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own corn, and our own trees, and we shall be well off for fragrance, for food, and for shelter.

But lo! arrayed in figure of a fan, and gorgeous as spread-peacock-tail-the annuals! The sunshine strikes the intermingled glow, and it threatens to set the house on fire. But softly-they are cool to the touch, though to the sight burning; innocuous is the lambent flame that plays around the leaves; even as, in a dewy night of fading summer, the grass-brightening circle of the still glowworm's light!

Singular! They have formed themselves into classes. beneath our touch-according to some fine affinities of name and nature; and behold in one triad, the ForgetMe-Not, the Souvenir, and the Keepsake.

When

One word embraces them all-memorials. "absent long, and distant far," the living, lovely, loving, and beloved, how often are they utterly forgotten! But let something that once was theirs suddenly meet our eyes, and in a moment, returning from the region of the rising or the setting sun, lo! the friend of our youth is at our side, unchanged his voice and his smile; and dearer to our eyes than ever, because of some slight, faint, and affecting change wrought on face and figure by climate and by years! Let it be but his name written with his own hand, on the title-page of a book; or a few syllables on the margin of a favourite passage which long ago we may have read together, "when life itself was new," and poetry overflowed the whole world! Or a lock of her hair in whose eyes we first knew the meaning of the word depth" applied to the human soul, or the celestial sky! But oh! if death hath stretched out and out into the dim arms of eternity the distance-and removed away into that bourne from which no traveller returns the absence -of her on whose forehead once hung the relic we adore in our despair-what heart may abide the beauty of the ghost that, as at the touch of a talisman, doth sometimes at midnight appear before our sleepless bed, and with pale, uplifted arms waft over us-so momentary is the visionat once a blessing and a farewell!

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But we must be cheerful, for these are cheerful volumes, and they are bound in smiles. Yet often "cheerful

thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind," and the eye slides away insensibly from the sunshine to the cloudshadows, feeling that they are bound together in beauty by one spirit. Why so sad a word-farewell? We should not weep in wishing welfare, nor sully felicity with tears. But we do weep, because evil lies lurking in wait over all the earth for the innocent and the good, the happy and the beautiful, and when guarded no more by our eyes, it seems as if the demon would leap out upon his prey. Or is it because we are so selfish that we cannot bear the thought of losing the sight of the happiness. of one we dearly love, and are troubled with a strange jealousy and envy of beings unknown to us, and for ever to be unknown, about to be taken into the very heart, perhaps, of the friend from whom we part, and to whom we breathe a sad, almost a sullen, yet still a sweet farewell? Or does the shadow of death pass over us while we stand for the last time together on the sea-shore, and see the ship with all her sails about to voyage away to the uttermost parts of the earth? Or do we shudder at the thought of mutability in all created things, insensate or with soul-and know that ere a few hours shall have brightened the path of the swift vessel on the far-off sea, we shall be dimly remembered-alas! at last forgotten, and all those days, months, and years, that once seemed as if they would never die, swallowed up in everlasting oblivion?

7*

THEODORA.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1830.)

It must be a heavenly life-wedlock-with one wife and one daughter. Not that people may not be happy with a series of spouses, and five-and-twenty children all in a row. But we prefer still to stirring life--and therefore, oh! for one wife and one daughter! What a dear delightful girl would she not have been by this time, if born in the famous vintage of 1811-the year, too, of the no less famous comet! But then-in spite of all her filial affection, speaking in silvery sound, and smiling in golden light, she would, in all human probability, have been forsaking her old father this very month; without compunction or remorse, forgetting her mother; and even like a fair cloud on the mountain's breast, cleaving unto her husband! Such separation would to us have been insupportable. Talk not of grandchildren, for they come but to toddle over your grave; as for son-in-law, they are sulky about settlements, and wish you dead;-every man of feeling and every man of the world, too, knows that his last day of perfect happiness is that on which he sees his only daughter a bride.

