rooms are lit badly, and, at twilight, they gloom. I am startled when the miller treads the creaking stairs; and the trap-doors and odd passages seem like an old castle. When grinding stops, silence hangs over the chambers, tenanted by squab figures, in white clothes, while down stairs the water trickles under the wheel, and the rats play hide-and-go-seek. Sometimes I am miller, and once I nearly set the building on fire by letting the grist run out of the hopper.

I am more than ever convinced, since I came here, you have made a mistake in not attending more to coloring, to the neglect, if you please, of so much outline-drawing. As I float down the river, I am detained by the color. These rich reflections, black in their depths, shining on their surfaces, with a delicate coating of silver, and glossing the trees, in masses, with an uncertain body-tint, could never be used in outline. You must pile on color, glaze and re-glaze. What would be the value of that starry group of willow-foliage, in your neutral pencil-drawing, deprived of its light, glimmering green, or this emerald bank, bearing a wreath of vermilion cardinals? I long to put these preparatory years of yours into one, and give it to a study so vexatious as this of outline, and then set you free into gorgeous colors that press forward and lie at your feet. Come from your neat chamber to my river, and we will float in splendid sunsets and royal moonlights, till you forget all but your picture, and create this smiling world over again. They will furnish a room in the mill, where you hear the hum of the lazy water-wheel, and the owl's screech, out of the forest on the opposite bank. We have good sweet meal, an orchard of scraggly apple-trees, and a deep kitchen hearth for cool evenings. Come, I entreat.

EDWARD.

MY DEAR SON,

LETTER II.

MRS. ASHFORD TO EDWARD ASHFORD.

Doughnut.

I was surprised to learn you had suddenly deserted college, and made your way to some place in the country, without either consulting me or the president. As your

mother, and nearest living relative, your feelings should have led you to inform me of this very serious change in your course of life. You left Doughnut, apparently contented to reside at college, and President Littlego's first letter was perfectly satisfactory. In his second I was mortified to learn you did not attend prayers, so often as was required, though regular at recitations; and in his third, with feelings I cannot describe, I learned you had left your room, and the greater portion of your clothes, and taken up your residence at some obscure farmhouse, in a country village.

It was from a letter to your friend Hope, I discovered to what point you had gone, and I write immediately on hearing, to beseech you to return to Doughnut, even if you do not instantly go back to Triflecut. At least, write on the

receipt of this, and inform me by what reasons you sustain your present extraordinary course of conduct. You must feel this is due to me, as well as to your other friends, and to President Littlego.

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I

After so long a course of studies, in this city, under the best preceptor I could obtain, I naturally felt that you would enter college with superior advantages, and obtain a high rank in your class. I know, my dear son, that as a young man, a very young man, just entering into life, your responsibilities do not seem so important as they will. regard a good position at college extremely desirable on one account, as the means of securing a good social position. You entered with the most respectable youth of this city, as associates in your class, and in other classes you have acquaintances, your friend Hope, and others of the same standing. I trust it will be your purpose to rank with these excellent young men. Again, the discipline gained from the study of foreign languages, and mathematics, will afford you a good basis on which you can erect your future labors.

You know, my dear Edward, my pecuniary circumstances, and that it is by limiting myself and your sister, I have been able to send you to Triflecut, without infringing too far upon the course of life we pursue in Doughnut. Yet I shall cheerfully make a greater sacrifice, if it will conduce to your greater happiness. If your room was unsuitable, or not furnished according to your wish, or if your ward

robe did not content you, I beg you will lay the cause before your mother's eye, and she will gladly devote any portion of her store to supply what you require.

me.

Hope informs me, you pass part of your time in a boat or some old mill. I beg of you not to be out in the evening air; remember your health, and how dear you are to Old mills are badly ventilated, and you have a tendency to cough. I have procured from Mrs. Puffy your flannel waistcoats, which I forward, together with another bottle of Smith's Lotion for sore throat. In case you should be unwell, send at once for a physician. I feel you will come home at once. God bless you, my dear son. Your affectionate mother,

REBECCA ASHFORD.

LETTER III.

RICHARD ASHFORD TO EDWARD ASHFORD.

Doughnut.

