Branksome dreamt of the deer-hunt, is Meteor, | hooves the dews of morning;-and Spectre, that the veteran of his class, a pointer "out of a thou- milk-white steed, will take the lead of all and sand." He rises and points, but it is at the noise bear his rider away like the Phantom horse of of the heavy ox-cart which the heavily-yoked Bürger, and all, huntsmen and hounds, will disoxen are dragging over the road beyond the appear like a vision of the night. gate-not at the partridges. Meteor is much I have endeavored to outline briefly that little more respectable than many meu of my acquain-read of diversion raccoon hunting; but I waste tance-and why? Simply because he is excel- no words on the fox-hunt, because Somerville lent in what he has undertaken to excel in- has described it before me, and because even that finding for his master's amusement, with uner-inspired author has delineated but faintly the ring nose, the game which the sportsman de- most exciting of all field sports, in his "Chase." lights to rattle down with his double-barrel. Now why should I add any thing to this rambPartridge-shooting! The sound you must con- ling letter which commenced with the newspafess is exhilarating; to me, not perhaps for my pers and has ended with a fox-hunt? great or frequent success, for it is not every one I have only to say that however attractive the who, even after long practice, can bag his dozen town may be-as the nucleus of news and life birds; but that at these words I feel the full in- and restless energy-I love rather at this period fluence of our beautiful autumn weather with to see the blue heavens and the white clouds the glorious tide of life which it pours into the yonder through glimmering leaves-to hear the veins. Before me rise the magnificence and clear mellow voice which rises to my ears, borne beauty of the golden autumn woods, the rosy on the pure forest-scented breeze. The fiery and inspiriting sunlight of October, the dreamy flood of thought, and enterprise, and energetic and heart-subduing panorama of piled up snowy ambition flows often without check in the heated clouds on a back ground as blue as the eye of atmosphere of the city when the coolness and beauty. It is that at these words rise visions of shadow of the country would chill its current, "standing" dogs, and cocked double-barrels held but I hear the oriole and the pewit from yonder in nervous hands, and fluttering birds which are rustling oak, and assuredly I am content—more the trophies of success. than content.

But what noise do I hear approaching nearer and still nearer-like a summons to battle or (which I must fear is an anti-climax) the stage's signal when it rattles into our country towns. It is that promising young, black Napoleon, Jr., who is "blowing away for life" on that large curling horn rimmed with silver on which his master's name is engraved, usually suspended by its green cord from a peg behind the door of the hall. And why is Napoleon. Jr., in so furious an ecstasy with swollen cheeks and dancing eyes, and what is the meaning of that prolonged and incessant baying which floating from every point of the compass answers the notes of

the horn?

The fox-hounds-some dozen of them-are about to be fed, and soon from the window you may see them leaping, and quarreling, and fighting around the pieces of corn-bread thrown to them, and hear their subdued baying as they mumble their food. They are black, black and white, yellow and brown, orange and tawny; but all are equally keen-eyed and long-eared, and should you go among them all will equally fawn on you pushing into your hands their cool slender muzzles. Now they are inactive, basking in the sun or dragging their blocks, but wait until the late fall and the pack will make musical many a hill and valley as they "open" in full cry after the veteran red fox,-and a merry and jubi laut party will dash from the grass with rapid

PINEWOOD, 8 September.

Perhaps it is better in the hours of winterthe long hours of the winter night-to have near you beloved friends dear to the memory and the heart, when you would recall the scenes and impressions of the past. Memory is a grand and noble gift to the heart that feels that the "living present" is not enough to chain its regards and draw forth in its full strength the treasure of its sympathy. Yet why should I say sympathyovvяanμì;—when this feeling is not suffering at all but rather a rare and sublimated joy?

