engaged one of her acquaintances to assist her in keeping the secret, and before the next morning every individual in the neighbourhood knew it. One of the deacons of the parish, a venerable old man who was held in great reverence, such a man as you may yet sometimes see in the places least visited by stagecoaches and steam-boats, carrying an ivory-headed cane, and wearing a red woollen cap over his thin white hairs, called to remonstrate with Holmes on the danger to which he exposed his daughter in suffering her to marry a man of a doubtful character. Holmes was even more alarmed than the deacon, and after some consultation it was agreed, that the latter should immediately call on Smith and get the matter cleared up. Smith received him with great politeness, was hurt at the slanders that had been circulated against him; protested his innocence, appealed to the propriety of his past conduct, which made the accusation utterly improbable, and finished by calling in the landlord to vouch for the truth of what he said. The landlord eagerly confirmed every word he had uttered, declared the chambermaid to be a lying baggage, and to show his sincerity, discharged her on the spot. The good deacon was the more inclined to believe in Smith's innocence as he had found him orthodox on the five points, and had observed that he always touched his hat reverently to himself and the minister; that he was sufficiently punctual in his attendance at church, and scrupulously so at the conferences and Sunday evening meetings, where the deacon himself was wont to hold forth in the way of religious exhortation. Smith's cause had now obtained powerful protectors, and the calumnies uttered against his reputation were frowned down and forgotten.

Spring had come on the track of winter, the snows first grew yellow, then showed patches of the brown ground, and finally disappeared altogether; the young blade shot up through the dead grass which the burden of the snow had pressed close to the earth; the maple hung out its profusion of minute red blossoms; the budding willow filled the air with a fragrance like that of lemon groves, and resounded all day with the murmur of bees. The wild cherry, the horse-plum, and the thorn-tree put out their flowers in succession, and finally the whole country was whitened with the bloom of orchards. The birds came back and made love to each other; every living creature was happy; even Edward forgot his griefs as he whistled to his team on the hill-side; but the fair Betsey was the happiest of all, for the graceful Virginian had pressed her to name the marriage day, and it had been named with her father's sanction.

It was one afternoon in this exhilarating time of the year, that Smith called at Holmes's with a fowling-piece on his shoulder. He complained of melancholy, of an unusual weight of sadness on his mind which he could not shake off. Betsey tried to rally him into cheerfulness, but her efforts were ineffectual. He looked at her vacantly, and at length said that he would go and see if a little exercise would do him good, and kill a rabbit for his landlord's breakfast. He went out, and she stood gazing after him a moment and then turned to her household affairs. Smith was observed by some laborers in the neighbouring fields to go up the hill along the inclosure of pasture ground mentioned in the beginning of this narrative, until he arrived at the little level near the skirt of the wood. It was an unusually sultry day for the season; there was not wind enough to shake the faded blossoms from the apple tree; the shriek of the tree-toad was occasionally heard from afar off, and the sound of the distant mountain brooks seemed like mysterious voices holding discourse in the air. Smith was sauntering languidly along, when the laborers heard a strange hissing sound, and looking, saw several puffs of white smoke issuing from the ground directly under his feet. Instantly the earth seemed to be rent at that very spot with a terrible explosion; a column of stones and earth was thrown to a great height; a tongue of bluish flame shot up, and a thick dark smoke arose, enlarged, and gradually whitened as it diffused itself in the air. A moment of dead silence succeeded, and then the laborers saw the stones and clods of earth dropping back into the smoke, and heard them strike heavily against the ground. After the first shock of astonishment and terror was over, they consulted for an instant together, and then hastened with mingled curiosity and fear to the spot. They were met by the smoke which was rolling slowly along the ground and of which the acrid and sulphurous odor almost took away their breath. On coming to the place they found Smith lying with his face to the earth, and the fowling-piece under him. They raised him, but he was dead, his jaw had fallen, and his countenance wore a strange expression of horror.

The body of Smith was carried to his lodgings, and a coroner's inquest was held over it. There was no appearance of any bruise or other external injury in his person, except that his eyebrows and the ends of his hair were somewhat scorched, and it seemed probable that he had perished by inhaling the fiery and deadly fume of the explosion. In his pockets were found some letters and memoranda, from the perusal of which a suspicion arose that his name of Smith was an assumed one, that the story

of his Virginia family was a forgery, and that he was already married, and that his wife lived in a distant part of the country. Curiosity was strongly excited; the trunks of the deceased were opened, his papers were examined with little ceremony, and their contents confirmed the suspicion beyond doubt. A strong feeling of indignation at the fraud he had practised mingled itself with the awe felt at the terrible event by which he had been cut off; and the verdict of the jury was, that the deceased had come to his end by the judgment of God.

