of his little, young wife, and she loves him as much as Rachel ever did. But it is so different, as you can judge by their portraits. You find a great friend in your pen," she continued, returning to that point, "I have often wished that I had the 'pen of a ready writer;' though perhaps if I had I shouldn't make good use of it. Mr. Islington says that you are a poet," and with this remark she left me. A poet! here was a thought. Let me tell you what I did with it; I arose from my seat, I went to the bow-window, I looked into the distance, in the direction of a projecting cliff, which is made more clear to my observation by the solitary and gigantic pine that crowns it. I am looking at it now. How clearly and sharply defined its branches show against the skiey background! I have a fancy that this may be to me a Tree of Life, for it suggests invariably a train of thought which I believe is destined to lead me somewhither-to a climax where I shall at last remain established, a fixed point. Certainly, as to itself, at this distance the tree looks as though its place were eternal in the heavens; as though it could never fall; as though neither shock of time, nor lightning blaze, could uproot or cast it down from its dizzy pinacle. If summer actually visits this region, as Flora assures me that it does, I shall scale that height, impracticable as the feat now seems from this distance. One might hope to receive, in what seems to be an eternal solitude, the Law of Life, not indeed on visible tables of stone, but on the tables of the heart; and one might pray that He whom the Lawgiver typified would break that inward table, and leave the triumphant law an everlasting witness there for itself. Well I looked at the old pine, and pondered on the office of the poet. I catechised myself without mercy. I thought upon the minnesingers of to-day, on those who flourished yesterday, on the horde of "little names," as Bulwer calls them— Heavens! what a horde! and then, with all becoming reverence, I approached my table, raised therefrom my pen, and laid it on an altar-of coal within the stove! And satisfied with the bright blaze that arose therefrom, I went, burdened with the recollection of my morning's interview with Renwick, into Flora's room. She was gathering up the picture-books which had been used for 'Bel's amusement. I spoke out without ceremony, "Did you know that I was actually very nearly married once?" No-of course she knew nothing about it, and she began to look at me with a wonderful degree of sympathy and surprise —more indeed, I thought, than the occasion warranted; but Flora's sympathies are always uppermost. "Such is the fact,” I said, “and I have been playing the fool before Renwick. What shall I do with myself?" "Sit down," said Flora, "and behave yourself." "Is not your Mr. Islington ever going to marry?" I asked. "Sit down, and I will tell you about him," was the answer. So "I turned myself as a sunflower" (vide, Hans Anderson), sat down-and prepared myself to listen; and this was what I heard: "Renwick told you that he and the pastor were rivals once. Then the poor man had another disappointment, Helen McLeod—” “The blind girl I'm going to see with the divine man to-morrow?" interrupted I. "Yes; he would have married her-but there was a younger and gayer man who stole her affections when she was at school in Boston. He died, was killed on his way here, and was buried the very day they were to have been married. And Islington went with her as a mourner to the funeral. He is certainly the noblest fellow in the world. She wept herself blind-I was to have been her bridesmaid." "It is a sad story; but I am wonderfully relieved having heard it. What shall I do and say when I get down there? She receives none of her friends, the pastor tells me." "I have not seen her since the day of the funeral. Mr. Islington told me that he had prevailed on her to receive you. And now you have something to do that's worth doing. Do it well, aunt Ag.' You will have all sorts of reconciliations to bring about; for this calamity has had a dreadful inward effect upon Nelly." "There is one thing I will teach her," said I, "that she ought to know and to take for her consolation those words of Byron The love where death bath set its seal Flora looked up anxiously at me, as much as to say, "Do I not deserve your confidence?"—but I was blind and deaf; not dumb, for I said, "Do you want me to turn author, Flora?" "We've all been talking about it," she replied, looking brightly up, and laughing gently, as is her way when she is greatly pleased. There's the ring of true metal in that laugh. "Then you must all be prepared to hear my decision," said I. "I'm not going to swell the list of bardlings, the Felicias and Letitias-never! and I shall make a very prosaic affair indeed of myself. One never succeeds in any vocation unless he gives himself up to it-if I make that my profession I shall be faithful to it-give it all my powers, thoughts, affections and desires. I shall live in my room in the midst of creatures of my own imagining, and all you outside my door will be like thin air' visions and so on. 'Bel will be afraid of me-I shall be afraid of myself; after a very little time I shall be mightily changed from what I am now; I shall be"-I was going on speaking more and more earnestly, and from my honest convictions, when Flora exclaimed, "For goodness sake stop, Agnes! you shall never be an author in this house." And that wound up the discussion, for 'Bel awoke. And I went off, carrying her in my arms, she laughing gleefully, and quite unconscious of the transformation that could be effected in her bearer to her terror and perpetual consternation. And with this my letter ends. You see how it goes on with us here. We are a happy set of gossips-the days come and vanish like beautiful shadows-the country is splendid-and my companions are a blessed study. Here endeth this epistle. IV. A. B. I HAVE Seen "Salathiel!"