Many persons live in the present hour with its joys and sorrows, its successes and misfortunes, with no thought of the road they have travelled upon, no glance to the path they have yet to tread ;-many live altogether in the future which they make their own, shaping with their vigorous castle-building imaginations the events that are to come. Others abandon both-the present and the future-to live again in the past, which they construct again for themselves seperating, however, the sunlight from the shadow, the pleasant from the bitter. Seen thus through the haze of memory the angles melt into roundness, the rude obstacles in the path passed over disappear, and like a mountain wrapped in the rivermist nothing but the beauty remains, with that rarer beauty invented by the imagination. I

shall never forget the words of an aged lady | go as reluctantly;—yet it must be. So in a who was spending calmly in the house where- moment the large wheels send forth their busy in she was born, the advanced evening of her murmur, the full-headed wheat rattles through days. "All my life," said she, "is bound up with the old house and grounds-yonder I played, there I sat down and cried: many mournful things have happened here, but I forget all of them and only remember the pleasant part."

the revolving teeth of the machine, and ere long you see moving toward the straw-mountain to the right a dozen moderate sized stacks, apparently moving at their own free will and pleasure, as Macbeth imagined he saw advancing Barnum When we would recall the joyful or the enter- wood to Dunsinane." Soon these stacks which taining as I have said—there is no time like the you now see are simply large bundles, arrive at the long hours of the night in winter, when the straw-mountain and slowly ascend the ladder hickory logs are blazing cheerfully and a roar-reared against it, and are thrown upon top. Then ing flood of sparks roll like shooting stars up the the boys who have moved these bundles so mysbroad chimney, and a happy circle are gathered teriously return to repeat their exploit. round the blaze. The warm air lies clear and golden on the vast

But to-day the memory should gather to-oblong stack, the movements of the hands are gether its treasures in silence and with no face busy and cheerful, the whiz and whirr of the manear to break its spell. For the warm breath of chine comes to the ear like the song of a good the summer woodlands begins to mingle itself housewife singing at her task and, if I, an unwith the cooler and more active wind of autumn. happy prisoner of the town (so much worse than I fancy too that a few yellow leaves have a prisoner-of-state) see beauty and attraction in fallen, and that here and there the aspect of the this scene, how much more beautiful and attraclandscape hints of the "melancholy days, the tive must it be to the farmer-when wheat is the saddest of the year." Yonder, too, over the quoted at "a-dollar-and-five !" broom-straw, waving musically (though I hear it not) I behold a red leaved tree which shows like the crimson-berried Dogwood. It is however the Gum.

Do not fancy that I am about to inflict on you a homily, or even some "reflections" on human nature in general "suggested by" the variegated splendors which the landscape will display when another month shall have rolled its clouds and winds over the woods and meadows. Nothing is farther from my purpose.

The tobacco too, stretching its broad leaves as far as the eye can reach is a pleasant sight, and from these green and milky plants your thought turns to the same plant in its later form-when it will administer to our luxuries (I should rather say our vices) of chewing, snuffing and smoking. My paper fails me and a better reason still, the rich sunlight shames my inaction.

PINEWOOD, 10 September.

Perhaps in musing over the beautiful poems on Yesterday it rained, and to-day we have a dethis subject which are scattered through the vol- lightful atmosphere which cheers and refreshes umes of all our bards, I may at times yield the the spirits. No "landscape winking through the rein to those devious and indolent thoughts heat," drives me in doors, but the fresh air is which suggest themselves; and like "Ik. Marvel" cool and inspiriting, the leaves of the trees are rear under the combined influence of the lovely laden with moisture, and on the smooth, soft weather and a mild Havana, those misty castles in grass, the first beams of the sun have not yet the air which he has caught and delineated with succeeded in drying up the heavy dew which so radiant a pencil in his "Reveries ;"-but how-glitters like handfuls of diamonds scattered in ever pleasant at certain times these caprices of careless profusion. Under the old oaks where the imagination, I confess that this season has the grass is like a variegated carpet, with the to me a real material beauty quite apart and dif- shadow of the moving boughs it is still heavier ferent from the poetical. It is the beauty of and brighter. plenty and it is now that the farmer reaps at last the result of April showers, May breezes, and the golden flood of the June sunlight.

A thousand woodland sounds come melodiously to my ear as I trace these lines at the open window, through which the shadows of the rustYonder are the stiff-necked (but not backsli-ling oak leaves fall on the sill, my paper and the ding) mules, going reluctantly, to their monoto- floor. That eternal crow is again complaining nous round: they go reluctantly for do they not or "crowing" over some victory, for it is imknow that before the sun slopes to the western possible to say what is his state of mind simply forest they will have to pass over a dozen miles from that stereotyped "caw caw!" which he reof space, dragging at their heels that heavy tim- peats with remorseless regularity. At the mober in its weary round? But the plough-horse, ment that I write these words, I should say he the stager, and the lawyer (less blest than any) was holding an angry debate on the corn laws→

possibly casting an indignant retrospect on the ment, I will end my scribblings-like one who inhumanity of the legislation which in cold blood rises after a morning call and takes his leave with sets a price upon his scalp. Just now I thought a pleasant and genial speech. he was rejoicing--but a little while ago I am sure he was complaining.

