“I am sure, my dear Hammond," said I, deeply affected at his manner-it was so like one trying to drive away sorrow and madness by an affected hilarity that you are nervous from excessive application."

"No, no, I am not. Nervous! Albert Hammond nervous! No, no, it is something worse than that; but talk-talk-as fast as you can--my blood is curdling-come nearer-yes, yes-hush! do you hear nothing? Ah! what is that? There! there! Hush! I told you so-now you will believe me! Hush! hush!"

As he said this, he leaped upright, and I-I knew not where I was-I felt all the childish terror of a nursery. Hammond!" said I, feigning to be indignant, while in truth I was frightened, "Come back! come back, and let us reason together like men. What is this?"

"What! did he not touch you? didn't you feel the hand?"

Some minutes passed before I could prevail upon him to sit down. I stirred the fire then, and his countenance, in the red flashing of the embers, when the disturbed sparks rushed like a torrent of fire up the chimney, was frightful and appalling. Had the devil himself been there, he could not have set more naturally upon his haunches, or looked through his huge knotted fingers with more fiery and troubled eyes.

...

They had all toasted their women," said Hammond, abruptly..."all!-and then he-he-he uttered the name of Elizabeth. The name thrilled through me. They all drank it standing. Elizabeth!' echoed through the whole room. I covered my ears, with a feeling of profanation. But that was nothing-nothing! Elizabeth who?' cried one; Aye,' cried another; let us have it.'

"Elizabeth Adams,' answered the madman, in a loud voice, throwing off another bumper, which was followed by the whole company. Your blood boils, I see, William Adams, to hear me tell it; judge then what I felt to hear her blessed name uttered by such a man, in such a company, associated with the lewd and blaspheming. I stood thunderstruck for a moment, and then tried two or three times to get my breath; to gasp; to cry out; to speak to him; but I could not. I could not see plainly; I could not utter a sound. The company began to take notice of it; and all the noise, and laugh, and song, and riot, instantly died away into a stillness more awful than death, while every eye was turned upon me. I was leaning toward him, and I whispered very faintly, so faintly that I did not hear my own voice; but it came from the deepest place of all my heart, and he understood the motion of my lips-he heard me. Elizabeth Adams, of D-?' said I. Yes,' he haughtily replied, Elizabeth AdYou are

.

you

a scoundrel!' said I, jumping up-I would not let him finish it-dwelling on every syllable are a scoundrel and a villain! A glass decanter whizzed by my head as I spoke, and narrowly missed dashing my brains out. We rushed at each other, and he grasped a carving-knife, but it was wrenched from him, and we were separated till

the room was cleared, a circle formed, and swords put into our hands; but mine was a miserable cut and thrust, and in receiving one of his blows, before I could make a pass, it was shattered to the hilt. We closed, and I was very severely cut in the hand. No other sword could be obtained, and we stood, leaning against the wall, panting like spent tigers, till the company had agreed to escort us to a wood, just out of the town, and leave us to our fate with pistols. Some objected to this; but at last the business was arranged; how I know not; and the next thing that I recollect is, that we were together-his friend with us-that it was just daylight, and that I had just levelled and fired at his heart, and that I saw the ball strike him— but he stood still.

"You are wounded,' said his second, approaching me. No,' said I, I am not, but your friend is-look to him.' When I said this he fell. It was wonderful how I escaped. He was a great shot. But when we levelled there was a strange darkness about me for a moment, and I felt as if already a ball had passed through me-coldness and numbness—but I caught his eye just then, and observed that as I dropped my pistol his eye followed it, till it was just opposite his breast. I fired before he had recovered himself, and the result was what I have told you."...

"Look here, William Adams," said he, lifting his black-matted locks, "look here!-it wasn't grief that did it-no, nor old age-but his hand! Three thousand miles were we apart. Yet at the moment, the very moment when he died, the very moment! these locks turned white! I felt his hot hand there in my sleep. I awoke with a scream that startled the household broad awake. It was midnight-but not a soul could sleep again that night. You may smile, William, but noyou do not-you look serious. Are you really so? Speak to me. Can you believe me?"

