low acorns, and form unterrified their tiny rings upon the grass. The terrors of 'Old Brocken' had fled; the scowl had passed from his forehead, and all unholy things had vanished with the storm and the clouds and the darkness. We passed over the mountain of Ilsenstein (the way of the witches on Walpurgis-eve,) where an iron cross had been erected to the men who fell for Fatherland in the War of the Liberation, and we reached the good inn of the Rothe Florelle' (Red Trout) at Ilsenberg just as the shrill bugle of the postillion announced the arrival of the diligence which was to convey me to Hartzburg and out of the Hartz.

Washington, Dec., 1849.

THOU exile on a foreign strand,

Thou gallant heart in bondage bleeding!
Thou last hope of a fallen land,

What eye can view thy wrongs unheeding?
KOSSUTH! oppression's arm of might
Hath laid in dust thy country's right,
And crushed the new-born hope that bloomed
A nation's hope and strong desire;
But Freedom is not thus entombed !
Like PHOENIX rising from the fire
She springs, undaunted by the strife,
Exulting in reviving life!

And we upon this western shore,
Who mourned a nation's glory o'er,
Shall yet behold her rising high,
And hear the loud victorious cry
Pealed forth by millions o'er the sea,
'Freedom to Hungary and thee!'

C. E. HAMILTON.

THE HERMIT OF UTICA.

BY A. B. JOHNSON.

IN our country few cities have been the slow growth of successive generations of men. The new settlement of a man's infancy becomes the village of his boyhood, and the city of his later life. It even becomes old before he is fully aware of his own senility, and he is sometimes startled at hearing it designated in fondness by the young as our good old city, when the whole period of its existence flits before him like a vision of yesterday. Utica is a city of this description, and several persons reside in it, and are in the vigor of life, who retain a vivid recollection of having often seen walking in the streets of Utica while yet a small village, a short, slender man, leaning on a stout rough cane or stick, himself almost bent double with age and rheumatism. His name was Pardee, but his christian name no one knew; and his surname was rarely applied to him, for he was usually spoken of as the old hermit. He seemed wholly abstracted from all surrounding objects, and his indistinct articulation, when he was occasionally compelled to speak, evinced an imbecility of intellect or a mind in ruins. A tradition existed that he came from Philadelphia, and was once in easy circumstances, though perhaps never very affluent; and a practised eye might easily detect, amid the tatters in which he was clad, that he had been a gentleman accustomed to the amenities of social refinement. His pecuniary fortune had been ruined by the bad conduct of a son, whose extraordinary adventures and mysterious death we are now to narrate

as they were currently spoken of in Philadelphia at the time of their occurrence; and a recollection of them still lingers in the memory of some of the old Philadelphians, especially among those of the Quaker denomination, which once numbered his mother among its members.

Young Pardee being an only child, was uniformly treated with great tenderness by his father, who was a widower, and perhaps always fond of seclusion, and thus peculiarly disposed to concentrate his affections and hopes on his motherless son. The father never refused any request for money that the son chose to make, and that the requests might not be unreasonable, the father frankly informed the son of the extent of his fortune, that the son should graduate his exactions by his own prudence rather than by the father's coercion. The young man, unsubdued by this kindness, was prodigal in his expenses from a very early period, and in the aggravated form of expending on credit; till the old man, becoming aware of these defects in his son, grew increasingly anxious that he should acquire a literary education, that he might possess something which could not be squandered.

The young man had obtained the ordinary rudiments of instruction, and having often heard that college was a clever place for enjoyment and frolic, he readily acceded to his father's wishes to become a student of Yale College at New-Haven, where he was speedily entered as a freshman. He commenced his collegiate course with some vague notions of acquiring college honors, not however, by hard study but by the force of native genius, which he knew he possessed abundantly, because he felt it; and that his genius might have fair play, he resolved on indulging only moderately in his former dissipations. But unfortunately his love of self-indulgence was too powerful for his intellectual restraints, and he soon gave full rein to his old habits of expenditure, augmented by the enlarged sphere in which he deemed himself situated.

He had been out late one night at an oyster supper with a party of his college companions, and he returned to his own room no little excited by the hilarity of the carousal, and the medley of things he had eaten and drunk. He undressed in a hurry and was speedily in bed; for he was desirous of losing as little as possible of the short period which yet remained for sleep. But sleep he could not. He thought involuntarily of the expenses to which he was subjecting the care-worn old man at Philadelphia, and of the grief with which he was afflicting him by dissipation. He tried to banish such reflections, and to substitute therefor a recollection of the pleasures in which he had just participated, and an anticipation of the enjoyments of a like supper that had been planned for the following night. But sleep would not be thus evoked, and he was more wakeful than ever. At length he became exceedingly irritated and kept feverishly turning his body from side to side, vainly mistaking his mental uneasiness for an uneasiness of his bed; while every moment that he lay awake abridged the short period that remained for repose, and rendered it still more necessary that he should speedily sleep. In the midst of this conflict of opposite feelings, he suddenly experienced a sensation as if some person was rocking his bedstead in the manner of a cradle. He tried to jump out, but on

