love can sometimes be regained. Jupiter 
had a falling out with Juno. Juno wishing 
to regain his affections, and beholding him 
ouc day sitting on Mount Ida, she retired to 
her dressing-room, bathed herself in ambro¬ 
sia, arranged gracefully her flowing tresses, 
and put on her best clothes and ornaments, 
and sought Venus, to borrow her charm by 
which she subdued the hearts of gods and 
men, Venus lent her the precious girdle. 
“ In this was «v«ry art, and every charm, 
To win the wisest, un«l tbe coldest warm; 
Fond love, the gentle vow, tliu «uy desire, 
The kind deceit, the still reviving tire. 
Persuasive speech and more persuasive sighs, 
Sllonce that spoke and eloquence of eyes.” 
Jupiter was more than ever smitten with 
Juno’s beauty. He brought a golden cloud 
over their heads, and a couch of roses sprang 
up beneath their feet. 
In real life, what tragedies are enacted in 
the name of love. The very purest of pas¬ 
sions is made a cover for the darkest of 
crimes. In the name of maternal niTection 
Pahysatis wreaked fearful vengeance on 
the enemies of ber favorite Cyrus. Tbe 
pure and noble affection of Jonathan for 
David was “ passing the love of women.” 
The unholy passion of the husband of Oc- 
tavia for voluptuous Cleopatra was un¬ 
worthy the name of love. 
The world is full of tales of unfortunate 
love. Many of the conceptions of poets and 
novelists have their counterpart in unwritten 
history. The unchaste love of Dido ended 
in a suicidal death. Death by tbe wander¬ 
ing Trojan’s sword was preferred to life 
without Eneas. A Scottish lad no “ langer” 
able to conceal his unrequited passion, told 
the object of bis affections that 
“ When yon green leave* fade l'roe the tree,” 
they would wither around bis grave. 
Thackeray tells the sad story of Wer- 
tiieh, a moral man, who had a love for 
Charlotte, a married lady, who continued 
cutting bread and butter while 
“ He sighod uml pined and ogled, 
And Ills passion boiled and bubbled, 
TIB ho blew hlH uilly bruins out.” 
Still love continues to go where the blind 
god sends it, although Lord Cures, a cen¬ 
tury ago, skeptically said: 
“ To stuoh oxuet proportion they have brought 
The action lovo, the passion Is forgot.” 
Long ago Kiciiaud Steele gave notice 
in “The Tattler” that lovers in raptures 
were forbidden to compare their mistresses’ 
eyes to the stars, os he had made use of the 
simile for the last time, in the “ properest ” 
manner, in the dedication of his almanac. 
Still the blind passion makes our poet’s 
lovers confound the two. 
We close this ramble among love poetry 
with a couplet from staid old JonN Milton, 
which may have originated in his own do¬ 
mestic infelicity: 
“ For nothing lovelier ean be found 
In woman than to study household goods.” 
Wo add, also, as a postscript, a summing 
up from Moore : 
•* There Is bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told 
When two that are linked in one heavenly tie, 
With heart never changing, and brow never cold, 
I.ovc on through all ills, and love on till they die! 
One hour or a passion so saerrd Is worth 
Whole ages of wondering bliss; 
And, O 1 tr there be an Elysium on uurtb, 
tt plrsalkng 
ous. Every school-boy remembers “ Rienzi’s 
Address to the Romans,” an extract from 
her drama of “ Rieuzi.” More stirring poetry 
is seldom declaimed any where. With such 
passages in it, and such un actor as Mac- 
ready to pronounce them, it is not strange 
that the play was successful, or that it placed 
her in the front rank of dramatists. 