What has got into your brains now, Ned, goes beyond the powers of your Uncle Dick! I happened to come to Doughnut the day they expected you from Triflecut. I arrived at 11 o'clock, in the stage, and found mother and sister Fanny working at your winter stockings, in the little back parlor. At 12 the bell rung, and the Triflecut coach stopped. Fanny flew to the window, your mother ran to the door, and in came a dapper-looking college man, in a black coat, and handed us a letter, which contained the astounding intelligence, that you had fled the soft embraces of President Littlego, and now smacked your lips over johnny-cakes and apple-dumplings, in a distant although romantic grist-mill. I was introduced to Mr. Hope, and asked him what could induce a quiet young gentleman, like you, to cut such a trick; at which he smiled, drew up his eye-brows, twirled his hat, and said, "I wish I was there with him." "The devil you do," said I. I have not laughed so much since I burnt off deacon Bugbear's queue at a revival lecture.

Your mother popped a series of maternal questions at Mr. Hope, to discover what motives led her darling boy to such a display of independence. Mr. Hope, who is a quiz

plainly, informed her your sudden disappearance was as much matter of surprise to him, as to herself, and went, leaving us as wise as when he came. He supposed the classic shades of Triflecut, as your mother calls scrub commons and twopenny tutors, might have wearied your imaginative head, and that the beautiful village of Lovedale was more adapted to it. I have lived a long time, my dear Ned, and have seen a good deal of life. I did not run away, when a youth, but was put up and labelled — sailor, and despatched in a dirty ship, to plough my way through the furrows of the ocean. I thought I should have a good time, rocking on the billows, far from the torments of six brothers, the plague of school, and the dull routine of a little seaport. My first voyage "cleansed my bosom of this perilous stuff." I came home, "a sadder and a wiser " lad, but I had to equip for another voyage, and sailed the sea twenty-six long years. At the end I came back to the little seaport, "an ancient mariner," with no property but the clothes on my back, some yarns about my travels, gray hair, and a rheumatism, to burden my family and look after my nephews.

Do what you like, only be careful to go to sea with a rudder. I rarely give advice, but I can recommend you never to do anything without seeing where your path goes, and, if you can, keep the old road. You will find the beaten track pleasanter, on the whole, and, if the scenery is tame, the accommodation is good at the taverns.

Your friend Hope made me laugh, as I say, by his cool indifference to your mother's tenderness. He has an old head on young shoulders. He told me, Triflecut was thrown into an agreeable excitement by your disappearance. Mrs. Puffy was in consternation, to lose so quiet a boarder with such a small appetite, and the good soul really feared that the hard fare of the University must have driven you desperate. A few of the young ladies have manifested some sympathy, and set you down as a rejected suitor. Pray appease your mother's distressed heart, by writing her.

We are in a quandary here. I have had a notion I would get a lawyer's advice, perhaps we could take you with a habeas corpus, but it is a good way to send a sheriff's officer, and it would be a blank business to have a non est inventus returned. Your mother begs me to engage

a vehicle and drive down myself; your sister Fanny suggests we bribe you to come back by the offer of a study and pens, a library, and permission to pass a week in seclusion. What we shall resolve, I cannot say; in the mean time I puff my pipe, at my leisure, in the garret, and read some old French plays I bought at a book stall.

Your Uncle,

LETTER IV.

JAMES HOPE TO EDWARD ASHFORD.

DICK.

Triflecut.

I acknowledge what you say of outline is partly true, my dear Ashford, but I think you have drawn too hasty a conclusion. We must, in art, make a beginning, to leap from the outset to the end, cannot produce any work above that of a petit-maitre. It is the fault of our time to escape deliberation, to mar by haste, and to suggest, rather than perfect. I am chagrined to hear you remark, you wish the Poet's power belonged to you, for I have always thought you were born to write verse.

I console myself by reflecting that every true poet has felt this deficiency at the outset, and my chagrin was the result of the same want of maturity I find everywhere; for how could I require you, just beginning to write, to produce anything sublime? I want courage to assert my right to the pencil, as much as you do to the pen. I believe our age is not only that of immaturity, but of disbelief; we are neither willing to graduate nor confide; we finish in haste, and read our failure of necessity. When I consider how the masters, who have stamped eternal foot-prints in the sands of time, spent years in writing characters which were instantly washed out, I resolve to sit in love and admiration, and value my ill-formed outsets as some tendency towards real beauty, as the alphabet to the bible of art. My outlines, in this light, are worth preserving, and I grieve that I was not possessed of this patience years ago, for it would have led me to keep my first sketches, and I might now see such a change for the better as to make golden my