"I do."

"It is impossible. You cannot. You believe that I am disordered. What! that at the moment of his death-the very moment! he should appear to me, and put his hand upon my temples and awake me!"

TALENT AND GENIUS.

FROM THE SAME.

His ambition was rather a diseased appetite for present notoriety than the gallant longing of a great heart for an imperishable and distant reputation. To his view the present was immortality; and he was foolish enough to believe that the future must echo to the voice of the present. He was, emphatically, a man of genius, though not a man of talent; but of such a genius as I would not that a brother or a son of mine should have for all the world. It was a kingly shadow, with the shadow of regal habiliments about it, which, when you approached them, fell of, and faded into brilliant exhalation, like coloured ice in the sunshine. Talent is substance: genius is show. Talent is a primary quality of things, like weight: genius the secondary quality, like colour.

A BOY'S REVERIES.

FROM THE SAME.

Look where I would, these brilliant creatures were incessantly in play among the stars, which were reflected in the depth below me, as if heaven had been showering them down like blossoms into the habitations of the waters.

Ah, I cannot describe the stillness that was about me. It was awful. It was like that of death. The sky was bluer than I had ever seen it, and much further off, it appeared to me, and the solemn stars were multiplied in the water till my head ached with the temptation of their influence; and I was on the point, child that I was, of plunging after them. Do not smile. Many drowned women and children have felt the same fascination, I have no doubt, drawing them as it were by a song and a spell into the bosom of the deep; and I have felt it more than once, neither as a woman nor as a child; but on this night it was more like an attraction, an irresistible, secret allurement, a delightful influence, winning and persuading me into a voluntary self-destruction. It was more like some unknown affinity operating upon my blood, upon the spiritual part of me, like a charm, than like what I have felt, as a strong hand, pressing me into the water by main force. At one time-the time that I allude to-we were upon the high seas, a few starved and desperate men, and were drifting, with our helm lashed down and topsail flying in the wind far and wide, like-O, unlike any thing ever seen upon the waters!--more like a floating hospital of lunatics and murderers, than a gallant ship, well-manned and obedient to the helm, and out upon the ocean, instinct with spirit, as if it had a soul and a will of its own....I was lying, I remember, in the hot sunshine upon the half-burnt deck, with my head over the side of the ship, gasping, giddy, and sick, and deadly faint, looking blindly down into the sea, and ready to give up the ghost with every sick, impatient sob, when, all at once there was a terrific explosion below me-a strong light flashed into my brain-my veins tingled-my blood was all in confusion-and the great deep heaved and roared, and broke up and vanished! vanished like a dream from my sight. And where it had been there came up a dizzy wilderness of beauty, and flowers, and greenness. The winds blew and the trees rustled all over, and waved their rich branches, and the birds flew about and the flowers fell, and everywhere, through the short thick grass and out of the old rocks, which were spotted with shining moss-the greenest in the world-the waters gushed and bounced, and sparkled and rattled, and then wandered away singing the self-same tune that the birds were all singing, in a labyrinth of brightness, with a reality so unspeakably tempting that I had well-nigh leaped down into the bosom of the apparition.... I attempted to stand upon my feet, they said, and threw up my arms with a cry of transport, just as the vessel heeled-and I should have been overboard but for the dwarf, who plucked me back and held me like a giant.

CHILDREN-WHAT ARE THEY?

FROM THE TOKEN.

WHAT are children? Step to the window with me. The street is full of them. Yonder a school is let loose, and here just within reach of our observation are two or three noisy little fellows, and there another party mustering for play. Some are whispering together, and plotting so loudly and so carnestly as to attract everybody's attention, while others are holding themselves aloof, with their satchels gaping so as to betray a part of their plans for to-morrow afternoon, or laying their heads together in pairs for a trip to the islands. Look at them, weigh the question I have put to you, and then answer it as it deserves to be answered: What are children?

