the vain aspirings of a not vain ambition, and fed my spirit upon the bright auguries of hope; and though I grieved to part from the kind hearts which had been the intimates of my heart, yet I nerved myself to part from them; and, with a determined desire to win fame, I left the scenes of mirth and sinless revelry, the scenes of my triumph-of my youth, and there was with, and after me, prayers for success from many a tongue of the aged, and muttered thoughts of hope and anticipations of my renown from the secret argosy of love which lay in the haven of woman's heart.

"So thus I went into the world of men, but did not leave the world of my own hoarded contemplations. I mixed and mingled with the many, and visited all scenes, and observed all things, and grew familiar with that riddle-my own heart, and with the hearts of men, and explained the hidden arcana of philosophy and art, and read the page of nature-for hitherto my study had been books-and the skies, so glorious and so fair, or in their serene moments, when the lightwinged clouds fleet on like the images of a happy dream, or in their brilliant epochs when the quivering lightnings flash their terrific beauty over the thunder-shaken earth; and I then surrounded myself in the silent and the stilly night with my old companions, and quaffed the stirring words of heroic history, and, again, spirit-led, trod the starry realms of immortal poetry, until at length I knew, by the struggles in my heart, that the hour had come for me, and I called up, as with a magician's wand, the spells of imagination, and the talismans of knowledge, and, blending them together, I poured forth, on the mute page, in all the melody of poetry, the gush of burning thoughts, which, from my youth upwards, had been mustering in my heart, but, until now, were vague, and erratic, and aimless. And, as I wrote, the full tide of pathos and of passion rushed from my pen, like the rising waters of the Egyptians' river, scattering worth, and the wealth of eloquence as it still flowed on. I transfused my very heart into expression, and the riches of reality gemmed the pages where fiction was embodied.

"And I sent my pages to the world of men, and a few felt, and many said they felt the magic witchery of my strain; and I became a marvel, and a wonder. Poets, as they hailed my approach to the sacred fount of poesy, and saw what rich L. 29. 1..

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offerings I was profusely scattering with a lavish hand at the muses' shrine, felt and feared that I had won at once what they had spent weary lives in quest of. Philosophers pored, in mute eloquence of silence,―for silence hath an eloquence of its own, which speaketh to her heart-in rapt wonder upon the writings of one who had intermingled the stern realities of truth with the airy fictions of verse. The scholar as, with throbbing brow and a silently sickening heart, he studied by his midnight lamp, or upon some sunny bank, beside a gurgling stream in his own native vale, whither he had come to die, forsook the lore of antiquity to ponder, with an elevated spirit, on that which I had produced, and still glowed with admiration as with delighted impatience he hurried over my page. Beauty as she sat in the leafy solitude of her roseate bower, waiting, how anxiously! for ONE who was all the world to her, felt a fever-flush mantle her peach-like cheek, and strange spirit-strivings thronging through her heart as she sighed, or joyed over the tale of love I had sung. The staid matron, as her children read to her, with half-understood emotion, the pathos of my strains, wept-not in sorrow-over the awakened remembrances of her youthful love, which, from the cells where they had long slept, my verse evoked. The painter was not ashamed to own that from me he took his brightest and most beautiful picturings of heroism, beauty, love, sorrow, or mirth. The melodist, whom they brought to marry my verse to music, flung his lyre away, exclaiming, that music, which was required to assist the sweetness of every other strain, was an useless adjunct to my songs, which needed nothing of such assistance, as they had in themselves more tuneful symphonies than his art could give. Even pallid envy, for once, was silent; and if she did not echo the praise admiration gave me, she, at, least, did not deny that it was deserved. All places were full of, and all persons familiar with, my songs. Many a breaking heart blessed him, whose strains had beguiled it into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. The aged and the young, the proud and the lowly, all people of all countries, united in lauding him who had thus, they said, laid open to its very depths the human heart in its affections, passions, griefs, and joys, and shown what undreamed-of treasures lay in its secret places; who had, they declared, thrown a spell over the spirits of fancy and wisdom, and, binding them in the

silken toils of melodious verse-wore that favor from the genii of the mind which many had, through the past eternity, vainly sought-which few had ever found. So thus did I reap the richest, the only harvest, a poet should ever look for-FAME; and my name and my numbers were elevated among the highest. The lover, whom deep passion rendered incapable of using the strength of his own eloquence, borrowed that which sparkled in my verse, and through the witchery of my passive words won, even to his own surprise, the all that blushing beauty had denied before: even childhood disped with an untiring tongue, in half-formed words, the lays my spirit had created.

:

"But I found that fame to be perfect, must not be unshared it must have some one with whom to divide the flowers it produced; and my heart panted for the companionship of heart; and even amid the converse and the feasts of the mightiest of the land-for the proudest were not ashamed to win to their palaces the honored poet and philosopher→→→ even there I sighed for one to cheer my solitude at home-to guide my spirit to some other unpathed oceans of thought,to cast forth (even as comes from the steel and the silicious stone,) by such collision, sparks of new and delightful inspiration: and this hope, which thus I nursed in crowds or loneliness,-this, too, did not remain unfulfilled.

