remembered, these many years, are the blue eyes and exquisite treble of a rustic belle, which pierced through and through the susceptible heart of a young sailor who was waiting for his ship! Not less were brown skin, ungloved, hard hands forgotten in the attractions of a manly energy and a warm heart. There, too, the little lord of a small private school in the centre of the town came and breathed a fine taste and silvery tenor in the ears of fair aristocrats, who in pure benevolence, no doubt, were lending aid to the respected chorister in improving church music. But with no ring of coin were the silvery sounds accompanied, or followed in the lapse of years, alas! And many unsuspected attachments, warming and strengthening into union for life, began in the heart-music which fell upon the ear, week by week, aye, trembled tenderly through many folds of winter clothing in those evening walks — not accidental!

But when, on Sunday, a large portion of the population of the town was swept into the vast area and galleries of the ancient church, as was then the constant custom, twice in the day and sometimes in the evening, blest were the labors of Mr. Rush to all ears, often rewarded in secret benedictions. Decayed music in the sanctuary is painful to every pious heart. But rich, full chords from a good choir, tuned from the very soul as no other organ but the human voice can be tuned, fall on the ear in some spiritual hymn, each delicate nerve highly charged with pure and elevated sentiment, spreading influences around, which bring the better nature into harmony with the place and the hour. Many a preacher has had reason to bless the vernal airs which, through fine psalmody, have penetrated into a cold, gravelly soil, and softened it for the reception of the truth.

We have leisure to look around and note any matter of interest at hand. We soon observe, with surprise, the grotesque mimicry played off on our respectable, dignified instructor by his shadow on the wall as, all unconscious, he plies his vocation. Now it swells into a giant, whose features are lost in vastness; now shrinks to a more exact copy of the man. At every turn of the head or body, the most

surprising caricatures of him exist and vanish occasionally, or linger in a ludicrous attitude. Ah! there is a nose, a moment since scarcely visible, now darting across the wall and corner-post, around to the window on the other side of the room, perfectly huge, running out to a sword-like point! The projecting head being fixed for some time, the post and window are thus transfixed. Now the leader lifts a hand to beat the time, and forthwith an immense club of shadow threatens to dash out his brains. As he takes his flute to give the pitch, his colossal image seizes a fence-rail, and goes through the same ceremony with perfect gravity. As the flute moves impressively in marking time, a sweeping shadow threatens the safety of all, and shrinks to nothing again, every moment through the tune. A penumbra is accidently created, which heightens the effect of the relentless ridicule. But when a corpulent old "gentleman of color" anticipates Mr. Rush in taking a chair in the corner, und pretends, upon a mere shadow of his violincello, to show him better how it should be handled and played, taking the business quite out of his hand with insufferable impudence, a little covert mirth runs around the room, which the good man is too busy to perceive.

You may have observed the old sexton very uneasy for some time past. Often has a little, black spherical timepiece appeared, and nearly as often the fob with it, returned with difficulty, soon to reappear. The precise moment so long expected seems at length to have arrived. Assuming a large lantern, resembling a "powder-house," not glazed, but punched roughly with fancy apertures, transmitting light, but imprisoning incendiary sparks, he kindles an inch of candle and glides out of the room. It is hardly gone when nine o'clock strikes, and forthwith the great bell is heard explaining the mystery in its evening chime. Swinging long, it attains a vertical posture, and "sets." Three several times a double stroke is heard as it sets by order of the town. Then the old bell-man, yielding to the horrors of solitude in the grim, ghost-peopled tower, attended only by his feeble lantern, leaves the bell to ring itself down from the last setting in a

frenzy of freedom, enacting the death agony of a boa constrictor in the dark, while with key in hand he hurries away to brighter duties. His appearance just now is mysterious to people not familiar with the art of ringing bells from steeples. For, as he enters, the last few strokes touch, at uncertain intervals, as faltering and bewildered; and when apparently done entirely, a last, loudest tone is struck, half double, which hums away into silence. Not one of its strokes has been lost upon teacher or pupil, though a powerful anthem has been in "full tide of successful experiment" during all the ringing. As Mr. Rush assigns his task for the next evening, books close spontaneously; a rustling movement becomes general. At his last word and pleasant bow, confusion ensues. A sort of polarity rules in it, however, by which garments are at once selected and donned in a hurry, and young persons separated during the evening make up duets or glee parties to walk home together.

