the sky of Italy, and naught but the keen air of his childhood's home could again restore its healthy tone. Vainly in the soil of Italy he sought for the plants he there had watched and loved: and as the memory of their perfume crossed his mind, he fainted beneath the load that pressed upon him. His mother, too, was pining for her native air, the song of familiar birds, and the low whisperings of the breeze, as it ever reached her ear, from off her husband's grave. But now an ocean intervened; no cherished tone was heard by her as she gazed wistfully across its waters, toward the heavens that smiled upon her far-off home.

She did not say it, but she felt that the vines planted in her native land would never shed their blossoms above her tomb. And so, as day declined and the bright colors faded from the sky, she sat and mused sadly on the past, and Earnest, and of the hand that should guide him when her last hour should have come. She dared not ask whose it would be; but when the physician visited her after the moon had risen, and the stars were set along the ways of heaven, she told him of her fears, and at length to him intrusted the guardianship of the gifted being who still dwelt, within her mind, the child I first beheld him.

Aloes with their marbled leaves were creeping serpent-like around the plants of the Violets and the Ivy, and shedding their bitterness over even the glossy verdure of the Oak.

But I could not pause to weep: another season was finished, and the next slowly unfolded itself before my gaze.

The yellow buds of the Heath are its crown.
One solitary figure filled the scene.

Earnest was alone: his mother

was no more with him, to move amid the silence in which he dwelt.

Well might the heath spring up beside him and strike deep root in the soil watered by his tears: his mother gone, and he without a voice in which to tell his grief!

The bitterness of the Aloe was fully tested then, when life seemed void of every blessing. The mother had been taken: the suffering mute stood unsupported in his loneliness. What aid could friendship offer, or what gift could love present that should be valued through the tears that blinded the eyes of Earnest?

There was no word, there was no gift that did not seem to him mocking as the air that tossed back the cry of grief that, in his woe, broke from his heart. Solitude alone could soothe, GoD's hand alone heal the wound which death had made. But in that hour of trial, when heath reared itself beside the mother's grave, that divided the present, with its woes, from the past, with its many joys, light broke upon the soul of the mute, hitherto so dark and silent.

Once more his eye sought the blue sky above him, and he seemed to realize the heaven of which his mother had so often taught him. It was no longer a far-off land. It was his mother's home, where he, her child, should dwell, that lay around him. For the first time, his soul received the impression of eternity: the lesson of his life began to be understood. In the evening hour, he knelt and offered unto God the solemn homage of his silent soul.

The seventh period was completed, and the purple blossoms of the Passion-flower spread forth as its emblem.

Belief had uttered its voice to the listening heart of Earnest.

The tendrils of the passion-vine have bound together the various parts of each separate period, and twined among the blossoms whose fragrance I have inhaled.

I view the tapestry no longer as the mysterious gift of the fairy, but as a type from the actual world. Although its history hath the semblance of a dream, I can understand from it how the seeming realities which now surround me will be as dreams to me, when a few years shall have passed away, and I stand upon the entrance of the world eternal and alone real.

You ask me to sing, but my heart it is wae;
In a harp out o' tune, there's nae music ava;
She is gone who gave tone to the music in me;
Oh! how can I sing, when my wifie's awa'?
I'm feckless and lonely, an' wantin' an' dim;

Like a leg o' the tangs, wi' its marrow awa',
E'en the fire-side is cauldrife, an' cheerless my hame;
Oh! my hame is nae hame, while my wifie's awa'.

It's not want o' ought, for o' a' things we've plenty,
An' kind are the bairns, an' the neebors, an' a,'
But a' winna do noo, or keep my heart canty,

For a' things gang wrang, when my wifie's awa'.
The light that did brighten my housie, ye ken,
An' made a' things cheerie, in chamber an' ha',
Is wantin', an' gloomy is a' but and ben,

Oh the sun has gone down, noo my wifie's awa'!

