gard asked Miss Fitzallen of Corrinna Mellen.

"Oh!" said Corrinna, "she has a pretty good voice, but her upper notes are not powerful enough. You should hear Miss Astor since she has taken lessons of that Italian master who charges seventy dollars a quarter. She can now raise her voice as high as Garcia. I suppose the reason Miss Legard chooses the harp instead of the piano, is, that it shows off her figure to such advantage. How nimble her fingers ran over the strings! and, by the way, what superb hands and arms she has! And did you see that ring? It was given her by the Duchess of Orleans, as a token of friendship. They say the duchess thought her divine, and invited her to all her parties. But only think of her being an American after all! I was so surprised! and then, her choosing such a song-just to make men stare, I do believe. I suppose it was her showpiece."

"What do you mean by show-piece?"

"Why, every one who plays, has one piece in which they become perfect, and play it on all occasions when they are called upon to amuse the company. I learned the Battle of Prague' for that purpose, and Arrabella the Overture to Lodoiska. Now, these being long pieces, the listeners were satisfied, and we were not asked to play a second time."

"Have you a part in the private theatricals at Mrs. B- -'8?"

"Oh, yes! I am to be the Mourning Bride,' and Gus Beaumont is going to act Osmyn, and Cornelia Stanbrook is to be Zara."

"And Laura?"

"Oh, Laura is too timid, and they wanted Inez Laurence to take her place, but she declined; I don't know what for, unless because this Miss Legard was not invited; and they are great friends."

One o'clock carriages were rattling over the pavement. Hoods and shawls in requisition, and beaux and belles, enlivened by dancing and champagne, whirled off to their respective homes, talking over the adventures of the evening, and forming new plans for the enjoyment of the morrow.

"You will not forget your engagement for to-morrow evening," said Miss Legard to Frederick Howard, as he stood at the steps of her carriage. "I have only a few social friends. But you are acquainted with the Stanbrooksthey will be there; and Miss Laurence-my lovely friend Inez."

That name would have been inducement enough, independent of all else. He bowed in acceptance of the invitation. Crack went the whip, round went the wheels, the lights danced before his eyes, and he was left to plod his weary way to his solitary room.

WITH sandals of iron the battle-men came,
Deep marking their pathway with slaughter and flame;
On pillars each chiseled his deed and his name,
And died, fondly dreaming their trophies were fame.

Slow ages came after the conqueror's heel,
Spread grass on the red turf, and shivered the steel,
To dust flung the pillars 'slaved millions had wrought,
And the heroes, alas! with their fame, were forgot.

They rose. like the surges that shriek to the storm;
They passed, like the whirlwind that mantles its form;
They mounted like eagles, were known by their scream;
With the cloud and the lightning, they fled like a dream.

WHAT can surpass the force or the beauty of intellect? By unceasing toil in a profitable vocation, riches are often acquired by those who possess common and untutored intellects; but a great and splendid mind is a peculiar gift conferred upon man, as a "standard" of his superiority, by that Almighty Genius, who, without any preparatory measures, conceived the grand idea of calling into action, with the unrivaled rapidity of thought, this beautiful and stupendous globe.

Whenever we behold the possessors of brilliant, of powerful intellect, let us note them as extraordinary, as gifted mortals, destined, sooner or later, to rise to the summit of human greatness-ay! to the topmost of ambition's ladder-and, by the proper or pernicious exercise of the talents with which Heaven, in a spirit of kindness, has endowed them, wield an influence either for good or for evil.

Look around to the unrestricted prosperity of this bright clime of freedom-this land of civil and religious liberty-and to what would ye attribute its rapid success, its upward, and its ever onward course? Surely not to the wealth of its inhabitants, but to the amount and quality of the talent employed in developing its still vast uncultivated fields of commerce, art and literature-talent elicited by the very nature of our liberal and happy insti

tutions.

Intellectual splendor shows itself in many forms. It was displayed by Fulton, in the application of steam; by Cole, when he painted the "Voyage of Life;" by Franklin, in his familiarity with the "Starry host;" by Clinton, when he opened the waters of the canal; by Morse, in his telegraphic discoveries.

But we come now to speak of a higher degree of intellect, approximating nearer to the Divine, viz. grandeur of thought and elo

| quence of speech-Oratory-which we are disposed to rank above all others, simply because the first and the greatest Orator was God: "He spoke, and it was done!"

