soften, refine and elevate the heart. It seems almost like sacrilege, to use this Heavenly Art for purposes so dark and earthly; and it is a relief to turn from the contemplation to speak of other uses. If Music hath power to stir the soul to frenzy, it hath power also to lull it into delightful peace, and bush all the billows of its fluctuating passions. There are strains, which seem to have the power to "take the prison'd soul, and lap it in Elysium." There are tones which come over the troubled spirit, like that which soothed the mood of Saul. It can truly, especially if "married" to sacred and immortal song, Minister to a mind diseased, its full influence. Few of us have that nice sensibility, that power to spiritualize sound, (if I may be allowed the expression,) which enables us to enjoy its most exquisite delights; and those, who have so cultivated the ear and the heart, as to detect the slightest improprieties in musical execution, but seldom hear such Music as unites every perfection. All earthly things are imperfect--all heavenly things are perfect. All earthly Music, has its share of discord-all heavenly Music, is unbroken harmony. Here, numerous trifles are ever occurring, to mar the beauty of almost every performance. A slight cold may take away the liquid clearness of the voice; the air itself is too close or too heavy, properly to convey the sound; the place in which the performance is carried on, is not the most suitable to produce its proper effect; or, even the position the hearer occupies, may be unfavorable to catch the sound; one voice is How often has the mourner's heart been soothed after the a little to harsh, another too shrill; one too loud, and another paroxysm of passionate and stormy grief, by a few concor- too soft; here a single note may occur improperly, there a dant notes? I have seen the tear-drop gush to the eye of suitable pause was omitted; here one is too hurried, (there the bereft, at the first notes of that lovely lyric of Mrs. He is something certainly very unmusical about this paragraph, mans, "Bird of the Spirit Land;" but ere the notes have but remember, gentle reader, I am on Musical imperfections died away, the tear has returned to its fount, and the sola- now,) there again another lags and drawls; and still more ced heart has been lifted nearer to that better land of the frequently is there a want of proper conception of, and endeparted and the loved. How often, too, has this influence tering into, the spirit of the strain; a proper identification been seen, at the sound of some, perhaps, more pious of the soul of the performer, with the soul of the piece. Hymn, teaching the disconsolate under the darkest afflic-But there; there will be no discordant tones, no harsh breath Pluck up deep-rooted sorrow; From out the troubled memory." tion, that "Earth hath no sorrows that Heaven cannot cure.' Music hath power also to soothe the soul, even in the period of its earthly dissolution-when the uncaged spirit is about to wing its way to immortality. How often has the voice of Music filled with its gentle cadence the chamber of death, and soothed the dying in that awful hour! How often has the sufferer, even when the spirit seemed to be hovering. and ready to join the Anthems of the Skies, found peace and solace, in mingling his faint breath in the Hymn of praise? Ah, and how often has the spirit parted, and mingled in the unending song of the beatified! The ransomed soul, borne up, as it were, upon the very breath of Holy Song! And here I cannot help again referring to the favorite authoress just alluded to. Her verses entitled "Music in a Room of Sickness," are inimitably sweet Oh, bring thy harp, Sister! a gentle heaviness at last Has touched my eyelids; sing to me, and sleep Sing me that antique strain, which once I deemed That said of old-" be still." Sing me that strain, Ah! it was Music like this, "the Saviour's dying hour," which soothed the Martyr at the stake. Can it be believed? Yes, there have been those who could praise God, even in the flames. The Martyr's sweet and solemn breathing strain has gone up, untremulous and clear-clear, and full, and triumphant, as the Victor's shout on the won field? But I must beg the reader's pardon, and hasten to my finale. Such hath been, and such is still the power of Music. Such hath been, and such is still the power of earthly Music. What then will be the Music of Heaven? Music here possesses power, proportionate to the perfection in itself and the delicate and perfect sensibility of the percipient. There are some men, in whose spirit the sweetest and most melting notes awaken no kindred chordthere is no sensibility in the percipient. There are again ears, so delicately attuned to the sweet harmony of sound, that the slightest deviation grates upon the nerves harsh discord. Both of these things prevent Music from exerting to disturb the sweetness of the strains, that warble from immortal tongues; not one jarring note, heard even by the perfect ear of God himself. Every voice, responsive to the full heart, will break forth in moving accents; not with the mechanism so often characteristic of earthly Music; but the heart, the spirit breathing through, in every syllable. Now, all Heaven resounds with the loud Anthem; loud as the uplifted voice of many waters, but "sweet as the Music of the chiming spheres, by God's own finger touched to harmony;"-all, all vieing in the blissful employment; not one voice silent; not one string, from