check any desire for a more intimate perusal of her features. The lady combined his two antipathies-her hair was decidedly red, and a strong cast, to use a mild term, detracted from the uncommon brilliancy of her mind-glancing eyes. She took very slight part in the conversation, and that little, so absorbed was Mr. Simpson, was by him utterly unheeded. She wore, like her friend Mrs. Frazer, a plaid dress, and the baptismal name of both was Mary.

The ladies departed early, and Mr. Simpson and Mr. Gray followed their example a few minutes afterwards.

"Mr. Gray," said the former gentleman, as he took leave of his companion at the end of the street, "what is that charming person's name? I have quite forgotten it."

"Which charming person?" inquired Mr. Alfred Gray, with a quiet smile.

This Mr. Simpson thought a very absurd question; he, however, replied "The lady in the plaid dress; Mary, Mrs. Puckford called her."

"The lady in a plaid dress, whom Mrs. Puckford called Mary, is a Miss Fortescue: she is a teacher of music and drawing," rejoined Mr. Gray, with demure accent. It was too dark for Mr. Simpson to see his eyes.

"Thank you, sir; good night," rejoined the enamored municipal dignitary. Mr. Simpson was soon at home, and before an hour had elapsed had carefully penned, and posted with his own hands, a letter to his friend Puckford. He then retired to bed, and dreamt dreams.

"Sarah," said Mr. Puckford the next morning to his wife, after reading a letter, just delivered, with a perplexed expression of countenance" did Mr. Simpson seem to you particularly struck with Mary Fortescue yesterday evening?"

"With Mary Fortescue? Surely not. Why do you ask?"

"Only that here is a letter from Simpson, professing violent love for her; and stating his determination, should you and I be able to assure him, which he scarcely dares venture to hope, that she is disengaged, to immediately solicit her hand in marriage."

"Gracious!-Is it possible?" "Read the letter yourself. Her beauty, he observes, is, he is quite sure, her least recommendation. Comical, isn't it?"

"Well, it is odd; but she is, you know, a most amiable creature; and will make, I am sure, an admirable wife."

"And he, too, that so especially detests red hair, or the slightest twist in the organs of

vision".

Mary Fortescue's hair," interrupted the wife, "can scarcely be called red: a very deep gold color, I should say"

"Very deep indeed-remarkably so," interjected Mr. Puckford.

"And as to the slight cast in her eyes, that no one observes after a few days' acquaintance with her."

"I suppose we may with a safe conscience assure him that she is not engaged?''

"Of course we may. It is a wonderful match for her, and we ought to do all we can to forward it. Friday next, the 1st of March, is Alfred's birthday; suppose you ask him to dine with us on that day to meet her? We need have only the same party he met yesterday evening."

This was finally agreed upon; and accordingly, as soon as he had finished his business in the city, Mr. Puckford, previous to returning home, called on Mr. Simpson. He found him in a state of great excitement, which, however, gradually calmed down after Mr. Puckford's solemn assurance, which he gave unhesitatingly, that the charming Mary Fortescue was certainly disengaged; and, in his opinion, by no means indisposed to entertain an eligible matrimonial proposition. All this was balm to the stricken Simpson; and after several failures, he at last succeeded in inditing a formal offer of his hand and fortune to the lady of his affection; of which impassioned missive Mrs. Puckford was to be the bearer; her husband undertaking that she would exert all her eloquence and influence to secure acceptance of the proposal.

"And now, Puckford," said Mr. Simpson, "we'll have a glass of wine, and drink the future Mrs. Simpson's health. What a charming ornament," he added, with a sort of rapturous sigh, as he placed the decanters on the table-"what a charming ornament she would be to this fireplace!"

"An odd expression that!" thought Mr. Puckford, forgetting that the speaker was an ironmonger, and dealt in such articles. In fact, from the way in which Simpson had been rapturizing upon Miss Fortescue's charms, a doubt of his friend's perfect sanity had sprung up in John Puckford's mind; and he shrewdly suspected that the affair would terminate in a de lunatico inquirendo instead of a license.