And "Authorship" we would rank in the second class of the school of intellectuality, placing in the front and head thereof, Moses, the great law-giver of the Hebrews, and claiming for his writings a popularity unsurpassed: breathing throughout an eloquence truly holy, and pure, and lovely, they will endure until the sun shall cease to perform his daily rounds, or until the moon doth set in eternal darkness.

Sublimity of thought! Oh! how superbly splendid does it fall on the ear of the refined and the intelligent, when clad in the fitting. and appropriate garb of glowing eloquence, of grandeur and of truth!

It is this which has transmitted the great names of Abn Ezra, Maimonides, and Mendelsohn, of Homer, Scott, Milton, Pope, Cowper, Shakspeare, and Addison, from generation to generation; and it is this which has clad with renown a Hemans, a Norton, a Landon, a Mitford, a Sedgwick, a Browne, a Bremer, a Howitt, an Aguilar, a Robinson, and an Opie.

Turn we now from those bright "stars," so dazzling to the eye, and fix our gaze on these brilliant lights around and about our literary horizon-on Irving, Cooper, Sigourney, Prescot, Sprague, Dana, Dawes, Pierpont, Halleck, Prentice, Lester, Everett, Paulding, Bryant, Holmes, Stevens, Longfellow, Conrad, Fay, Street, and Lowell.

The following beautiful poem, by Henry W. Longfellow. so forcibly illustrates the subject of our heading, and is such an undeniable evidence of American genius, that we cannot refrain from presenting it to the numerous and intelligent readers of "The Republic," as a

sparkling gem in the literature of our country:

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath
Flash'd like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light

Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

"Try not the pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche !"

This was the peasant's last good-night;
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,

A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveler, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still

grasping in his hand of ice
That banner, with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There, in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star
Excelsior!

The succession of pictures presented to the mind's eye, each complete in perfect beauty, can scarcely be surpassed. The solitude of the lonely Alpine village among the mountains, its lights glimmering faintly through the mists and shadows of darkening night; the entrance of the youthful enthusiast, his heart and eye full of the fire of hope and of resolute purpose, and bearing in his hand the banner with the "strange device;" his sorrows, as he turns with wistful eye away from the warm and friendly welcome of social homes to the stern reality of the giant height that frowns before him; the warning of cautious age, the solicitations of youthful beauty, fall alike unregarded on his ear. His path is upward! He hears

a voice he sees a hand, dim in the distance, pointing to the path, and forbidding him to tarry.

And then the last scene of all-the cold and lifeless clay-from which the daring spirit had departed, found in the snow by the kindly monks; the banner, with the wondrous device, grasped in the frozen hand firmly still; the musical voice, faint like the light of a star falling from the clime he had gained,―all, all is exquisitely beautiful.

We could occupy the entire pages of Col. Whitney's able and excellent Magazine, were they at our disposal, in illustrating, by the brilliant writings of the distinguished American authors herein named, our meaning of intellectual grandeur; but we will only cite a few instances of the superiority of mind of those who, among others, have clad their thoughts in language, soul-stirring and eloquent, beautiful and sublime. The following beautiful thought is from the pen of the Right Rev. Dr. Doane, Bishop of New-Jersey:

Chisel in hand stood a sculptor boy,

With his marble block before him,
And his face lit up with a smile of joy

As an angel dream passed o'er him:

He carved the dream on that shapeless stone,

With many a sharp incision:

With Heaven's own light the sculptor shone,

He had caught that angel-vision.

Sculptors of life are we as we stand

With our soul uncarved, before us;
Waiting the hour when, at God's command,
Our life-dream passes o'er us.

If we carve it then, on the yielding stone,
With many a sharp incision,

Its heavenly beauty shall be our own,
Our lives that angel-vision.

SPRING IS COMING.

Spring is coming, spring is coming,

Birds are chirping, insects humming;
Flowers are peeping from their sleeping;
Streams, escaped from winter's keeping,
In delighted freedom rushing,
Dance along in music gushing;
Scenes of late in deadness saddened,
Smile in animation gladdened;
All is beauty, all is mirth,
All is glory upon earth.
Shout we, then, with Nature's voice,
Welcome Spring! rejoice! rejoice!
Spring is coming! come, my brother,
Let us rove with one another
To our well-remembered wild-wood,
Flourishing in nature's childhood;
Where a thousand flowers are springing,
And a thousand birds are singing;
Where the golden sunbeams quiver
On the verdure-girdled river;
Let our youth of feeling out,
To the youth of nature shout,
While the waves repeat our voice,
Welcome Spring! rejoice! rejoice!