Gabriel's to the infant cherub's, left untouched; and the high dome of the "Golden City" echoes with the pealing hallelujah. And now, a gentler strain-now, it moves in soft and tender cadence, trembling on the evening air; or floats in gently undulating waves, along the Waters of the River of Life, which flows fast by the Oracle of God! How transporting the thought! I sometimes think, if this were all of Heaven, it were enough to lure us up there. To hear, and join in the song of the ransomed; of those who walk in white robes, emblems of their virgin purity-a song, already begun, it may be, by our own loved ones-ah, too fondly loved-and whose witching tones seemed to have caught the Minstrelsy of the Empyrean, e'er they left this lower world, and thus wrapt us in its trance. List! I hear one voice, hardly more sweet than when it sang to me on earth; but yet more soft, more purified: it comes down like the quivering ray of yon pale star, or dies along like the notes of yon distant flute upon the sleeping waters-but now again, it is lost in the universal song, the outbursting praise of transported spirits! Oh! who is there that is at all alive to sacred harmony, who longs not for a place amid Heaven's Choir? Who is there, whose heart has one string to vibrate with pious emotion, who cannot exclaim with the devoted and spiritual De Fleury, Ye Angels, who stand round the throne, M. HOME REVISITED. It is there! It is there! I can see the glance As they gently toss in the sportive breeze. There, the woodlands wave, in whose verdant maze I am home once more! Oh that heart-cherished word! WEALTH. VALERIA. Attractive subjects, these: and attractively does the author discuss them. We shall consider ourselves as having done the country a service, by every reader we procure for her work. Mrs. John Farrar, of New-York, is the writer If any chapters can be singled out as more valuof a volume bearing the above title: and never able than the rest, we would specify those upon was a title better deserved. Its 350 or 400 pages Dress, and upon the Means of preserving Health teem with inestimable hints for the creation and Mrs. Farrar is a decided advocate for much exerforming of woman's character. The fair author cise, taken rather in the form of useful work than seems deeply imbued with that large, healthful in mere walking or jumping; though she prefers commonsense, which gives Miss Edgeworth her these, and active sports of all kinds, to slothful inpreeminence over all other female writers of this action. Her thoughts upon the kind and quantity age; along with a very sufficient portion of the of food are extremely judicious; and there is the piety, that marks Hannah More. This combina- soundest dietetic truth in her recommendation, to tion is almost our beau ideal of female excellence. drink no water or other liquid shortly before any It is one of our most long-cherished opinions, that meal, and very little indeed-not exceeding one of all human compositions, by any single author, tea-cup full-at a meal. So there is, in her cisthe Tales, Essays, and most of the Novels of Ma-suasion from liquids while digestion is going on, ria Edgeworth, are best suited to make useful, and at all other times. She bears unequivocal and good, and GREAT men and women; and that in strong testimony against tight lacing. choosing a wife, or a husband, no question half so pregnant with valuable meaning can be asked, as-"Is she an Edgeworthian girl?" or, "Is he an Edgeworthian man?" That epithet comprehends a host of good qualities, which it would require much circumlocution, and perhaps more than one page, to express in precise words. John Randolph's pile of eulogy upon our favorite, we would fain keep forever present to every American mind:"delightful, ingenious, charming, sensible, witty, inimitable, though not unimitated Miss Edgeworth❞— said he, in one of his most powerful and most eccentric speeches. G. T. DR. RUSCHENBERGER'S NEW WORK. FIRST BOOK OF NATURAL HISTORY, prepared for the use of Schools and Colleges, by W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, Surgeon U. S. Navy, &c. Philadelphia: Turner & Fisher. 1841. A neat little volume, illustrated with numerous encravings. The style is plain and unaffected; the explanations clear and comprehensive. Such a work is much needed among the text books of our Schools and Colleges,-pote, male or female, should be without it. We heartily recommend it to the notice of teachers and pupils; for it is one of the most valuable acquisitions of the day to the catalogue of school-books. THE AMBITIENSE: A SKETCH. BY MISS JANE T. LOMAX. "De toutes les riantes imaginations de ma jeunesse, rien n'a été vrai que l'amour!" I. lege and the tenderness of an old friend, but I tremble for your happiness, when I see the already dawning result of the vague wishes you have cherished. Were your powers less conspicuous, I should spare you my warnings, but you are gifted "It is with mingled feelings of pleasure and re- with rare endowments, and they must color your gret, my fair young friend, that I recall the con- destiny for weal or for wo. I have lived too long in tents of your letter; with pleasure, for they tell the world not to know how dangerous is the posme the separation of several years, has not di- session of such talent to one debarred by her sominished your confidence in my sympathy, and cial position from exercising her intellect in the with many regrets awakened by the tone of lan- more extended