EVERY NUMBER EMBELLISHED WITH A STEEL ENGRAVING. THREE DOLLARS A YEAR. VOLUME III.] EDITED BY G. P. MORRIS AND N. P. WILLIS. NEW-YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1844. PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. [NUMBER 25. their gaping little ones as-I can no more, 'Bel'; for, even while these light words are on my tongue, there comes a grave between my eye and the point it would settle on. Wheel around the sofa, dear, and sit close beside me; for the ugly vision has got upon my heart, and you must while it away, while I tell, whomever chooses to read, something more of Nora Maylie. 'St, cousin! 'st! The public is my audience now, and will care no more for that point-lace of yours than they would for so much "Lisle-thread." Dear reader, how left we Nora Maylie? Indolent and good-natured, was not she? Disliking anything like bustle, Tell more of Nora Maylie? Ah yes! with pleasure. I and resisting every attempt to be made something of, with love dearly to think of her. Please vacate that ottoman, 'Bel', and betake yourself to the sofa. My first sketch was written on that, and I have a kind of fondness for it; "by the same token," as an Irishman would say, that we love the haunts of our childhood. Besides, it is just the right height; allowing head, neck and a very small portion of shoulder to rise above the table. That will oblige me to sit straight. an invisible strenuousness that made wise people marvel mightily, whether her nature were of wax or adamant? I think we so left her, and so we find her; as like what she was as yon sun will be to its present self, when we, who now glory in its light, are shut away from it by the coffin-lid. Few changes come upon such characters as that of the fair Nora. They appear before us quietly and without ostentation, as the bright-eyed pansey unfolds its petals in the High-shouldered? Oh no! See how easily the thing is spring-time; and, like that loveliest of lovely things, they done, and without the possiblity of lounging. Then I have another reason for affecting this ottoman. Geniuses have queer notions, (as well as other spoiled children,) and the world pets and indulges them, and encourages their eccentricities, till oddity becomes the universal badge of the tribe, and men reason something on this wise: Geniuses have queer notions; A. has queer notions; Therefore A. is a genius. Or, au contraire: All geniuscs have queer notions; live on, smiling in the sunshine, and bending to the storm with a pliant gracefulness which mars not their beauty. And yet those who looked only at outward circumstances would have said that Nora Maylie was changed most entirely. You will recollect that at sixteen poor Nora was considered unfit to become a milliner even, sent home in disgrace to do nothing. At eighteen she was altogether above the necessity of doing anything. Mrs. Maylie chanced to have a sister, who married a fortune, together with an aged and gouty metropolitan; and this lady chanced to get a glimpse of our fair Nora. Instantly Mrs. Maylie was made to understand that she had Now I have set my heart on playing make-believe, if I mistaken her daughter's vocation; and so the young beauty am not a genius; and so I must contrive up some little pe- was be-jewelled, be-flounced, and bedizened, till it was culiarity. Burns wrote his first things on the air, while proved by every possible experiment that, adorned or unsauntering over the "banks and braes of bonny Doon ;" adorned, she was all the same, and transferred to a fashion. and, sealing the light-winged scrip to his memory, he car-able drawing-room. Everybody said that Nora Maylie was ried it home to copy from at leisure. It was a very odd a very lucky individual, and many a pretty maiden sighed thing of the Doon-man! Any common individual would || with envy as the proud mother recounted her darling's trihave written but in a quiet room, with the most convenient of standishes, a half-dozen nicely-nibbed pens, and a quire of foolscap cut and paged, all spread invitingly before him. (And, between our two sclves, 'Bel', I think I should prefer such a room, genius or no genius.) But here is another case, quite in point. The whilome proprietary of Glenmary found the shadow of a bridge a wall impregnable to truant thoughts; and he has made the spot, seldom looked upon but by rafters and cross-beams, and the little winged people that go among them to find summer-lodgings, classicground. That bridge at Glenmary! What a scrambling there will be to see it, one of these days! And this ottoman! it is a very trivial thing, to be sure, but that is what makes it important, and I shall take pains to let it be known that this is my own peculiar property, leaving it to be inferred that I could not possibly write any. where else. Then think of your great-grandchildren, 'Bel', exhibiting this same pretty ottoman-the cover so faded that you could not recognize it, and the hair peeping through a thousand crevices-think of their exhibiting it to umphs. But what thought the young lady herself? Alas! the perverseness of human nature! Nora longed for the green woods where she had first dreamed over the gorgeous creations of minds as dreamy and idle as her own; the silver-toned voice rising from the little trout-stream facing the hill was forever in her ear, and she was sure no man-made music could compare with it; and there were birds and flowers and-shall I tell you? Those were very homely tastes of Nora Maylie's. The tame rabbits, peaking their ears at every sound; old Mooly, with her crumpled horns and sober, sensible face; the doves that used to fly from the barn-top to her bosom; the hens, with their domestic, motherly ways; and the geese, with their pretty necks and tea-party voices-all these were to poor Nora as so many lost friends, whose places could not be supplied by the simpering things in stays and broadcloth that flocked to do her homage. And was there any other home-attraction for Nora than these, and her own kin? Anything for which she would have resigned her envied position, with all the eagerness of |