which much thought is condensed. For this he finds a text in Dryden's remark concerning Shakespeare, that all the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew from them, not laboriously but luckily.' We call thoughts and expressions of peculiar force and beauty, happy' and felicitous,' as if they were products of the writer's fortune rather than his toil. But as worm-eaten apples, no less than ripe, fall of themselves, so in ease of execution the falsest work may agree with the best.

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But it is of prime importance to observe that the afore-mentioned mature fruit, which so falls at the tenderest touch into the hand, is no sud

den, no idle product. It comes, on the contrary, of a depth of operation more profound, and testifies to a genius and sincerity in Nature more subtle and religious, than we can understand. This apple that in fancy we now pluck, and hardly need to pluck, from the burdened bough, think what a pedigree it has, what æons of world-making and world-maturing must elapse, all the genius of God divinely assiduous, ere this could hang in ruddy and golden ripeness here! Think too what a concurrence and consent of elements, of sun and soil, of ocean-vapours and laden winds, of misty heats in the torrid zone and condensing blasts from the North, were required before a single apple could grow, before a single blossom could put forth its promise, tender and beautiful amidst the gladness of spring! -and, besides these consenting ministries of Nature, how the special genius of the tree must have wrought, making sacrifice of woody growth, and, by marvellous and ineffable alchemies, co-working with the earth beneath and the heaven above! Ah, not from any indifference, not from any haste or indolence in Nature, comes the fruits

of her seasons and her centuries!

We should be unwise, he continues, to forget the antiquity of a pure original thought; it has a genesis equally ancient, earnest, and vital with any product of Nature, and relationships no less cosmical, implying the like industries, veritable and precious beyond all scope of affirmation.

May not the above considerations go far to explain that indifference, otherwise so astonishing, with which Shakespeare cast his work from him? It was his heart that wrote; but does the heart look with wonder and admiration on the crimson of its own currents?

Within the last two or three years Emerson has seemed to turn his attention mainly to poetry. We are now looking for every month to bring us his next book, which it is understood is to be a volume of Poems, of which the chief piece is a Spring Song,' a song of many variations, now evolved from the first breath of the willow on his farm, and now from the strain of an Æolian harp. There will, I doubt not, be included the Atlantic Monthly, which are in form imin it some lyrics, given from time to time to provements on the verses of his early volume of Poems. One of the best of these is The Titmouse.' The overbold poet, far away from home, his bones turning to marble under the arctic cold, the frost-king tying his feet, finds life hemmed in with narrowing fence:

Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,
The punctual stars will vigil keep,
Embalmed by purifying cold.
The wings shall sing their dead-march old,
The snow is no ignoble shroud,
The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

From Macmillan's Magazine.

A DULL LIFE.

I THINK there is no country in the world so dreary and oppressive as the country round New Orleans. It is a vast swamp, below the level of the Mississippi, covered with cedars, not evergreen, but deciduous; and when I was there in the early spring, there was not a single leaf upon them. For miles these dreary forests extend, with almost always the same aspect, except, perhaps, for a few miles the trees may be bathed in yellow slimy mud half-way up their trunks, where some lake or river has been swelled and risen for a time some ten or fifteen feet higher than usual.

Natural scenery, untouched by man, has, almost everywhere in the world, some beauty; not always a lovely, graceful beauty, but a beautiful dreariness, or a beautiful wildness, or a beautiful quaintness, or a beautiful luxuriance. Here, in this swampy, slimy Louisiana, there is ugly dreariness, ugly wildness, ugly quaintness, and the country often struck me as absolutely ugly, and, with its alligators basking in the rivers, as almost revolting, somewhat as if it were a country in a geological period not prepared for man's appearance.

We were in New Orleans in 1858, and the state of society was not more pleasant to contemplate than the natural scenery; the moral atmosphere was as offensive as the swamp miasma. Every day we heard of murders and assassinations in the streets, and crime ruled in society. The fear of vengeance from criminals very often prevented the injured from seeking the protection of the law-in fact, the state of the city was almost lawless. The aspect of the streets was quiet enough, perhaps, with the exception of a few drunken Irish and Germans, whom I saw sometimes absolutely rolling on the pavement; but it was impossible to speak to any person without hearing of recent crime, and the daily papers were crammed with revolting records.