To which you reply at once, without any sort of hesitation, perhaps,- Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined;" or "Men are but children of a larger growth," or, peradventure, "The child is father of the man." And then perhaps you leave me, perfectly satisfied with yourself and with your answer, having "plucked out the heart of the mys tery," and uttered without knowing it a string of glorious truths. . . .

Among the children who are now playing together, like birds among the blossoms of earth, haunting all the green shadowy places thereof, and rejoicing in the bright air, happy and beautiful creatures, and as changeable as happy, with eyes brimful of joy and with hearts playing upon their little faces like sunshine upon clear waters. Among those who are now idling together on that slope, or pursuing butterflies together on the edge of that wood, a wilderness of roses, you would see not only the gifted and the powerful, the wise and the eloquent, the ambitious and the renowned, the long-lived and the long-to-be-lamented of another age; but the wicked and the treacherous, the liar and the thief, the abandoned profligate and the faithless husband, the gambler and the drunkard, the robber, the burglar, the ravisher, the murderer and the betrayer of his country. The child is father of the man.

Among them and that other little troop just appearing, children with yet happier faces and pleasanter eyes, the blossoms of the future-the mothers of nations-you would see the founders of states and the destroyers of their country, the steadfast and the weak, the judge and the criminal, the murderer and the executioner, the exalted and the lowly, the unfaithful wife and the brokenhearted husband, the proud betrayer and his pale victim, the living and breathing portents and prodigies, the imbodied virtues and vices of another age and of another world, and all playing together! Men are but children of a larger growth.

Pursuing the search, you would go forth among the little creatures as among the types of another and a loftier language, the mystery whereof had been just revealed to you, a language to become universal hereafter, types in which the autobiography of the Future was written ages and ages ago. Among the innocent and helpless creatures

that are called children, you would see warriors with their garments rolled in blood, the spectres of kings and princes, poets with golden harps and illuminated eyes, historians and painters, architects and sculptors, mechanics and merchants, preachers and lawyers; here a grave-digger flying a kite with his future customers; there a physician playing at marbles with his; here the predestined to an early and violent death for cowardice, fighting the battles of a whole neighbourhood; there a Cromwell, or a Cæsar, a Napoleon, or a Washington, hiding themselves for fear, enduring reproach or insult with patience; a Benjamin Franklin higgling for nuts or gingerbread, or the "old Parr" of another generation, sitting apart in the sunshine and shivering at every breath of wind that reaches him. Yet we are told that "just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined."....

Even fathers and mothers look upon children with a strange misapprehension of their dignity. Even with the poets, they are only the flowers and blossoms, the dew-drops or the playthings of earth. Yet "of such is the kingdom of heaven." The Kingdom of Heaven! with all its principalities and powers, its hierarchies, dominations, thrones! The Saviour understood them better; to him their true dignity was revealed. Flowers! They are the flowers of the invisible world; indestructible, self-perpetuating flowers, with each a multitude of angels and evil spirits underneath its leaves, toiling and wrestling for dominion over it! Blossoms! They are the blossoms of another world, whose fruitage is angels and archangels. Or dew-drops! They are dew-drops that have their source, not in the chambers of the earth, nor among the vapours of the sky, which the next breath of wind, or the next flash of sunshine may dry up for ever, but among the everlasting fountains and inexhaustible reservoirs of mercy and love. Playthings! God! If the little creatures would but appear to us in their true shape for a moment! We should fall upon our faces before them, or grow pale with consternation, or fling them off with horror and loathing.

