To this query of Isaiah the watchman replies, "That the morning cometh, and also the night." The brevity of this answer has left it involved in something of the obscurity of the season when it was given. I think that night, however sooty and ill-favored it may be pronounced by those who were born under a day-star, merits a more particular description. I feel peculiarly disposed to arrange some ideas in favor of this season. I know that the majority are literally blind to its merits; they must be prominent indeed to be discerned by the closed eyes of the snorer, who thinks that night was made for nothing but sleep. But the student and the sage are willing to believe that it was formed for higher purposes; and that it not only recruits exhausted spirits, but sometimes informs inquisitive and amends wicked ones.

Duty, as well as inclination, urges the Lay Preacher to sermonize, while others slumber. To read numerous volumes in the morning, and to observe various characters at noon, will leave but little time, except the night, to digest the one or speculate upon the other. The night, therefore, is often dedicated to composition, and while the light of the paly planets discovers at his desk the Preacher, more wan than they, he may be heard repeating emphatically with Dr. Young:

"Darkness has much divinity for me."

He is then alone, he is then at peace. No companions near, but the silent volumes on his shelf, no noise abroad, but the click of the village clock, or the bark of the village dog. The deacon has then smoked his sixth and last pipe, and asks not a question more concerning Josephus, or the church. Stillness aids study, and the sermon proceeds. Such being the obligations to night, it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge them. As my watchful eyes can discern its dim beauties, my warm heart shall feel, and my prompt pen shall describe, the uses and the pleasures of the nocturnal hour.

Watchman, what of the night? I can with propriety imagine this question addressed to myself. I am a professed lucubrator, and who so well qualified to delineate the sable hours, as

"A meagre, muse-rid mope, adust and thin?"

"He went out to He chose that sad, virtues of a beloved

However injuriously night is treated by the sleepy moderns, the vigilance of the ancients could not overlook its benefits and joys. In as early a record as the book of Genesis, I find that Isaac, though he devoted his assiduous days to action, reserved speculation till night. meditate in the field at the eventide." that solemn hour, to reflect upon the and departed mother. The tumult and glare of day suited not with the sorrow of his soul. He had lost his most amiable, most genuine friend, and his unostentatious grief was eager for privacy and shade. Sincere sorrow rarely suffers its tears to be seen. It was natural for Isaac to select a season to weep in, which should resemble "the color of his fate." The darkness, the solemnity, the stillness of the eve, were favorable to his melancholy purpose. He forsook, therefore, the bustling tents of his father, the pleasant "south country," and "well of Lahairoi :" he went out and pensively meditated at the eventide.

The Grecian and Roman philosophers firmly believed that "the dead of midnight is the noon of thought." One

of them is beautifully described by the poet, as soliciting knowledge from the skies, in private and nightly audience, and that neither his theme, nor his nightly walks were forsaken till the sun appeared and dimmed his "nobler intellectual beam." We undoubtedly owe to the studious nights of the ancients most of their elaborate and immortal productions. Among them it was necessary that every man of letters should trim the midnight lamp. The day might be given to the forum or the circus, but the night was the season for the statesman to project his schemes, and for the poet to pour his verse.

Night has likewise with great reason been considered in every age as the astronomer's day. Young observes with energy, that "an undevout astronomer is mad." The privilege of contemplating those brilliant and numerous myriads of planets which bedeck our skies is peculiar to night, and it is our duty, both as lovers of moral and natural beauty, to bless that season, when we are indulged with such a gorgeous display of glittering and useful light. It must be confessed that the seclusion, calmness, and tranquillity of midnight is most friendly to serious, and even airy contemplations.

I think it treason to this sable power, who holds divided empire with day, constantly to shut our eyes at her approach. To long sleep I am decidedly a fce. As it is expressed by a quaint writer, we shall all have enough of that in the grave. Those who cannot break the silence of night by vocal throat, or eloquent tongue, may be permitted to disturb it by a snore. But he, among my readers, who possesses the power of fancy and strong thought, should be vigilant as a watchman. Let him sleep abundantly for health, but sparingly for sloth. It is better, sometimes, to consult a page of philosophy than the pillow.

THE SUMACH TREE.

BY MRS. ELIZA B. THORNTON.

I LOVE the rose when I am glad, it seems so joyous too;
With what a glow it meets the sun, with what a scent the dew!
It blushes on the brow of youth, as mingling in its mirth,
And decks the bride as though it bloomed for her alone on earth.

I love the columbine that grows upon the hill-top, wild;
It makes me dream I'm young again, a free, a blessed child;
But youthful days and bridal ones just like the roses flee,
And sober fancy turns from these toward the Sumach Tree.

The Sumach? why?-its leaves are fair and beautifully green,
And fringe the brilliant stem that runs a carmine thread between;
Its clustering fruit, a velvet cone of royal purple hue,
Peers upward midst the foliage fair, in richest splendor too.

And then the wayward fancy turns in pensive hour to thee,
And twined with melancholy thoughts art thou, proud Sumach Tree,
A deep-wrought spell of early days; - in lone and solemn state,
Rank grew a princely Sumach Tree, beside the grave-yard gate.

Kindred and friends reposed below, and oft hath childish prayer
Risen from my heart that I, in death, might slumber with them there;
That prayer, how vain! yet still I love in fancy oft to be

Lingering within that place of graves beneath the Sumach Tree.

THREE HOURS AT SAINT CLOUD.

BY

LEWIS CASS, [Minister at that Court.]

It was a glorious evening, toward the middle of September, when we ascended the hill whose summit is crowned by the Chateau of Saint Cloud. The sun was pouring its setting rays over the beautiful valley of the Seine, and as the whole region stretched before us to the east, the flood of light was sent back, exhibiting all the prominent objects in bold relief, as they are represented in the pictures of Claude Lorraine. We stopped to gaze upon this landscape, no longer wondering that a résidence which commanded such a prospect had long been a favorite habitation of Napoleon, as it now was of Louis Philippe. A broad fertile valley was before us, bounded in the distance by the elevated plateau through which the river has worn itself a passage, and where it winds from side to side, as if to adorn as well as to fertilize the domain it has conquered.

This father of the French rivers, however great his renown in Europe, would form but a feeble tributary to the magnificent streams which our country pours into the ocean. Nature has indeed spread out her works upon a more extensive scale in our favored regions, than in this older portion of the human heritage. Our lakes and rivers, plains, valleys and forests, are impressed with a character of vastness, if I may coin an abstract term, which is itself one of the attributes of true sublimity, and which produces upon the traveller who visits them, emotions which no after events in life can efface. I never felt more profoundly the weakness of man and the power of God, than when seated in a frail birch