to it, and more nakedly disgusting; because it memories her companions during the liveis stripped of all the allowances and palliations long day. But these subjects are lightly which are admissible in all other cases. And touched on, as though the heart within her this disgust is not compensated for by a corre- failed in giving them utterance; and the sponding satisfaction in our own good; for the very best good we can ever recognize in our sorrowful now was, we fear, victorious in selves falls so far short of our own conceptions, the end. A birth-day spent we can hardly so fails to satisfy the requisitions of the moral say kept-in a sick room is sufficient to sense, that it can afford no gratification. make the most heedless think; but she If it is thus in the season of vigor, health, draws her comfort from the reflection-“ If and self-command, how inexpressibly absurd is with the mistake of bringing such a topic as consoevery year of contemplation the world lation to the sick and sequestered!-to the appears a more astonishing fact, and life a sick, whose whole heart is faint, and the men- more noble mystery, we cannot but be retal frame disordered more or less, in propor-animated by the recurrence of every birthtion as the body is jaded and the nerves un- day, which draws us up higher into the strung; and to the sequestered, who perforce regions of contemplation, and nearer to the devour their own hearts, and find them the gate within which lies the disclosure of all bitterest food! If the consoler could but see the invisible array which comes mysteries which worthily occupy us now, and doubtless a new series of others, adapted to our then ennobled powers." A sublime imagining, and no less true than solemn ; yet declaring too well that mere human help was insufficient on such occasions.

thronging into the sick room from the deep regions of the past, brought by every sound of nature without, by every movement of the spirit within the pale lips of dead friends whispering one's hard or careless words, spoken in childhood or youth-the upbraiding gaze of duties slighted and opportunities neglected to the invalid; it is admirably considered. The subject of the third Essay is nature the horrible apparition of old selfishness and pusillanimities-the disgusting foolery of idiotic We need not dilate on the theme, in introvanities: if the consoler could catch a momen- ducing it, for its power and beauty are suf tary glimpse of this phantasmagoria of the ficient recommendation. All who have seen sick room, he would turn with fear and loath-the look of rapture with which the eyes of ing from the past, and shudder, while the the dying are lighted up on beholding fresh inured invalid smiles, at such a choice of topics and living flowers, remember that sight for for solace. Then it might become the turn of ever. the invalid to console-to explain how these are but phantoms-how solace does abound, though it comes from every region rather than the kingdom of conscience-and how, while the past is dry and dreary enough, there are streams descending from the heaven-bright mountain-tops of the future, for ever flowing down to our retreat, pure enough for the most fastidious longing, abundant enough for the positions-some are satisfied if they can thirstiest soul. The consoler may then learn lie all day long, with eyes beholding heaven for life how easily all personal complacencies-others look lower to the green earth or may be dispensed with; while the sufferer can the sea expanse. tell of a true refuge and strength,' and 'present help,' and of this river that gladdens the city of God,' and flows to meet us as we journey towards it."

It is wonderful, that power of nature over sick and wasted forms, acting upon them like an enchanter's spell, and calling back life to beat strongly about the heart, as in better days! The sights and sounds about us, at such a time should be wellchosen; they will vary with different dis

"When an invalid is under sentence of disease for life, it becomes a duty of first-rate importance to select a proper place of abode. This is often overlooked; and a sick prisoner goes on to where he lived before, for no other reason than because he lived there before. Many a sufferer languishes amidst street noiswindows command dead walls, or paved courts, or some such objects; so that he sees nothing of nature but such sky and stars as show themselves above the chimney-tops. I remember the heart-ache it gave me to see a youth, confined to a recumbent position for two or three years, lying in a room whence he could see nothing, and dependent therefore on the cage of birds by his bed-side, and the flowers his friends sent him, for the only notices of nature that reached him, except the summer's heat and the winter's cold. There was no sufficient

There are next some touching allusions to those "marked days"-anniversaries-so joyous with us in early youth, so mournfules, or passes year after year in a room whose when time's finger inscribes them upon tombs. These commemorative seasons, and, above all, that day of olden merriment, Christmas, our invalid recommends should be passed alone. With her sprigs of holly over the fire-place, she can flit away, fancyplumed, to a thousand hearths, enter rooms full of young eyes," or gaze for a moment on "the cozy little party of elderly folk round the fire or tea-table, and make her

66

reason why he should not have been placed where he could overlook fields, or even the sea."