Ah! but now there can be no doubt! There are at least half a dozen of them, and their angry notes ranging from the prolonged bass of some veteran warrior and corufield robber, to the shrill and quick treble of the boy-crows yet under a hundred years, tell me that the martin, that abhorred enemy of the crow race, is wheeling

The rainy day which was to lead you to the shelves of "quaint and olden" books around me failed to afflict us in its full power, and that part of my promising must go to make up that antique pavement which we are told is formed of "good intentions." Yet let me call your attention to my London edition of Froissart, Lord Berners' translation.

You will find in the fourth volume an account and gyrating about their dusky flight! Com- of Froissart's visit to his "High Mightiness Gasplain not magnanimous and large souled crow; ton Phoebus, Count of Foix and Bearne," at Orlet thy diminutive opponent spend his strength taise; and there he met with a man-at-arms and take his fill of worrying thee in thy corvine who told him of many battles and places where sport! Long after he shall have crumbled into he had never been. Now I have told you of Pinedust and not a feather in his haughty crest shall wood and I think I am entitled to sign here insurvive him, thy nervous wing shall float over stead of my own the name of the Knight— broad, newly-planted cornfields, and thine eye, ERNALTON OF PINE. bright as though no "hundred years had gone," shall from afar spy whatsoever shall administer to thy pleasures, or what is aimed at thy venerable life. Fear not, O veteran that hast never trembled at the Texun pipnin which formed yonder unseemly figure of a "scare-crow," in old ragged coat, inexpressibles of inexpressible cut, and straw hat which has "been in the wars" of Yes she is dead, who sung the songs of May; the elements; thou shalt long laugh at thine enemies, and possibly some future "NUGATOR" may Who charmed the grove with her sweet, simple lay, "hymn thy praise" with a "loftier" pen than mine.

The Death of the Nightingale.

FROM THE GERMAN.

The songstress sweet,

Lies at my feet.

Her sweet tones find an echo in my breast,
In my sad hours;

Among the flowers.

Gradually the "caw caw!" grows fainter and melts into the low murmurs of the pines, and When by the brook I lay me down to rest, then comes drowning every other sound, the grating note of the locust. Soon however his child's-She poured in death from out her swelling throat, rattle voice sinks into a low wail, and he darts

Her sweetest strain;

off apparently to engage in mortal combat with While echo from the rocks around, each note
his rival vocalist in the elm.
Gave back again.

Now, that he has ceased, I can hear distinctly At even there, the rustic's song is heard,

the low regular sweep of the mower in the long
grass yonder near the road, and if you desire Oft meet
high authority for the pleasantness of the sound,

And maidens gay

to dance, where sung the pensive bird,
At close of day.

And by his side

His fair young bride.

The whispered tale

They clasp their hands, while up to mem'ry springs
They there did breathe, ere thou didst cease to sing,.
Sad Nightingale.

I refer you to "In Memoriam," by the Poet-There came a youth, who once had heard her lays, Laureate. With it mingle the lowings from the fields, the voice of a thousand birds playing There stood, and hung enraptured by his gaze, among the moving boughs, and the other senses besure are not left ungratified. As yesterday, the day before and every day, the blue sky is traversed by large snowy clouds, (I should rather I believe say woolly.) which now take the forms of ships white-sailed and vast, ploughing through azure seas; then shift into a thousand shapes which afford an idle play to the imagination. As yesterday, the day before and every day, the rich, fresh odor of greenwood leaves, comes to me while writing, and now with these pleasant sights and sounds and perfumes around me, which Yet ere they slept, a sigh for thy sad lot,

I have endeavored to tell over for your amuse

Silent they stood, until the Curfew's note
Rung out aloud;
And Hesperus, who seemed in gold to float,

Burst from a cloud.

They then at twilight sought their peaceful cot,
And sank to rest;

Escaped each breast.