"Do you know, Puckford," said Mr. Simpson, with a benevolent, patronizing air, after the third or fourth glass-" do you know I fancy there is a great likeness between you and Mary Fortescue?"

Mr. John Puckford, the reader must understand, was a handsome young man, with a brilliant florid complexion, perfectly-agreeing vision, and lightbrown hair. No wonder, therefore, he was more startled than flattered by the comparison. The color mounted to his temples, and a conviction of Simpson's utter insanity flashed across his brain. "Mad as a March hare !" he mentally ejaculated; at the same time resolving, should the paroxysm grow dangerously violent, to knock him down with one of the decanters; both of which, as two could play at that game, he drew, as if in doubt which wine he would take, to his own side of the table. Mr. Simpson, mistaking the nature of his friend's emotion, added, "Don't suppose, Puckford, I intend any absurd flattery!"

"Not at all, Simpson; I didn't suppose anything of the sort, I assure you."

"To be sure not; nothing is more contemptible. You are a good-looking fellow-very; but

of course I could n't mean that you, a man, are to be compared to Mary Fortescue."

"I should think not!" drily responded the more and more mystified and bewildered Puckford. "Exactly: you do not resemble each other about the eyes, either in color or expression." "Oh!"

66

"No; as to hair," continued Mr. Simpson meditatively, yours, there can be no doubt, is decidedly the lightest."

"It's coming now," thought Mr. John Puckford, grasping at the same time one of the decanters, and eying his friend intensely.

Mr. Simpson, quite misinterpreting the action, added quickly, "Do, my good fellow, fill me a bumper, and we'll drink her good-looking friend's health-the lady, I mean, with the dark silky hair and brunette complexion. Do you know," continued the complacent Simpson, crossing his legs, throwing himself back easily in his chair, and hooking his thumbs to the arm-holes of his waistcoat" do you know that, if Mary Fortescue had not been at your house yesterday evening, I might have"

What the worthy ironmonger might, in the case supposed, have done or said, must be left to the reader's imagination, for on the instant a clerk hurriedly entered the apartment, to announce that an important customer awaited Mr. Simpson in the counting-house below. Hastily rising, Mr. Simpson shook hands with his friend, and both departed their several ways: Mr. Puckford bearing off the epistle addressed to Miss Fortescue, and musing as he went upon lover-madness, which, he fully agreed with Rosalind, deserved chains and a dark house quite as much as any other variety of the disease. The next day Mr. Simpson received a note from Mary Fortescue, modestly and gracefully expressed, in which, with charming humility, and many expressions of gratified surprise, the offer of his hand was-on one condition, unexplained, but which rested altogether with himself-gratefully accepted.

Such was the state of affairs when, on the 1st of March, Mr. Simpson, as I have before stated, entered a Brougham, and directed the driver to make the best of his way to Mile End. It was a fine, bright and exceedingly cold day; but notwithstanding the nipping, eager air, the love-lorn ironmonger, as he approached the house which contained his charmer, was in a state of profuse perspiration and high nervous excitement. Once more he drew from his pocket the fairy note, and glanced over the modest, grateful, delicately-feminine expressions. "Dear lady," he audibly exclaimed as he finished about the five hundredth perusal of the familiar lines-"Dear lady, she will be all tears and tenderness!"

About a minute after giving utterance to this consolatory reflection, Mr. Simpson found himself in Mrs. Puckford's presence, who, congratulating him on his punctuality, and pointing to the door of the front apartment said, "There is only one

lady there, and you know her." Mr. Simpson's heart leaped and thumped, as if desirous of bursting through his green velvet waistcoat. He stepped desperately towards the door, and essayed to turn the brass handle; but so profusely did the bashful man's very fingers perspire, that they slipped round the knob without turning it. The second trial, with the help of his cambric handkerchief, was more successful, and the lover was in the presence of the lady.

