington was the only and well-beloved child of a wealthy merchant, in the City of Brotherly Love, a grave and portly man, and a prominent member of the Society of Friends. She was a good and gentle girl, who had few faults, and but one misfortune, that of having a great deal more beauty than she had any use for in the secluded life she led.

This was a constant inducement to a wellmeaning, but injudicious fashionable lady, her mother's cousin, to draw her out from her monotonous home, for the eclat of exhibiting her. And it was not very strange that Adah liked the variety of an occasional visit to Mrs. Morland.

It was at Mrs. Morland's that the gay young Lieutenant, known, when off cruise, as Charlie Mertoun, first saw pretty Adah Willington, and her rare beauty gave to her precise little ways and her quaint dialect, a piquancy perfectly irresistible. Adah must be his bride, and so the dashing young sailor threw his whole undaunted soul into the preposterous enterprise of wooing and winning the little Quaker maiden. After several ineffectual attempts, he gave up all hope of conciliating the father, who could see no worthiness out of the shelter of a broad-brimmed hat, and to

whom his warlike profession rendered him espe cially obnoxious. With the mother he might, in time, have succeeded in winning favour; but her religious scruples were strong. Adah belonged by birthright among "the plain people." She must not "marry out of Society."

But it was with good little Adah herself that the hardest part of his task was to be done. It was not so difficult to persuade her into full belief in his own perfections, for his bright eye, his graceful floating locks, his merry laugh, his free step, and his buoyant spirit, were powerful auxiliaries; but to upset all her previous ideas of right and wrong, to supplant father and mother in her affections, to bring her at least to brave the opprobrium of forsaking her sect, and marrying him from her cousin's house without the sanction of her parents, must have been a formidable work. But he accomplished it.

I may as well go on to tell their whole story, as I afterwards learned it. Friend Willington swore-nay, he affirmed-that he would never more see his erring child. She had chosen her lot in life, and she must abide by her choice. It was distinct from that of her parents, and it should be kept so; so he forbade to the yearning heart of her mother, any intercourse, or the transmission of any token of forgiveness.

This was the secret grief which gave such a pensive character to the lovely face, and such a subdued and quiet manner to the Lieutenant's little wife. She spoke in a tremulous, appealing way, as if she would deprecate censure, and move pity. But she spoke very little, for she shrank from society. She had given up all for her husband, and now nothing seemed to interest her but him. His footstep, after a day's absence, would thrill her with visible electricity. She sprang into his arms with quivering lips, and such a modulation of “Oh, Charlie!” as had a world of tenderness in it. Never were two words susceptible of so many shades of meaning as these. When the young father would take their beautiful child in his arms, and comment upon it in his lively, rattling way, criticising its features, and saying, "It will die, Adah, it will die it is too fat to live!" her remonstrance was all comprised in “Oh, Charlie!"

A sudden professional summons for "Charlie," took the Mertouns away from the watering-place where I met them, and it was not till some years after that I heard of them again. Then I learned the sad sequel of their young romance.

Lieutenant Mertoun had been ordered to the Mediterranean, and, at Adah's earnest entreaty, had left her at lodgings in a rural suburb of the city of her father's residence. The hope which had prompted this, was partially gratified. The beloved mother more than once visited the err ing daughter, and comforted her affectionate heart with full forgiveness. Time wore away, and Adah was now looking forward to the

return of her idolized husband, and rejoicing over the miniature "Charlie," an infant of a few days old, which she would place in his arms, when a letter was imprudently put into her hands, announcing that he had been suddenly ordered to the Pacific, and might be absent for years. Her feeble frame sank under the overwhelming disappointment, and she died with the murmur of the beloved name upon her lips. Then, all too late, the stern father came to look in anguish upon the face of his dead child, to lay her in the grave, and take her babes to his home, and to the yearning heart of her mother.

There are more romances than one dreams of, scattered up and down in life, and wooings and weddings are the very hinge on which they turn. Every home, with its superstructure of family love, is based upon one of these heart-histories, which lives imperishable in its archives. These records are often a hidden hoard, visited only at long intervals, but ever available for strengthening and solace amidst the waste and spiritual wear and tear of life. This retreat into the past is a little stronghold of poetry, where it maintains itself against the prosaic and the actual, which make up the staple of life; and the farther we recede from our youth, the more we prize it, till age grows garrulous over its recollections. However homely and wearisome the duties of the matron's routine, she can remember one period of her life which was a veritable piece of fairy-land, where she queened it for her brief hour. She may know in her heart that she never was beautiful, but she is sure that her John once thought she was, and that is as good to her as if it had been true; while he, good man, though deeply conscious that there was never much of the hero about him, looks back with great satisfaction upon a time when Susan Staples thought he was quite too good to be refused. These cherished remembrances may have been all the while but a brace of delusions. The flattered Susan may have been chiefly charmed with the young woman who could captivate John Gray, and John's self-complacent thoughts may have been mainly occupied with the nice young man whom Susan could not withstand. It may seem to corroborate this view of the case, that the good wife's choicest relic is usually a fragment, not of the bridegroom's coat or waistcoat, but of her own wedding-gown.