When takin' the Book, an' our evening psalm raising,
There's ae voice awantin', the sweetest of a',
Then, 'mang a' the blessings of HIM we are praising,
My heart breathes a prayer for my wifie awa';
An' then in the mornin', my woes are unending;
The breakfast is late, no one answers my ca';
My sark wants a button, my stockings want mending;
O come back, my wifie, and bide nae awa'!

The birdies are singing; the sweet flowers are springing;
The blue-bells an' violets glint out fu' braw;

All nature smiles gladsome: but ah! there is ringing
Nae joy in my heart, while my wifie's awa:

Then come back, my dearie, an' make my heart cheerie;
Let music an' mirth ance mair gladden my ha';

Then 't will be 'mong the by-gones, when dowie and wearie,
I mourned for the want o' my wifie awa'.

ALL Heaven is anchored off the world; and every, every where,
The silver surges of the moon make music through the air;
As the stars revealed by night, as the dew-drops by the stars,
So the bosom's wordless wealth, by the moon-beam's misty bars.
Oh! sunlight for the world of things, but moonlight for the heart!
From out the dreamy shadows, how the forms of beauty start!

II.

How they throng the halls of Thought! there an ANGEL-ONE appears;
Though I cannot see her clearly by moon-light, and for tears,
I'd know that foot-fall any where, as light as summer-rain,
For it sets my pulses playing, as none can do again.

III.

Ah, Thou art there, my Cynosure! I know those eyes are thine;
No other pair would ever turn so lovingly to mine:

And now, a billow of green turf swells breathless o'er her rest,
As if it feared to wake the babe that slumbers on her breast.

1V.

The bough was bent to breaking, as the blast went sweeping by,
But the nameless bud of beauty was wafted to the sky:
And thou, fair Moon! art shining on, in all thy glory yet,

As if upon no fairer brow no paler seal were set.

The purling azure ever parts in music round thy prow:

As we together saw thee then, so I behold thee now.

And yet, methinks, thy deck grows dim with gray and gathered years: Not so, not so! untouched by time! 'Tis nothing but these tears.

VI.

I wonder not the stars are out, to see thee riding by,

And not a breath to break the blue of all that blessed sky:

There's just one cloud in all that dome of God's own starry thought, One little cloud of Zephyr's fleet, left floating there, forgot.

VII.

Not all thy glory, gentle Moon! can turn that gloom to gold,
Nor all thy silver lure a star to light a single fold;

For, like a banner weirdly wove in wild Campania's loom,
That cloudlet's volume swells aloft, as dark and deep as doom.

Good-night, fair Moon! -good-night again, pale captive to the cloud;
I've seen a dearer light than thine extinguished by the shroud.
That cloud is edged with silver now; its gloom is webbed with gold;
The stars shine through it every where a pearl in every fold!

MEN, MANNERS, AND MOUNTAINS.

BY ROBERT M. RICHARDSON,

THE

KUR SALL

ON 'CHANGE: OR SALOON OF FINANCE.

IN acquaintanceship, as in most other experiences of life, Napoleon's dictum holds good: Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute. Since my opportune rencontre with Ernest, I had either found or made almost as many acquaintances as the 'hare of many friends.' It was three o'clock; and, having spent the morning in visiting and rambling, Ernest and myself sought occupation in the SALON OF FINANCE.

THE MAISON DE CONVERSATION is the Palladium of Baden-Baden. It may likewise be viewed as a temple of the Muses, a pleasure-house of the Graces, a summer asylum of the Fates, and oft-times of the Furies. You cannot, indeed, conceive of an establishment more completely stocked with all the machinery of amusement. Situated, as already mentioned, in the most felicitous manner, opposite the two principal hotels, the main building comprises a grand group of ball-rooms and drawing-rooms, replete with stuffs and statues, mirrors, musical and gambling apparatus. A luxurious café occupies one spacious wing with its manifold agrémens; while, couched in the other, a catering saloon for quidnunes a readingroom-flanked by a perfect bijou of an opera-house, denotes that a proper balance is maintained in the prodigal appliances of animal and spiritual pleasure.