James Nuck

Mr. Nack is deaf and dumb, and has been so from his childhood; yet his poetical writings, in almost every variety of measure, are distinguished for more than common melody of versification.

Judge Charlton, in a recent eloquent address before the Young Men's Library Association, at Augusta, Georgia, thus sketches the "Marriage Altar:

"I have drawn for you many pictures of death: let me sketch for you now a brief, but bright scene of beautiful life. It is the Marriage Altar. A lovely female, clothed in all the freshness of youth, and of surpassing beauty, leans upon the arm of him to whom she has just plighted her faith, to whom she has just given herself up forever. Look in her eyes, ye gloomy philosophers, and tell me, if you dare, that there is no happiness on earth. See the trusting, the heroic devotion which impels her to leave country and parents for a comparative stranger. She has launched her frail bark upon a wide and stormy sea; she has handed over her happiness and doom for this world, to another's keeping; but she has done it fearlessly; for love whispers to her that her chosen guardian and protector bears a manly and a noble heart. Oh, woe to him that deceives her! Oh, woe to him that forgets his oath and his manhood!"

Would you view great intellect in the commanding position of Oratory, and without any partiality on political grounds? Hie then to the Senate Chamber, and listen to the consummate eloquence of the many bright spirits whose scholastic acquirements have added lustre to the title of an American Citizen.

Behold in this great Legislative Hall-this fenowned arena of eloquence-the beauty, the grandeur, the splendor of intellect, in its extended, its powerful bearings. View it in that patriot sage, occupying an eminent and towering position in the land of his birth and of his fame. Hark! he speaks! Every voice but his is now hushed in breathless silence. Oh! listen to the accents of wisdom, as they fall from the lips of that aged and venerated statesman. The weight of "three-score years and ten" is on his brow; and yet the lustre of his eye is not dimmed, nor his manly form bowed down with the infirmities of age. Know ye not this glorious son of Columbia-this great defender of the Constitution? 'Tis HENRY

CLAY, of Kentucky.

Reader! shall we carry you back for a series of years to a thrilling scene in one of our South-western Courts of Justice, in order to point out to you the power, the importance,

the value of intellect? for it can touch the inward feelings of the heart, and overthrow the better judgment of mankind.

Mr. Crittenden (the present Attorney Gene ral of the United States) was engaged in defending man who had been indicted for a capital crime. After an elaborate and powerful defence, he closed his effort by the following striking and beautiful allegory :

"When God, in his eternal counsel, conceived the thought of man's creation, he called to him the three ministers who wait constantly upon his throne-Justice, Truth and Mercyand thus addressed them: Shall we make man? Then said Justice, 'Oh, God! make Truth made answer also, 'Oh, God make him him not; for he will trample upon thy laws.' not; for he will pollute thy sanctuaries. But Mercy, dropping upon her knees, and looking up through her tears, exclaimed, "Oh, God! make him; I will watch over him, and surround him with my care, through all the dark paths which he may have to tread.' Then God made man, and said to him, 'Oh, man' thou art the child of Mercy; go and deal with thy brother.'”

The jury, when he finished, was drowned in tears, and, against evidence, and what must have been their own convictions, brought in a speedy verdict of "not guilty."

The grandeur of intellect not only exercises its salutary and powerful influence in our Legislative Halls, and in those of Justice, but it finds its way into the consecrated temple-the hallowed house of prayer-and inculcates in the human heart, and impresses on the human mind, the instability of earthly hopes, and the fallacy of earthly things, and directs our aim to a haven of eternal bliss beyond the restricted confines of this temporary life, the nothingness of earth.

Such is the effect of eloquence that it can produce a glorious result in the reformation of weak and erring mortality. Does it fall calmly and solemnly from the inspired lips of the preacher, as, with extended hands and upturned eyes, he implores his hearers to forsake their evil ways, and walk in the paths of righteousness? Does it proceed from the distinguished lawyer, as he earnestly impresses upon a jury of his country the importance of grounding their verdict upon the testimony of the case? Does it emanate from him who, in the deliberative assembly, pleads the cause of the oppressed widow and the orphan? Oh! ye fortunate mortals in the possession of such an able vindicator of your rights! Intellect, arrayed in its bright robes of splendor, will rescue