which ever side he attempted to reach the floor, the bedstead became elevated, and he was rolled back again into the centre of the bed. He became horribly alarmed, and would have screamed for assistance, but before he could utter a syllable, something heavy and exceedingly hot sprang upon his breast; and while it effectually prevented his utterance it held him motionless and prostrate. He lay thus for some moments in a sort of speechless agony, when the body that was crushing him down extended itself slowly to his ear, and whispered therein, but with a voice so husky, and in accents so fierce and incoherent, that he could recognise no meaning to its communication; but after listening with all the self-possession he could command, he thought it told him that if he would resort to the elm-tree that stood opposite to his window in the public square, he would find a charmed purse, which would supply all his future pecuniary wants, how large soever they might happen to be; and that he should never be molested for the use he might make of the money unless he should contract therewith the three cardinal vices, when the owner of the purse would reclaim the gift, and as a penalty for its abuse, seize his body.

After this communication all became again silent. The body that was pressing on his breast shrank gradually from his ear, and gradually lifted itself from his chest. The burning sensation subsided slowly, the bed ceased from rocking, and the sufferer, relieved thus from constraint, bounded from the bed and stared wildly around the room. All things therein looked precisely as he had placed them, and the morning sun was pouring its cheerful beams in at his window. He began to suspect that what he had heard and felt was a dream; and on a little reflection he became sure it was nothing more. Thus consoled, he wet his parched lips and tongue with a draught of cold water, and dressed himself in haste, but being too late for morning prayers in the chapel, he hurried to recitation, though with an aching head and an ominous consciousness that he should receive many bad marks for his literary deficiences.

In returning from recitation, where he had not failed from obtaining the deficient marks he had anticipated, his way led him past the elmtree that he had been told of in his dream, if dream it was, and he could not forbear from looking down at the indicated spot; but his surprise was excessive when he saw among the grass, close to the trunk of the stately old tree, a curiously-wrought asbestos purse, which he almost involuntarily picked up, and found it heavy with gold that glittered through its interstices.

The purse was ornamented on its surface with various characters that resembled Hebrew, although differing in some particulars; but prominent amid the ornaments was the device of a skull surrounded with flames, while a headless Agnus Dei, with its cross broken, seemed to clasp the mouth of the purse. He felt a nervous irresolution as to whether he should cast down the ominous purse to the place from whence he had taken it, or make himself master of the exhaustless treasure which its possession portended; for as so much of the night's vision had proved to be a reality, why might not the remainder be a reality, and he, by accepting a diabolical present, subject himself to be

VOL. XXXV.

14

seized by the terrific owner and carried he durst not name wither. But this contingency was to happen only on his contracting the three cardinal vices, and although he knew not distinctly what the sevices might be, yet as he was firmly resolved to contract no vices permanently, he certainly could incur no danger by availing himself of the means of enjoyment thus providentially cast in his path; especially as he should thereby relieve his father from the burden of his future expenses. This consideration he thought meritorious, and therefore, with the self-complacency of a man who feels he is acting from a worthy motive, he placed the purse in his pocket and walked home to breakfast, less to gratify any appetite that he possessed than to relieve, by a cup of strong coffee, the dull pain that oppressed his forehead.

He dozed at different intervals through the day in listless prostration of body and mind, but at the approach of night, his headache subsided, and his vivacity revived, until at the hour appointed for his evening rendevous he became as brilliant and well as ever. He was even gayer than usual, for possessing the means of unstinted gratification, he was liberal in calling for wine at the tavern where the meeting was held, and in regaling his companions as well as himself. Cards were also resorted to, by way of varying the amusement, and as all the players were excited by deep drinking, bets and stakes soon became high, and the virtue of the purse was frequently tested by copious abstractions therefrom; but it suffered no diminution in bulk or weight, remaining continually full, with the gold gleaming through its interstices as brightly as ever. Assured thus of the efficacy of his purse, the owner dismissed all doubts of its inexhaustibility, and played recklessly and high, though losses seemed to fill him with rancor and stimulate him to revenge as much as though he owned no purse to supply his deficiencies. From the card-table the jovial companions concluded, by an easy transition, to pass the remainder of the night in such haunts as the excitement of wine and cards rendered congenial. They accordingly broke up in a tumult, upset upon the floor the tables with all their burden of decanters, tumblers and candles, and sallied forth to conclude in darkness an illspent evening with, if possible, a worse-spent night.

Thus passed the days and nights of young Pardee, but not without an episode in the form of a gentle acquaintance with a young lady of Baltimore, the only child of an old millionaire of that city. She was residing at a boarding-school in New-Haven, and was just at the dangerous period of womanhood when conduct is controlled by the feelings rather than by the intellect, and when the world with its dim future is viewed through the medium of our hopes rather than through the light of experience and observation. The parties had seen each other in the streets and laughed as they met in pure exuberance of youthful animation. They had met in various rambles about the suburbs of the city, and as the rules of her school forbade any authorized interviews with young men, unauthorized ones became in a manner sanctioned by necessity; and she eventually acquired an intimacy with Pardee, a prepossession in his favor and a fondness for his conversation and attentions. The physical excesses in which he indulged, and which blunted his sensibilities and rendered him as unsusceptible to her partiality as unworthy