Throughout the oak-environed avenues which lead at right-angles from the grand promenade bordering the Kursall façade, toward the town, are arranged diversified rows of stalls, where hawkers of different nations proclaim an exposition of things cheap and choice - German toys, Paris gloves, transcendental tooth-powder, complexion-peppers, rings and rosaries, bonnets, bouquets, mermaid-mirrors, Chinese pigs and poodles, Genoa flower-fabrics, Milan tooth-picks, Swiss wood-work, chamois-boxes. cosmetic sponges, and other commodities, of which some are too numer ous to mention, and others, from their nature, wholly unmentionable. The Kursall is not a palace, for it is more. The features of comfort and ease, combined with elegance, which it presents, are foreign to the cold palaces of Europe; and the varying scenes which characterize its interior bear no resemblance to the stately and stationary aspects which palaces of this age wear. In the Kursall, gayety sometimes abides and sometimes departs. Sometimes the dance throngs throughout the extent of its saloons. Every evening, floods of music pour down from its high orchestral throne. Now it is a hive of animation, and now lulled. If it dazzles with gas constellations to-night, to-morrow may find it as dull as a chapel. At one hour as busy as Moneta's court, it is the next as vacant as the minds of its frequenters. But, although the Kursall varies its aspect according to the hour, the weather, the caprice, it retains at least one focus, con

stant as the original taint;' immovable and all-moving as the Maelstrom. To this radiating cynosure let now attention glide.

ON 'CHANGE.

We entered by the principal door beneath the portico. What a change from the radiant sky without! Absorbing all sound and riveting all attention, was stationed the genius loci; the Sphinx which yet awaits her Edipus; the Punic power, to win over whose interest all diplomacy is vain; the magnetic divinity of this Fortune's Mecca- the roulette scheme. Sombre and immobile, the throng closed round, like suitors in a court of shades. The last levée of Louis XIV. could not have been more self-contained in aspect. The green cloth, from which few glances were averted, spread over the table like a symbol of the green ocean, almost rivalling its grand prototype in the amount of treasure which it annually engulfs.

The roulette, or oubliette, whose tender mercies consign rouleaus to oblivion, is a machine somewhat resembling an old-fashioned hand coffeemill; having a scheme appended, rather complicated to explain, and in which initiation is too easy to need formal demonstration. Enough to say, that it is a very powerful engine of correction, through whose agency, if offended at your fortune, you have opportunity of ready revenge, by breaking it on the wheel.

In the exaggeration of a mind naturally prone to credulity, I had always preconceived this scene as in the category of those objects which do not disappoint expectation. So mysterious is the veil with which description usually drapes these world-renowned tables de jeu, and so vivid were the tableaus which my irradiated imagination had previously shadowed forth, that I would hardly have approached an auto da fé, or a table d'inquisition, with a deeper sense of interest than I now experienced in drawing near the high altar of the blind goddess. A phantasm of Druid and Mexican priests, invested with the dark solemnity of their inhuman rites, rose confusedly before my disordered vision as I penetrated among the forms officiating at the public sanctuary of vice.

So much for romance. Now for reality.

The sanctuary reeked not with the fumes of sacrifice; but it was redolently scented with eau de vie, eau de cologne, and bad cigars. The altar was not (as my orientalism had pictured) Pelion on Ossa-Golconda reproduced in literal pyramids of gold and bank-notes. Funds which possess such' alacrity in sinking' are rarely so portentous in amount. The arbiters, Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Company, did, to be sure, sit dealing out sentence after sentence of destiny, and extending the regulating hellrake much after the manner of my prefigurations; but in general they wore that expression of meek sleepiness which characterizes the fatigued lion of a menagerie: nothing visible betokened the flow of very ferocious feelings. The chief potentate of Orcus obliged to take snuff in order to bear up against the Boeotian nature of his business! The sepulchral being who occupied the middle seat of the bench, seemed to occupy a rank in creation midway between a man and an automaton, so mechanical were his functions, so accurately did he rehearse them. With the one hand he spun the marble on its whirling race; with the other, he poised the