To the latter our friend inclines, and assigns her reasons for its choice in her own

case :

its sandy beach, where there are frequent wrecks-too interesting to an invalid-and a fine stretch of rocky shore to the left; and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying their kites; lovers and friends taking their breezy walk on Sundays; the sportsman with his gun and dog; "What is the best kind of view for a sick farm-houses on Saturday evenings, to carry and the washerwomen converging from the prisoner's windows to command? I have their loads, in company, to the village on the chosen the sea, and am satisfied with my yet further height. I see them, now talking choice. We should have the widest expanse in a cluster, as they walk, each with her of land or water, for the sake of a sense of lib-white burden on her head, and now in file, as erty, yet more than for variety; and also be- they pass through the narrow lane; and finalcause then the inestimable help of a telescope ly, they part off on the village green, each to may be called in. Think of the difference to us between seeing from our sofas the width of hind the village and the heath stretches the some neighboring house of the gentry. Bea street, even if it be Sackville-street, Dublin, railroad; and I watch the train triumphantly or Portland-place in London, and thirty miles careering along the level road, and puffing of sea view, with its long boundary of rocks, forth its steam above hedges and groups of and the power of sweeping our glance over half a county, by means of a telescope! But trees, and then laboring and panting up the the chief ground of preference of the sea is which at last bound my view. But on these ascent, till it is lost between the two heights, less its space than its motion, and the perpetual heights are more objects;-a windmill, now in shifting of objects caused by it. There can be motion and now at rest; a lime-kiln, in a picnothing in inland scenery which can give the sense of life and motion and connexion with turesque rocky field; an ancient church-tower, the world like sea changes. The motion of a when the setting sun shines upon it; a colliery, barely visible in the morning, but conspicuous waterfall is too continuous, too little varied, as with its lofty wagon-way, and the self-moving the breaking of the waves would be, if that were all the sea could afford. The fitful action wagons running hither and thither, as if in of a windmill, the waving of trees, the ever- various degrees of ascent, whose yards, padpure wilfulness; and three or four farms, at changing aspects of mountains are good and docks, and dairies I am better acquainted with beautiful; but there is something more life-than their inhabitants would deem possible. like in the going forth and return of ships, in know every stack of the one on the heights. the passage of fleets, and in the never-ending Against the sky I see the stacking of corn and variety of a fishery.' hay in the season, and can detect the slicing away of the provender, with an accurate eye, at the distance of several miles. I can follow the sociable farmer in his summer-evening ride, pricking on in the lanes where he is alone, in order to have more time for the unconscionable gossip at the gate of the next farm-house, and for the second talk over the paddock fence of the next, or for the third or fourth before the porch, or over the wall, when the resident farmer comes out, pipe in mouth, and puffs with a shawl over her cap, to see what can amidst his chat, till the wife appears, detain him so long; and the daughter follows, with her gown turned over her head, (for it is now chill evening,) and at last the sociable horseman finds he must be going, looks at his watch, and, with a gesture of surprise, turns hay-making goes forward in its season. It his steed down a steep broken way to the slopes down to a hollow, where the prior of old beach, and canters home over the sands, left preserved his fish, there being sluices formerly hard and wet by the ebbing tide, the white at either end; the one opening upon the river, horse making his progress visible to me and the other upon the little haven below the through the dusk. Then, if the question priory, whose ruins still crown the rock. arises, which has most of the gossip spirit, he From the prior's fish-pond the green down or I, there is no shame in the answer. Any slopes upwards again to a ridge; and on the such small amusement is better than harmslope are cows grazing all summer, and half less-is salutary-which carries the spirit of way into the winter. Over the ridge, I survey the sick prisoner abroad into the open air, and the harbor, and all its traffic; the view examong country people. When I shut down tending from the light-houses far to the right, to a horizon of the sea to the left. Beyond my window, I feel that my mind has had an airing." the harbor lies another county, with, first,