In person Miss Mitford was short, and 
“ in plain English," as her biographer says, 
“ decidedly fat.” She was very precocious, 
as a child, and read easily from the news¬ 
papers when three years old. From her 
girlhood on, though so severely tried, she 
altered little in personal appearance, except 
that her hair early turned white. Oi a mild, 
gentle disposition, she made triends ot all 
who knew her. Her mother died in 1830, 
her father in 1842 ; and on the 10th of Jan¬ 
uary, 1855, ber own life of toil and sacrifice 
came to a peaceful end. That the evening 
of her clays was made easier and more com¬ 
fortable thau the weary way preceding, it is 
pleasant to think; and that it was so arose 
from the facts that tbe British Government 
granted her a pension, and that she had no 
one left to sacrifice for. “ I have not bought 
a bonnet, a cloak, a gown, hardly a pair ot 
gloves for four years," she wrote just before 
her father’s death. And this is but typical 
of that devotion and unselfishness which 
characterized her lor one-fourtli of a century. 
TO NIGHT 
THE BEAUTIFUL LAND 
DEDICATION 
Swiftly walk over the western wave, 
Spirit of Night I 
Out of the misty Eastern cave, 
Where all the long and lone daylight. 
Thou wovest dreams of Joy and fear, 
Which make thee terrible and dear,— 
Swift be thy night! 
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, 
Star In-wrought! 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of day. 
Kiss her until she bo wearied out, 
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, 
Touching all with thine opiate wund- 
Come, long-sought! 
When I arose and saw the dawn, 
I sighed for thee; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 
And noon lay heuvy-ou tlower and tree, 
And the weary Day turned to his rest, 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 
J. sighed for thoe. 
Thy brother Death came, and lie cried: 
“ WonIdst tliou me ?” 
Thy sweet child Sleep, the flliuy-oycd, 
Murmured like a noontide bee, 
” Shull 1 nestle near thy side ? 
Wouldst thou rneV” And I replied: 
”No, not thee!” 
Death will come when thou art dead. 
Soon, too soon. 
Sleep will come when thou art fled; 
Of neither would 1 ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night; 
Swtrt be thine approaohlng flight— 
Como soon, soon! 
[Shelley. 
THERE are brighter skies than tbeso I know; 
Lands whore no shadows lie— 
Fields where Immortal flowers bloom 
And founts that are never dry: 
There are dome* where the stars are never dim, 
Where the moon forever gleams, 
And the music breath of the radiant hills 
Sweeps o’er the crystal utreums; 
For often I've caught In the time of sleep, 
A gorgeous glimpse of this hidden deep, 
Away In the land of dreums. 
When night lets down her pull of mist 
On slender cords of uir, 
And the purple shadows of dying day 
Are teeming everywhere; 
While unseen lulrles chant a lay 
In the lily's crimson cell*. 
And the solemn voice of the harmless winds 
Breaks up the dreary fella; 
I know by the cry of my soul within. 
There’s a place where they shut the gates of »tn, 
And tho Hon of glory dwells. 
If that, Indeed, were fact which seems 
A pleasant universal action. 
That’s dally born of youth ful dreams. 
Nor dies of daily contradiction; 
That every mortal has n mate, 
And counterparts go blindly groping, 
To And, perchance, through fogs of fate. 
The end of all their weary hoping— 
I’d say '.—Whatever I have done 
To manhood’s earnest work befitting. 
Be consecrate to her alone 
Who waits for me, though all unwitting: 
Who puts the sign* of pain away. 
Lest grief too soon her cheek should furrow; 
Who beats temptation back to-day, 
That 1 may see some glad to-morrow. 
Who dares not pluok a flower that grows 
Beyond the path God spreads before her, 
Nor even think of passing those 
That bloom beside it to adore her; 
Who strives to add a cubit yet 
By faith unto her moral stature— 
Dear soull lest I should feel regret 
At finding less than mine her nature 5 
Whose hands train many a trailing vino 
That mine had rudely left to perish. 
And all its tendril* deftly twine 
In folds that falling years shall cherish; 
Whose steps will mark life’s tune alwny, 
Though mine have stumbled, failed and blundered 
Whose spirit walks with mine to-day. 
However far our feet axe sundered I 
[E. if. Johnson. 
The wall of the wind, the river's voice, 
The arch of western hill. 
The beauty spread o’er thellviug earth, 
In slumbrous twilight stills 
Tho yearnings of each human heart. 