I detested New Orleans; I detested the great Hotel St. Charles, with its 800 people sitting down to table together; and I detested the conversation I heard there at dinner, and in the immense drawing-room crowded with fine ladies. Fine gives no idea how fine these planters' ladies were; indeed, much more extravagantly dressed than crowned heads in old countries, and some wore more jewels in the early morning than a princess would wear in any evening in England. Everything I saw in New

Orleans disgusted me. I could not visit the slave auction or slave depôts without suffering with horror for days after; and I could not look at the daily paper, with its little black running negroes heading innumerable advertisements of runaways, without feeling sick with sympathy for the sufferings of these human beings so indicated.

In fact, I never lost the feeling of the presence of slavery. It met me everywhere; its influence was felt everywhere in the book-shops, by the glaring absence of certain books; in the pulpit, by the doctrines doctored to please the congregation; in the cars, by the division of white and black; in the schools, from the absence of every child supposed to have a tinge of black blood; in the evening, by the gun to send all coloured people home - everywhere, at every time, the presence of slavery was heavy upon me.

The conversations at that time, in almost all groups of people, were directly or indirectly about slavery and the infamy of the North; this infamy all connected with the peculiar institution. One evening we went to the only scientific society in the city-a poor, struggling, ill-supported associationand the interest of the lecture I heard there turned, too, on slavery. It went to prove that the Egyptians had negro slaves, and that these African races from all time had been servants, and always ought to be, and always would be.

There was quite enough in this city to make the heart of man sad; and though the country around was sad too, there is always the sky when one is out of the narrow streets. So I often used to go by the railway to different points in the woods, or on the Lake Ponchartrain, to get the refreshment of the beautiful blue sky and the gorgeous setting sun.

One day I went to Carrolton, a collection of white wooden villas, with green verandahs and gardens, very ugly and utterly uninteresting, but it is on the very verge of the uncultivated, untouched forest swamps. It was, in fact, one of the few places where it was possible to get a view of that melancholy country, and so one day, very near to Carrolton, I encamped with my sketching umbrella, &c., to make a view of the monotonous wall of deciduous cedars which rose beyond the one field which had been cleared, and cultivation attempted, but unsuccessfully; and this field, which was my foreground, was now a swamp covered with rank grass, dwarf palm, and dead stalks of tall plants. The trees beyond were leafless,

moss

say,

but clothed in waving garments from the topmost branches to the ground, of grey - monotonous and fantastic. The first day, I had not been seated more than half an hour, in dead stillness when I heard steps close behind me, and, looking up, saw a young lady, very pale and slender, with a timid, tired look, walking up to me, with a negro woman, who, like most other household slaves, was rather fat, and remarkable for her ready smile and gay handkerchief, arranged turbanlike on her head. I said at once, Good morning," and, as the timid young lady halted close to me, she said, "Good day, ma'am," and then she stood behind me, for at least twenty minutes, until I began to feel her eyes on my fingers, and to get quite nervous; but, as she looked so pale and so very timid, I did not dare to "Go away; you prevent me from drawing," and so I turned round in despair, and said, "You must find it very dull and tiring standing so long." "Oh, no! oh, no! I could stand here all day, and never feel weary at all, I am so interested." This was said quickly, but in a very low voice. "Good heavens!" thought I," I hope not; this is very desperate;" and seeing the negro squat down, reminded me it would be better for us both if the young lady would sit down. So I pulled out a corner of a mackintosh cloak, and said, "Pray sit down." The young lady instantly accepted my not very politely-worded offer, and sat down by me, saying, in a very low voice, lower than before, "Oh, you are very kind!" The "kind was almost inaudible. I went on drawing. The young lady never spoke, but watched me intensely. Half an hour passed, and I began to wonder, but I determined not to break silence first, and so, by my watch, which I took out and looked at, another half-hour passed, when the silent young lady got up, and saying, "Shall you come to-morrow?" awakened her sleeping negress, and, being assured I should be there again the next day, said "Good morning," and walked away. She went into a very little wooden villa behind me, which very dull-looking little house was now invested with interest for me, for this pale, uninteresting young lady excited my interest, she was so very quiet; and now I had had time to examine her, I had found out she had quite perfect features- not a fault to be found with the lovely lines of brow, nose, and chin, with all so expressionless, and so colourless, that no one could be struck with her beauty it was beauty to discover for yourself by patient investigation. If there was any expression, it was pathos. She

did not look open-eyed and stupid, as you may perhaps imagine the word expressionless to mean, but utterly weighed down, listless, and without any feeling, or desire, or restlessness, or pain, or pleasure, or anything. She looked as if she were ennuyée, and did not know it even.

