incline over me? Many a sweet summer hour did she sit here by my side, or blithely bound over the lawn, clapping her little hands for joy that summer was come. Then would she skip from flower to flower along the dell, and having woven, with tiny hands, a wreath, steal with light. steps around my study-chair and crown me with a chaplet, to recall me from my dreamy reverie. Her fair hand failed never to smooth from my brow the wrinkles of sorrow or of care. Her voice to my soul was music-music sweeter than Eolian melody or the Orphean Lyre. Her soul was a mine of gems and of gold. Her heart was a fountain of affection, welling up spontaneous and pure from exhaustless depths.

One evening, in the merry month of May, she was rambling with me about this shady glen, and about the garden walks of home, till the fading twilight sent us to repose. To the night succeeded a morning of intense anxiety. There was hurrying to and fro about the house, and flitting forms of physicians and friends passed and repassed by me, as I was watching intent over my sick and dying child. Another night-a night of bitter agony, a night of intense anguish, a night of dying hope, a night of despair-passed slow and sad away. Another morning came-the morning of the holy Sabbath came. bright and beautiful; but I can only remember the voice of wailing and of woe in my once happy home, the melancholy tones of the bell of death pealing on the air, the long funeral procession, the open grave, and by the side of it a coffin with its lid upraised, and in that coffin my own little Emma Rosabelle, with the sunlight of heaven beaming bright on her cold, pale, yet beautiful face. We buried her buried her here in this rural spot. "When I am dead," said she, a few days before she fell sick, "they will not bury me in the cold graveyard, but they will bury me in the bower among the flowers, and my

father and my mother will come and sit by me." So we buried her here, in this lovely bower, and for her sake we call it Rosabower.

Here she still sleeps. Unbroken are her slumbers, undisturbed her repose. She wakes not, though I call her long and loud. She sleeps on, though her poor mother, with a disconsolate heart, often kneels in prayer over her grave; though her only sister, at morning and at evening, strews flowers over the spot; and though her little brother, often as he passes by, sighs for the lost companion of his childhood. She slumbers on, though spring after spring has returned with its music and gladness, though summer after summer, with its flowers and its fruits, has come and gone, though autumn after autumn has strewed her grave with fallen leaves, and though winter after winter has howled, drear and bleak, with its wild winds, over the landscape.

To me there seems something bright and beautiful gone from earth. There is a blank in life. A cloud is on my brow, a shadow on my heart. Yet would I not call back my child to suffer and to die again. No, sleep on, my lovely one. Dark as may be to me my future pathway, there is one bright spot in the past. There is on my soul one beauteous picture that can never fade—a picture of loveliness, of gentleness, of purity. When my eye of flesh grows dim with age, my eye of mind shall still look, my child, on thy beautiful face. When my ear grows dull to passing sounds, the melody of thy voice shall linger still

"Like an echo that hath lost itself

Among the distant hills."

Come, then, gentle reader, come to my bower and let us commune together. I would, if I may, awaken in your mind some pleasing reminiscence of the past, and inspire some hope of the future. If I contribute, in

ever so slight a degree, to afford you one pleasing emotion, I shall accomplish no small object. Happy is he who succeeds in smoothing one wrinkle from the brow of care, and in lighting up one smile of hope on the face of sorrow.

I may not aspire to furnish you any new ideas. My retreat is away from the busy city and the crowded thoroughfare. No one comes to see me unless he comes on purpose. I have only a few books, and them I read up long ago. In our free and easy interview let us not be cooped up by bars of iron logic, or entangled in split-hair nets of metaphysics. Forced all day to be solving equations, and developing functions, and deducing differentials, and summing up integrals, and measuring triangles, and moving in conic sections, I must, at evening, when I sit down to commune with you, have a respite from what men call science and reason, and must cultivate the sentiments and the affections, the noblest part of our nature.

Let us, therefore, with unembarrassed ease and familiar freedom, review the past, analyze the present, divine the future, develop the sentiments, and cultivate the affections of our nature, and occasionally make excursions into the domains of nature and of fancy, that we may pick up by the way something to amuse, or instruct, or interest us.

BARREN HILL.

I CONFESS that I had not the good fortune to be born in the west. I was going to say that few have; but that would be a sad mistake; for any one may perceive, from the legions of merry children about him, that the west is becoming quite a common birthright. I may, however, truly say, that few of my age have the pleasure of claiming the great and glorious west as their childhood's home.

Often

I have to own for the place of my birth a spot known in the neighborhood as Barren Hill. Rather an unprepossessing name, surely. I here enter my protest against the practice of bestowing such villainous names on places and persons. There are places, and beautiful places too, where I would not live, solely on account of the horrid names attached to them. I would not, under I would not, under any consideration, be obliged to speak or write such names. it happens that a beautiful place has an outlandish name billeted on it forever by some hypochondriac in a fit of spleen. While names are so plenty, and so cheap, and so easily manufactured, and so readily imported without custom-house duties, it is a pity there is not more taste displayed in choosing them. Barren Hill, however, is not so bad after all, at least not to me. It is true that corn obstinately refused to grow upon it, and that grass seemed uneasy and desirous of changing its latitude or longitude, it mattered not which. But it produced rocks in abundance. They were venerable-looking, primitive rocks. They seemed natives of the place, not strangers and intruders, like those we find occasionally in the west.

They were useful in many ways. A stranger, once passing by the hill, and seeing a flock of sheep upon it, cropping what little grass grew there, said that the shepherd should have a blacksmith-shop near by, so as to have the noses of the sheep occasionally new laid, as they might soon get worn blunt. But this stranger was evidently "green." The sheep had only to sharpen their noses on some granite whetstone, to keep them sufficiently pointed for cropping the tufts of grass in the crevices of the ledge.

These old gray rocks abounded in well-fashioned minerals. The tourmalin, and the beryl, and the amethyst, and the garnet, and the andalusite dwelt here in their native homes. It was curious to find these beautiful specimens of nature's handicraft, more finished in shape than any human artificer could form, in solid masses of granite. How came these delicate, beautiful, and fragile gems in these rough old rocks? One man, whom I once met in a geological expedition, thought the Indians must have happened along, and thrust the minerals in, while the rocks were soft. But when were the rocks soft, and how came they soft?

Not all the surface of Barren Hill was covered with rocks. There were little patches of thin soil, on which grew clusters of pines. The pine, the most beautiful of forest trees, loves the neat, clean, sandy surface of such soils as Barren Hill. Here the pine feels at home. The pine is a noble tree. It grew on Barren Hill in thick clusters, towering up, with its straight stem and conical top, high toward heaven. And what music it made! It answered the gentle zephyr in strains sweet as the Eolian harp. But when the storm wind blew, the pine answered in tones deep as the pealing organ. One cluster, on the very crest of the hill, formed a conspicuous object, last seen by the adventurous seaman, as