Emerging from a close, hot room into the clear, pure, cold air of a January night, all the feelings and perceptions are instantly traced to the beauty of Nature in full evening dress. Not a cloud is visible, but a thin haze hangs near the earth, blending snow and azure sky, and brightening along the northern horizon. The moon is lifting but now her silver disk above roof and tree-top. Constellations are mapped in gems upon the firmament, and the fixed stars in diamond dust twinkle through infinite space. Jupiter, large and intensely brilliant, and other lesser lights flash and sparkle through the heavens. Buildings appear in drapery of black velvet and cloth of silver. Shop and bank signs, huge brazen knockers and latches, show themselves in burnished gold by moonlight. The sea, a quarter of a mile distant, after the storm of yesterday, breathes audibly, sighs, roars along the beach, bursts, and rushes upon icy rocks. Rows of ancient trees, bald of foliage, and antique chimneys, give sigh for sigh, and roar in the brisk wind. Crisp, pebbly snow crackles under a hasty tread. Frosty air tingles at ears' and fingers' ends, pinches nostrils, swells lungs to difficult respiration. We pass "down street" in solid column,

whole platoons of ladies officered by a few beaux, in actual commission, or for the present waiting enlistment, marching to the music of their own merry voices. Now comes lumbering by the eastern mail-stage, enveloped in green baize, —an awkward, inverted trapezoidal box, on double-runners, drawn by four fleet, gray horses, in charge of a veteran of the whip, proudly keeping the very centre of the street, regardless of light cutters dashing by. Now we overtake a mammoth load of English hay, a mow peripatetic, on its thirty-miles' journey to an early market in the city, gliding, crushing, creaking, sluing over polished tracks or pebbly snow, after pigmy oxen invisible under the hay as they move steadily onward. Squads of rowdy young men hang about doorsteps and street-corners, obstructing the sidewalk, jostling and pushing one another, to the thorough annoyance of parties or persons passing by, responding to civil remonstrance with profane and vulgar ribaldry. And when a rough voice wakes the echoes with a shout, mastiff, terrier, spaniel, and curs of low degree bark themselves hoarse.

Life in Mornington sets bedward at nine o'clock. Already shop-shutters bang heavily into socket, iron bands and bolts. clang and rattle as they are secured. Glass doors are superseded by deal and padlock for the night. The air is slightly tainted with smoke of peat or smoldering brands from kitchen hearths. Rusty keys turn in front-door locks with a shriek which sets the teeth on edge and hair on end. Shovels grate harshly on the ear, and hisses from quenching sticks and back-logs press for a hearing as we pass contiguous parlors. Heads cautiously peep as curtains are drawn in chambers, and tapers suddenly show but a glimmer at the casement. Hearts and diamonds reveal through shutter-holes a dishabille that will not bear the light; or through the night the mother watches her fretful child, fans the pale cheek, or keeps sleepdestroying insects at bay from the bed of sickness and pain. Lights wander about lower rooms ascend-linger awhile in attics, and vanish. Repose, with downy breast and noiseless wings, hovers low to alight and brood over the town.

- pause

TOPICS OF THE MONTH.

THANKSGIVING.

THIS great New-England day, which has been taken up by the people and made a national festival, has never probably been so extensively observed as it has been this year. No day in the calendar so commends itself to our household affections. It has always been peculiarly a family festival, when the scattered members of the household might come home to the old paternal roof, and for this once in the year, however frugal at other times, gather round a plenteous table, and with warm affections and good cheer render thanks to Almighty God. It has been a day when, if ever, domestic feeling and religious gratitude are alive; when the hearts of the old are made young; when son and daughter, coming back from their newly established homes, feel that they are children once more. It has been a day for talking over the incidents of early life, the little childish experiences which linger on in the heart with growing sacredness as the years of our pilgrimage are lengthened. It is a day which bears the features of a more patriarchal age, and which carries us back to the olden times, and is filled with reminiscences of bygone generations. It is a day, too, when the heart, expanding with the sense of its own domestic happiness, remembers the stranger who has no home, and in its thankfulness for the abundance which God has given extends its blessings to those with whom "every harvest is scanty and every year unprosperous.'

We cannot, therefore, but rejoice in the more general observance throughout our land of this great home and harvest festival.

CONGRESS.

The meeting of Congress is always a matter of interest to the nation. The President's message must, we think, com