The next day, unfortunately, there was what the Americans called a "young tornado" - that is to say, a little tempest which flooded the country with its rain and tore up the trees with its winds, and it was, of course, impossible to think of sketching. I was very glad it was not an old tornado, if this was a specimen of the power of a young tornado. Two days after this the ground was still wet, but I went off by rail to Carrolton, and, in india-rubber boots, waded to my sketching place. Before I was installed even, my pale young lady came out of her little bathing-machine like house, with her negress, and walked up to me with her, "Good day, ma'am." The negress said, "Oh! I be very glad you come, for Miss Cecilia sat all day at the window for three days, looking for de fine weather. I don't know what she do if you don't come."

I was touched, and said, "Miss Cecilia must have very little to do, if she has so much time to think about my drawing."

Miss Cecilia blushed a little, and said very low, "I have nothing to do."

This was said in perfect good faith, and so quietly, and so much as if it were a matter of course, that I was quite staggered. "Nothing to do? nothing to do?" I said, accented as a question.

66

Nothing to do," she answered quietly. Then we sat down as before, in silence, and I gave her a seat on my mackintosh and two air cushions, and made her very comfortable; and there we sat in silence.

The negress had gone into the house saying, "You will take care of Miss Cecilia," and not waiting for my answer.

Miss Cecilia sat with her hands (which were enveloped in little white cotton gloves) folded over her knees, and leaned forward, watching me intensely watching the brush as it went into cobalt and emerald, green and sepia, and pink madder, trying hard to get the strange grey of the shroud-like moss.

I did not look up, but I felt her eyes, and gradually I lost my power of concentration on my work, and inwardly gave it up and determined to gratify my curiosity about my strange Cecilia; but I went on pretending to work and not looking at her.

"Miss Cecilia," said I," do you paint?"

"I do it, but I don't think I like it." You must not think this was a brisk conversation very far from it there was a long gap after each "No;" and it was only the last sentence which gave me any hope of a conversation.

"What do you like?" said I.

"I do not know," said she, very low and languidly.

"But I am sure you like sitting here with me, Cecilia," said I, boldly calling her by her Christian name.

"Yes," she answered, 66 very, very much." "Ah," rejoined I, "I am very glad that you like it very, very much; and you like it very, very much, why? tell me?"

"Oh, because it amuses me to see you take so much trouble about what I can't understand. There is nothing to draw. Why don't you draw our house? And what did you come here for? nobody ever came here before like you."

I was delighted to explain to her as well as I could a traveller's reasons for sketching, but she evidently did not really comprehend or sympathise with what I said.

Whilst I was talking, a negro woman came up to me and said, "My missus says you're to bring what you're doing to her to look at, and you're to come to the back

door."

Now I confess I was a little angry and refused to go, which was very childish, for if I had had the sense to have submitted quietly I should have seen something of another family of slave-owners, and perhaps have been able to give this great lady a little lesson, but I was insulted by this continual contempt which I found any kind of steady work was exposed to. Perhaps, if this had been the first time a fine lady had treated me like a slave, because I worked like a slave, I should not have been angry; but it was the last touch which quite over

set my good humour, and I shall for ever regret it. Ah, what a pity I did not go to that back kitchen-door! What I should have seen and heard must remain for ever unseen and unheard, because I was put out of temper by a very natural message considering where I was and who sent it. I had the satisfaction of seeing the lady leaning out of an upper window of her house trying to see me, and Cecilia told me she was very rich and had a great many slaves, and was very cruel sometimes when she was ill and irritable.

Cecilia, after a long silence, for I was cross and quiet, said, "I want to know how you dared to go into the cypress wood the other day are you not afraid of the runaway slaves there? They say they are worse than wild beasts."

"Oh no; there can't be any so close to the town. I was not afraid; I only went for a little walk. Don't you ever go for a walk?"

"No, never."

This reminded me of a fashionable young lady in New Orleans, who had never seen the country at all round her city, and who did not know of what we were speaking when we spoke of the long grey moss one day at a dinner party. I told my companion this, and she said, "Oh, she had seen it, no doubt, in the shops ready for stuffing mattresses, and thought it was horse-hair! But I am not astonished she had not seen it in the country: why should she go to see it ? " I tried to make her understand the many reasons moral, physical, and intellectual

why we should take walks in the country, or rides, or drives, or all three; but I suppose my disquisition was very dull, for she did not seem to care about it, and fell into her listless attitude. So after a little silence I fell into the cross-questioning method, which was the only possible one with my strange companion.

