from which all faces are alike, complete the furniture of my apartment: a scraggly bell-wire in the corner gives evidence that there either is, or has been, an intention of answering the summons of any chance visiter; and bidding good night to the twin hills, and to the sky, with all its poetry, I compose myself to sleep, in spite of the fleas, whose ambuscade I in vain endeavor to discover, and whose inflictions I must therefore patiently bide.

'It was near six o'clock, the next morning, before I had began my way up the Great Salève. The path to the mountain top was exceedingly steep, long, and rough, and the sun shone broadly in the sky before I reached the summit. During the whole ascent, however, my eye and fancy were entertained with brilliant views of the neighboring valleys, just appearing from under the night mists, and glistening in the early rays of the sun. After an hour's toil, I found myself upon the less steep part of the mountain, where cows were grazing upon excellent pasturage, and several huts showed that I had not yet reached the region where nature refuses to contribute to man's subsistence. At one of these, I refreshed myself with a cup of cream, which was offered me by one of a ragged, dirty family, who were eating their morning meal of boiled lettuce and bread. I found that a mountain life had not made, nor kept them, honest.

The highest point of the mountain, (called by the peasants Les treize arbres,' from a number of trees, which have unaccountably acquired size and strength to resist the storms, and stand there alone,) is three hundred feet above the lake, and more than four thousand above the level of the sea. From this point of view, I surveyed the extensive tract of country, described with such beautiful faithfulness by the author of the Nouvelle Heloïse,' from the Alps to the Jura, and the rich vales between the shores of the lake, from Geneva to the site of Lausanne, which was then hidden by a heavy cloud, at a distance, the passage by which Hannibal entered Italy and on the other side the Simplon, the Bernard, and the Cenis; and then turned my eye down to the plain to descry so minute in comparison of this vast array of nature- the almost imperceptible cities and villages of men, the small threading roads, so much boasted, upon which an empire's treasure had been lavished. These human works seemed but a cirumstance, an exception, an insignificant chance. They appeared like the works of a petty insect on small spots of a vast expanse; and brought to my mind the days when I used to sit crosslegged, by the side of the path in my native village, to watch the ants scudding around and over their little hill. A like insignificant proportion do the bodies of man and insect bear to the extent of the ground upon which they labor; with like blind and ridiculous precipitancy, do they caper about for the accomplishment of their petty purposes, which a chance breeze may render vain, or a careless footstep crush, and both alike confine their view to the few atoms over which their dominion lies, heedless of the incomparable beauties and grandeur that lie beyond the scene of their follies. Yet there is this all-important difference between the natures of these two animals. The works of the insect are as insignificant as his body; and its nest is no more commodiously arranged now, than when it rose in Adam's pathway; whereas, the works of man,

minute as they and he are, extend over the surface of an immense tract. By the accumulated labor of ages and nations, he changes the appearance, the uses, the influences, of all upon which and in which he lives. He makes his roads over the largest hills. He turns the course of broad rivers, and makes use of lakes and seas. Climate changes after his steps, and the whole earth, so vast, becomes from savage, drear, and waste, cultivated, cheering, and enjoyable. This little lord of the creation, by his retrospective and prospective faculties, becomes an important being, and rises to the dignity of an integer in the universe.

6

'The mountain top,' continued Philaster, is the place for the musings of the religious philosopher. There, every thing mundane sinks to its due station of inferiority; the air, purified from mists and exhalations, inspires greater activity of life; the world's noise and filth left far below. -the heavens 'shed down their stellar virtue,' uncorrupted; the sky, carrying the thoughts with it, expands to a wider arch, and assumes a deeper blue; and by the apparently increased proximity of the celestial luminaries, the solitary muser seems to have made half his journey to the better world. The ancients, either from a knowledge of human nature, or from a certain religious instinct, sought, for their consecrated edifices, the highest sites. The Temple of Capitoline Jove overlooked the whole of the imperial city; that of Jupiter Ammonius is seen from far, the highest point of the Alban hills; upon the Appenine, the Temple of the Sybil yet stands, the most picturesque of the ruins of Italy, upon the point of the rock which overhangs the highest cascade of the Roman territory; the most ornate of the churches of modern times is at the top of a lofty hill, in the centre of the Neapolitan capital, and commands a view of the bay and of the shore which Virgil has immortalized — of Vesuvius, and of the tracts which have been, at successive periods, desolated by her eruptions; upon the highest peak of the snowy Rochemelon, among the Alps, is a chapel, to which the inhabitants of the valley annually and with toil ascend, to worship God. So it is, that elevation of place has been in all times held typical of elevation of soul. Certainly, the one tends to produce the other.'

Here Philaster broke off. The company thanked him, and he went his way,

COME in, little sister, so healthful and fair,
Come, take in our father's best parlor a share;
You've been kept long enough at the nurse's, I trow,
Where the angry lakes roar, and the northern winds blow;
Come in- we've a pretty large household, 't is true,
But the twenty-five children shall make room for you.

