feathers, which are barred with dusky brown toward their extremities; spurious wing, primary coverts, a great portion of the anterior extremities of the primaries, the axillary feathers, and under-wing coverts black, with a shade of brown; the remaining lower and longer portion of the primaries, and the upper row of under-wing coverts white; the posterior primaries tipt with the same; secondaries and the outer webs of their greater coverts white, marbled with dusky; wings rather longer than the tail, the lower with a spotted liver-brown streak, bounded above by a spotted white one; eyelids, chin, belly and vent white; the rest of the under plumage brownish white, streaked on the throat and transversely barred, or waved on the breast, shoulders, flanks, and under tail coverts with clove-brown, the bars pointed in the middle. Female colored like male, but an inch longer. Legs and feet dark lead color, the soles inclining to olive, the toes broadly margined with a sort of continuation of the web; iris hazel. Winter dress with fainter spots on the upper plumage, and without the dark waving transverse bars below, only the fore part of the neck and breast of a cinereous tint, marked with small brown streaks. VISITANTS FROM SPIRIT-LAND. BY E. CURTISS HINE, U. s. N. THEY are ever hovering round us, Then the forms of the departed Enter at the open door, The loved ones, the true-hearted, A mysterious, shadowy band, That concealed behind it lie. Sweet their soft and gentle voices Rest in peace and bliss for aye. True, our eyes may not behold them, And each gentle voice is known, When some dreamy spell hath bound me, As I sit at eve alone! Playmates of my joyous childhood, As they roamed with me the wildwood, On bright pinions round me still, Tender as some doting lover, Warning me of every ill. And among them comes one, brighter, Who in life's green springtime died. Like the wind-harps plaintive tune, When the breeze with soft wing brushes O'er its strings in flowery June. O, thou white-browed peerless maiden, Was this heart with love for thee! But in dreams thou comest often, Of the loved and early dead! Strange the seal, and when 't was broken, Deem not that the soul reposes We will gild your leaves again!" HISTORY OF THE COSTUME OF MEN, DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. BY FAYETTE ROBINSON. PEOPLE grieve about the departure of the good old times, and prate of the days of chivalry, which Mr. Burke sixty years ago said were gone. That they are gone the world may well rejoice at, not only because they were times of ignorance and cruelty, but also of discomfort and inconvenience. In the diary of a court-officer of the days of Henry VII. is the note of a charge for cutting rushes, to strew on the floor of the Queen-closets; and another one mentions the number of under-garments belonging to Henri III. of France as considerably less than any one of the better orders in our own time would require. In those days, the downy couch meant a bed of goose-wing feathers; gloves were not; and when a gentleman needed a new doublet or head-piece, he went not to a tailor or the hatter of the day, but to a blacksmith. Let the lovers of romance talk as they please, there was little true poetry, and less feeling, in the minds of the heroes they wish to extol, than of the veriest apostles of commerce of our own age. Rightly enough do we date civilization from the times when men laid aside the rugged manners of old with the bronze and iron armor, and doffing the hammered helmet, assumed the cap of velvet and the hat of plush; when they laid aside the iron gauntlet for the chamois glove, and assumed the Cordovan boot in place of the leg-pieces of steel. not however the case, for in spite of the progress the world has made, the women of France and our own country, and the men also, are not to be compared to the members of the most savage tribes, either in gracefulness of form or propriety of dress. If the Chinese distort the foot, or the Indians of the North West Coast of America the forehead, the civilized women of to-day compress the waist, and men commit not less enormities. These matters are, however, incontestible; and though we might regret we cannot prevent them. They simply therefore give us a clue in treating our subject, of which we will avail ourselves. They teach us, that to Paris belongs the incontestible empire of that mysterious power known in France as la mode, and in our own land as FASHION. Possibly this may be a remnant, the sole vestige, of that tone of pretension which led France in other days to aspire to universal empire. If so, the pride of other nations which led them elsewhere to resist French assumption here has been silent. Though not the rulers of the world by the power of the sword; though the French idiom be not so universal as the English, even the denizens of " Albion perfide" submit to the behests of the controlling powers of the French mode. Let the French language be universal or not, is to us now of no importance; that French fleets will drive English and American squadrons from the seas, is doubtful, but it is very certain Englishmen and Americans for all time to come will wear French waist The feelings of chivalry yet lingered as late as the days of the English Charles I. and the French Louis XIII. in the minds of the nobility. A new series of ideas, however, had arisen in the breasts of the peo-coats, and Germans both in London and Philadelphia ple at a date long previous to this. Printing had become general, and the learnning previously the property of the priests had become the heir-loom of humanity: As a natural consequence, new ideas and new wants were unfolded, and these same ideas had become more general. At this crisis France took the lead, and not only in philosophy but in the minor things of life, French manners and habits were copied. Consequently, in describing costume, Paris will be perpetually referred to, from the fact that from that great city emanated the fashions which controlled the costume of the world. It is true that other nations had their peculiar costume, handed down and preserved by the tradition of courts, as the Norman dress continues even now the court uniform of the state officials of the British kingdom; Spain had her peculiar doublet, hose and cloak, and Holland her own court apparel. If, however, we look nearer and closer, we shall discover each of these were dresses imported from France at some particular crisis, and retaining position and importance in their new home, when they were forgotten in the land whence they were adopted. The most highly civilized of all the nations of Europe at the time that this supremacy over the costume of the world was exerted by France, it might have been expected that its selection would have been guided by good taste and propriety. This was will call themselves French bootmakers. How fond soever a people may