-Mine eyes have beheld the Wandering Jew! Not Metta Fuller's-nor Eugene Sue's-nor yet the Rev. George Croly's Wanderer, though it strikes me the old Quaker might worthily have been taken by either as a type-in his outer presentment, that is to say. He is the father of Hellen McLeodand she it was, you may remember, whom I was to visit the day after my last letter was written. Well, the visit was made, and many another has been made since; but of that I'm to tell you. Our call was well timed, for we found none beside Miss McLeod and the servants in the house: that is, the old man was away from home. Helen has no mother -on earth. The good woman went to heaven when Nelly was a child. When we went into the parlor, which quite eclipses every other in the village in the matter of fine decoration, we found Miss Helen there, and as she arose to rcceive us, her eyes glancing towards the door through which we entered, it seemed impossible to believe that their light was gone for ever. Rarely have I seen a more attractive, "speaking" face; and this, to my thinking, was its language, "I have suf fered so much that I can never rely again on any earthly hope, however fair in its seeming it may be. I fear nothing, for I have known the worst. I desire nothing, for there is nothing to be desired. Pity me not-you are exposed to the same trials I have borne: leave me alone-what have you to share with me that I could wish?" This certainly has been the language of her conduct to all except the pastor, who would never listen to such message or idea-and now he has prevailed upon her to adopt another language towards me. You see in his conduct how a true man can truly and steadfastly love without selfishness, without pride-for the dictate of a common pride, the suggestion of an ordinary selfishness, would prompt him to far other action than this we behold in him. In person Helen is quite beyond the ordinary height, and she is exceedingly graceful. Her eyes are of a light blue. Mr. Islington says they were brilliant once as this firmament, which to-day, and I'd almost said every day, I think of, as an immense and perfect sapphire in the signet ring of the King of nations. Her hair is a light brown, and this she wears braided, and looped up in a very becoming manner. She is not a distinguished looking person, but a girl that must be loved with utmost tenderness by those that love her. Her voice is just the voice I expected to hear issuing from her lips-musical, firm, calm, and deliberate in its utterances. It is a luxury to listen to the delicious languor of her speech at times, and then to note its sudden changes with the changing thought. She is such a woman as one (myself) loves to gaze upon and think about. I sat down beside her as beside an old friend, feeling as if I had known her always. Don't you want to know how we talked, and what we talked about? After a few minutes' chat the pastor left us, to visit one of his parishioners, and then followed this conversation. When Mr. Islington had closed the door after him, Helen said, "I have asked so many questions about you, Miss Bond, that I have ascertained exactly your look. Of course you and Flora think it very strange that I should consent to receive you when I had so often declined her visits. It is all Mr. Islington's fault. He insisted on your coming, and lectured me on my duties in such a way that I felt as though I had been guilty of some heinous crime in barring out my friends so long. I want to hear you talk. Tell me if the tea-rose stands exactly in the right place; if the sun shines upon it in the way it should; and if the roses are per fect and beautiful. Talk to me as you do to the pastor and your sister, if you think it worth your while; otherwise-" "Otherwise be off, and say nothing? That I cannot do, for Mr. Islington has driven the horses away," said I. "Yet I thank you for the suggestion; it is like opening a door very graciously for one who hardly hoped for more than opportunity to hammer away at the bolted obstacle, with no manner of assurance that it would ever be opened. But as to the tea-rose, you know all about it that I can tell you. You know that it stands alone on the frame made for it; and that on no account would any one venture to remove it, or to place other plants beside it. You know moreover that the number of buds apparent thereon is 969, or thereabouts; that not less than twelve roses are in full blossom; and that the sun is shining on them all as if it loved them, and had taken them under its special care. You know that the room is filled with their fragrance-why should I tell you about the rose-tree, then? I had much rather hear you sing 'Consider the Lilies.'" "Who told you that I sung it, Agnes?" "The pastor, Helen." "Tell me first about the Georgia Cathedral." "Who told you that I had seen it, Helen?" "The pastor, Agnes." "Very well,” said I; “when your friends go to Savannah, tell them to continue their travels to Bonaventura, a place about five miles distant from that city. Not for the purpose of looking at the ruins of a place once, and for aught I know to the contrary still, in the possession of a commodore in our navy, but for the purpose of wandering through a road that rejoices in the name of Thunderbolt Road.' The avenue is more than a mile long, and the stillness of death reigns through its length and breadth. The roof of this Cathedral of Nature, its fretted archesthat is to say, the intertwined branches of those splendid oak-trees, the majestic pillars that line the great aisle-cannot be compared for beauty and vastness to those arranged by any human architect. Such a light falls there as was never seen even in the twilight gloom of the grandest 'storied fane.' The