In the writer's description of her own retreat, we recognise that pleasant little watering place, Tynemouth, in Northumberland. What a faithful daguerreotype painting is the following!—

"But then, there must not be too much sea. The strongest eyes and nerves could not support the glare and oppressive vastness of an unrelieved expanse of waters. I was aware of this in time, and fixed myself where the view of the sea was inferior to what I should have preferred, if I had come to the coast for a summer visit. Between my window and the sea is a green down-as green as any field in Ireland; and on the nearer half of this down,

I

I

away

We are less inclined to agree with the less relish and success than by those at ease writer's speculations on Life, than with any and in full vigor. In my childhood, I attendother portion of the volume. The world's ed, as an observer, one fine morning, at the funeral of a person with whom I was well acamelioration, and the consequent increase quainted, without feeling any strong affection. of human happiness, are her fond dreams; I was somewhat moved by the solemnity, and and she grounds their now probable near- by the tears of the family; but the most powerness upon the growing influence of the ful feeling of the day was excited when the popular classes. We are old-fashioned evening closed in, gusty and rainy, and I enough to regard the movements of the thought of the form I knew so well, left alone present day with fear, rather than hope. else was warm and sheltered. I felt that, if I in the cold and darkness, while every body We do not think we have strengthened our had been one of the family, I could not have political building by knocking away the neglectfully and selfishly gone to bed that buttresses and carefully picking out the night, but must have passed the hours till daycorner-stones; nor do we see that we have light by the grave. Every child has felt this: wisely legislated for the masses, by giving and every child longs to know whether a sick them, through our new enactments, fifty friend contemplates that first night in the cold We grave, masters where they had formerly one. and whether the prospect excites any are stupid enough also to discredit the people's advancement in virtue, since the era of reforms began. Neither increased power, nor increased knowledge, imply of necessity augmented goodness. A sword in a child's hand is most dangerous to the weak wielder of it; perhaps it had better for ever rested in its sheath. We want faith, moreover, in the world's improving itself; and we shall continue to hold such a thing as of impossible occurrence so long as we perceive man deficient alike in the power and in the will to effect the change. We are sure that when such an advancement comes, it will not be from the operations of the human mind, but from a change in the human heart.

emotions.

"Surely-we do not contemplate it-frequently eagerly. In the dark night, we picture the whole scene, under every condition the imagination can originate. By day, we hold up before our eyes that most won drous piece of our worldly wealth-our own right hand: examine its curious texture and mechanism, and call up the image of its sure tions? Each must answer for himself. As deadness and decay. And with what emofor me, it is with mere curiosity, and without any concern about the lonely, cold grave. I doubt whether any one's imagination rests there; whether there is ever any panic about the darkness and the worm of the narrow house.

"As for our future home—the scene where our living selves are to be-how is it possible The essay "Death to the Invalid," in imagination, when it is to be our next exthat we should not be often resorting thither though eminently beautiful, appears to us cursion from our little abode of sickness and over full of shadowy mysticism. There is helplessness-when it is so certain that we too much of philosophy in it-too little of cannot be disappointed of it, however wearily religion. Here, if any where, on account long it may be before we go-when all that of our utter ignorance, speculation should has been best in our lives, our sabbaths, all have little place. None but they who tasted sunset evenings and starry nights, all our revof it, can tell what it really is; yet the when all these things have always pointed erence and love that are sanctified by death, living love to color it with their own fancy- to our future life, and been associated with it, ings, and according to different dispositions how is it possible that we should not be ever or different emotions, to invest it at one looking forward to it now when our days are time with terrors, at another time with sur-low and weary, and our pleasures few? The passing beauty. To the invalid, and chiefly to the one who is so permanently, it is of course a constant thought; he turns to it without alarm as the natural exodus from captivity; and as the star brightens on which the eye fastens for a while, he sees in it hour by hour an added glory. We must give an extract :

