66 THE

INVISIBLE LADY."

143

night, he went to the house where the festival was held, but became so disgusted with the parvenu character of the company, that he retired to an adjacent apartment and locked himself in until the time arrived for his return home, under the impression that he should not retrace his steps before the hour designated in the document.

When a negro is found abroad after eight o'clock at night, the police invariably require to see his "pass." The non-possession of such a safeconduct entails the "lock-up" until next morning. Returning from church one Sunday evening, I happened to pick up a document of this character, which reads as follows:

"Permit the bearer, Jordan, to pass from Mr. John T. Sizer, on Clay, to Mr. Kents, on Franklin Street, and return by eleven o'clock, P.M., unmolested.

"JOHN T. SIZER, JR.

66

'Sept. 8, 1861.”

The absence of this paper most probably procured a night's confinement for the unlucky wight from whose person it had got detached.

The "Invisible Lady," immortalized by Thomas Moore, although her eyes lack lustre and the roses on her cheeks have become seared as autumn leaves, has not yet "shuffled off this mortal coil." She was the queen of beauty in her day; but her

reign, like that of most coquettes, was short and brilliant, and soon forgotten. When Moore was in Richmond, A.D. 1803, this lady, although very young, had reached the zenith of her fame. She possessed numerous admirers, but the Irish bard was the most favoured and flattered of them all. As he addressed odorous odes and idolatrous idylls to all the pretty Caras and Coras, Neas and Noras, Psyches and Chloes, whom he met, it was impossible that he could have withheld a like tribute of affection to one so fascinating as Cara, the "sweet spirit of mystery." Accordingly we find him inditing the following fanciful lines to this fair enchantress :

"TO THE INVISIBLE GIRL.

"They try to persuade me, my dear little sprite,
That you're not a true daughter of ether and light,
Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms
That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms;
That, in short, you're a woman-your lip and your eye
As mortal as ever drew gods from the sky.
But I will not believe them-no, Science, to you
I have long bid a last and a careless adieu :
Still flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring its cause,
You forget how superior for mortals below

Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know.
Oh! who that has e'er enjoyed rapture complete

Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;

TOM MOORE'S EULOGY.

How rays are confus'd, or how particles fly

Through the medium refin'd of a glance or a sigh ;

145

Is there one who but once would not rather have known it,
Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?

"As for you, my sweet-voiced and invisible love,
You must surely be one of those spirits that rove
By the bank where at twilight the poet reclines,
When the star of the west on his solitude shines ;
As the magical fingers of fancy have hung
Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue.
Oh! hail to him then!-'tis retirement alone
Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone.
Like you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen;
And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres,
Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears.

"Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love,
In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,
To have you thus ever invisibly nigh,

Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh!

'Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of care I might sometimes converse with my nymph of the air, And turn with distaste from the clamorous crew,

To steal in the pauses one whisper from you!

"Then come and be near me, for ever be mine,
We shall hold in the air a communion divine,
As sweet as of old was imagined to dwell
In the grotto of Numa, or Socrates' cell.

And oft at those lingering moments of night,

When the heart's busy thoughts have put slumber to flight,
You shall come to my pillow and tell me of love,
Such as angel to angel might whisper above.
Sweet spirit!—and then could you borrow the tone
Of that voice, to my ear, like some fairy-song known;
VOL. I.

L

The voice of the one upon earth, who has twin'd
With her being for ever my heart and my mind,
Though lonely and far from the light of her smile,
An exile, and weary and hopeless the while,
Could you shed for a moment her voice in my ear,
I will think for a moment that Cara is near;
That she comes with consoling enchantment to speak,
And kisses my eye-lid and breathes on my cheek,
And tells me the night shall go rapidly by,
For the dawn of our hope-of our heaven is nigh.
"Fair spirit! if such be your magical power,

It will lighten the lapse of full many an hour;
And let fortune's realities frown as they will,
Hope, fancy, and Cara may smile for me still."

A number of fashionable belles still grace the metropolis of Virginia; but to say that they render themselves "invisible" would be sadly to belie them. Still, I greatly prefer the soft Southern women, with all their little foibles and frailties, varium et mutabile semper, to their pedantic, petulant, masculine, cold, and harshmannered sisters of the North.

CHAPTER V.

THE NEW ENGLAND PURITAN AND NEW YORK

SETTLER.

The Union an "Experiment"-The First ConfederacyLaws of Connecticut-The "Republican Basis”—A Religious Oligarchy-Penn's Government-A Commercial Aristocracy-The Dutch West India, CompanyCommercial Warriors—Jurisdiction of the States-General-Gross System of Plunder-Colonial Contests-The Law a Dead Letter-General Corruption of Morals.

FROM the earliest period strong antagonisms have existed between the Northern and Southern sections of the American Continent. The two races have been aliens in blood, religion, sentiment, pursuits, and politics. Indeed, the North has always admitted that the "aristocracy of the