Be that as it may, years of wedlock have shown to both the husband, and the wife, that neither the youth nor the maiden had all the fine qualities with which, in the rosy light of those days, they stood mutually invested, so that these lovers' apotheoses must have been in some sense delusions; but they were right pleasant fantasies, and they are cherished, even when detected as falla

cies, for they are pleasant and consolatory still, and are retained even when they might be safely dismissed. They have been replaced by something a great deal better, that unwavering trust and

durable affection which is the growth of years of mutual reliance, and thorough knowledge of one another; but still the glance turns ever fondly back to the love of youth, the one "fountain with palms" in life's pilgrimage.

These wooing days, then, living in remembrance as the flower and climax of our mortal days, could they have been so painful in progress? Is courtship the "cruel business" it has

been represented? Ah, but that must depend upon circumstances. Hard, indeed, must it have been for some to recommend themselves; others might safely have trusted their own good qualities to be their advocates.

What then is this wooing? Wherein lies the speciality of it? How is it proceeded towards, and progressed in? Analyze it for us-give us the philosophy of it-detail its history and mystery.

Reader, of all the leaves of the forest, never two were notched and veined into perfect similitude; and I opine, that could I set forth to thee in full, ten suits in this court of High Chance-ry, I should but weave for thee ten tales, diverse in web and woof.

"Wouldst thou gain the love of a woman," saith one oracle, "ply her with flattery. Fill her to the brim with self-love; then shall all that runneth over be thine." We apprehend, however, that this course may have its after disadvantages, since the cup must be kept filled. Set forth upon the classic pages of Sir Charles Grandison, wooing is a series of genuflections-of picturesque bowings, while the sword projects stiffly behind,-of ecstatic castings up of the whites of the eyes,-of expressive layings of the wristberuffled hand upon a heart, supposed to be beating under a stiff brocade waistcoat; it is a windy tempest of sighs and vows, ending, if successful, in a reverential pressure of the lips on the delicate tips of a fair lady's fingers, while the circumference of a hoop interposes to restrain the lover's rapture which might seek to clasp the beloved object. Set forth by Dickens, it is simply a cool sending forth of the announcement that "Barkis is willing," and writing in chalk upon the tilt of the cart the name of the candidate who has the refusal of the situation. Here a learned professor finds the root of the matter in a certain pithy conciseness and stern brevity: "Madam, I am Job Exegesis. Will you have me or leave me?" Another carries his matrimonial negotiation through a correspondence which might fill three folios.

With some, courtship is a poetic furor. What female heart could withstand such a plaint as this, which has seen actual service.

"Go now, my dear verces, my wishes impart

To Miss Lucy, the maiden what conquered my hart!
Go tell her her charms to all charms I perfer;
That all my fond wishes are wished about her;
That I dream of her nightly, and sigh for my pain,
As I wride o'er my farm, and return back again.
Oh, who can tell what I endure?

I never felt such feelings before!" Staunch-hearted West-Virginia lover! surely this moan came from thee only in extremis. With young Jonathan the case is something different. Wooing is with him a sort of process of incubation;-" -" he comes, and sets, and sets." There is real philosophy, as well as solemnity, in many a Yankee courtship. It is carried on mainly on Sunday nights. The stiff "Sabba'd'y suit," the

stout black-balled boots, know their way to the right house, where the right girl sits patiently waiting for the accustomed arrival.

"She hears a foot, and knows it, too,
A-rasping on the scraper."