"Those who speculate outside on the experience of the sick room, are eager to know whether this solitary transit is often gone over in the imagination, and whether with more or

liability is to too great familiarity with the subject. When our words make children look abashed, and call a constraint over the manners of those we are conversing with, and cause even the most familiar eyes to be averted, we find ourselves reminded that the subject of a person's death is one usually thought not easy to discuss with him. In our retirement, we are apt to forget, till expressly reminded, the importance of distinctions of rank and property in society, so nearly as they vanish in our survey of life, in comparison with moral differences; and, in like manner, we have to recall an almost lost idea, that death is an awkward topic, except in the abstract, when

our casual mention of a will, or of some trans- | sickness, whether in relation to one's self, or action to follow our death, introduces an awe and constraint into conversation."

And again, in reference to dear friends who have felt with her all her feelings, and have now gone before her to rest, what beautiful thoughts are these! If such departures form, for the healthful, a link with the Unseen, how much more do they heighten the invalid's anticipations of future things:

to others; in the former case, as conducting to self-contempt, if not self-despair, and in the latter, as debarring one especially from the visits of children, "the brightest, if not the tenderest, angels of the sickroom." She shows well, how widely friends in health may err in the estimation of the sufferer's fortitude-at one time imagining that all power of endurance has passed away, because, through intense agony the soul is made to "cleave to the dust;" and "Perhaps the familiarity of the idea of death is by nothing so much enhanced to us as by lime patience, when he had really no cause at another time giving him credit for subthe departure before us of those who have sympathized in our prospect. The close do- or temptation to feel otherwise. She demestic interest thus imparted to that other nies, from deep experience, the possibility life is such as I certainly never conceived of of becoming inured to pain, so as to disrewhen in health, and such as I observe people gard it; but she would have it encountered in health do not conceive of now. It seems but the other day that I was receiving letters by antagonistic forces, and thus subdued of sympathy and solace, and also of religious by the power of ideas. An omnipotent and philosophical investigation as to how life host of these she can call up at will, by her here and hereafter appeared to me; letters books and pictures, and their associations. which told of activity, of labors, and journey- From her couch she has but to turn her ings, which humbled me by a sense of idleness eyes to the wall above, and behold "the and uselessness, while they spoke of humbling consolations of eighteen centuries," in one feelings as regarding the privileges of my se-portrait-the CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR of clusion. All this is as if it were yesterday; Scheffer; and the fullness of her varied and now, these correspondents have been gone for years. For years we have thought emotions she gives us in this, our last, exof them as knowing the grand secret,' as tract: familiarized with those scenes we are for ever

prying into, while I lie no wiser (in such a comparison) than when they endeavoured to learn somewhat of these matters from me.

And besides these close and dear companions, what departures are continually taking place! Every new year there are several-friends, acquaintances, or strangers-who shake their heads when I am mentioned, in friendly regret at another year opening before me without prospect of health-who sends me comforts or luxuries, or words of sympathy, amidst the pauses of their busy lives; and before another year comes round, they have dropped out of the world-have learned quickly far more than I can acquire by my leisure-and from being merely outside my little spot of life, have passed to above and beyond it. Little ones who

speculated on me with awe-youthful ones who ministered to me with pity-busy and important persons, who gave a cordial but passing sigh to the lot of the idle and helpless; some of these have outstripped me, and left me looking wistfully after them. Such incidents make the future at least as real and familiar to me as the outside world; and every permanent invalid will say the same, and we must not be wondered at if we speak of that great interest of ours oftener, and with more familiarity than others use."

In the inquiry on temper, the writer searchingly examines the causes and modifications of the irritability produced by

others that are tendered for our solace! One "See what force this is, in comparison with and another, and another of our friends comes hope of relief,' that talisman which looks so to us with an earnest pressing upon us of the well till its virtues are tried! They tell us of renewed health and activity-of what it will be to enjoy ease again-to be useful againto shake off our troubles, and be as we once

were.