What would be our feelings to see a fair child start up before us a maniac or a murderer, armed to the teeth? to find a nest of serpents on our pillow? a destroyer, or a traitor, a Harry the Eighth, or a Benedict Arnold asleep in our bosom? A Catharine or a Peter, a Bacon, a Galileo, or a Bentham, a Napoleon, or a Voltaire, clambering up our knees after sugar-plums? Cuvier labouring to distinguish a horse-fly from a blue bottle, or dissecting a spider with a rusty nail? La Place trying to multiply his own apples, or to subtract his playfellow's gingerbread? What should we say to find ourselves romping with Messalina, Swedenbourg, and Madame de Staël? or playing bo-peep with Murat, Robespierre, and Charlotte Corday? or puss puss in the corner with George Washington, Jonathan Wild, Shakspeare, Sappho, Jeremy Taylor, Alfieri, and Harriet Wilson? Yet stranger things have happened. These were all children but the other day, and clambered about the knees, and rummaged in the pockets, and nestled in the laps of people no better than we are.

But if they could have appeared in their true shape for a single moment, while they were playing together! what a scampering there would have been among the grown folks! How their fingers would have tingled!

Now to me there is no study half so delightful as that of these little creatures, with hearts fresh from the gardens of the sky, in their first and fairest and most unintentional disclosures, while they are indeed a mystery, a fragrant, luminous and beautiful mystery. And I have an idea that if we only had a name for the study, it might be found as attractive and as popular; and perhaps—though I would not go too far-perhaps about as advantageous in the long run to the future fathers and mothers of mankind, as the study of shrubs and flowers, or that of birds and fishes. And why not? They are the cryptogamia of another world, the infusoria of the skies.

Then why not pursue the study for yourself? The subjects are always before you. No books are needed, no costly drawings, no lectures, neither transparencies nor illustrations. Your specimens are all about you. They come and go at your bidding. They are not to be hunted for, along the edge of a precipice, on the borders of the wilderness, in the desert, nor by the sea-shore. They abound not in the uninhabited or unvisited place, but in your very dwelling-houses, about the steps | of your doors, in every street of every village, in every green field, and every crowded thoroughfare. They flourish bravely in snow-storms, in the dust of the trampled highway, where drums are beating and colours flying, in the roar of cities. They love the sounding sea-breeze and the open air, and may always be found about the wharves and rejoicing before the windows of toy-shops. They love the blaze of fireworks and the smell of gunpowder, and where that is they are, to a dead certainty.

You have but to go abroad for half an hour in pleasant weather, or to throw open your doors or windows on a Saturday afternoon, if you live anywhere in the neighbourhood of a school-house, or a vacant lot with here and there a patch of green or a dry place in it; and steal behind the curtains, or draw the blinds and let the fresh wind blow through and through the chambers of your heart for a few minutes, winnowing the dust and scattering the cobwebs that have gathered there while you were asleep, and lo! you will find it ringing with the voices of children at play, and all alive with the glimmering phantasmagoria of leap-frog, prison-base, or knock-up-and-catch.

Let us try the experiment. There! I have opened the windows, I have drawn the blinds, and hark! already there is the sound of little voices afar off, like "sweet bells jangling." Nearer and nearer come they, and now we catch a glimpse of bright faces peeping round the corners, and there, by that empty enclosure, a general mustering and swarming, as of bees about a newly-discovered flower-garden. But the voices we now hear proceed from two little fellows who have withdrawn from the rest. One carries a large basket, and his

eyes are directed to my window; he doesn't half like the blinds being drawn. The other follows him with a tattered book under his arm, rapping the posts, one after the other, as he goes along. He is clearly on bad terms with himself. And now we can see their faces. Both are grave, and one rather pale, and trying to look ferocious. And hark! now we are able to distinguish their words. "Well, I ain't skeered o' you," says the foremost and the larger boy. "Nor I ain't skeered o' you," retorts the other; "but you needn't say you meant to lick me." And so I thought. Another, less acquainted with children, might not be able to see the connection; but I could-it was worthy of Aristotle himself or John Locke. "I didn't say I meant to lick ye," rejoined the first; "I said I could lick ye, and so I can." To which the other replies, glancing first at my window and then all up and down street, "I should like to see you try it." Whereupon the larger boy begins to move away, half-backwards, half-sideways, muttering just loud enough to be heard, "Ah, you want to fight now, jest 'cause you're close by your own house." And here the dialogue finished, and the babies moved on, shaking their little heads at each other and muttering all the way up street. Men are but children of a larger growth! Children but empires in miniature....