grove is of liveoak trees, and this is the wonder of it all; from the branches of those trees depend long festoons of hairy moss, gray and most venerable in appearance; you think as you look upon the bearded trees, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and when the wind sighs through the branches, swaying the pendant moss solemnly to and fro, you say in a poet's words, 'It soundeth like Amen sung by a choir of mourning men; an affirmation full of pain and glorying!' You might measure these beards not by the inch but by the yard. I wish all the world could go there and worship!" By which exclamation you will see, Lina, that I am not yet wholly recovered from the effects of our last visit, but I was doing my best at description, and of course was bound to present my own impressions with every sort of emphasis. "What a place to die in!" was Helen's only exclamation. It was the very thing natural for her to say, but I did not like to hear it, and I said, "The last place in the world. Infinitely preferable is the clear open space where the sunlight meets with no obstruction. No! when our souls go through the shadow of death, let the natural sunlight at least be around us. The place is, however, consecrated by a death, a tragic fate. They tell the story of a youth who was so impressed and affected by his visit to this remarkable spot, that he gave himself over to Charon there, voluntarily throwing himself into the dark and turbid stream that flows along its borders. He must have been possessed of a wild imagination, and so ran violently down and perished in the waters." "Some unendurable grief was the occasion, doubtless. Now I will sing for you, before you ask me again, that you may be convinced of my desire to please you." And she sang, or rather chanted, with the sweetest and purest voice I ever heard, some verses, two or three of which I copy for you, they are so beautiful. The pastor bad repeated them for her, and she remembered them, and gave to them a tune; but he could not tell, neither do I know, the author. They are called "THE INTERCESSOR," "By that unchanged, unchanging oath of mine- "I could not bear to see him cast away, I saw Mr. Islington passing through the yard while she was singing the first verse; he did not make his appearance in the parlor, but remained in the entry, until Helen had finished; his face was radiant when he came in; he had caught the words, and it was a great hope, either of the pastor or the friend, perhaps both, that shone in his eyes and broke forth in his words then, for he spoke as one inspired: "When I hear a song like that, or any that has the spirit of devotion in it, sung in the church or out of it, by one or many, I love to think of it as ascending from this earth, mounting higher and higher through the arches of holiness, until at last it falls as a purified and pleading angel before the Throne of God. And I believe that the office of music, of song, is, legitimately, to exercise just such an influence upon our souls as we might suppose would be produced did the angel song, of which I love to dream, kneel actually before our Father, and plead for us in heaven." This was a strain in which I had not heard the pastor indulge before, and of course for a little time I was quite struck dumb. I seem indeed to have beheld him in an altogether new capacity in this house, as another sort of man. As the consoler, certainly he has the most refined and exalted idea of what human friendship may be. And this office of the consoler he fills so well-he does the work here given him to do so cheerfully, apparently in perfect self-forgetfulness, as if in constant remembrance of the lines, "The bruiséd reed He will not break So is he waiting patiently for the healing and the restoration; hoping manfully, and doing unobtrusively what he may to hasten the desirable result. In the course of our conversation Helen spoke of life as of a desert, and such I can well imagine it appears to her! But the good man would not allow it for a moment. "Let us rather call it a garden, my friends," he said. "It is filled with trees, and herbs, and flowers. True, the weeds find ample room for growth, but we may help to remove them; and as to the shade-trees, we may choose between them. Here is the Tree of Knowledge-there the Tree of Thorns. Choose. Here is enervation, sloth, and a sensuous joy-there toil, self-sacrifice, the rewards of faith! Under the branches of one of these trees a table is spread in the shade of the tree! and the fruit piled thereon is golden-does it seem fair and 'good'? From the branches of the other was a crown woven-given the wearer-a King whose dominion shall have no end-in his last hour of life on earth; how emblematic of the life that He had lived! They who gather beneath this Tree may also rest, but their couch is not one of ease and luxury. The fruit they may gather, but it will neither intoxicate them nor much rejoice them. Yet will they be well content to rest there, and to feast thus, and to choose their staff from the thorn-branch, and, leaning on that, to be recognized among the subjects of the King that was thorned on Calvary. For they know that the revellers might as well feed on ashes as on that golden fruit. For them is it reserved to behold a 'splendor in the grass, a glory in the flower' quite independent of the visible beauty-in every act and duty of life they recognize a sacredness. The incidents of life are but accordant links in the chain of Providence; to them every passing event is full of wonderful significance. Joy or sorrow, let it come as it will, it's his ordaining, they accept it with -not resignation, let us not say that— but with thankfulness. God is over all and in all; why can we not see that, and act upon it? How well Ruskine has said, 'His infinity