Certainly it was she! Mrs. Frazer, the hapless Simpson's Mary Fortescue, was there in bodily reality. But the grateful humility, the "tears and tenderness," prefigured by the charming note !

Oh Alfred Gray!

The unruffled ease, the calm, reserved politeness with which Mrs. Frazer received him chilled his enthusiastic fervor wondrously. His perspiration became a cold one, and in a few moments he felt as if enveloped in coatings and leggings of Wenham-Lake ice. Recovering himself as speedily as he could from the shock of this unexpectedlychilling reception, Mr. Simpson stammered forth something about his extreme good fortune in having obtained a favorable response from so amiable a person, et cetera.

"Certainly," replied the lady, "I think you are very fortunate, Mr. Simpson." And then, by way of saying something particularly civil, and to relieve the modest man's embarrassment, she added, "But few men have, like you, sufficient discrimination to discern and appreciate attractions which lie hidden from the merely superficial observer."

Poor Simpson gasped for breath! He was literally dumbfounded! Here was modest gratitude, to say nothing of "tears and tenderness," with a vengeance! Miss Fortescue, with a precarious salary of some twenty pounds per annum, exclusive of bread and butter, was, in her own opinion, conferring a tremendous obligation upon a civic dignitary worth at least twenty thousand pounds, by accepting him for a husband! That was quite clear; and although Mr. Simpson was too much in love to deny such a proposition in the abstract, still it was, he thought, scarcely consistent with maiden modesty to state it so very broadly. Notwithstanding his amazement, Mr. Simpson, as soon as he recovered breath, continued, so well had he studied for the occasion, to get out a sentence or two about the superiority of connubial to single blessedness. This sentiment also met with ready acquiescence.

"Oh dear, yes," said Mrs. Frazer; "I would not have been an old maid for the world!"

"Well," thought the astonished admirer of feminine reserve, almost doubting the evidence of his ears, "this is certainly the frankest maiden I ever conversed with!"

A considerable pause followed. Mrs. Frazer, seated upon a sofa, played with the luxurious auburn-really auburn-tresses of her nephew Alfred.

"A pity!" exclaimed the lady: "I think it beautiful! And," added she, looking the astonished man somewhat sternly in the face, "I should be well pleased if all our children had hair of the same color!"

This was a climax! Simpson leaped to his feet as if impelled by the shock of a galvanic battery. "Our children! Well, after that. But I must be dreaming," thought the fastidious ironmonger, as he wiped the perspiration from his teeming forehead; "laboring under some horrid enchantment."

Dreaming indeed, and to be swiftly and rudely awakened. The door opened, and a gentleman entered, whom Mrs. Frazer immediately introduced with-" Mr. Simpson, my husband, Mr. Frazer!"

The blow was terrific! Simpson staggered back as if he had been shot. He glared alternately at the husband and wife for a few seconds; then, pale as his shirt-collar, tottered to a chair, and sinking into it, ejaculated with white lips, "Oh!"

"What is the matter, sir? you look ill!" said Mr. Frazer.

The bewildered man made no reply. His brain was whirling. "Who, on earth, then had he been courting?"

A loud knock at the street door somewhat aroused him. "My sister, I daresay," exclaimed Mrs. Frazer.

Her sister! Possibly his Mary might be the brunette; and yet There were but three females present on that fatal evening, besides Mrs. Puckford, that he distinctly remembered; and perhaps Vain hope! the door opened, and the brunette and two gentlemen entered-" Mr. and Mrs. Holland, and Mr. Alfred Gray."

All illusion was now over. He, Robert Simpson, wealthy tradesman, respected fishmonger, and common councilman, was the betrothed husband of a red-haired damsel with a decided cast, with whom, moreover, he had never exchanged a sentence! His first impulse, as the certainty of his miserable fate flashed upon him, was to strangle Alfred Gray out of hand as the author of his destruction, when fortunately another rap-tap arrested his fell intent.

