of his sovereign in an especial degree. His father was for a long time in command of a Fundamental Equation, one of those castles of absolute Truth, bolted to the indestructible rock, and which if it fell, would leave bare the very vitals of the empire. The arch-enemy of Mathematics indeed once bribed an Earthquake to burrow under this fortress, but at the first lift the creature broke his back. Young x, being of very fair proportions, held a commission in the Cosines of the Guard, and had seen some service. He was employed in the intricate and masterly operations of the astronomer royal in the neighborhood of Sirius, and behaved with distinction in the brilliant flank movement on the Zodiac. In the disastrous reconnoisance of the astrological corps in the furious regions beyond the visible creation, where those worthy men, getting lost in huge abysses and floundering around in total darkness, became distracted, our hero preserved his presence of mind and succeeded in capturing one of the natives, who was compelled to pilot them out; for which services he had been commissioned by the Astronomer Royal to bear the Radius Vector and elements of an orbit, which lately surrendered to the Court of the Grand Quadratic. He also brought despatches announcing, that the cause of a perturbation of five barleycorns at every fourteenth revolution of one of the asteroids had been laid hold of; to the immense relief of five hundred learned men, who had been deprived of their natural rest during a term of years on that very account. So our hero became a lion; not one of those Nubian monsters that go around seeking whom they may devour, but a social lion, somewhat in danger of being devoured himself. For there was the most Sublime Prince, addressing him in such magnificent periods, that he was confounded. The Lord Coefficient condescended to unbend, and trotted out a forlorn old joke, which he picked up and adopted somewhere about the time of Ptolemy. No one ever succeeded in laying' the miserable thing, for on every state occasion it came forth like one from the dead, to the great annoyance of excitable nerves. Then after he was released from the dignitaries around the throne, young x was betrayed by his friends to three hundred and seventy-five old ladies, who had grandsons in the foreign service; some serving with the Cotangents near the Zodiacal Light; some ranging with the concave Reflectors on the trail of Encke's comet; some with the Trigonometers, running triangles off in unheard-of territories outside of the constellations. These good old ladies, who were quite moderate-only three hundred and seventy-four of them talked at a time were assured that the nights in the Zodiacal country were not damp, that the reflectors never went off unexpectedly, and that the state of morals in the outside territories was by no means so bad as represented by John Milton. Our hero was getting frantic when he was rescued by some of the young cubs and presented to the most distinguished beauties of the Court; and his martial carriage, his stories of encampments in the Nebula, of perilous marches across the unbridged abysses, of captured planets, of wild lights noosed by the astrono

mers, and of desperate excursions into the Void, completely turned the heads of these fair Quantities.

But after all was our hero happy? Alas! Concealment like a worm, budded in his jaws or something like that; it's in Shakspeare. Why did his eye wander through the brilliantly lighted halls, for it was now about midnight, and why did he start when beneath the gorgeous cone that surmounted an amphitheatre in the north wing, he beheld the ethereal, the incomparable, the inexpressibly beautiful y? He paused for a moment in one of the hundred lofty naves which radiate from that amphitheatre, and saw her standing alone in a flood of soft light, pouring from the immense tunnel above, like the angel of a flaming planet. A mob of promenaders headed by a brass-band, debouched into the vast apartment from another hall, and our hero turned away, revolving in his mind whether to seek employment in the equinoctial survey, or to ask for a post in some frontier equation beyond Artophylax, on the brink of the illimitable deep, or to go down in a diving-bell with a transcendental geometer into those frightful pits where so many devoted philosophers have descended and never been heard of more.

IV.

Ir is always painful to dwell upon the infirmities which are too often ingrafted upon the moral constitution of the human family. It is especially painful, when any individual has transgressed those statutes, or ruthlessly trampled upon those precepts which are written in indestructible lines upon the tablets of the heart, to hold up that individual in his true colors for the reprobation of the virtuous and good. But however painful to the historian it may be, however repugnant to the promptings of those feelings which throb in the recesses of his own private bosom, his duty to the dead, his duty to the living, his duty to posterity, demands, in imperious tones, that this service should be performed calmly, fearlessly, inflexibly.

At a considerable distance within the darkness which bounded the great empire on all sides, dwelt an atrocious old rebel, named Z, leagued with the Princes of Darkness to retard the conquests of the Grand Quadratic, and to work him annoyance in whatever manner he could. His visage was of the most malignant cast; his habits were disreputable, and the society he kept would have disgraced a loafer of Gomorrah. He lived in an equation of astonishing strength, composed of cubes, roots, binomials, conic sections and other such bad things, all piled together with art truly amazing. Moreover two of those long black, curved concerns, which we used to encounter in integral calculus were planted at each end, vincula stretched across like the triple walls of Jerusalem, and bomb-proof parentheses encircled each bastion. Furthermore the ground beyond the horn works was sown with prickly expressions which would have daunted a good many New Hampshire schoolmasters. A smart sprinkle of infinitesimals were disposed at advantageous points; logarithms bristled at every angle, and crowds of those diminutive figures which have so often carried distraction to the very cerebellum of a freshman, were scattered through the whole fortifications.

hold that

Altogether it was a miracle of mystery. In this strong utterly depraved old rebel defied the great algebraical potentate and all his hosts. Every process was tried to rout him out; the royal sheriffs he caught and sent home, stuck through and through with asymptotes; the royal mathematicians all came back with a brain fever. Finally, the sublime Quadrate himself and all his engineers and hosts, went forth and enveloped the equation with some sort of powerful analysis; but a chemist might as well try to decompose a bank-safe with buttermilk; they were all glad to get back to day-light again considerably shattered. To this den, flocked every bad character of the whole region round about. Decayed theories, exposed humbugs, sophisms that had been set up in the pillory, radicals persecuted for political offences, and all kinds of dissatisfied Surds and Symbols, who had emigrated from the great empire, made up the regular population; but they had a constant run of visitors from the Court of Chaos and sable-vested Night,' young Princes of Darkness, roaring Tetrarchs of Tartarus, dissolute naval officers from Acheron, and brawling captains from the garrison of Domdaniel, who, you may well imagine, made the country echo with their orgies. The annoyance which this nest of vagabonds caused to their civilized neighbors is not easily expressed. Not only was it impossible for any friend of decency to stay within a good many leagues of such an unintermittent riot, but the conquests of science could not be pushed beyond it: there the dingy old castle barred all progress, unyielding as a rock.