is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable-not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea."" And much more that I do not now bear in mind; of which perhaps you will be glad. This friendship, of three links, I prophesy is to be no ordinary affair. Miss Renwick says it will end in a marriage. I hope it may, as I tell her also; and then sometimes she looks surprised, and sometimes incredulous; she will not believe that I am not eventually to take my place down there in the parsonage and become the minister's helpmeet! Quite obviously she is not yet awakened to an idea or a respectable appreciation of the manner of friendship, which so much invigorates the pastor and me! But let her " gang her ain gate" and think as she can; so long as she does not actually proceed to proposing terms in my behalf, I am content. I am, after all, most fortunate. And I know that you are envying me this discovery I have made of a character that could love so profoundly as to weep itself blind when death came between it and the object of its love. It does indeed delight me that such a study is before me; I shall master it, be very sure. And I wonder if such a study could be afforded elsewhere than up in this region where impressions seem for the most part to be frozen in, or imbedded like crystals, &mid the natural and abundant rocks of the human nature, as developed. In all the "fiery Southerners" I have seen, I have never discerned the glowing of a passion so genuine as in this girl, of whom I have spoken so at length, for your edification. Yea, not of one who has turned suddenly to stone-or iron, alas, for I feel this last to be much the most applicable term; but this blind girl is a more agreeable, touching, edifying, and lovable monument. I saw Salathiel" as we came from the house after we had taken leave of Helen. I had seen him before and have seen him since: he is, as I told you, Helen's father. Her loveliness and his hideousness make a contrast such as only a very daring artist would attempt to portray on the same canvas. But in spite of his loathsome appearance, they tell me his heart is tender as a girl's, and his fondness for his poor child has no bound. He goes about arrayed in a coat that only does not drag upon the ground as he walks; a broad-brimmed hat, his head bent upon his chest, his eyes greedily peering ground-ward, and a more infernallooking object you never beheld. He had been an intemperate man for years, but his daughter's affliction seems to have wrought a change in him, and to have done a good work for him so far. But the vile habit has been so long indulged in that he is branded with it, and must bear about with him as long as he lives the proof of his fatal infatuation. What a blessed thing it is that they who, Nebuchadnezzar-like, go feeding as beasts through the fields of the world, must themselves bear their burden; that however they may distress, and trouble, and wrong others, the chief woe must alight on their own head! Blessed provision of Providence! Since our first visit, I have been to the McLeods' alone, and such talks as we have, Lina! I may be doing this young girl some good by my cheerfulness—(my cheerfulness!)-and conversation; but she is doing more for me than I can do for her. I am willing to own it. I believe she will prove to me to be, to all intents, the philosopher's stone. They say that the spring bursts suddenly on this "up country"-that a day of warm sunshine works a miracle here. I am waiting with impatience for the time to come; and listening, I cannot tell how eagerly, for the first song of Undine as she comes dashing through the forests, and over the mountain-side. After that, I shall be fully revived; but now, oh for a little warmth beside that of the roaring stoves! I want to be alan, not in the solitude of my chamber It is spring-time here in the mountains ; and, more than spring-time, it is summer. Oh Lina, I have seen the miracle, and yet I am not satisfied... Very clearly I behold the truth. . . There is nothing left for me! I must get me a thorn-branch from that tree of which the pastor spoke, and feast on its fruit, and then go on my way trusting to it for my support in the journey. The spring that was to have strengthened me, has made me as weak as a child; I could better endure the face of nature when she lay wrapped in the pure white shroud, than now, after this resurrection, when she appears so radiant in her joy and gladness. You speak of Wayland's successes; why should you name him, and why do I? Let him pass. I do not know if I am glad or grieved to hear of him, and it were folly to stop and strive to analyze my thought upon the subject. But though this spring-time has, through its influences, shown me to myself in a way most likely to humiliate, I can but think, how infinite a compensation is it for them who endure the storms of winter, the piercing winds, the searching frosts. For them the disappearing snow, the breaking and the falling towers of ice; the warmer and the warmer wind, the budding tree, the springing grass, the unfolding flower; these are in their influence so happy that one thinking of these north-land people might well speak of the regenerating influences of the spring-time; understanding in the heart what that means. If I were a poet, I should be singing now, and, as it is, herein you find a supplement to the confession of weakness made above. I often do find myself singing in my heart. There is occasional melody there. It is surprising how at times we can totally forget ourselves, entirely lose our self-consciousness. We scem in such moments translated to a height above all individual griefs, and so transfigured that they cannot recognize us. I have been made alive to this fact, this spring-time. There is another little child in the house and they call him Islington With Flora he is exalted into a sort of |