"Ah, ah, hourra! hourra! here's a fellow's birthday!" cried a boy in my hearing once. A number had got together to play ball, but one of them having found a birth-day, and not only the birthday, but the very boy to whom it belonged, they all gathered about him as if they had never witnessed a conjunction of the sort before. The very fellows for a committee of inquiry!-into the affairs of a national bank if you please.

Never shall I forget another incident which occurred in my presence between two other boys. One was trying to jump over a wheel-barrow. Another was going by; he stopped, and after considering a moment, spoke. "I'll tell you what you can't do," said he. "Well, what is it?" "You can't jump down your own throat." "Well, you can't." "Can't I though!" The simplicity of “Well, you can't," and the roguishness of "Can't I though!" tickled me prodigiously. They reminded me of a sparring I had seen elsewhere-I should not like to say where-having a great respect for the temples of justice and the halls of legislation....

I saw three children throwing sticks at a cow. She grew tired of her share in the game at last, and holding down her head and shaking it, demanded a new deal. They cut and run. After getting to a place of comparative security, they stopped, and holding by the top of a board fence began to reconnoitre. Meanwhile, another troop of children hove in sight, and arming themselves with brickbats, began to approach the same cow. Whereupon two of the others called out from the fence. "You, Joe! you better mind! that's our cow!" The plea was admitted without a demurrer; and the

cow was left to be tormented by the legal owners. Hadn't these boys the law on their side?...

But children have other characters. At times they are creatures to be afraid of. Every case I give is a fact within my own observation. There are children, and I have had to do with them, whose very eyes were terrible; children who, after years of watchful and anxious discipline, were as indomitable as the young of the wild beast, dropped in the wilderness, crafty and treacherous and cruel. And others I have known who, if they live, must have dominion over the multitude, being evidently of them that from the foundations of the world have been always thundering at the gates of power.

WORDSWORTH.

FROM RANDOLPH.

WORDSWORTH is a great, plain-hearted, august simpleton: a gifted creature, of prodigious power: a devout dreamer, who cannot, for the soul of him, tell when he is awake; a strong man with the organs of a child; whose ample and profound thought can find no correspondent diction. He thinks like an angel, and talks like something less than a man. He is a giant, blind of both eyes, and deaf as a post, who has blundered, somehow or other, into Nature's laboratory, and there goes groping and rummaging about, most unprofitably for himself, among all the beautiful elixirs of immortality and crucibles for transmutation-wading into oceans of uncongealed precious stones-ploughing through heaps of rough gold, hardly cool from the furnace -waking strange, subterranean music, at every step, as he tumbles along, first one way and then another, among the sources of sound and harmony, totally insensible to all, one would think; while the very dust that he brings away upon his garments never fails to enrich those who have the first scouring of them, and picking of him—a matter that keeps a mob of retail dealers in poetry watching after him, as they watch, in China, after people who are seen to make wry faces; and when they get him in a corner, they never fail to beguile him of his old clothes, heavy with unknown spoil, and wash him clean even to the hair of his head, all the time talking baby-talk to him, and profaning his simple majesty with all sorts of idle and wicked mockery. In short, Wordsworth is not a little like the lump of fresh meat that Sinbad found-rolling about among diamondswounding and tearing itself continually-without any profit to anybody but the creatures that grew dizzy in waiting for him. Wordsworth is altogether a natural poet. Education has done nothing for him, except to make him tedious, childish, obscure, and metaphysical. His talent is more sublimated, simple, and clear-sighted than that of any other man-sentiment angelic-imagination altogether subordinate, quite common-place-taste too pure, periodical, subject to accident, time, place, and the moon-industry none at all-misunderstood and misapplied.