Fur a holler, better clime— 
A higher life than this mortal course, 
Bearing the seal divine! 
Ah, sure there must be a beautiful land, 
Where the white-robed millions ransomed stand 
Chant! ug their songs sublime 
OUR SAMSONS, 
Samson of old bad splendid opportunities. 
Sot apart for a noble work from his birth, 
and gifted with power to perform that work, 
he might have been the Deliverer of his peo¬ 
ple and made for himself a history grand in¬ 
deed. But whut were the facts? Relying 
on his own wonderful strength he dallied 
with sin. He made a jest of life. lie set 
himself about nothing profoundly earnest, 
and worthy his attention. 
Voluntarily he put himself in his enemies’ 
hands, confident that he could escape at will. 
In gratification of his lusts lie entered Gaza, 
the stronghold of the Philistines, and went 
out only by taking the gates with 1dm. 
Later, still following out his lustful pleasures, 
he tarried with Delilah, and amused him¬ 
self by permitting attempts upon his liberty. 
He could resist the men of Philistia; but a 
woman’s blandishments compassed his ruin. 
An overweening faith in his own might was 
Though ho 
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 
She was the first widely popular English 
authoress. Before “ Our Village” appeared, 
no female writer was much known outside 
England; and only one or two were espe¬ 
cially famous even there, iliss Porter 
had written “ The Scottish Chiefs,” which 
had made quite a noise, and the fame ol 
which had gone abroad somewhat; Miss 
Austen hod sent out several indifferently 
good novels, and Miss Edo f. worth’s “Tales” 
had been read by many; l —11—1" - 
LOVE AND THE POETS, 
BY L. D. BURDICK. 
ALL ABOUT DIMPLES. 
Dimples are the perpetual smiles of na¬ 
ture, the very cunningcst device, and the 
lurking place of love. When earth is 
dimply by hills and valleys, it always seems 
to laugh ; when the ocean is dimpled by the 
breeze, it sparkles with joy beneath the sun¬ 
shine of heaven. We cannot look for frowns 
on a dimpled lace; frowns and dimples will 
not. associate together. How soft, how 
roguish, how beautiful, are the dimples in 
the elbows and shoulders, the pretty hands 
and feet, of the rosy babes. Mothers dote 
upon those darling dimples, and delight to 
kiss them. But perfectly enchanting dimples, 
at least to the eyes of an enthusiastic young 
man, are those which come deeping out, of 
the. cheeks around the mouth of “sweet sev¬ 
enteen,” when sweet seventeen essays some 
arch, provoking sally, peeping out and Hying 
away the moment after, coming and going 
with the most bewitching coquetry. 
but that these were 
widely popular can hardly he said. “ Our 
Village” touched the heart of the people. 
Its sketches were true to the common life. 
They were realist ic in a degree then unusual; 
and they found admirers without number 
both sides the water. Edition after edition 
of each successive volume was called for in 
England, and speedily duplicated in Ameri¬ 
ca; and thus Miss Mitford came t.o be 
known and loved by both English and 
Americans, and was through her later years 
as much sought after by visitors in her 
neighborhood as any celebrated individual 
ever was. 
Her life was a rare illustration of womanly 
devotion. Born (Dec. 18, 1787) to a fortune, 
she enjoyed tho privileges which fortune 
brings only through her girlhood. Her 
father was a spendthrift. Fond of play, he 
squandered the whole of her mother’s large 
dowry, and a lottery prize of £20,000, within 
a few years, and the family was thenceforth 
liarrasaed continually by debt, and often 
driven to extreme necessities. Yet through 
it all his daughter’s love renui ned unchanged. 
She seemed blind to his faults. His only 
child, and therefore his pet, the affection be¬ 
tween them was unusually elose and insep¬ 
arable ; and thus it continued until he died 
an octogenarian. 