and exciting careers of greatness. guor in which you write. I ought not, perhaps, to In a woman, to be differently constituted from the expect from you now, the same thoughtless ardor many, is in itself a misfortune, and there are few which distinguished your character when we parted, things more difficult for society at large, to forgive, and the time I have spent abroad, must, in strength- than the mental superiority to whose rule it cannot ening your mind, have taken somewhat from its but submit. The very consciousness too, of posbuoyancy and its glee. I left you, a gay, enthusi- sessing this, takes away a portion of our interest astic girl, scarcely beyond the threshold of child- in the generality of those around us, and we are hood, yet fervent in the pursuit of knowledge, prone to be painfully alive to the want of sympaeager in the wish for praise, and with that firm thy in our common companions. This lack of conconfidence in yourself, without which, there is no geniality, felt at times by all, presses constantly success in the world. If with these qualities, was and heavily on those, who have the sensitiveness mingled something of haughtiness, if pride occa- of undirected genius. It may seem strange to sionally exercised too strong a mastery, and if you, Florence, to hear words like these from one undisguised contempt for whatever seemed to you whose ambition has been so ardent and so fortunate mean and ignoble, often swayed you more power-as mine; but the gaining of reward, has shown me fully than prudence could have wished, I regarded how worthless it is at the best, and I grieve to see these faults, as in a manner, the essential accompa- you pining for a success so tempting, yet so unsaniments of gifts like yours. I trusted to time for their correction, and I believed they would be taught control by that spirit of policy, which communion with society sheds upon all. I saw, that though lofty in mind, and prone to rebel against all that shackled your peculiar views, your heart was a very woman's still, and I believed your own generous feelings would prove your surest guide. My suppositions were both right and wrong. When I encouragement is a barrier to all tranquil happiness; again met you, before my departure, five years ago, and even its prizes cannot atone to you, for the I found you in many respects, what I had antici- lovelier joys you must relinquish. Something of pated. You had lost, it is true, much of the free that restless weariness which always follows vague eagerness of childhood, but your high reverence aspirings, your letter betrays, has already been for the great and good, had grown stronger, in yours. I could almost smile at the folly of your changing from an impulse to a principle, and you unfounded repinings, but I know this lassitude to had learned to veil with graceful polish, that scorn, one like you, is a treacherous thing, and I fear for once too ready to come forth. In our early youth, your peace, when you bend to its influence. I we are apt to think all concealment is hypocrisy; grieve, Florence, to find your fair dreams so soon but as we grow older, and its necessity becomes disappearing, and your gifts thus preying on yourapparent, our self-love gives it a gentler and more self. You say you are weary, dispirited, heartsick; flattering name. This period of lenient judgment, you, with beauty, grace and intellect, combining to was with you at our last meeting, and when I brighten your existence. This ennui is unworthy marked the influence your intellect half uncon- of your powers, and ruinous to your future transciously exerted over the giddy and frivolous around quillity. You ask too much from the world, my you, I had an earnest conviction your lot would be friend, in demanding happiness; more, far more, proud, and felt an interest warm, and true as a pa- than it can bestow. In the heart, not in the mind, rent's, in the child of one, who was the dearest dwells the spring of real enjoyment; and you friend of my boyhood. You had all that exalted cannot be blest, until affection is more to you than sentiment which characterized your father's youth, praise. You cannot exist in the nothingness, howand much also, of that undefined, restless, and un-ever brilliant, of vanity and fashion; to a characreasonable ambition that darkened his later life. ter like yours, there must be a decided object in Forgive me, Florence, if I carry too far, the privi- life, and your sources of excitement are few, be VOL. VII-79 tisfying. Far be it from me, my young friend, to still one throb of your proud aspirations, to crush one sign of the might that is slumbering in your soul. I would but have you pause ere you sacrifice too much to pride, and yield too entirely to the tempter. In a man, I would foster every indication of ambition, till it should become the ruling passion, the guiding star of his life; for you, its cause trifles have ceased to excite you. When applause, and then, with a common weakness, lathe praises of society have lost their charm, and mented, not her choice, but its consequences, atadmiration palls upon the ear, a woman's sole re-tributing to a harsh destiny, the disappointments maining earthly solace, is love-and of that, you her own will had created. Years are not the sole speak scornfully, bitterly. Dear Florence, you are givers of experience; there are dispositions which wrong, fearfully wrong? Be true to your gentler circumstances mould better than time, and minds nature