But let us not run into the melancholics. We wishnotwithstanding all this--that we had now-one wifeone single wife-and one only daughter. Ourselves about fifty-my dear some six summers farther off heaven--and my darling, "beautiful exceedingly," on the brink of her expiring teens! Ay, we would have shown the world "how divine a thing a woman might be made." Our child would have seemed-alternately-Una-Juliet-Desdemona-Imogen; for those bright creatures were all kith and kin, and the angelical family expression would, after

a sleep of centuries, have broken out in beauty over the countenance of their fair cousin, Theodora North!

"And pray, sir, may I ask how you would have educated your sweet scion of the rising sun?"-whispers a dowager now at her third husband, and therefore at present somewhat sarcastically inclined towards bachelors of

a certain age. We answer susurringly. "Think not,

madam, though we have hitherto been the most barren, and you the most prolific of the children of men, that, therefore, were a daughter yet to be born to us, we should show ourselves ignorant of the principles of female education. There was Miss Hamilton-and there is Miss Edgeworth, who never had a child in their lives-though you have had a score and upwards—yet each of them writes about children as well or better than if she had had bantling after bantling annually, ever since the short peace of 1802. So are we to our shame be it spoken-childless; that is, in the flesh, but not in the spirit. In the spirit we have had for nearly twenty years-an only daughter-and her Christian and Scriptural name is Theodora-the gift of God!"

Some day or other we intend publishing a poem with that title, which has been lying by us for several yearsbut meanwhile, let us, gentle reader, as if in a "twahaun'd crack," chit-chat away together about those ideal daughters, of whom almost every man has one-twoor three-as it happens-and whose education he conducts, after a dreamy mode it is true, yet not untrue to the genial process of nature, in the school-room of imagination.

The great thing is, to keep them out of harm's way. Now, surely that is not hard to do, even in a wicked world. There is a good deal of thieving and robbing going on, all round about villages, towns, and cities, especially of flowers and vegetables. Yet, look at those pretty smiling subur ban gardens, where rose-tree and pear-tree are all in full blossom or bearing, not a stalk or branch broken ;-nor has the enormous Newfoundlander in yonder kennel been heard barking, except in sport, for a twelvemonth. Just so with the living flower beneath your eye in your own Eden

No need for you to growl,

Be mute-but be at home.

Not a hair of her head shall be touched by evil; it is guarded by the halo of its own innocence; and you feel that every evening when you press it to your heart, and dismiss the pretty creature to her bed with a parental prayer. It is, then, the easiest of all things to keep your rose or your lily out of harm's way; for thither the dewy gales of gladness will not carry her; in sunlight, and moonlight, and in utter darkness, her beauty is safe-if you but knew what holy duties descended upon you from heaven the moment she was born, and that the God-given must be God-restored out of your own hand at the last day!

But we are getting too serious-so let us be merry as well as wise-yet still keep chatting about Theodora. She has, indeed, a fine temper. Then we defy Fate and Fortune to make her miserable, for as long a time as is necessary to boil an egg-neither hard nor soft-three minutes and a half; for Fate and Fortune are formidable only to a female in the sulks; and the smile in a serene eye scares them away to their own dominions. Temper is the atmosphere of the soul. When it is mild, pure, fresh, clear, and bright, the soul breathes happiness; when it is hot and troubled, as if there were thunder in the air, the soul inhales misery, and is aweary of very life. Yet there are times and places, seasons and scenes, when and where the atmosphere, the temper of every human soul, is like the foul air or damp in a coal-pit. The soul at work sets fire to it, by a single spark of passion; and there is explosion and death. But religion puts into the hand of the soul her safety-lamp; and, so guarded, she comes uninjured out of the darkest and deepest pit of Erebus.

You have kept your Theodora, we hope, out of harm's way; and cherished in her a heavenly temper. The creature is most religious; of all books she loves best her Bible; of all days most blessed to her is the Sabbath. She goeth but to one church. That one pew is a pleasant place, hung round by holy thoughts, as with garlands of flowers, whose bloom is perennial, and whose balm breathes of a purer region. The morning and the evening of each

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