At first an authoress because it pleased 
her fancy, and gratified her friends, Miss 
Mitford was afterward an authoress be¬ 
cause she could be nothing else and earn 
bread. She deplored her lot, pitiably. In 
her letters, just published, she more than 
once declares she would rather scrub floors 
than write for the public, if scrubbing floors 
would support her parents. Constitutionally 
opposed to real mental exertion, and the 
physical employment of wielding a pen, she 
must perforce exert herself both mentally 
and physically, and with little Intermission, 
The family shifts, from 
the mischief underlying all 
broke the green withes, and the new rope, 
aud escaped with the web woven in his hair, 
lie fell at last, weakly, miserably. 
His life and his death have their counter¬ 
parts everywhere. There are men with pos¬ 
sibilities hardly less than were Samson’s,— 
with powers unlike his, yet equal to them,— 
whose, lives are not less a miserable failure 
than his. Gifted, they use their gifts to no 
purpose praiseworthy; strong in their own 
consciousness, their strength serves them for 
a time, but proves the veriest weakness in 
some unexpected moment, and they go down 
before the enemy of all good and are wrecked 
forever. 
These Samsons whose powers all go for 
naught,—what a melancholy spectacle they 
present! A ml what is the lesson ? That we 
may not boast of our own abilities. That 
we should not put ourselves in the way of 
temptation, fondly believing wo can with¬ 
stand it and come off unscathed. That we 
cannot recline in the lap of any Delilah of 
sin, however gentle Its nature, with a cer¬ 
tainty we shall not be shorn of what is our 
pride and glory. That gifts misapplied and 
perverted will bring us only bitterest reward; 
anil that without an earnest aim our life will 
Shall we 
AGRICULTURAL BONNETS 
The advent of bonnets of wheat, and bar¬ 
ley straw, ornamented with sheaves of grain, 
which first made tlieir appoarauco in the 
streets of London In 1817, seems to have 
been met with a crusade of ridicule as great 
as that which has since greeted the more 
modern “ Grecian bend.” The following 
stanzas, written at that time, will show the 
kind of ordeal they had to pass through be¬ 
fore their ultimate triumph; 
” Who now of threatening famine flare complain, 
When every female forehead teems with grain? 
See how the wheat-sheavea nod iimld the plumes, 
Our barns are now transferred to drawing-rooms: 
And husbands, who indulge In active lives, 
To fill their granaries, muy thresh their wives.” 
WHAT TO READ 
Are you deficient in taste ? Read the best 
English poets, such as Thompson, Gray, 
Goldsmith, Pope, Cowper, Coleridge, Scott, 
and Wadsworth. 
Are you deficient in imagination ? Read 
Milton, Akcnside, Burke, and Shakespeare. 
Arc you deficient in powers of reasoning? 
Read Cliillmgwortb, Bacon, and Locke. 
Are you deficient in judgment and good 
sense in the common affairs of life? Read 
Franklin. 
Arc you deficient in sensibility? Read 
Goethe and Mackenzie. 
Are you deficient in political knowledge? 
Read Montesquieu, the Federalist, Webster, 
and Calhoun. 
Are you deficient in patriotism? Read 
Demosthenes and the Life of Washington. 
Are you deficient in conscience? Read 
some of President Edward’s works. 
Arc you deficient in anything? Read the 
Bible. 
CURRENT GOSSIP 
In New Orleans tho little boys throw mud 
at Mrs. Dr. Mary Walker’s pantaloons. 
Miss Pauline Bayley of New Orleans, 
La., is said to be the most beautiful American 
lady at present in Rome. 
The wretch who can stand in a pair of 
slippers worked for him by his wife, and scold 
her, is a brute, who deserves to have the gout 
in both feet. 
A marrying bachelor anxiously asks if it 
would be of any use to attempt to make love 
to a young lady after he has stood on her 
dress till he could hear the gathers rip at her 
waist ? 
Mrs. Slocum, who is editing the St. 
Charles Herald, opposes woman suffrage ag¬ 
itation in Missouri, and say 3 the women en¬ 
gaged in it are ridiculous, and had better go 
home and attend to their household duties. 
The wife of Postmaster-General Creswell 
is said to be au elegant woman, slender al¬ 
most to fragility, whose dress and profile 
make the beholder think that one of the 
proud beauties of the days of Louis XIV. has 
stepped out of her picture-frame, and come 
to life again. 
