bathed in the Britannic fluid wittily described by a late French writer, by the impossibility she experienced of accommodating herself to the indecorums of the scene. We ladies were to sleep in

the bar-room, from which its drinking visitors could be ejected only at a late hour. The outer door had no fastening to prevent their return. However, our host kindly requested we would call him, if they did, as he had conquered them for us,' and would do so again. We had also rather hard couches (mine was the supper table), but we Yankees, born to rove, were altogether too much fatigued to stand upon trifles, and slept as sweetly as we would in the 'bigly bower' of any baroness. But I think England sat up all night, wrapped in her blanket shawl, and with a neat lace cap upon her head; so that she would have looked perfectly the lady if any one had come in; shuddering and listening. I know that she was very ill next day, in requital. She watched, as her parent country watches the seas, that nobody may do wrong in any case, and deserved to have met some interruption, she was so well prepared. However, there was none, other than from the nearness of some twenty sets of powerful lungs, which would not leave the night to a deadly stillness."

To a poetical mind the commonest occurrence has a meaning which the many never see: there is all the difference in the world between the Hamlets and the Horatios of human nature.

Few men so thoroughly understood the heart as Cervantes and Shakspeare. How singular a coincidence that both these great spirits should leave earth the same day! It seems as though they had been asked to meet, no other men being equal to the task of entertaining each other.

Never did poet so wonderfully condense into two individuals the great classes of mankind as Cervantes has done in Sancho

Panza and his master. While the former represents the common-place of the human family, the other is the sublime embodiment of the chivalrous and the imaginative. Don Quixote is truly of imagination all compact! And how wonderfully does an indulgence in their own natures lower the one down to a greater sensualism, the other intensed and heightened into madness! While the Squire is the representative of worldly wisdom, cunning, and that interested fidelity so prevalent in the world, the knight is a perfect type of the generous, the noble, and the brave-hearted gentleman. In a word, Sancho Panza is the prose, and Don Quixote is the poetry of human

nature.

And how wonderfully true to experience is the result of many of the woful knight's philanthropic endeavors! Witness his humane interference in favor of the idle sheep-boy, whom his master thrashed twice as much when Don Quixote had turned his back. No bad illustration of the effect produced on the slave-trade by the "humanity men" of England and America. Notice also the "shaping power of his fancy" when he mistakes windmills for men-at-arms. This is only the imaginative powers carried one step beyond their natural scope. As the poet says:

"Great genius, sure, to madness is allied,

And thin partitions do the bounds divide."

And a modern's illustration of beauty may be applied to the mind:

"One shade the more-one shade the less,

Had half impaired that nameless grace!"

How subtly the imagination works on itself, none can tell. But that every poet has a madness slumbering in his nature is clear to every self-reflective man.

An appreciation of the beautiful is the first sensation of the poetical mind: that belongs to many. The power of giving that faculty an utterance is the gift of the few: those few are the poets. To Miss Fuller the flight of a flock of pigeons is a music.

"One beautiful feature was the return of the pigeons every afternoon to their home. Every afternoon they came sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion, more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew. Had I been a musician, such as Mendelssohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings bore them.”

To the imagination,

"The meanest flower that blows, can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

How often does the very loftiness of a man's nature lead to the odium of the world, as from an eminence he beholds things the crowd denies, because they cannot see so far on account of their low stature. Much of the objection that has been raised to Miss Fuller's writings has proceeded from this defect in the eyesight of the world. Occasionally that fine woman's instinct, which is a half-revelation, lets us into more of the heart than a volume of man's preaching.

"Oh! it is a curse to woman to love first, or most.
In so doing she reverses the natural relations,

And her heart can never, never be satisfied

With what ensues."

But we refer the reader to the story of Mariana, as related in this little volume; it is one of the most touching and powerfully drawn narrations we have ever met with.

Many half-truth commentators have misrepresented Miss Fuller's theory of the position of woman. We hope it is their ignorance, and not their malice, which has led to this injustice. For our own part, we cordially echo her sentiments, convinced that every day brings us nearer to the realization of her system. After some observations upon Philip Van Artevelde, she says:

"When will this country have such a man? It is what she needs; no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens while his feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong and dexterous for the use of human implements. A man religious, virtuous, and-sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere spectacle, or fleeting shadow, but a great solemn game to be played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others. A man who hives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far as to be driven mad to-day by

the gift which discerns to-morrow. When there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be expressed."

Who can deny the following?

"It marks the defect in the position of woman that one like Mariana should have found reason to write thus. To a man of equal power, equal sincerity, no more!-many resources would have presented themselves. He would not have needed to seek, he would have been called by life, and not permitted to be quite wrecked through the affections only. But such women as Mariana are often lost, unless they meet some man of sufficiently great soul to prize them."

And where is the political economist who contradicts this?

“Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, be laid to heart! Might a sense of the true aims of life elevate the tone of politics and trade, till public and private honor become identical! Might the western man, in that crowded and exciting life which developes his faculties so fully for to-day, not forget that better part which could not be taken from him! Might the western woman take that interest and acquire that light for the education of the children, for which she alone has leisure!

"This is indeed the great problem of the place and time. If the next generation be well prepared for their work, ambitious of good and skilful to achieve it, the children of the present settlers may be leaven enough for the mass constantly increasing by emigration. And how much is this needed where those rude foreigners can so little understand the best interests of the land they seek for bread and shelter! It would be a happiness to aid in this good work, and interweave the white and golden threads into the fate of Illinois. It would be a work worthy the devotion of any mind."