"Have you always lived here?"

"No, we lived in New Orleans when I was little and my parents were alive. Since their death I have always lived there with grandmother," said she, pointing to the green and white box.

Then, in answer to my questions, she told me she was twenty, and that her father and mother had died of yellow fever when she was five years old and her only brother seven; that she had doted on, and adored her brother John; that he had been quite different from her, very lively and very clever; and that he could not bear to live a quiet life, so he ran away from home and had joined General Walker, who was his

great hero, and had been killed in Nicaragua. She told me how a letter came to her grandmother and she had to read it as her grandmother was too blind, and how, after understanding the terrible news, she fell down in a faint and was sick for weeks and weeks after. "But," said she wearily, "that is six years ago; a very long time ago." She went on to tell me, that her grandmother was very old and infirm, and now quite blind, that she was very kind and very good, but that she would never let her go out anywhere, because it cost money, nor learn the piano, or sing, because that cost money too, and because she could not bear a noise or bustle in the house: the rooms being divided with wood only, you could hear every sound in the house as if it were

one room.

"She is very good to me," said Cecilia. "She has a little money; and as my father died in debt, it is very good of her to keep me. She says I and my brother have cost her a great deal of money."

"If she said that," said I to myself, "I do not think she has been very good to you, and it is fortunate for you if you think so." "She is a great sufferer now," continued Cecilia, and Zoe has to sit by her for hours, holding her hands or combing her hair, and sometimes for days she will not see me. She does not believe I know how to nurse or do anything. Zoe is a very good creature: I should not be here now, but Zoe has the sense to say, when grandmother asks where I am, Miss Cecil is close by; I can see her.'”

I sat silently wondering at this dull life, and thinking of all the avenues to activity in any little town in England for a young lady like Cecilia-the church, the chapel, the little social societies for charity, all of which occupy those who are too poor or too pious for balls, picnics, and country gaieties. We have in England so many small organizations that it would be strange there to find a being who did not deliberately choose it, leading so isolated a life as my poor Cecilia. In England the clergyman or the minister and the doctor are the steady friends of the most solitary woman.

"Do you not go to'church?" I said. "Sometimes, but not very often. Grandmamma will not let me go alone; and as she likes the minister to come and read prayers to her, I stay with her; but I like to go to church best, because I like to see the people."

"But don't you see any one- not the doctor?" said I, determined to find out if

this life were really so cut off from all hu man fellowship as it seemed.

"Oh, sometimes we do see the doctor." Cecilia blushed deeply with some emotion or other, as she mentioned the doctor, so I asked her if she liked her grandmother's doctor.

"Oh yes, very well," said she.

But this did not satisfy me, and I put ingenious questions, which it would be very tedious to relate, until I extracted the following episode in her life.

Two years ago, in the middle of the summer, there had been a terrible attack of yellow fever, which had been more than usually fatal; the deaths followed so quickly

hundreds upon hundreds- that a deadly panic seized the people, and in many places the doctors and nurses fled. Hospitals were obliged to be hastily prepared where the rich and poor were taken alike. The doctor, Cecilia's friend, had under his care a hospital for children, which was the schoolhouse, hastily adapted to its new purpose. The long rows of desks and forms were covered with mattresses, and children in every stage of the disease were crowded together: some were nursed by relations, but the greater part by ladies who volunteered to do what few women dared to do for hire. This doctor had taken Cecilia, in spite of her grandmother's disapprobation, and put her into this hospital, where it was evident he had soon felt her worth, for he had made her, young as she was, chief of a wing. He had praised her devotedness, he had depended upon her, he had called her his Sister of Charity, and entrusted many dif ficult missions to her care; she had found out what liberty was; for she had been about alone on the business of the hospital and found herself full of courage and life. She was intensely grateful to the man who had made her useful and found her good for something, and she had evidently regarded the doctor as the good angel of her life. He had made a mark in her life; but she, alas! had not, it seemed, occupied his attention after the pestilence had passed. He was, probably a very busy man, and had almost forgotten her; he did remember her, indeed, sometimes; but he was too full of his own family affairs, his patients, and his negroes, to think much of his devoted Cecilia.

"Ah!" said she, with the longest sigh I ever heard, "I don't know how it was, and of course it is very wicked, but I never was so happy in all my life! Every day I was up at four and never in bed until twelve,