AZIN.

life of one of the most illustrious of modern financiers, possesses great incidental interest; and its unadorned facts yield the most impressive illustration of the relation of money to society and government.

The vicinity of the Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay renders Bayonne a favorable site both for inland and foreign trade; and her commerce with Spain on the one side and her lucrative fisheries on the other, as well as the large amount of ship timber annually exported to Brest and other parts of France, amply vindicate her claim to commercial privileges which are still farther secured by the enterprise of the Gascon character. That

In the majority of cases large fortunes are gained and preserved through careful attention to details-an habitude which is supposed to militate with comprehensive views and liberal sympathies. It is, therefore, common to regard the acquisition of money and elevation of taste and character as essentially incompatible; and this consideration gives peculiar interest and value to the few noble exceptions to a general rule which reveal the sagacious financier as a patriot it is an excellent mercantile school is evident from and philosopher. Prejudice and the narrow ideas the proverbial success of her inhabitants elseusually cherished by the devotees of trade have where. It was from this old city that a youth of caused the whole subject of money-its acquisi- twenty, breaking away from his mother's tearful tion, preservation and use, to be consigned to the embrace, one night in the year 1787, departed for domain of necessary evils or the study of the Paris, with no guarantee of a prosperous expepolitical economist: it is, however, an interest rieuce except that derived from an ingenuous distoo vital and too inextricably woven into all the position, enthusiasm, ready intelligence and great relations of modern society, not to have claims natural cheerfulness. He became a clerk to the upon the most reflective minds independent of all banker M. Perrégaux; and soon after, by his personal considerations. The actual theory of own obvious merit, book-keeper, then cashier, an individual in regard to money is no ordinary and finally the exclusive director and indispensatest of character; the degrees of his estimation ble man of business of the establishment. Such of it as a means or an end, and as a source of was the origin of James Lafitte's career. The obligation and responsibility, is graduated by qualities which thus advanced him in private life the very elements of his nature and is a signifi- soon inspired public confidence and gradually led cant indication of his tone of mind and range of to his honorable and progressive activity in the feeling. In its larger relations—those of a na-national councils. Financial ability of a high tional kind-history proves that finance is a order, combined with noble traits of character, vast political engine intimately connected with thus identified him with the best interests of his the freedom, growth and civil welfare as well as country, and enrolled his name among her most One of ten external prosperity of a country. The traveller efficient and illustrious citizens. far removed from his native land, at a period of children, his first object was to provide for his great financial distress, is made to realize the im- family, which he did with characteristic geuerportance of credit, its moral as well as pecuniary osity. In 1809 the son of the poor carpenter of basis, when he hears the character and means of Bayonne was the president of the Chamber of all the prominent bankers in the world freely can- Commerce, regent of the Bank, and master of vassed in some obscure nook of the earth, only a princely fortune. Thenceforth we trace his connected perhaps with the civilized world by agency, more or less distinctly, in the wonderful this very recognition of pecuniary obligation. It series of events that succeeded the first revoluis at such crises, bringing home to his own con- tion; now providing funds for a royal exile, now sciousness the vast and complicated relations of coming to the rescue of a bankrupt nation, and money to civilized life, that the individual be- again lying wounded on his sofa, advising, ordercomes aware of the extensive social utility of ing and invoking the chief actors in the events those principles of financial science to which of the three days in July,―his court-yard a barperhaps, in less hazardous exigencies, he has rack aud his saloon an impromptu cabinet, where given but listless attention. The same broad a provisional government was organised and views of the subject are forced upon a nation's Louis Philippe proclaimed. It was standing bemind in the junctures of political existence, and all tween Lafitte and Lafayette that the new king great revolutions alternate from the battle-field first ventured to show himself to the people. For and the cabinet to the treasury-the state of pub- many years the patriot-broker was the centre of lic and private credit being, as it were, a scale a gifted society, the arbiter of pecuniary affairs, that truly suggests the condition of the body poli- the coadjutor of monarchs and men of genius, tic-like the pulse of a nation's life. Besides its of the working classes and political leaders. Surattraction as a study of character, therefore, the rounded by luxury, he never became indolent;