His relations were informed of his fate, and his effects were delivered to them. Further inquiries into his history showed a series of irregularities on his part which ended in his associating with a gang of sharpers in one of the Atlantic cities, from which he was at length driven by the pursuit of justice. His real name, and the place of his birth, I do not think proper to disclose, since there are probably those alive to whom the disclosure might give pain.

But the event struck a deep awe into all the neighbourhood. People spoke to each other in a subdued voice, the choleric were afraid to quarrel, and the knavish to cheat, the old warned the young, and the young forbore their usual amusements and gaieties. Even old Holmes contented himself for a while with a smaller usury, and it was long before the look of concern and the tone of fear passed away from among the good people. The little level where the event happened, and the hollow where the fire broke forth from the earth, beautiful as they are, with wild flowers in spring and wild fruits in summer and autumn, still remained, and even yet remain the objects of dread.

Betsey was an heiress, and did not long remain unwooed. Edward was the handsomest young fellow left; he had remained constant in his affections, and, what was of some importance, he had always borne an excellent character. Means were found to overcome the objections of the father, and before the orchards were again in bloom the young couple were man and wife. A numerous progeny sprung up around them; of whom I remember to have once seen a specimen in passing through the place in the stage-coach-two chubby boys of nearly the same age, who being frightened down from the back part of the coach, where they had clandestinely placed themselves, by the crack of the driver's whip, indemnified themselves by the ainusement of pelting him with apples.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

SONNET.

A POWER is on the earth and in the air
From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid,
And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade,
From the hot steam and from the fiery glare.
Look forth upon the earth-her thousand plants
Are smitten; even the dark sun-loving maize
Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze:
The herd beside the shaded fountain pants;
For life is driven from all the landscape brown;

The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den ;
The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men
Drop by the sun-stroke in the populous town:
As if the Day of Fire had dawned, and sent
Its deadly breath into the firmament.

B.

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE PASTOR FIDO.*

Аст І. SCENE V.

SILVIO.

SIL. THERE is no life, forsooth,

But that which nurture hath

LINCO.

From wanton and mad phantasy!

LIN. Tell me, if in this glad and beautiful tide,
That overlays with gold the new-born earth,
Thou shouldst behold, for flower-embroidered fields,
Green meadows and the leaf-invested groves,
Shorn of their tangled locks the pine and fir,

* These versions are intended to come as near metaphrase as the structure of the languages permits; and if they do not, the attempt is a failure. The measure has been exactly preserved, and the transitions from rhyme to blank verse and vice vers in the first of these specimens correspond with those in the original.

Beech, ash, and all the woodland family,

The meadows bare, the uplands unadorned,

Wouldst thou not say, "Earth waxes sick and pale,
Nature herself decays?" Like horror, then,
Like wonder strange as thou wouldst entertain
At such unheard, portentous novelty,

Feel at thyself. Heaven to the course of years
Conforms the wants of life; to every age

Its genial usages; and even as love

Accords not with the thoughts of grey-haired men,
So youth's antipathy to gracious love

Affronts great nature and opposes heaven.-
Look then around thee, Silvio :

All in this world that's fair and excellent

Is Love's creation: heaven is full of love;

And earth, and ocean's depths.

And that sweet star, forerunner of the dawn,

Which yonder thou mayst mark,

Glows with that flame; she too in her pure sphere

Kindles with her son's fires; the source of love

Herself enamoured shines;

And now, even now, perchance,

Dear, secret raptures and the chosen breast

Of her own love she quits.

Lo! how she sparkles and smiles radiant !

Deep in the desart woods

The monstrous creatures love; amidst the waves,

Swift gliding dolphins and the shapeless orc.

That warbler who his chant

Prolongs so sweetly, winged in wanton flight

From th' ash tree to the beech,

From the beech to myrtle spray,

Had he human wit, would

say

In his articulate song, "I love! I love! "

Yet what his song doth move,

The language of his heart,

The mistress of his music understands.

And list, list, Silvio,