He gazes on the face of his dead wife,
More lovely now than e'en when lit by life,
And that proud beauty, whose imperial power
Had fixed his wandering wishes, from the hour
He saw her first in her Assyrian home:

Why did I tempt my love thus far to roam?
Why was I doomed to bring her here to die?
Cursed be the Persian soil, and sun and sky,'
He weeping said; and then his mighty grief
Sought in these wild and passionate words, relief:
Thy grave shall not be in this barren land,
Which by no healthful breeze was ever fanned;
No! o'er the desert drear

And stormy deep

I'll bear thy corse; not here
Shall my bride sleep!
Then when thy lover dies,

Him in thy grave they'll lay,
And with clasped hands we 'll rise
On the dread judgment day.'

II.

'Tis noon in the desert; no oasis is nigh;

Hot are the sands and blazing the sky;

"T were now sweetest music to hear fountains flow,
But no stream sparkles here; not a flower can grow;
For the Arab and Simoom with fiery haste
Sweep over the desert, sole lords of the waste.
Lo! a speck in the distance a small caravan-
Shall they pass without tribute to Sheikh SULEIMAN?
Should we gain a rich booty, with love and delight
The eyes of our women will sparkle to-night,
And the young girls will sing; BENI SALADIN!
With your lances, the wealth of the world you could win.
Thus spake an Arab chieftain to his troop,
Who, swift as falcons on the pilgrims swoop:
The search is soon over but small are their gains;
Behold!' said their leader, one coffer remains.
In mercy spare that, it contains my soul's treasure,'
DELLA VALLE implored. Submit to our pleasure,'
The haughty chief replied: Come, let us see

What the fool values so exceedingly.'

They burst the lid; they lift a snowy veil ;

What do they gaze on? wherefore grow they pale?

It is a woman's corse; proudly serene

And beautiful; she seems a sleeping queen.

TO DELLA VALLE'S tale the Arabs listened,

The youthful wept, and tears which fell not, glistened

In the stern eye of age; all were subdued

Unto a kindly, pitying, mournful mood.

"T was a strange scene: the dreary sands around, And the wild warriors leaning on their spears,

Gazing upon the dead with awe profound,

Their dark eyes glowing through unwonted tears:

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.

Altogether it was a miracle of mystery. In this strong hold that utterly depraved old rebel defied the great algebraical potentate and all his hosts. Every process was tried to rout him out; the royal sheriff's 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.

It was now, as we before gave notice, about midnight. Darkness 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 ain,
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