"Miss Fortescue at last!" cried Mrs. Frazer, as if announcing glad tidings.

"Oh!" ejaculated the accepted suitor, dropping nervelessly back into the seat from which he had just risen-" Oh!”

He was seized with a sort of vertigo; and what occurred, or how he behaved for a considerable interval, he never distinctly remembered. He was, however, soon seated at table by the side of his affianced bride, Mr. Puckford saying grace. This was the actual state of affairs; but poor Simpson's impression at the moment was, that he had been

He

that his friend Puckford was the chaplain reading the funeral service. Gradually, however, his brain cleared, and he grew cooler and more collected. Upon reflection, his position did not appear so very desperate. As to Mrs. Frazer, all that was of course over, past praying for, and he must dismiss it from his mind as speedily as possible. The lady beside him, who he could see was almost as discomposed as himself, was, he had no doubt, a sensible person-her letter was sufficient evidence of that; and when he had explained the unfortunate mistake that had occurred, which he would by and by take a quiet opportunity of doing, would no doubt release him from an engagement he had never intended to contract. would, moreover-Simpson was anything but a churlish or ungenerous man-bestow upon her a marriage-portion of, say, four or five hundred pounds, which would doubtless enable her to marry respectably, and thus console her for her present disappointment. Thus philosophizing and reasoning, Mr. Simpson's spirits, considering the suddenness of the shock he had endured, rallied wonderfully, and he was enabled to address a few words of course to Miss Fortescue in almost a cheerful voice and manner. The lady's answer was uttered in the gentlest, sweetest tones he had ever listened to; and Mr. Simpson was a connoisseur in voices. The conversation continued; became general; and the dinner, commenced so inauspiciously, passed off, considering all things, remarkably well. After dinner, Miss Fortescue-her friends, who greatly esteemed her, generously drawing forth her powers -appeared to great advantage. Her mind, of a superior order, had been well cultivated, and her conversation was at once refined, sparkling, and sensible. Mr. Simpson was surprised, pleased, almost charmed. Music was proposed, and she sang several songs admirably. Mr. Simpson determined to postpone his explanation-necessarily an unpleasant one-till the next day, when he would do it by letter. The party separated about nine o'clock; long before which hour it had several times glanced across the ironmonger's mind, that a dislike of any particular colored hair was, after all, a very absurd prejudice; as to the cast, that, he was satisfied, was so slight as scarcely to deserve the name. It had been arranged that they should all dine with the Frazers the day after the next; and as Mr. Simpson handed Mary Fortescue into the cab, in which Mrs. and Mr. Frazer were already seated, she whispered, "Oblige me by coming on Sunday half an hour before the time appointed: I have something of importance to say to you." Mr. Simpson bowed, and how could he do less?-raised the lady's hand to his lips. The carriage drove off, and the worthy man was left in the most perplexing state of dubiety and irresolution imaginable. He began to think he had gone too far to recede with honor; and, what was very extraordinary, he felt scarcely sorry for Mr. Simpson, punctual to his engagement, found Miss Fortescue awaiting him alone. He felt on this occasion none of the violent emotions he had experienced on the previous Friday. His heart, instead of knocking and thumping like a caged wild thing, beat tranquilly in his bosom; yet it was not without a calmly-pleasurable emotion that he met the confiding, grateful smile which beamed on his entrance over the lady's features. Seating himself beside her, he, with respectful gentleness, requested her to proceed with the matter she wished to communicate. She blushingly complied, and speedily beguiled him, if not of his tears, which I am not quite sure about, of something, under the circumstances, far more valuable. "Her family, not many years before in apparently affluent circumstances, had been, by reverses in trade, suddenly cast down into extreme poverty. The only

even now fully resolved never to do so unlessunless" Mary Fortescue paused in her narrative, and her timid, inquiring glance rested anxiously upon the varying countenance of her auditor.

