LETTER XI.

THE box of Rhenish is no substitute for yourself, dear Doctor, but it was most welcome-partly, perhaps, for the qualities it has in common with the gentleman who should have come in the place of it. The one bottle that has fulfilled its destiny, was worthy to have been sunned on the Rhine and drank on the Susquehannah, and I will never believe that any thing can come from you that will not improve upon acquaintance. So I shall treasure the remainder for bright hours. I should have thought it superior even to the Tokay I tasted at Vienna, if other experiments had not apprized me that country life sharpens the universal relish. I think that even the delicacy of the palate is affected by the confused sensations, the turmoil, the vexations of life in town. You will say you have your quiet chambers, where you are as little disturbed by the people around you as I by my grazing herds. But, by your leave, dear Doctor, the fountains of thought (upon which the senses are not a little dependent) will not clear and settle over-night, like a well. No-nor in a day, nor in two. You must live in the country to possess your bodily sensations as

well as your mind, in tranquil control. It is only when you have forgotten streets and rumors and greetingsforgotten the whip of punctuality, and the hours of forced pleasure-only when you have cleansed your ears of the din of trades, the shuffle of feet, the racket of wheels, and coarse voices-only when your own voice, accustomed to contend against discords, falls, through the fragrant air of the country, into its natural modulations, in harmony with the low key upon which runs all the music of nature-only when that part of the world which partook not of the fall of Adam, has had time to affect you with its tranquillity—only then that the dregs of life sink out of sight, and while the soul sees through its depths, like the sun through untroubled water, the senses lose their fever and false energy, and play their part, and no more, in the day's expenditure of time and pulsation.

"Still harping on my daughter," you will say; and I will allow that I can scarce write a letter to you without shaping it to the end of attracting you to the Susquehannah. At least watch when you begin to grow old, and transplant yourself in time to take root, and then we may do as the trees do-defy the weather till we are separated. The oak itself, if it has grown up with its kindred thick about it, will break if left standing alone; and you and I, dear Doctor, have known the luxury of friends too well to bear the loneliness of an unsympa. thizing old age. Friends are not pebbles, lying in every path, but pearls gathered with pain, and rare as they are precious. We spend our youth and manhood in the

AVARICE OF FRIENDSHIP.

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search and proof of them, and when Death has taken his toll, we have too few to scatter-none to throw away. I, for one, will be a miser of mine. I feel the avarice of friendship growing on me with every year-tightening my hold and extending my grasp. Who at sixty is rich in friends? The richest are those who have drawn this wealth of angels around them, and spent care and thought on the treasuring. Come, my dear Doctor! I have chosen a spot on one of the loveliest of our bright rivers. Here is all that goes to make an Arcadia, except the friendly dwellers in its shade. I will choose your hill-side, and plant your grove, that the trees at least shall lose no time by your delay. Set a limit to your ambition, achieve it, and come away. It is terrible to grow old amid the jostle and disrespectful hurry of a crowd. The academy of the philosophers was out of Athens. You cannot fancy Socrates run against, in the market-place. Respect, which grows wild in the fields, requires watching and management in cities. Let us have an old man's Arcady-where we can slide our "slippered shoon " through groves of our own consecrating, and talk of the world as without-ourselves and gay philosophy within. I have strings pulling upon one or two in other lands, who, like ourselves, are not men to let Content walk unrecognized in their path. Slowly, but, I think, surely, they are drawing hitherward; and I have chosen places for their hearth-stones, too, and shall watch, as I do for you, that the woodman's axe cuts down no tree that would be regretted. If the cords draw well, and Death take but his tithe, my

shady "Omega" will soon learn voices to which its echo will for long years be familiar, and the Owaga and Susquehannah will join waters within sight of an old man's Utopia.

"My sentiments better expressed" have come in the poet's corner of the Albion to-day-a paper, by the way, remarkable for its good selection of poetry. You will allow that these two verses, which are the closing ones of a piece called "The men of old," are above the common run of newspaper fugitives :

"A man's best things are nearest him,

Lie close about his feet;

It is the distant and the dim

That we are sick to greet:

For flowers that grow our hands beneath
We struggle and aspire,

Our hearts must die, except we breathe

The air of fresh desire.

But, brothers, who up reason's hill
Advance with hopeful cheer,

O loiter not! those heights are chill,
As chill as they are clear.
And still restrain your haughty gaze-

The loftier that ye go,

Remembering distance leaves a haze

On all that lies below."

The man who wrote that, is hereby presented with the freedom of the Omega.

The first of September, and a frost! The farmers from the hills are mourning over their buck-wheat, but the river-mist saves all which lay low enough for its

white wreath to cover; and mine, though sown on the hill. side, is at mist mark, and so escaped. Nature seems to intend that I shall take kindly to farming, and has spared my first crop even the usual calamities. I have lost but an acre of corn, I think, and that by the crows, who are privileged maurauders, welcome at least to build in the Omega, and take their tithe without rent-day or molestation. I like their noise, though discordant. It is the minor in the anthem of nature-making the gay song of the black-bird, and the merry chirp of the robin and oriel, more gay and cheerier. Then there is a senti ment about the raven family, and for Shakspeare's lines and his dear sake, I love them,

"Some say the ravens foster forlorn children

The while their own birds famish in their nests."

The very name of a good deed shall protect them. Who shall say that poetry is a vain art, or that poets are irresponsible for the moral of their verse! For Burns's sake, not ten days' since, I beat off my dog from the nest of a field-mouse, and forbade the mowers to cut the grass over her. She has had a poet for her friend, and her thatched roof is sacred. I should not like to hang about the neck of my soul all the evil that, by the last day, shall have had its seed in Byron's poem of the Corsair. It is truer of poetry than of most other matters, that

"More water glideth by the mill

Than wots the miller of."

But I am slipping into a sermon.