New-York, 1850.

If CIRCE-like you weave a spell
So pure yours, hers seems doubly fell;
Reason and fancy, sense combine,
To make that witching form of thine:
The past is all a worthless dream,
With you my present, future theme.
Eternal friendship I would swear
Did not Love's tempting form appear
To bid me lay before your shrine,
Perchance to doom this heart of mine.
But better thus, so sweetly slain,
Than struggle on in after pain;
If left for aye your glorious bloom,
Crushed with irrevocable doom,
The heavy scar within my heart
Would cling until its pulse depart.

J. B. L.

THE summer of 1849 was unusually warm and sultry. The wealthy and the fashionable left their mansions in the crowded city to avoid the terrible pestilence that was approaching. Business itself seemed to sigh for an hour of leisure, and consequently was complained of as intolerably dull. As for myself, I have no fancy for those crowded watering places, where the comforts of home are sacrificed for the miseries of an attic, lest your tattling and inquisitive neighbors should pronounce you unfashionable and vulgar. They are excellent places for exquisite beauty to whisper soft things to tender languishing belles; for manoeuvring matrons to entrap butterflies for their portionless daughters; or for ladies of indubitable maturity to figure once more in the careless gayeties of sixteen; but as homes for old unpretending bachelors they are anything but comfortable.

There are, however, some public resorts which are in reality all that the lover of comfort and convenience can desire. Fresh breezes and cool sea-bathing, a room within sight of the earth, plenty of quiet congenial companions, and no hops or fancy balls; at such a place I found myself during the oppressive month of August, and enjoyed the rare satisfaction of undisturbed idleness. Among the many kindred spirits that entertained the same views on such subjects as myself I found an old acquaintance, whose humors and eccentricities had often amused me, and whose fund of stories and legends had served to shorten many

a wintry evening in my study at home. He had seen much of the world, and had thus added to his stock of literary information an extensive knowledge of men and manners, derived from a keen observation of the various scenes which he had witnessed, and of the different characters among whom he had been thrown. His physiognomy was marked and peculiar. A pair of gray eyes shone from under a projecting ridge of sandy hair; his high forehead was invariably carelessly shaded with thick and straggling locks; a nose of that good-natured kind which we sometimes see on the faces of old Dutch landlords; while his complexion, though somewhat florid, might have been attributed either to the effect of his travels or to the gentle influence of that far-famed Burgundy wine, whose merits he sometimes rather loudly extolled. Be that however as it may, he was of that race of men who know that living happily is synonymous with living singly, and that the pleasures of life would be neither enhanced by the chorus of babies, nor by the expostulations of an untameable shrew. In addition to all these excellences, he possessed a great taste for literature, which had been judiciously cultivated in his younger days by an erudite parson of the old school, whose historical knowledge was not confined to the books of Moses, and whose poetical studies had not concluded with the psalms.

The dress of my friend was as singular as his countenance. He wore a coat which seemed to be related both to the large family of sacks and to the breed of English riding coats. A row of large hornbuttons extended up and down the front, but whether they were for use or for ornament I never could determine. Capacious pockets gaped on either side, filled with fishing lines, boxes of patent hooks, and all the other troublesome 'conveniences' of an experienced angler. His long-waisted Quakerish vest was also made with an eye to service; for from one pocket protruded the end of a cigar-case, from another a large head of cavendish, and a third seemed pregnant with a sufficiency for a fourth. A pair of buff pants, relics apparently of other days, proudly withdrew from an ample pair of double soles; while a cap, which would have won the palm at a jockey club, completed his outer man. I have been thus particular in describing my companion for no other purpose than to give some idea to my readers of the characters with whom I associate.