leave the stern paths of fame, for man to on which events and emotions seemingly unimporfollow; and let yours be a wiser choice. Bestow tant, will imprint traces never to be obliterated, for on the heart something of the culture you lavish good or evil. There comes to all enthusiastic on the intellect; and the genius now wasted in vain temperaments, a season of realization, little underdesires, will be a blessing and a comfort. Curb stood, yet enduring in its influences; a period when the wild feelings, all too proud and bitter for your our wilder hopes grow dim, when our first untested youth and sex; and the ambition to be applauded by desires lose their charm, and wither in the hearts the many, will soothe, when it changes into a where they had sprung. Firmer and wiser wishes, yearning to be loved by the one." replace them in time, but for awhile, there is a void left in life. The impulses once wild and fervent, become depressed and spiritless; the thoughts which spurned submission, kneel at human shrines; and expectations whose wings were radiant as the rainbow, and whose flight was ever to the skies, droop with stained and broken pinions, and lie down on the earth, to die. With Florence, this era had none. II. There were tears in the eyes of the young and graceful lady to whom these lines were addressed; as she finished the letter of her father's friend, tears wrung from a high heart, warring with its softer and better nature. Experience had come to her prematurely, and the cup of flattery had been proffered so readily, that it soon ceased to attract or to gratify. Florence was too refined to be dawned, and the bounding enthusiasm of her girllong interested by common pleasures; and though hood was succeeded by lassitude and ennui. dependent for enjoyment on constant and exciting occupation, she found it no longer in the idle re- It was a soft Summer afternoon, and Florence, sources, to which she had resorted. There must accompanied by a gentleman, slowly drew near an be credulity, or praise cannot satisfy, and she had old moss-grown ruin, which was the object of their With that quick knowledge of character, ride. To her, there was nothing particularly atand ready conception of hidden motives which often tractive in the view of half-fallen walls draperied accompany genius, giving intuitively to youth with ivy, though tradition threw a charm around something of the sad wisdom of age, she was not them, and age and mystery united to weave their deceived by the professions and commendations, magic spell. Florence had little sympathy, and offered by the trivial around her. The pining for some contempt, for what was merely imaginative, admiration, ever strong in an ambitious disposition, she worshipped only what was real, or distinguishwas in her all powerful, but it was a desire for ed. She had visited the place at her companion's better applause than the frivolous could give—a wish, because, having never been there, it had the ceaseless longing for a reward undefined, and per- recommendation of novelty, and any change was haps unattainable. Florence had scarcely past agreeable to her now, that served to distract her the spring-time of womanhood, yet the illusions thoughts. Too worldly for romance, and too skepwhich make girlhood beautiful had, one by one, tical for sentiment, she looked half scornfully on faded away. Powerful in the magic of grace and ideal pleasures, and cared not for the sweet, though genius, surrounded by the homage of society, "fol- undefined associations, which to an imaginative lowed, flattered, sought and sued," she was not disposition, twine like tendrils, around all that is happy. There lived in her heart a quenchless purest and loveliest in the outer world. Some two thirst for—she knew not what, a feverish, visionary or three years previous, she would have experiaspiration, the "love of the moth for the star." enced something of these, on gazing at the veneToo proud to neglect even those sources of appro-rable pile they approached, but she had reached val which in secret she despised, she played her that sad time when the illusions of fancy cease to part in the world with the politic skill, which no deceive, and trifles cannot exhilarate. But her warmth of feeling could tempt her to forget. Ever companion was handsome and somewhat of an engraceful, self-relying, self-possessed, she had learn-thusiast in romance, and Florence could seem sened to seem the promoter of others wishes, while timental when policy required it. She listened in truth, she employed them to forward her own. very graciously to the gentleman's recital of leShe was always forsaking the joys of the present, gends connected with the spot, and even quoted for uncertain ones in the hereafter; and in the soli- poetry with well assumed animation. Florence tude of her thoughts there was no peace. She could affect very gracefully now, and was not quite passed unheeding, the green by-lanes of daily life, as sincere as she had been. She dismounted at with their pure and placid pleasures, to pursue the her friend's request, and rambled about the ruin, rough, mountain road guiding to the temple of while he related many a wild story of the olden a brief, but very true history; will you listen mon amie ?" and Florence smiled assent, for Herman had beautiful eyes, and he looked so imploringly! time. Perhaps she felt at last, the interest feigned | Florence reasoned; each practised a separate phiat first, for the speaker's voice was