Darkness It was now, as we before gave notice, about midnight. covered the land; a soft and silent darkness, not like that harsh blackness which enveloped the territories without, but a refreshing darkness which flowed from the sluices of heaven, and covered the empire like a sea of fluid shadows. The innumerable, stars like luminous bugs, crawled up the dome of night, but the moon, like a gorgeous shining beetle, had crept with a good deal of briskness out of sight. At this moment that abominable old settler, whose character we took occasion to discuss in the last chapter, emerged from the regions which he usually adorned with his presence, into the gentle starlight. More of him and his doings in a concluding number.

CUPID SHIPWRECKED:

AN ANACREONTIC.

BY D. BETHUNE DUFFIELD.

WANDERING late at eventide
By ocean's loud resounding side,
Where the wild billows beat the shore
With angry and incessant roar ;
Far out upon the breaker's crest,
And fiercely by the storm opprest,
A tiny bark I chanced to see
Hard struggling for the mastery.
Now high it rose against the cloud,
Enveloped by a foamy shroud;
And now, between the surges' swell,
Down to the lowest depths it fell.
The exulting sea-bird's direful scream,
The frequent lightning's vivid gleam,
Seemed portents that no skill could save
The sailor from a watery grave:
But, fearless at the vessel's prow,
Stood CUPID with his shafts and bow ;

A gorgeous sea-shell was his boat,
Which one scant sail had kept afloat:
No star or helm to guide his way,

Reckless he dashed through whirling spray;
Around his lips a lurking smile

That spoke of triumph all the while.

'O for his sea-born mother's hand

To bring her darling safe to land!'

So spoke I; when a stronger blast
Swept from the deck the sail and mast;
And down in NEPTUNE'S caverns dark,
Sank CUPID with his foundered bark.

I, overwhelmed with pity, stood
Powerless to aid the little god;
And briny tears flowed free and fast,
That LovE had met his death at last.
But, as I mourned his hapless fate,
A friendly wave bore him elate,
And tossed him near me on the beach,
Beyond the angry surge's reach.
Up sprang the urchin from the sand,
His bow and quiver still in hand;
Laughing, he pressed his dripping hair,
And flung its tresses on the air:
Then, as he shook his wings, with art
Quick from his quiver drew a dart:
'My string I fear will never dry,
My bow is spoiled- but let me try ;'
And urged with sudden, certain aiin,
Deep in my heart the arrow came.
Then, floating off on rosy wing,
With mocking glee I heard him sing:

Detroit, May, 1849.

'Old DEATH may shut all mortal eyes,
But sportive CUPID never dies:
My bow I find still serves me well,
And, stranger, learn the truth I tell ;
A truth thou now dost truly prove:
That Pity is akin to Love.'

THE FIRST KISS.

BY AN AMATEUR

WHEN I speak of kissing, I don't include kissing mother, or sister, aunt, grandma', or the little people; that's all in the family, and a matter of course. I mean one's wife, sweetheart, and other feminines, that are not kin or blood connection. That's the sort to call kiss

ing,' and that is the sort I am going to describe.

There is a beautiful village about twenty-four miles north of NewHaven, called in the Indian tongue Pomperany. What it means in Indian I don't know. It was not taught us in the district-school up there, where we learned our A B c's, and afterward progressed as far as B-A, BA; K-E-R, KER; BAKER, when I was allowed to graduate, and enter the 'Youth's Seminary,' under the charge of the Reverend Mr. Fuller. One of my school-mates in the latter place was a bright, intelligent boy, of the name of Walter Marshall. I loved him; so did every body else in the old village love him. He grew up to manhood, but not there. No; New-England boys do n't grow up at home; before they reach manhood they are transplanted, and are flourishing in all parts and ports of the known world, wherever a Yankee craft has been, or the stars and stripes. Talk about Americans abroad; its altogether too general. They are Yankees,' and nothing else; the pure New-England stock. Speak of your Virginian, your SouthCarolinian, and Southern-Staters in general; where are they? who are they? where can you find 'em? Go out into the great world; run up to Greenland, down again to Patagonia, round on t'other side, up to the Russian Settlements, slip across to the Feejees, touch again at Australia, pass the Straits of Sunda, cut up to Java, in around to Japan, China, British India; visit Muscat, the Gulf of Persia, run down the Arabian coast; call in at Mocha for a cup of coffee; get on board an Arab Red-Sea craft, land at Suez; cross the desert, take a look at the Pyramids, then ship in the Marseilles steamer, which will fetch you along toward home; and who of your own countrymen have you seen in all those different 'diggins' that you visited? Seen any Southerners, any Georgians, (our Georgians,) or Marylanders, or Mississipians? No; you have met with none but the genuine Simons; the real piloting, pioneering, peddling, push-ahead genuine Yankee breed. But what has all this got to do with kissing, except the Yankees are a kissing stock? I have come back to New