We had been fishing one pleasant day, and had experienced unusual good fortune. Our worthy host, skilled in the ways of gratifying the peculiar whims of his guests, had broiled a couple of the largest blue fish which we had caught, and while we were taking our late supper, and praising his cookery, he regaled our imaginations with marvellous accounts of the 'schools which would run' as the season became a little later advanced. In a mood for promising any thing, we intimated our determination to remain until that time, and our host, assuming the air of a man who has hooked a plump trout with a painted fly, waddled pompously away. We had finished our supper, rendered doubly delicious by the consciousness that we had contributed to its excellence, and with hearts at peace with all mankind, we leaned back, as all bachelors do, in two affectionate rocking chairs, placed in the piazza, which

commanded a beautiful prospect of the entrance of Long-Island Sound. It was one of those soft and exilarating evenings which succeed to the heat and languor of a sultry and oppressive day. The sun had already sunk below the long range of hills which skirted the western shore of the tranquil bay; but its lingering rays still fringed with a golden hue the edges of the light clouds which floated near the horizon. A light breeze had arisen, and the merry song of a boat's crew, just discharged from a long voyage to the Pacific, was borne to the small knot of anxious friends who had collected on the pier to welcome them. Now and then would be heard the bleating of the sheep or the lowing of the kine gathered in some distant farm-yard; while at regular and solemn intervals struck the evening bell, as it tolled the hour for sacred service. There is no man who, at some time in his life, has not experienced the soothing influence of an evening like that. The mind forgets the toils and sorrows of the present, and looks either with bright hopes toward the future, or reviews in pleasing sadness the faded pleasures of the past. It is a feeling neither melancholy nor joyous, yet it somewhat partakes of both. Childhood, with all its innocent amusements, with all its trembling anticipations, and with all its hallowed associations of mother's prayers and father's blessings, crowds back upon the memory. The curtain of recollection is raised, and the panorama of our own experience unwinds slowly before us. 'Tis seldom in this busy, anxious world, that a man finds the leisure to turn over the leaves of his own history; but when he does, he feels himself wiser and better, and perhaps more holy and virtuous.

The boat-load had long since landed, and the last echo of the church bell died plaintively away, when I roused myself from my dreaminess and turned toward my companion. He too had been unusually affected, for his pipe was extinguished, and from the inverted bowl the ashes had lodged like snow flakes upon the wrinkles of his vest. His countenance too had lost the air of careless good nature, which it usually wore, and now assumed a curious look of half solemn seriousness. I had never caught him in a mood of melancholy before; and the expression of his face was so unlike any thing that I had ever seen it wear, that I gratified my curiosity by scrutinizing it. His sharp eyes seemed fixed on some object in the air before him; his nose had lost its social, jolly look; and the corners of his mouth were drawn down, as if his last friend on earth had discharged the final bill of nature. A laugh escaped me as he drew a heavy sigh, when, confused at being caught in reflections which he had invariably denounced as unworthy of a philosopher and a bachelor, he started up, and stammered out some remark on the oppressiveness of the weather.

'You have a meditative turn to-night,' I said, with a look which implied that I had guessed the nature of his thoughts. Have you been ruminating among the memories of college, recalling the sentimentalities of some boyish courtship, or reflecting on the inanities of all human hopes, and the insufficiency of all human calculations?'

On none of those,' he replied, though I confess that for once I have departed from my usual rule, and instead of endeavoring to divine the signs of the future, I have been indulging in some reminiscences of the

past. You have often told me that the countenance of a delightful friend, the pages of an entertaining book, or the objects in a beautiful scene, look more attractive when viewed through the colored glass of the imagination than when seen by the naked eye itself. I always declared you to be a dreamy, ideal being, who looked at things not as they are, but as they might be; one that would fall in love with yonder moon because you fancied a resemblance between the clouds, which now half veil her face, and the shyness of a practised coquette. In short, a sort of half fact, half fiction, good for nothing but to write rhymes in ladies' albums, and to sigh over hours of departed happiness, which you would persuade yourself that you had in reality experienced. But I am somewhat inclined to come over to your views, or at least, though I beg your pardon, to embrace the most sensible of them.'