Mr. Simpson was not made of adamant, nor of iron, though he traded in the article; and no wonder, therefore, that the graceful manner, the modest, pleading earnestness, the gentle tones, the filial piety of his betrothed, should have vanquished, subdued him. Her features, plain as they undoubtedly were, irradiated by the lustre of a beautiful soul, kindled into absolute beauty! At all events Mr. Simpson must have thought so, or he would not have caught the joyfully-weeping maiden in his arms and exclaimed, in answer to her agitated appeal, "Unless your home may be theirs also?" Be it so: I have, thank God, enough and to spare for all."

Thus was oddly brought about, and finally determined on, one of the happiest marriages, if Mr. Simpson himself is to be believed and he ought

sister, had been long principally dependent on her exertions for support. The assistance she had fortunately been able to render had hitherto sufficed them; but of course, if she married, that source of income must fail; and she never would marry -indeed she had never, till surprised by his gen

HUMBOLDT'S BIRTHDAY.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT completed his eightieth year on Friday the 14th instant, and the announcement of his continued health and unabated faculties is hailed with delight in every land. Few spectacles can be more cheering to the sight than the aged philosopher, wise, happy, and venerated. Humboldt is a living triumph over impossibilities, a reconciler of the irreconcilable. After wandering about the globe, not in the hurried career of the tourist, but in the patient scrutiny of the naturalist and the geologist after

Should he attain, of which there is every reasonable prospect, the dignity of lord mayor, he will, I am quite sure, attribute that, as he now does all fortunate events, to his supreme good-luck in having unwittingly fallen in love with another man's wife!

erable tree typifying such liberty as the French could plant in 1848 and Lamartine " immortalize;" but beyond, borne on the wings of time, whose stream cannot be turned back, is the liberty which despots cannot hinder and revolutionists cannot snatch. Sitting in the narrow circle of his king's court, Humboldt expounds the laws of the Kosmos, and proclaims the future consummation of human science in the free government of man.

If ever there was a typical man, it is he who still lives with us; whose new gifts are still awaited with expectant gratitude. The universe

that would have blinded stronger men, building up books upon an enormous scale-he returns to find rest in a court; and yet again from that ungenial sphere he pours forth his philosophy in language unstinted and untarnished.

Two truths often seem opposed to each other, or separately incredible, till they are brought together; it has been Humboldt's function to bring truths together, and expound their relations in time and space, and thus to rebuke many a needless conflict. From him the despot and the revolutionary, the bigot and the sceptic, may learn the complement to laws of which they see only a part, and may know that what they are fighting for, to bloodshed, is decreed, all in its good time.

upon it-it has been his, mortal thing creeping upon this earth of ours, to look forth upon the universe in time and space, and to open for his kind that vast and wondrous vision, in all its beauty-not only to their knowledge, but to their affections. It has been his to show that the political fate of man rests, as to its essential progress, on the changeless laws of that universe; his to show that the wisdom of the seer and the station of the court minister may be united with the unpretending good-nature, the practical tolerant virtue, of the honest and kindly man. His own personal success illustrates his philosophy; he has succeeded in small things without forfeiting success in great; he has played his part in daily life without forgetting eternity; he has served kings, and borne consolation to the humblest and most oppressed, by proclaiming the laws that gov

From the Britannia.

RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES.

As the relations of Russia with Turkey are again likely to be brought prominently before the European eye, we give a sketch of their history for the last hundred years.

The wars between Russia and the Porte had existed from the conquest of Western Asia by the Ottoman monarchs, but generally without results; the war was an inroad, and the peace was a truce. The rise of Russia under Peter the Great made those wars more inveterate, but with effects equally transitory. It was only in the reign of Catherine II., a woman of masculine mind and more than Russian ambition, that those barbaric conflicts assumed the form of a determination to conquer, and that every war was followed by a permanent accession to the dominions of Russia.

of Othman. He now once more abolished the Nizam Jedid.