There, sitting on the edge of his chair, the wooer sees the father, if propitious, twirl his thumbs, and the maiden look pleased and con

scious. He can read the signs;-what is the use, of words in the case? Jonathan always saves what there is no use in spending. It is all a taken-for-granted thing, as long as he keeps coming, and she stays at home from singingschool, and takes none of the hundred other ways of letting him know that his attentions are not acceptable. He goes on upon trust, and fences in his farm, and builds his modest house; she, with answering confidence, gets up piles of snowy napery, and numberless patchwork counterpanes. Should they, after all, change their minds, there is no chance of an action for breach of promise, since nothing is said about marriage till the wedding-day is appointed. They don't change their minds, however; to the honour of that section of the country be it said, such bonds hold.

possible that he has been inflicting similar sufferings? Poor, patient, unobtrusive woman! how often she is rejected, by being simply overlooked! How little liberty of choice has she! How unfortunate for her happiness, should she instinetively make a choice, since she is denied the consolation of advocating her own cause! Woman's tactics are very simple. She ranges herself under one of two schools. "Never believe any man is in love with you till he tells you so," is the wholesome maxim of the Conservatives, handed down through generations, from mother to daughter. Many a delusion has it warded off, and done duty as sentinel before the door of many an innocent heart. But it bears hard upon the wooers, since it is wilfully blind to every manifestation of preference short of an explicit declaration. The motto of the opposite school, which

"Dear Doctor, I want a wife, and should be glad to marry one of your girls. You know me, and so do they. If either of them is willing, please let me know."

The father did let him know that they all de

clined.

What shall be said of the wooings that never come to weddings? Why, simply this: that some of the best lessons of life have been learned in the school of Rejected Addresses. A truly sensible woman remarks, that a man is not fit for a woman's acceptance till he has been six times refused. Punch is doubtless of the same mind, when he maintains that it is an excellent thing to have the conceit taken out of us. But that by no means comprises the full benefit of the course. It may, indeed, be true of some, that

"Experience has been theirs, And taught them nothing; where they erred, they err,"

but it is because costly discipline has been wasted on incapable souls.

True love for a worthy object seldom fails to exert an elevating and refining influence; and the high ambition inspired in a manly heart, to prove that it deserved what it failed to attain, is a noble stimulus to effort. It would be a curious investigation to trace all that has been achieved in literature, in science, the arts, or in enterprises for the advancement of human happiness, under the natural impulse to take a noble revenge on some heart which failed to appreciate true worth. The obdurate Laura was Petrarch's best

muse.

There is consolation, too, in the certainty that these mischances are not the result of want of skill. The mistake is the radical one of the person, not the minor one of the mode of advance. "Matches are made in heaven," but how shall man recognise his predestined mate? Some, indeed, have relied much on certain spiritual knockings in the region of the heart; but hearts have been known to beat violently for the wrong person.

Every disappointed man, who will but look well about him, may detect the shy glance of sympathy, which, if he be wise, will direct him to better success. While he has been enduring the mortification of an unsuccessful pursuit, is it not

your lovers; never allow a preference which you do not mean to encourage to come to open proposals.” This is heroic, and generous to the antagonist; but, in a world of infatuations, it seems hardly safe. It views every man who approaches as a wooer, whose case must be immediately decided upon, and met by prompt encouragement or repulsion. Alas for the credulous heart of woman, prone to read the omens by its wishes! Alas for the poor dupe of her own vanity, when she attempts the sanative course with one who is in no danger from her charms!

In this lower

Alas for poor womankind! world, where we "marry, and are given in marriage," how much of the heroism and self-sacrifice is to be done by her! How much beauty and pathos there is in her simple trust, and quiet waiving of her just claims! Here, more than a thousand miles from his native New England, is a young mechanic, enterprising and prosperous. Houses rise under his steady hammer, and, by and by, one rises for himself. To furnish it within, and plant trees and shrubbery in the little door-yard, gives ample employment for his leisure. As I pass, a cheerful fire burns on the hearth, and good Mr. Travers, the minister, sits before it in a comfortable arm-chair. The

sound of a distant stage-horn is heard, and the young householder rushes from the door, in some apparent excitement. Before many minutes, there is the bustle of an arrival. Substantial trunks are lifted from the baggage-rack, and set within the door; and, last of all, assisted to alight by our young man, his face glowing with delight, comes a young woman, on whose Father Travers understands now why he has pretty face smiles and blushes are contending. been invited there. A few minutes suffice for the marriage-service, in expectation of which the fair betrothed has come all the way from Vermont to Georgia. Is not this proof of a true woman's devotion to the interests of the beloved object? If it is not, the energy with which she uses a genuine Shaker broom on the walk before the door, and drapes the windows with the white curtains she has brought for them, prove her determination to make for the young man a genuine Yankee home.

Observance more scanty still has satisfied the loving heart of woman. A Western lawyer is starting for a distant circuit court. After a few miles of rough riding through the woods, he meets a man on horseback, with a woman riding

behind him, who inquires of him respecting the magistrate of the town he has left. "I am the magistrate. What do you want? I can't turn back."-"I want to be married to this woman.' -"You do, hey? Young woman, this man says he wants to marry you. Are you agreed ?"— "Yes."-"Well, then, you are married. Just move along."

