EDITH.

"Oh, when shall the grave hide forever my sorrow?"

It was evening. Edith had just entered her boudoir, and stood at the casement, anxiously peering through the mazes of a honeysuckle, which twined its pleasant shade before the window, and filled the room with its delicious fragrance. The cool breeze crept timidly through the leaves, and gently lifted the darklyflowing tresses of her hair, while now and then it dared playfully to steal a kiss from her rounded cheek. Edith was not one of those imaginary beings whom the poet loves to create and endow with all the perfections his fancy can suggest; to make the idol of his thoughts, the shrine around which cluster his devotions, and the ceaseless object of his pursuit. By many she was called not beautiful. You were not, at first, struck by any thing in her appearance, unless it were the peaceful smile which ever dwelt upon her lip. Yet to strangers alone it was, that she seemed uninteresting. If you but once heard that voice, which seemed to have filched its melody from an angel's harp; if you but once felt the glance of that eye, the soul of whose every beam was love; if you but once drank in with rapture the words which flowed from her lips, so innocent, so natural, and yet so new, her image was pictured on your heart never to be effaced. In your hour of lonely musing, it would insensibly rise before you, till, ere you were aware, your whole soul would be charmed into the contemplation by the might of its beauty.

We were the only children of two neighboring families, and in the tender years of childhood, we had been taught to look upon ourselves as the bond which was to unite them. We were ever companions, and our pursuits, our desires, our hopes were one. The disposition of each became imbued with that of the other, and each heart beaming upon the other, tinged every feeling as it grew, with the hue of its own youthful gladsomeness, till the same bright color diffused itself over our whole natures; even as the sun shining upon a field of springing grain, infuses into each frail stalk his own brightness, till there spreads beneath him, as it were, a sea of embodied sunbeams. In happiness we had been united, and when affliction came, she threw her dark veil over both. Friend after friend fell around us, and now all of happiness the world contained for us was centered in each other. Friends, to be sure, arose, and kind, but none remained in whom flowed the blood of our names. I stood on the verge of manhood, and she was just gloriously unfolding into all a woman's graces.

At the time my story begins she was awaiting my arrival. I was to meet her in the garden, where we thought we should be uninterrupted; and she had promised there to fix the time which should make us one in the world's eye, as we then were in the sight of God and ourselves. I approached the house, and waving my hand towards the window behind whose vine I knew she was hidden, I turned to gather a rose-bud at my side. She was with me in an instant, and playfully taking the bud from my hand, kissed it, and placed it in her bosom, while that indiscribable smile enwreathed her mouth and sweetly dimpled upon her cheek. Disturbed in the garden, we left it, and strolled through a grove of fatherly old oaks, which seemed to invite us to their shady recesses. The hours flew by unheeded, while we "feasted bee-like" on the joys of a spirit-blending confidence, when suddenly we missed the ray of the moon, which had struggled here and there through the foliage, and in a moment utter darkness clothed the sky, while the rain pattered upon the leaves, making sad music. But hark! a thunder storm is upon us, whose fitful flash and rumbling peal had warned us in vain, so absorbing was our love. We left the wood immediately, and not being able to see on account of the pitchy darkness, hurried on in the direction we thought would soonest lead us home. No time was to be lost, for Edith was dressed in the light clothing of summer, and the leaves scarcely afforded any shelter. Oh God!-(pardon my feelings,) that haste was fatal! At the other side of the grove flowed a small stream whose channel had been deepened and widened by art, and ere we were even aware that we had reached it, we found ourselves struggling in the water, while the suddenness of the plunge, together with the stream, drew Edith from my grasp. In the darkness of the night despair had well nigh seized me, but the shriek that she uttered, "Oh, save me, Henry!" roused me to energy. I pushed out in the direction of her voice, and had the fortune to grasp her hand. I then swam for the shore, and seizing a strong bush which was strongly rooted upon it, found that with its assistance I could just stand upon the bottom; then taking Edith with my right arm, while I held on with the left, I lifted her out with an exertion of all my strength. She moved not! She spoke not! Frantic I took her in my arms and rushed with a giant's strength to the house, guided by a flickering ray from one of the windows. I reached it, laid her upon a couch, and fainted at her side. From that hour she drooped. Death had laid his poisonous hand upon her frame. He came and found her like a flower just budding into beauty, and he trod it into the dust! But she passed slowly away like a star of evening. Her mild blue eye began to shun the light, and hide itself deep in her wan cheek. Her rounded form withered away, and her snowy hand grew more and more attenuated, while