be of its national garb, ultimately it must submit to the trammels devised in Paris. Ultimately all men will wear that most inconvenient article called a hat, will insert their extremities into pantaloons, and put their arms into the sleeves of the garment, so short before and so long behind, they are pleased to call a coat. When all nations shall have come to this state of subserviency, the end of the world will certainly be at hand, whether because the ultima perfectio has been reached, or because God, who created man after his own likeness, will be angry at the ridiculous figure they have made of his features, better theologians than I must decide. We certainly are not very near this crisis, for hundreds of yellow-skinned gentlemen are yet ignorant of the art and mystery of tying a cravat, and never saw a patent leather boot. Like great epidemics, the passion for dress often leaps over territorial boundaries, and ships not unfrequently carry with the cholera and vomito bales of articles destined to spread this infection among lands as yet ignorant of it; so that some day we may live to hear of Oakford sending a case of hats to the Feejees, and of Watson making an uniform for the general-in-chief of the King of the Cannibal Islands. Possibly this passion for our costumes is to be attributed to the deterioration of the morals of the savages, and if so, even dress has its historical importance and significance, and is the true reflection of morale. It may be that the days of the iron garb were days of iron manners, and also of iron virtue, and that in adopting a silken costume we have put on, and they may be about to adopt a silken laxity of virtue and honor. WE will begin to treat of costume as it was in the days of Louis XIV., the solemn mood and ideas of whom exerted their influence even on dress, and the era which saw all other arts become pompous and labored, also saw costume assume the most complicated character. Costume naturally during this reign was permanent in its character, and when Louis XV. succeeded to the throne he found his courtiers dressed entirely as their fathers had done, and the young king, five years of age, dressed precisely like his greatgrandfather, with peruke, cane and breeches. When he had reached the years of discretion, Louis XV. continued to devote himself more to the trifles of the court than to affairs of state. The following engraving is an illustration taken from a portrait of a celebrated marquis of that day. This, will be remembered, was the era when women wore whalebone frame-works to their dresses and caps, or a kind of defensive armor over the chest and body. The fine gentlemen also encased themselves in wires, to distend the hips of their culottes or breeches. This was the costume of the fine gentlemen, and in it kings and heroes appeared on the stage almost without interruption until the days of Talma, if we except the brief and unsuccessful attempt at reform, as far as theatres were concerned, by Le Kain and Mademoiselle Clairon. The foregoing was the prevailing court costume, the next is the military garb of the day, recalling the costume of Charles XII. of Sweden, and not unlike that of our own Putnam or Mad Anthony Wayne. Thus the lowland gentlemen who fought in '45, dressed after this mode, were the opposing parties of the armies at Ramilies.. As a whole it is not malapropos, and altogether more suitable and proper than the uniforms of our own day. The following is the portrait of a mousquetaire just one century after the time of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artignan, whom Dumas made illustrious. MAPLE SUGAR. BY ALFRED B. STREET. OH, the rich, dark maple sugar! how it tells me of the | Up, up, the beaten path I climb, with bosom of blithesome woods, cheer, Of bland south winds and melting snows, and budding For the song, oft varied with whistle shrill of the woodssolitudes! Oh, the melting maple sugar! as I taste its luscious sweets, Remembrance in my raptured ear her witching song repeats; Once more my heart is young and pure! once more my footsteps stray Amid the scenes, the lovely scenes, of childhood's opening day. A frosty night! the searching air made hearth-fires a delight, Stern Winter seemed as if again to rally in his might; Off, off! run, leap, and drink the air! off! leave man's roofs behind! Nature has more of pleasure now than haunts of human kind. How free the blood is bounding! how soft the sunny glow! And, hearken! fairy tones are ringing underneath the snow! Slump, slump! the gauzy masses glide from hemlock, fence and rock, And yon low, marshy meadow seems as spotted with a flock; Drip, drip, the icicle sends its tears from its sparkling tip, and still With tinkle, tinkle, beneath the snow rings many a viewless rill. We cross the upland pasture, robed with a brown and sodden pall, The maple ridge heaves up before-a sloping Titan wall! The maple ridge! how gloriously, in summer it pitches tent: Beneath, what a mossy floor is spread! above, what a roof is bent! man Keene, I hear; The bold and hardy woodsman, whose rifle is certain death, Whose axe, when it rings in the wilderness, makes its glory depart like breath, Whose cabin is built in the neighboring dell, whose dress is the skin of the doe, And who tells long tales of his hunting deeds by the hearth-fire's cheerful glow. The summit I gain-what soaring trunks-what spreading balloon-like tops! And see! from the barks of each, the sap, slow welling and limpid, drops; A thicket I turn-the gleam of a fire strikes sudden upon my view, And in the midst of the ruddy blaze two kettles of sooty hue, Whilst bending above, with his sinewy frame, and wielding with ready skill His ladle amidst the amber depths, proud king of the scene is Will. The boiling, bubbling liquid! it thickens each moment there, He stirs it to a whirlpool now, now draws thin threads in air; From kettle to kettle he ladles it to granulate rich and slow, Then fashions the mass in a hundred shapes, congealing them in the snow, While the blue-bird strikes a sudden joy through the branches gaunt and dumb, As he seems to ask in his merry strain if the violet yet has come. The rich, dark maple sugar! thus it brings to me the joy, The dear warm joy of my heart, when I was a careless, happy boy; When pleasures so scorned in after life, like flowers, then strewed my way, And no dark sad experience breathed "doomed sufferer be not gay!" What lofty pillars of fluted bark! what magical changeful When Life like a summer ocean spread before me with tints As the leaves turn over and back again to the breeze's flying prints. golden glow, And soft with the azure of Hope, but concealing the wrecks that lay below. TO MY LOVE. BY HENRY H. PAUL. DEWY buds of Paphian myrtle Strew, ye virgins, as I sing; Chaplets weave from Love's bright fountain O'er my lyre their fragrance fling. With Cyprian fire thine eye is sparkling, |