VOL. XVII-79

with absorbing duties, he atoned by study for a at times, impelled by grateful sympathy to recogneglected education; the possessor of immense nise the noble spirit of such a financier ;—that wealth, he never forgot the responsibility to others it involved; a zealous partisan and of so conciliatory a temper as to have the reputation of caprice in opinion, he preserved unbroken a moral consistency that won universal respect.

the emperor Alexander placed a guard at his door when his liberty was threatened by the invaders;—that Napoleon expressed his confidence by saying, as he left the remnant of his fortune in his hands, I know you did not like my government, but I know you are an honest man;" and that France herself, when his own fortune was wrecked by his devotion to the bank and the country-was moved at the remembrance of his sacrifices, would not permit the first asylum

To this special insight of a financier, Lafitte added genuine public spirit; he fully realized the social claims incident to his wealth and financial knowledge; and accordingly never hesitated to sacrifice personal interest to the general welfare whenever circumstances rendered it wise and of the revolution to be sold, and by a national benevolent so to act. When governor of the subscription redeemed it for Lafitte. bank of France, he relinquished his salary of a It is however to be regretted that he ever inhundred thousand franes in its favor on account terested himself actively in politics, except as of the poverty of the institution; in 1814, when they were directly related to his peculiar sphere. the directors assembled, after the entrance of the When called upon to bring financial means to foe into Paris, to raise funds, he proposed a na- the aid of government or people in her exigentional subscription and munificently headed the cies of civil life, we have seen his exemplary list. When the allies were at the gates of the wisdom, integrity and generous spirit; when he city, he steadily refused to endanger the credit addressed the Chambers upon any question of of the bank by a forced loan: and to avert the debt, credit, loans, or currency, his superior inhorrors of civil war, placed two millions of his telligence and practical genius at once won resown property in the hands of the Minister of Fi-pectful attention; his lucid and able reports, nance. After the events of those three days, he while governor of the bank, indicate his accurate resigned his coffers to the provisional govern- knowledge of the principles of public credit; the ment: his hotel was the rendezvous of the chief remarkable speeches in which he revealed a proactors, his party installed Lafayette at the head ject for resuscitating the nation's treasury,—the of the troops, and it was he that sent word to originality of his ideas, his colloquial eloquence the Duke of Orleans to choose between a crown and the manner in which he made a dry subject and a passport, and subsequently caused him to and even figures themselves interesting and combe proclaimed. Thus Lafitte thrice gave a safe prehensive-amply prove his remarkable adapdirection to the chaotic elements of revolution, tation to the domain of social economy and poand came bravely and successfully to the rescue litical action he illustrated. Appointed by the of his country in great emergencies. Nor was king in 1816 as one of the committee of finance, his action in behalf of individuals less noble with the Duke of Richelieu at its head, he conand prompt. When Louis XVIII. was ex-tested the system of forced loans as identical iled he sent the royal fugitives four millions with bankruptcy. In 1836 he demanded the reof francs; when the Duke of Orleans offered imbursements of the five per cents. His theory large, though doubtful securities to various com- was founded essentially on the conviction that mercial houses in vain, Lafitte accepted them the way to diminish the burdens of the people is at par value, uncertain as they were. When to diminish the expenses of the State. Napoleon departed for St. Helena, Lafitte became the repository of the remainder of his fortune; when General Foy experienced a reverse of fortune and imprudently sought relief in stock speculations, the generous banker confidentially arranged with his broker to enrich the brave and proud officer, and when he died subscribed a hundred thousand francs for the benefit of his family. These are but casual instances of his private liberality. It was a habit as well as principle with him to afford pecuniary relief whenever and wherever real misfortune existed, to cherish by the same means industry, letters, art, and benevolent institutions, with a judgment and delicacy that infinitely endeared his gifts. It is not surprising that both people and rulers were, lieu, his most formidable antagonist on this oc

Had Lafitte thus strictly confined himself to the subject of which he was master, it is probable he would have escaped, in a great degree, the blind prejudice of his oppouents. As it was, however, his career as a deputy to the view of an impartial spectator, reflects honor upon his character. Here, as in private life, he was eminently distinguished by moral courage. On one occasion he boldly proposed the impeachment of ministers; during the hundred days he was one of the intrepid minority that sought to preserve France from a second invasion; in opposing the system of forced loans his noble hardihood induced the king to invest him with the legion of honor: "I have," he said to the Duke of Riche