lamp, and put fire to the vine branch which warms my watch in this little vaulted tower, silent and isolated, like a sepulchral chamber still inhabited by the activity of life. I open my window, I take a few steps on the worm-eaten floor of my wooden balcony.

I look at the sky and the dark notches of the mountains, which carve themselves distinct and sharp on the pale blue of a winter firmament, or bathe their summits in a heavy ocean of mists; when there is wind, I see the clouds run over the last stars which shine and disappear by turns, as the pearls of the deep which the wave covers and uncovers in its undulations. dark and naked branches of the walnut trees of the church-yard, twist themselves, and complain under the tempest of air; and the nocturnal storm gathers and rolls their heaps of dead leaves, which come roaring and gushing up at the foot of the tower, like water.

The

Amid such a spectacle, at such an hour, in such a silence, in the midst of this sympathetic nature, of these hills where we have grown up, where we should grow old, at ten steps from the tomb where reposes, awaiting us, all which we have wept on earth, is it possible that the soul which awakens and which bathes itself in this air of the nights, experiences not an universal shuddering, joins not itself instantly to all this magnificent intimacy of the firmament and of the mountains, of the stars and of the meadows, of the wind and of the trees, and that a rapid and bounding thought flashes not from the heart to mount to the stars, and fron the stars to mount to God? Something escapes from me to con found itself with all these things; a sigh brings me back again to all that I have known, loved, lost in this house and elsewhere; a hope, strong and evident as the Providence in nature, carries me back to the bosom of God, where all will be found again; a mingled sadness and enthusiasm are infused into several words, which I articulate aloud without fear that they will be overheard, except by the winds which carry them to God. The cold night seizes me; my steps crackle on the hoar frost; I shut my window and reënter my tower, where the burning faggot sparkles, and my dog awaits me.

What's to be done then, my dear friend, during these three or four long hours of silence, which must pass away, in November, between the awakening and the movement of the sun and of the day? All are sleeping, in the house and in the court; we sometimes hear a cock, deceived by the shining of a star, throw out a faint cry, which he seems half ashamed of himself; or the ox, sleeping and dreaming in the stable, gives out a sonorous lowing, which causes the herd to start from their sleep. One is sure that no domestic disturb ance, no inopportune visit, no business of the day will come to surprise one for two or three hours, and distract one's thoughts. One is calm and confident in one's leisure. For the day belongs to man, but the night belongs to God.

This sentiment of sweet security is of itself voluptuousness.

I enjoy it an instant with delight. I go, I come, I make my six steps in every direction, on the flag stones of my narrow chamber; I examine one or two portraits suspended on the walls, images a thousand times better painted within myself; I speak to them; I speak to my dog, who follows with an intelligent and inquiet eye all my movements of thought and of body. Sometimes I fall on my knees before one of these dear memorials of the dead; oftener I walk, raising my soul to the Creator, and articulating some fragments of prayers which our mother taught us in our infancy, and some stanzas of psalms of the sacred Hebrew poet, which I have heard in the cathedrals, and which float about here and there in my memory, like the wandering notes of a forgotten air.

This done, (and should not every thing begin and finish with that?) I seat myself at the old oak table, where my father and my grandfather have sat before me. It is covered with books, worn and defaced by them and by myself. Their old Bible, a large quarto Petrarch, a Venitian edition in two enormous volumes, where his latin works, his politics, his philosophy, his Africa, take up two thousand pages, and where his immortal sonnets cover but seven-perfect image of the vanity and uncertainty of the labor of the man who passes his life, in raising an immense and elaborate monument to his memory, of which posterity saves but a little stone to make for him glory and immortality-a Homer, a Virgil, a volume of the letters of Cicero, a torn volume of Chateaubriand, of Goethe, of Byron, all, philosophers or poets, and a little "Imitation of Jesus Christ," the philosophic breviary of my pious mother which preserves the traces of her fingers, sometimes of her tears, and a few notes of her's, and which to her contained inore philosophy and poetry, than all the philosophers and poets. In the midst of all these dusty and scattered volumes, some leaves of fine white paper, some pencils and pens, invite me to draw and to write. My elbow supported on the table, and my head on my hand, my heart big with sentiments and remembrances, the thoughts full of vague images, the senses in repose or sadly soothed by the grand murmurs of the forests, which come rolling and dying away over my windows, I yield myself up to all my dreams; I feel all, I think of all, I negligently twirl a pencil in my hand, I sketch some odd images of trees, or of ships on a sheet of white paper; the progress of thought stops, as the waters in the bed of a river too full; the sentiments accumulate, they demand agress in some form or other; I say to myself, Write. As I do not know how to write in prose, for want of frame and habit, I write in verse. I pass several hours, sweetly pouring out on paper, in metres which mark the cadence and movement of the soul, the sentiments, ideas, remembrances, sorrows and impressions of which I am full. I read several times to myself these harmonious confessions of my own revery; most of the time I leave them unfinished, and tear them up after having written them.