In 1812 the pressure of Russian affairs by the French invasion produced a peace, by which, however, Turkey lost Bessarabia and the principal mouth of the Danube.

The Greek revolt next occupied the troops of Turkey until the struggle was closed by the ruin of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, in 1827, an act of the most obvious impolicy on the part of the existing cabinets of Europe, and especially of the whig cabinet.

The old quarrel between Russia and Turkey relative to their share of influence in Moldavia and Wallachia had been pacified by the treaty of Akerman in 1826. But war recommenced in 1828. In the following year Diebitsch crossed the Balkan and reached Adrianople, while Paskiewitch invaded Asia Minor. The imminent peril of the sultan now brought the ambassadors of England and the continental powers to his protection. But

ski, gave Russia almost the entire of the Turkish fortresses to the north of the Danube, the co-protectorship of Moldavia and Wallachia, and the still more important right of protectorship over all the Greek churches in the Turkish dominions. The Crimea also was declared independent of Turkey, which was equivalent to its future possession by Russia. This peace was regarded by European statesmen as laying Turkey finally at the feet of Russia. It was, unquestionably, a severe blow. But history is full of the follies of political prophecy.

Russia suddenly seized on the Crimea in 1787, and war again began. The Turks fought stubbornly, but, through inferiority of means, lost every battle; until the war was concluded by the peace of Jassy in 1792. The Crimea was surrendered to Russia, and the Dneister was made the frontier.

He was

At this period Selim III. was sultan. a man of intelligence and vigor, and, from his melancholy proofs of the superiority of European discipline, he took advantage of the interval of peace to reform the Turkish armies. He now established a new force, named the Nizam Jedid. This establishment threatened the power of the Janizaries, who rose in insurrection and threw the sultan into a dungeon.

Mustapha IV., the cousin of Selim, began his reign in 1807. Bairactar, a pasha and friend of the deposed sultan, marched at the head of an army into Constantinople to restore him. Mustapha, to render this impossible, put him to death, but was himself deposed, and Mahmoud II., his brother, placed on the throne in 1808, by the aid of Bairactar. The Nizam Jedid was now restored. But the Janizaries revolted again, stormed the seraglio, and drove Bairactar, then grand vizier, into a tower, which he defended with his charac

acknowledged the independence of Greece, and paid five millions of ducats for the expenses of the Russian army.

The insurrection in Egypt under Mehemet Ali again mutilated the dominions of the sultan, who marched an army against the pasha, but was defeated in 1831. The Egyptian troops under Ibrahim Pasha reached within 130 miles of Constantinople, when they were stopped by the Russian ambassador, who had ordered a Russian army to march for the defence of the capital. The recompense for this service was the treaty of Hunkiar Skelessi, by which the passage of the Dardanelles was in future to be closed to all the enemies of Russia.

In 1839 war broke out again with Mehemet Ali, who defeated the Turkish army, and drove it into the defiles of Mount Taurus. In this period of national calamity Mahmoud died, in 1840, a man of great natural ability and general good conduct, but rash in his reforms, and exposing his country to hazards, by enfeebling the attachment of his people to their old institutions before he had firmly established new.

England now interfered, and Abdel Mejid, the present sultan, was delivered from the Egyptian army by the English squadron on the coast of Syria. Tyre, Sidon, and Acre were gallantly captured; and Ibrahim Pasha was driven out of Syria with the loss, by climate, the sword, and want of provisions, of nearly 50,000 men. was thus restored; but a treaty confirmed the Pasha of Egypt in his government, which was made hereditary on the condition of acknowledging the sultan's supremacy and paying an annual tribute.

Syria

The question of peace and war with Russia will naturally bring into view, and possibly into action, the political interests connected, in every European