My readers are doubtless, ere this, prepared to admit that few general principles can be laid down on the subject under discussion. The hic labor, hic opus est, is hard to be pointed out, and the treatise entitled Wooing made Easy, is yet to be written. The wisdom of centuries of experience has, however, embodied itself in one maxim, "Faint heart never won fair lady;" in corroboration of which, I propose to relate a true history, and that it may have due prominence, it shall occupy a section, per se, and stand forth as

THE WOOING OF HARRY DINWIDDIE.

It rained all night, and a company of travellers were almost suffocated in the closely-buttoned-up stage coach, in which we were moving at a tedious pace, over roads which were simply beds of clinging red clay. There was more lateral than onward motion, for we went down into a deep rut on one side, and then, with a sudden jerk, out of that and into one somewhat deeper, on the other. In one of these hasty transitions, snap went a spring of the clumsy old vehicle, and the united force of the company was put in requisition to substitute a rail, which, by the light of a lantern, we abstracted from a zigzag Virginia fence. This change gave an undue elevation to one side of the coach, making our seats an inclined plane, and added a bumping emphasis to each of our sudden descents. Since the blessed advent of railroads, few such experiences in life are now to be encountered, but if any one survives, whose fate it was to traverse through its weary length the upper or middle stage-route through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and onwards, he dreams of it yet. There were sudden halts for consultation-gullies to be crossed, where our driver chose to consider that our satisfaction and our safety, and the well-being of his horses, were all to be promoted by our walking half a mile or more, ankle or knee deep in mud. There were creeks to be forded, swollen from mere "drinks" into formidable rivers by the rain of a night. There were weariness, and hunger, and exasperation, for our promised supper that night was a moveable feast, which receded in our slow progress, and looked most inviting and tantalizing in the distance. How our weary bones ached for the two or three hours of sleep, which was the promised appendix of the supper! How cross we were, especially one man, who would bear the crowded inside no longer, but insisted on having a place on the top of the coach, among the baggage, where he stretched himself out to sleep, and was buckled down under the cover to take his chance of oversets. It was under these circumstances that I heard the tale of Dinwiddie's wooing, from the lips of the hero, who was our fellow-traveller. To appreciate it, one should have seen the man.

He was

deviating far from the lines of the beautiful. His keen black eyes twinkled with merriment, and to make his appearance more comical, as day broke on this wretched company, he had received a fanciful decoration from a pellet of mud, which had settled upon his shirt-front like a breastpin. He alone was good-natured. Every fresh disaster was food for his mirth, even to the broken tire and huge gap in the wheel, threatening to break down at every revolution, for which there was no remedy but to push on till it did break.

“Never mind, if it should break," said the imperturbable man, "we shall come down lightly, at the rate we go. I have been concerned in more hopeless enterprises than this. Let me tell you a story of what patience did for me in my difficulties. Ahem!

"A frog he would a-wooing go,'

and so, once upon a time, would I, though I was in no haste, for I waited till I was no longer a very young man, before it occurred to me that I wanted a wife. This was because I never had seen a woman whom I fancied, and I am sure no woman had ever taken a fancy to me, for you can readily see that I never was very charming. But my hour was to come.

"I was walking one day with a friend through the principal street of the small town of B., when we met a lady. I caught one look at her modest face, and said to my friend,

"Tell me who that lady is, and I will marry her.'

"Marry her, indeed!' said he, with a laugh; you are crazy.'

"Tell me who she is.'

"She is Miss Margaret Clifton, of C., South Carolina.'

"What is she doing here?'

"She is in the Moravian school here. Marry her, indeed! The girls of the Moravian school have nothing to do with marriage. They are as saintly as nuns, and are as grave and decorous as if the world were a great chapel, made to sing psalms in. I should just like to see you try to speak to her.'

"I have no idea of trying it. But it is true, notwithstanding, that I will marry her.'

"I saw no more of Miss Clifton, but hastened home to my business, for this was in the spring, and the crop was to be started. Every true Virginia planter is his own overseer. The corn was up and ploughed for the first time, the tobacco fields were set with thrifty young plants; everything on the plantation was in perfect order, and matters put in such a train, that nothing would suffer in my absence; and then I set out on my enterprise.

"To B. I went; and there I learned that the fair lady of whom I was in quest, had gone to her home in South Carolina.

"So to South Carolina I went; and one fine morning I stood at the door of a stately mansion in the city of C., and inquired if Miss Clifton was at home. She soon came to me, and looked at me with grave astonishment, when I told her frankly that I had come to marry her.