faint or weary and performs all those nameless little offices which those who have no cousin Ned must live without. He has a great deal of tact, and though always on hand is never in the way. To be sure, he wishes every day that he was not our cousin, but the next moment, declares himself a lucky fellow that he stands in that delightful relationship; and we declare ourselves as much blest as he. We are blest, and will do every thing for his comfort and pleasure, and always give him a sincere and cordial welcome to our hearts and our fireside. From the latter, he has now been a long time absent. But when he comes, we will invite you to meet him, and you shall wish as sincerely as we do, that you had a cousin Ned.

June 14th, 1848.

THORNS AND FLOWERS.

BY MISS JULIA PALMER.

I had a fragrant little flower,
In a shady nook it grew;

Its petals, they were snowy white,

Pencilled with shining blue.

But an ugly, crawling earth-worm came

And gnawed it at the root,

And long e'er summer days were flown,
'Twas trodden under foot.

I had a darling little bird,

With black and crimson wings;
Its voice was full of melody,

Like a Peri's, when she sings.

But once, the live-long day she sat,

With folded wing and drooping head,

And when the quiet even came,

My little bird was dead.

I had a little sister,

With eyes so blue and bright,

That they wove a love-spell in my heart,

With their joyous dancing light.

My soul was full of happiness,

When her heart was pressed to mine,
And I said, "What a world of joyous days,
Thou dear one, shall be thine!"

There is no better test of an author's ability than to take up an old subject on which every variety of mind has expended itself for ages, and without any new facts or helps, render it fresh and attractive. These lectures, now collected in a book form, were delivered a year or two since in New York and Boston, to perhaps the most intelligent and accomplished audiences the cities could furnish. Without any of the clap-trap accessories so often employed to obtain admiration, they secured it by their intrinsic merit alone. To clear thought and a true style, Mr. Hudson adds impulsiveness of feeling and vigor of expression. His unbounded reverence for Shakespeare does not dull the edge of his criticism, or weaken the power of his analysis. Some have objected to these lectures, on the ground that he has made far more out of the characters than

Shakspeare himself ever dreamed of. The latter simply caused them to speak naturally, without any reference to art whatever. But as in reading Shakspeare, we care not whether his Richard III is the Richard III of history, and think only of the character as drawn by his pen, so in listening to Mr. Hudson, we care not whether the bard's creations were effected by synthesis, or subjected afterwards to strict analysis; we are delighted with the perfection they present and the close investigation they will bear. Indeed, we do not see what else is left a man, except to show how this great genius, in being a lover himself, obliged all the lovers of true art. As Minerva sprang full-armed from the head of the god, so does every character emerge from the soul of this great wizard, perfect in all its proportions, complete in all its accessories. To unfold this, is to reveal the greatness of Shakspeare, or in other words, make us comprehend what we before knew but did not understand; that nature cannot furnish a better Jew than Shylock, or a completer devil than Iago, or a nobler woman than Cordelia, or a more perfect wife than Imogene, or indeed a character of any hue from Caliban to Bottom, truer than he has given us in the great wonder. Yet we do not fully appreciate this, till some gifted mind analyzes, compares and tests each character in turn. Johnson, Coleridge, Mrs. Jameson, Hazlitt, and a host of others, have undertaken this task, and added to our stock of knowledge and increased our admiration, but Mr. Hudson stands in a better position than either. With the results of all combined before him, and viewing them generously and freely, he has also given us the product of his own reflections. Possessing great originality himself, the thoughts of others have become as it were his own in passing through his mind; or in other words, after furnishing himself with all the helps in his reach, he has given us not a compilation, not a collection of opinions, but a complete original work as distinctly and strongly marked as if he were the first man that ever wrote on Shakspeare.

His antithetical mode of saying things, nay, his very alliter ations give a movement and vigor to his sentences that burry the reader on so, that what he took up perhaps as a dry analysis, he finds he cannot lay down without an effort.

A large part of the first volume is devoted to Shakspeare himself, and the times in which he lived. We cannot give an ade quate idea of the author's excellence or style, without extensive quotations, and if we were required to select from the different plays, we should hardly know which to choose. He first gives the plot and then takes up the principal characters and analyzes them. The tragedies, perhaps, from the very characters necessary to them, possess more interest than the other plays. Hamlet and Macbeth are huge creations that make us tremble as we contemplate them. The midnight grave, the murderous deed, the cries of conscience and the still copse, enchain us more than the jokes of the buffoon, the retorts of the wit or the passionate language of the lover. We