low and musi-losophy-one of nature and the heart, the other of cal; and his gaze so earnest and admiring, was the mind and the world. It may be, that some fixed on her. emotion more ardent than early friendship gave "What a memory you must have, Herman!" additional fervency to Herman's words; his was she said, as he concluded one of the 'ower true' not the calm look of one who recalls a tie of the love stories, that seemed to harmonize with his past, but the ardent gaze of a lover, whose hopes mood. "I can recollect histories of glorious tri- were in the future. Perhaps Florence read his umphs and proud rewards, but these tales of lowli- hopes well; for experience had taught her the ness and sentiment pass by me and leave no trace.' power of her influence, and she had not exercised "And yet," was the reply," it is to such, that it without acquiring that consciousness of her own the past owes its sweetest poetry, and they speak attractions, which, in a character less proud, would to us of the bright stores of happiness, dwelling in have been vanity. daily life. Heroic deeds are the portion of a few, "And now, I must tell you one more love story, but gentle feelings belong to all, and surely, Flo- notwithstanding your horror for la belle passion; it is rence, they give a lovelier hue to old times, than is ever cast by dazzling heroism!" She smiled incredulously, and had the speaker been any but Herman, that smile would have been scornful. "You think then," he said, after a moment's pause, and with semething of disappointment in his tone, "you think that only far-famed acts wake worthy associations? Do you attach no value to the common trials of moral fortitude, to the hourly sacrifices, which though untold to the world, are holy as the martyr-spirit of old? Do you feel no throb of sympathy, when you hear of joys and sorrows like our own, of hearts tried and bowed and broken, though no poet's voice has sung their destiny?" "With such, I have nothing in common," she answered, "it is with the celebrity they have won, rather than with the acts themselves, that I feel congeniality. What avails the sweetness wasted on the desert air,' the flower that springs to blush unseen?' To me, greatness is not precious for itself, but for the stamp the world has given it, I turn unheeding from the music, to worship the echo it wakes!" 6 "A long while ago," he began, gathering while he spoke a cluster of the wild violets growing among the grass at their feet, and giving them to his listener; "a long while ago, there lived a youth, whose only fortune was his hopeful heart, and who quitted a happy home to seek wealth and distinction. He traversed many lands and gained something of good from all, but little of the wisdom which avails in the world, for he came back with much pleasant learning, with many a chronicle of the olden time when romance was not all a dream, and chivalry was abroad in the land; but these were his sole reward, and he was almost as far from riches as when he departed. Perhaps, as he was not ambitious, he thought there were other things better than gold; at least, he was not dissatisfied with the result of his wanderings. Well, he was but a boy, when he forsook his native land; but as he had a very warm heart, he fancied it would grow cold if he carried it with him. It is a common fancy, This was a cold philosophy for one so young; Florence, and he obeyed it; so he left his heart sebut Florence had long ago merged nature in policy. cretly, at home. He came back at last to find the To her companion, who, though older than herself, lady of his love more beautiful than even his memohad nothing of her worldliness, this creed sounded ry had painted her; but the world's flattery had too harshly on lips so beautiful, and he half regret- made her proud, even to haughtiness, and he tremted it had been called forth. She was not often so bled for the destiny of his early gift. She had lost candid; and as she saw the disappointment on her all sympathy with his thoughts, and scoffed at listener's face, she almost repented having confess- the dreams he prized; and though he mourned the ed her faith thus freely. Valuing all things more change, he worshipped still, and reverenced as he for their effect than for themselves, she had never loved. He grew fearful at last, for his devotion so much regretted the loss of her younger enthu- was too sincere to be confident, but it was very siasm, as now, when she marked how becoming it earnest, and he resolved to know its fate. Flowas to her companion, and she envied the glow of rence! change the time from the past to the prefeeling, that flushed the cheek of her friend. Flo- sent, and that lover is kneeling before you!" It rence and Herman had been playmates in their was not the first time that Florence had heard tones childhood, but he had spent some years abroad, and like these; the accents of profession were familiar but recently returned. With the improvement and to her ear; nor was she surprised to hear them polish of manhood, he retained those warm affec- now; but she grew very pale as her companion tions, too often forsaken with our childhood, and spoke; and the blue flowers she held, trembled in they lent to his manner that graceful earnestness her hand, as if the breath of the summer breeze which convinces while it charms. He possessed had swept over them. "Florence! dear Flomore of sentiment than of intellect, and felt when 'rence!" said the suitor, as he drew her towards |