'I was thinking,' he continued,' of some incidents which occurred during my visit to the land of our forefathers a few years since. I have a strange fancy for Germany, its rough and varied scenery, and for its smoking and beer-drinking burghers. Perhaps it may be owing to the Dutch blood which I inherited from my father, who descended, as the chronicles say, from some hard-brained Mynheer. At all events, such is the fact. It is a land where literature and science flourish together; a land whose universities preserve with sacred veneration the mutilated fragments of classic lore; a land unrivalled in wild and romantic diversity; and a land where the customs of forgotten ages are still cherished in the mouldering castles which it contains. Ah! those high and frowning walls; the deep, half-filled moat; the broken and rotten drawbridge and the high sombre turrets, speak volumes to the lover of history and to the student of the feudal days. But I do not purpose to deliver you a lecture on antiquities, or to trace the connexion between our own laws and those of feudal original; but simply to relate a little incident which occurred to myself during one of my rambles, and which may serve perhaps to gratify your craving appetite for the marvellous.'

At the prospect of a story, I drew my chair nearer and disposing myself in the comfortable position of a person who knows that he is to be entertained, without being called upon to exert himself, impatiently waited for what was to follow.

My companion slowly brushed away the ashes from his vest, refilled once more the head of Frederick the Great, and sending forth a cloud of curling smoke, thus commenced his tale.

Ir was near the close of the summer, when in company with friends of habits and tastes similar to my own, I commenced my tour along the banks of the Rhine. I was impelled to this from several motives. For two years, I had been confined at Berlin, pursuing the study of the classics and toiling among the time-worn pages of Theodosius and Justinian. Filled with the decretals of Gregory, and wearied with the mysteries of German philosophy, I determined to spend a few months in travel before returning home. I was desirous also of seeing some of those

magnificent ruins, around whom poetic legends have thrown a mysterious charm, and from whose history so much pleasure and instruction is to be derived. At the social meeting of the Burschenshaften, or club of students to which I belonged, I had often heard strange tales concerning those venerable structures, but which I had always charged to the account of the goodly flagons of German beer, or to the flaming bowls of crambambuli. There was one, for instance, which I doubt not you have often heard repeated, about an avaricious bishop who purchased all the corn in the district, and in a time of famine extorted exorbitant prices from the starving and impoverished peasantry. In punishment for his sins a swarm of rats attacked his granaries and threatened destruction to his castle. In despair he intrenched himself in a tower which he built in the middle of the Rhine. His enemies however still pursued him, and devoured him on a luckless day as he was entreating heaven for a cessation of his evils. I have since seen the lonely tower in the bosom of the sparkling waters of the Rhine, but as to the truth of the legend, I cannot vouch, though I do not feel authorized to dispute it. Desirous, however, of gratifying my curiosity as well as for the purpose of having some strange wonders to relate to domestic but curious bodies like yourself, I bade farewell to the halls of the University, and on the morning after a grand supper party of my club, started on my journey.

I will not tire you with a prolix description of all the matters of interest which I saw, or of all the old castles which I visited; sufficient be it to say, that I suddenly acquired a strange affection for antiquities, and spent half of my time in rummaging among old vaults, and in attempting to decipher illegible inscriptions. I had thus spent several weeks in antiquarian solitude and soliloquy, when at the entreaties of my friends who were native Germans, and whose proverbial patience was well nigh exhausted, I left with reluctance the dried-up moat in which I had been searching for the fragment of a cuirass, and proceeded toward the city of Heidelberg. The traveller in passing through the duchy of Baden finds himself unconsciously beguiled for weeks among the interesting localities which have rendered this romantic city so attractive to the student of antiquities. It is equally difficult for myself to relate an incident which occurred not far from its boundaries, without halting for a few moments in my progress, to indulge in some recollections which the mention of Heidelberg awakens.

You are aware that the different circumstances, the peculiarities of the weather or the various shifting accidents under which you visit a locality with which you are hitherto unacquainted, determine essentially the impression which you carry away, and the opinion which is thus suddenly formed is the one which invariably presents itself to the mind when it recurs to the scene afterward. The memory behind the focus of the eye, like the polished plate behind the lens of the camera, receives the outlines of the object upon its sensitive surface. Association places here and there the varied tints and colorings, and the whole picture is ineffaceable.

It was near sunset as our party leisurely entered the winding and fertile valley, in whose fragrant bosom reposes the aged city of Hei