“ Reader to the Empress ” is one of the 
most attractive offices that any young lady 
could aspire to. It has a salary of 3,000 
francs a year, with all the comforts of a 
home in the Palace, and a passport to the 
first society. More, the ladies holding this 
“ portfolio” arc proverbial for making bril¬ 
liant matches, and, not being rich generally 
in this world’s good, their Majesties always 
come down with something handsome in the 
corbeille. Tbe readership becomes vacant 
at the end of this month, as the young lady 
filling it is going to be married to the rich 
Vicomte Clary. 
darken into woe most fearful 
make the lesson ours, and profit by it ? 
SHUT THY DOOR. 
I feel all that I know and all that I teach 
will do nothing for my soul if I spend my 
time, as some people do, in business or com¬ 
pany. My soul starves to death in tho best 
company, and God is often lost in prayers 
and ordinances. “Enter into thy closet,” 
said He, “ and shut thy door.” Some words 
in Scripture are very emphatical. “ Shut 
thy door” means much ; it means shut out, 
not only nonsense, but business; not only 
the company abroad but the company at 
home; it means, let thy poor soul have a 
little rest and refreshment, and God have 
opportunity to speak to thee in a still small 
voice, or He will speak to thee in thunder.— 
Cecil. 
for many years. 
Bertram House, their pretentious residence 
at Grasely, near Reading, to a small cottage 
hard by, and later to lodgings even meaner 
yet, are painful to think of; yet through 
them all the vivacious authoress kept her 
spirits up, and wrote with a degree of liveli¬ 
ness most astonishing. 
She had great talent, if not indeed posi¬ 
tive genius. Her mental caliber was pecu¬ 
liarly large. She took a deep interest in 
politics, even at an early age, and manifested 
a quick appreciation of human nature in its 
varied aspects. A rapid reader, she de¬ 
voured all kinds of mental aliment with ap¬ 
parent relish. Pen in hand, she dashed off 
her pleasant sketches of village manners, her 
gossipy letters to Sir William Elford, her 
simple pastoral poems, or her impassioned 
verse for the playwrights, with apparently 
equal facility. She complains once, in fact, 
that this versatility re-acts against her inter¬ 
ests, as the doubting public refuse to believe 
that a woman can write “ Our Village” and 
still be able to produce a drama of merit. 
The two kinds of writing are so unlike, and 
demand such a wide range of talent, that the 
doubt is not surprising. 
Yet Miss Mit ford’s plays had merit, as 
was speedily conceded. She put a power of 
STREET SONGS IN PARIS. 
An English paper says:—“ No less than 
27,000 penny song hooks are sold every day 
throughout France. What Is still more sur¬ 
prising, Is the immense number of persons 
engaged in the trade. It is the custom for 
a man or a family of beggars to procure the 
song books aud tramp the whole country 
round, singing the songs in them. This at¬ 
tracts attention, and then they sell the little 
books. The singers in France number 800,- 
000. They may he divided into three great 
orders; those at fixed posts, the tramps who 
wander about and sing in the streets, and 
those who frequent the low eating houses. 
The song hook which has sold the most is 
one containing the Femme a bar be which 
Theresa made notorious. This song, how¬ 
ever, is of German origin.” 
The Bible will 
The Bible and Nature. 
not he less, but rather more, prized by our 
occasionally turning from it to open another 
and equally divine volume, to read some 
pages of the Book of Nature. Both are good 
books, and both are God's books; and he 
only looks on this great world aright, who, j 
valuing it for something more valuable than 
tho gold men draw from its rocky bowels, 
the flocks it pastures, the rich freights borne 
on its waves, and the harvests that wave on J, 
its fields, beholds there, as in a glorious mir¬ 
ror, the wisdom and power of God—the 
goodness that shines in every sunbeam and w 
falls in eveiy shower.— Dr. Guthrie. 
Mosquitoes never trust, of course — they 
invariably present their bills in advance. 