SOLOMON

QUIGG:

EX-MEMBER OF CONGRESS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE LATE BEN. SMITH, LOAFER.'

'To what base uses may we come at last!'

On the second step of a 'stoop' in Broadway, sate QuiggSOLOMON QUIGG, ex-member of the Nineteenth Congress of the United States casting about in his mind like a melancholy heron, the means and devices for procuring a breakfast. While his large person expanded over the solid bench whereon he sate, his ponderous chin rested on one hand, and the other reposed in his breeches pocket; his eyes, meantime, travelling here and there, as if in search of something to silence the voice of hunger. His dress was a congress of absurdities a pie-bald court, to which every tailor's shop in the city seemed to have sent its representative. While one leg of his blue pantaloons draggled on the ground, the other, apparently of a more aspiring disposition, mounted to the very knee. Half his coat was of a mixed gray, while the other moiety, was of a lively crimson. His vest, originally the gift of a strolling player, whom Quigg had once patronized at Washington, had been so often remodelled and amended, that, like the constitution of a small debating society, scarce a shred of the original article remained. The countenance of Quigg had certainly been once expressive: now, the only feature which retained a claim to that appellative, was a bulbous which stood out from his face like the boom of a vessel, with a light run out at its extremity; a beacon of warning to all those who sail the sea of wine, lest, one day, when they dream not, shipwreck may befal them. The mouth, which had doubtless in days past been bearded with scorn, and stiff with haughty feeling, now hung loose and agape, like an old lady's worn-out purse. On the summit of his head rested an ancient, bell-shaped hat, the crown of which had partly given way, and lifted up and down, like the lid of a pipkin, with every passing gust of wind. It seemed to be a convenience, by which the wearer's more devout thoughts might find a shorter road to heaven.

nose,

At times as Quigg sate thus, with an elbow on his knee, a tear, despite a certain effort at self-control, would steal from the corner of his eye, and resting for a moment on a crow-foot wrinkle underneath it, run down his cheek beside, just so as to escape his mouth, over his chin, and fall to the ground.

His aspect expressed, to me at least, a certain regret for the past, and doubt of the future. Quigg the congressman was now but a ragged gentleman a loafer. As he sat upon that cold stone, weeping in tatters, he was, unconsciously, the representative of a constituency larger than his original political one; namely, of that vast body known as decayed politicians - a red-faced, tavern-haunting tribe; fishes who live in an ocean of liquor, and yet are always athirst; the cast off leaders of parties; demagogues out of favor; office-holders thrust into that direst Erebus-out-of-office. The cushion of state Quigg had exchanged for a more substantial bench in the open sunshine. No longer a servant of the people, he was the lacquey of his

own sweet will. Abandoning the dress-circle of fashionable life, where he had once revolved a special planet, he looked upon it from a humble corner in the pit. And yet hunger was not so easily to be got over. It is a creditor who takes up its mansion within ourselves, and devours our very seat of life, till it be paid the uttermost farthing. Quigg was in a perplexity.

THE room into which Solomon Quigg was ushered that night, (when he had passed triumphantly through the Marengo, the Austerlitz, and the Waterloo of the day-breakfast, dinner, and supperwas an upper chamber of an old tavern in the second ward of our metropolis. The tavern had once been the 'head-quarters' of a dominant political party. At a glance, Quigg read its history. On one side, the remnant of candle which he held in his hand gleamed on the dusty fragment of a flag which had erst waved proudly, illumed with the national stars and stripes. This was rolled up, and on it as a pillow, Quigg laid his unkempt head. Near his right hand, on the floor, reposed a broken fiddle, which had once given forth cheering music to the freemen of the second ward. Against the instrument, reclined the relics of a tin-pan, half through the bottom of which was thrust a mouldering drum-stick, which in its better days had summoned from the cold metal sounds that stirred many a voter's bosom, and filled many an urchin heart with keen delight. In different corners of the humble attic hung, from pegs and nails, flags, banners, ensigns, and devices of a thousand kinds, setting forth in monstrous capitals the virtues and qualifications of favorite eandidates.

But and this struck the somnolent eyes of Quigg with most force on a corner of one of the tattered banners were the figures 18; the very year in which Quigg himself had been elected, after a fierce struggle, to the American Congress. As he stretched himself for sleep, his hand, by some mischance, struck against a modest pine box, which stood perched just over his head: it came to the floor, and from its bowels rolled forth a heap of dusty papers, folded like doctors' prescriptions. He seized one of them, and on it found:

For Congress.
SOLOMON QUIGG.

Here was a theme for thought. Quigg now lay as it were before a wizard glass, over which passed in gloomy procession the achievements, the glories, and the triumphs, of his past life. In contrast with that bright 'lang-syne,' he felt the double bitterness of his present condition. His soul began to stir afresh, and to feel the throbbings of a revived ambition. A thousand plans and enterprises crowded his brain, and all that night he lay restless; meditating high schemes, and devising new ladders, in this his Jacob's vision, by which to reach the heaven of his desire. Quigg was once more an ambitious man.