We sigh, and say, it may be so; but they see that we are neither roused nor soothed by it. Then one speaks differently, tells us that we shall never be better-that we shall continue for long years as we are, or shall that pain, and disturbance, and death are insink into deeper disease and death; adding, dissolubly linked with the indestructible life of the soul, and supposing that we are willing to be conducted on in this eternal course by Him whose thoughts and ways are not as oursburst in, and take up the word! What have but whose tenderness . . Then how we we not to say, from the abundance of our hearts, of that benignity-that transcendent wisdom-our willingness-our eagerness-our sweet serenity-till we are silenced by our unutterable joy."

Our failing space constrains us to pass over the two remaining essays, with but a brief allusion. They relate to the perils and pains of invalidism, and its gains and privileges, respectively; and are fully equal

to any of the preceding papers. Our read-| ers will gather from our quotations the character of the work, which is of the purest kind. It is not a volume to be read through hastily, and then laid aside; but one at once requiring, and repaying, the severest study. The mind of the writer is plainly of that stamp, which Bacon calls "full" and her sentences are weighty in thoughts-thoughts which create thoughts. It was a notion of Shelley's, that feeling so lengthens out life, that the man of talent who dies at thirty is immeasurably older than the dullard who drags on his unmarked existence to threescore. He has, emphatically, lived more. If we might reason similarly, the writer of these essays has lived centuries. Each hour has brought its thought-life with it, and emotions sufficient for years; and hours upon hours have gone over thus with her in her solitary chamber, and she has lived them all. In the present volume we have the records of a few. She possesses, almost in intensity, that lovely, yet how fearful, gift, the capability of suffering; and she has largely used it. Yet her experiences have ever brought some good with them, vivifying the heart, not hardening it; and when they depart, she invariably discovers that they have left a blessing behind them.

We reluctantly close this beautiful volume, only to make it the frequent companion of our own leisure hours. It needs no further exposition, and what we have extracted will sufficiently plead its cause. We have only to add that the gifted writer is, we understand, Harriet Martineau.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMMING-BIRDS.

From the Dublin University Magazine.

WHEN Saint Patrick preached in the Emerald Isle,
The Fairies that haunted the green,
And their revels had held, in olden time,
Were filled with envy and spleen.

So they went where the water-lilies float,
On the edge of the shallow bay,
And they chose themselves each a little boat,
To carry them far away.
Merrily now that little fleet

Bounds o'er the waters blue;

Boldly the fairies have taken their seat,
Each in her light canoe.

They gave to their Queen the largest flower,
Their perilous course to guide;
And after her, like a snowy shower,
The tiny vessels glide.

The eddying ripples that bore them along,

A murmuring melody played;
And the fairies, who knew the words of its song,
A whispering answer made.

We have thought for many a day-and
the book before us revives the impression
that more true heroism is needed for a
severe sickness, than for mingling in the
terrors of a battle-field. With life beating
strong in his pulses, and health careering
in his veins, and now half-maddened by
the braying of pibroch or clarion, the sol-
dier rushes against his foeman-determined
to "do or die." If he possesses a minute
to think, his memories are thronged with
the vivas of his countrymen, and the undy-
ing remembrances of generations to come;
and danger, and wounds, and death are
disregarded, when he feels that his name
shall yet be a household word. But oh,
how changed is every thing, when with
nerves unstrung, and health-that life of
life-departed, we have to encounter the
enemy amidst the heart-depressing silence
of the sick-room! The trial to be under-
gone is not a whit the less fiery, while the
power and stimulant to endure it are want-
ing. Blessed be God for it, a new series
of helps then comes in; and when the sun
of this world has gone down, it is not dark-Are the Fairies who left the Emerald Isle,
ness rules omnipotent, but the moon and
stars arise in heaven to guide the wanderer.

The waters are hurrying away to the south,
And bear them on with their tide,
Till safely they reach the river's mouth,

And float on the ocean wide.

Though many a day and night they sailed,
Warmly the sunshine fell,
For the might of the winds and waves was stayed
By the power of their magic spell.

That magic spell has banished the night,

While their westward course they take,
For a glorious trail of burnished light
Is following in their wake.

The fairies have reached the coral strand,
And left the lily-flowers;
They fly away in a merry band

To the pleasant citron bowers.
And the humming-birds seen in that sunny clime,
Sparkling with rainbow hues,

In their lily-white canoes.

H. B.