"I had, one day, wandered from the noise and the bustle of the town, to win from the balmy quietude of the pleasant country its fresh and vigorous air-its soft and whispering zephyrs, some cooling for the fever of my cheek and brow: for the exercise of thinking, and the birth of poetry, are painful and distressing things. I lay in the sweet sunshine, which I ever loved to bask in, wearied with my lengthened walk,-for the city had unnerved my endurance of fatigue, and my step was less springy than in the noontide of my youth it had wont to be. I was musing upon the fame I had won,-won, too, as it seemed, without an effort; and thinking how easy it would be for me to exceed all that I had done, by throwing the concentrated powers of my knowledge, and the whole sensibilities of my heart into expression and language. But the chain of my musings, and the silence of that sleeplike day, were broken by the silvery sweetness of a woman's voice. I started at the sound, for there is that in

the melody of such accents which falls refreshingly on the heart, like a passing shower on the aridness of a sultry autumn-like a fall of water upon the ear of a solitary; or like the distant dying echo of sweet-soul'd music heard afar off, amid the rocks and trees. How my heart did beat with a proud joy-throb as I heard that sweet voice warble one of my own songs it lent a rich and powerful feeling to the passion of the verse, and threw upon the words a halo of beauty I had never dreamed of, as being one of the attributes of my strain. She progressed on towards me, and at last the glory of her unrivalled beauty met my view: she was, in truth, the embodiment of all my heart had ever imaged in its most voluptuous day-dreams of immortal creations,—of all that its most ardent thoughts had ever fancied of female loveliness. She was the perfect admixture of every element of form, feature, or divine thought, which I had sighed for woman to possess, but, until then, had never found. She was the personification of that intellectual and visible beauty which my burning verse had ever loved to describe, but which, hitherto, I had deemed impossible could be found in breathing dust.-No more-no more! The pen, that once could perfectly describe her, has lost its spell of power, but on the tablet-the adamantine tablet of my heart, are traced in the ineffaceable characters of memory; her form and features still kept, like flowers of amaranth from purer spheres-bright and beautiful!

I became known to her through a service happily rendered, which preserved her life, and, for a time, endangered mine. She nursed me, in my sickness, as with a sister's care. I discovered that my father and hers had been familiar friends in youth, and thus, orphaned as she was, she had an hereditary claim to my protection-to my love. Ere she knew me as myself the scion of a noble race-she loved me for myself: we read, and mused, and walked together. Proud was my heart when hers acknowledged that, of all the flowers of song, mine was most treasured by her judgment-mine most watered by her tears; and when I told her-for till then she only knew me as a stranger-that I was the poet whose winged words of passionate earnestness she had so loved, she cast her noble spirit as an oblation before mine, and as an offering upon the altar of my heart. It was indeed a happy moment for us both: I was proud to win a heart like hers

happy in our untiring affection; and she, oh! how happy was she in the love I bore her!

"Why do I vainly dwell upon the memories of these fleeting hours? even now, as they arise before me, my temples are throbbing with the irrepressible strivings of strong emotions. I thought my heart was tamed down to this narrative: I must hurry to conclude it, and then. We were betrothed: a day, not distant,-for my love feared even the shadows of delay-was named for our bridal; and I sped, light in heart, and buoyant in the exuberancy of a happy spirit, to my paternal roof which, since my triumphs, I had not visited to devote to my father the few remaining days of my celibacy. Our hearts had vowed, with all the enthusiasm of first love, that from the hour which joined our hands, neither in joy or in care (but we smiled at the visionary thought of care touching us,) should a day, a single day, see us separated: and the hours sped along, as I thought, upon slow and leaden wings; but those of my home-my kindred and my friends-deplored the rapidity with which they flew. I meted time by the anxiety of a lover, away from his shrine of beauty; they by the regret of parting from one who had never forfeited affection, and had thrown the splendors of immortal fame around a name not unhonored by its possessors in the days that had passed.

"One night-I have dwelt, it may be, too minutely upon the foregoing narrative, but it was in avoidance of this part of my story; and now I must narrate it, and though my heart swells up with emotion, and bleeds afresh, as the memories of departed and buried years rise up before it, yet it must nerve itself to the endurance of recording them. One night-the last I was to spend in my paternal home-I lay on my couch in a state between repose and thought. The dim reality of things was momently fading; but oblivion had not yet been sealed in sleep. As the clock began striking the midnight hour, I heard, or thought 1 heard, the door of my chamber slowly open, and a foot-a woman's foot it seemed by its light tread-pace stealthily along: it came near, more near, and ceased when it reached my bed. A sudden, and it seemed a shaded light, appeared through the curtains, as if some hand held a lamp cautiously, half-veiled, to avoid dazzling me; the curtains slowly opened, and-and, by heaven,