the large purple veins stood out upon it, as if ready to burst their frail and delicate covering. Her smile-for she would smile on me-that angelic smile grew fainter as death drew nigh, but that voice lost none of its heavenly tones. It merely grew more softened by disease. I watched these dreadful tokens with an agony only to be felt. But I loved her still; yes, and I cherished the fond hope that she would bloom again. Fool that I was, I would not allow the thought of losing her to master me. Still she glided to the tomb-and-she died! The memory of that day harrows up mine inmost soul. 'Twas a bright day. Even the plants, as they sprung forth and swung in the wind, seemed to burst into smiles, while they gazed upward at the sun. But I knew no sympathy with them. What was their joy to me. My only life, my only love, my all, was passing away! Dark, melancholy thoughts brooded o'er my soul, and triumphed in my breast like a savage crew. She died, I said,-aye, and she breathed forth her last faint breath upon my faithful bosom. Just ere she went, she looked up to me with a glance of unearthly love, and thus addressed me: "It has come, and I must leave this earth of sorrow. Yet I could go with joy most unalloyed, did not the chain of love bind me to thee so closely. Even now I almost feel the joys of heaven. Soon this faded body will rest within the quiet tomb. And when the flowers of spring wave their loveliness above my head, come, Henry, to my grave, and think of her who loved thee so fondly when on earth; then-'tis my last request-go, forget me, and take another to thyself." She sighed, and these lips caught the fleeting life from that bosom so long adored. They buried her. I knew it not, for reason deserted her throne, and fled with that pure spirit to the skies. They tore her from my arms, and gave her to the earth's cold embrace. Month's passed, and now frightened reason had returned, but only to renew my sufferings. It was a balmy day of spring. I felt more calm, for now a sense of utter loneliness absorbed my soul. And then I walked unto her resting place alone. I found a lily of the valley rocking its snowy bells above her grave. Oh! how I loved that little shrinking flower! It seemed an emblem of her modest beauty, and the sweet memory of her loveliness. It spoke to me in every fragrant breath it breathed, and by its spotless purity, of her last request. Often she now whispers in that soft, gentle, touching voice of hers, "Pine not for me, but cull one of the many modest flowers which surround thy path, and cherish it as thou didst me. Be unto her a sun, and shine upon her with thy warmest beams." I did cull a flower-I culled that lily of the valley, and laid it in my bosom, on my heart. There it shall remain, till my spirit meets hers in the mansions of eternal rest. MS.

THE Greeks knew no solitude in nature. Every place was peopled with forms of beauty, and animated with living intelligences. Their mountains and valleys, deserts and forests were

each thronged with presiding deities. Their fountains were filled from the pure urns of the Naiades; their grottos were the haunts of gods; the wind, sighing in their groves, was but the spirit song of the wood-nymph; the coralline chambers of the ocean echoed to the soft tread of the Nereids; their heavens were lighted with the smiles of departed heroes. This superstition, so full of poetry, which thus led them to see life and beauty in all the phenomena of the universe, and to consider every manifestation of power and skill as resulting from the secret workings of omnipresent mind, is by no means peculiar to any age or people. To all, at least of the "poetic temperament," the exhibitions of nature in her wildest, grandest mood, are terrible or sublime only as they appear the effect of an all-pervading mental energy. The clouds may gather blackness, the winds howl through the forests, and the rain descend in torrents-but it is when we hear in the blast the shrill voice of the "spirits of the storm" and feel, that,

"horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,"

they are marshalling the warring elements at their will, that we look and listen with mingled awe and admiration. We love to contemplate the ocean lashed to madness, the cataract uttering its ceaseless roar in the ear of the Eternal, and the mountain belching forth the fires that rage within, because we see in them the manifestations of Infinite mind.

But even the clay-fettered intellect of man, though in its operations less startling and mysterious, bespeaks, in no ambiguous terms, the divinity of its origin. Whatever may be said of the degradation of human nature, he has looked only upon its darkest shades, who discovers in it no redeeming features, no enobling qualities, no godlike energies. True, it is fallen, but, like the palace shattered by a bolt from heaven, it is magnificence in ruins; and the philosopher, while he may lament its desolation, finds much in the wreck which he cannot but admire and revere. He sees a grandeur in the spectacle, which a Herschel presents, as, in his nightly solitude, he sends out his observations into the regions of illimitable space and converts the faint, sparkling dots that checker the concave into the burning centers of revolving systems. He reverences the power of a Franklin, as the lightnings, at his word, leave their fearful pastime in the clouds and trace their noiseless way in quiet submission to his feet. He is awed at the sublimity displayed in the vast conceptions of a Milton, as, "with no middle flight," he soars "to the height of his great argument," and from the battlements of heaven, surveys with eye undazzled, the glittering armies of warring angels, and listens, unabashed, to the shout, that

"Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night."