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THE FISHER BOY.

THOU recallest to me, rosy boy, the careless moments of my early youth. How often, with my rod in my hand, have I sought the shelter of some shady thicket, when the sun had risen too high to pursue the sport which had engaged me from early dawn by the margin of the tumbling brook. With old Izaak Walton as my companion, to give to my idle occupation the charm of imagination and genius, and my basket of provisions by my side, I have happily wasted away the hot hours, until the cooler breezes of evening again welcomed me to my sport.

Who that has enjoyed the pleasures of wandering free and far among scenes of rural beauty, has not learned to loathe more deeply the irksome bondage of a city life. Give me the blue and lofty mountain shutting out another world behind it—the sequestered valley where I may quietly muse among overhanging rocks, soothed by the murmurs of the bubbling stream. Let my companions be nature's free denizens. Let me watch the finny tribe glancing over the yellow

sands, and dashing at the thoughtless insect who ventures too near the treacherous wave. Let me listen to the songs of various birds as they first hail the rising of the sun, or seek their nests as he descends into the west. Let me sit unfeared by the sportive squirrel or timid rabbit that plays around my feet; or cull the ever-varying flowers that cover the face of earth with the gayest of vestures.

These are the scenes which gradually impress upon the mind the truest knowledge of the quiet sublimity and variety of nature; they give to it that tone which at once enlarges and exalts its views; they create in us new and happier emotions; they impart

'That serene and blessed mood

In which the affections gently lead us on.'

These are the scenes which calm and soften the heart and fill us more deeply with that silent devotion, which seems naturally to arise towards the inscrutable being, who has created them all for his own good ends, and whom we learn to adore with deeper humility and admiration.

THE HEROINE OF SULI.

BY GODFREY WALLACE.

MANY, many are the hours I have spent in the glorious wilderness of imagination! Who would ever exchange it for the plodding regularity of matter of fact existence? O! the joy of revelling the owner of half the treasures of the world, and using your exhaustless wealth in gladdening that circle of creation of which you are the centre!-O! the rapturous exultation of the moment of successful affection, when the eye of beauty, before clouded by the staid prudery of female decorum, beams with all the mild softness of the tenderest love, when she, you have so long adored, hangs on each word of the tale of past mental suffering with rapt attention, and repays each by-gone pang with those endearing looks which woman only can bestow, and which make the heart of man throb with passionate emotion!-O! the glories of the field of combat; the trumpet's call, the hasty preparation, the dread array of opposing hosts, the thunder of ar

tillery, the fierce charge, when, at the head of hundreds, you hear the rapid tramp of steeds, you see the determined resolution of those whom you are leading to brave and conquer death:-the triumph of success, the plaudits of those who hail you as a protector and preserver!-O! the revellings of power-power gained by talent, and maintained by virtue; when listening multitudes hang upon your words, and their minds are swayed to and fro by an eloquence which makes them obedient to your will, and enables you to lead them to their happiness! All these intense enjoyments are in your reach-imagination can afford them; and for the moment with all the vividness of reality. -O! how I love the silent solitude of nature! It is far upon the pointed hill top, where you stand alone, from the bustle and restlessness of the world-the heavens above you, and the dark green forests around and below you, where the dwellings of man are afar off, where the smoke from their hearths curls only in the dim horizon-it is there that the almost awful and indescribable sensation of quietude, spreading through all visible nature, makes you conscious that you are alone. I have revelled, I revel still, for hours in the solitude which I have described. I have stood by the running stream, and watched it, as it dashed its petty, but untiring foam from ledge to ledge of some obtruding rock, until I fancied myself another Sacripant, and looked around for an Angelica to appear, a bright vision of beauty.-O! that I had lived before the

days of Ariosto, when bugle horns hung on castle gates for knights in black, white, blue, and green armour to blow; when dwarfs of hideous form appeared on projecting battlements; when giants and ogres lived only to keep ladies in duress, and exercise the valour of their champions; when money was unnecessary in travelling; and when errant damsels stood all weathers in the same garments, never caught cold, and knew nothing of cashmeres, merinos, or gum elastic overshoes-O! that I had lived in these days, Orlando would have been a fool to me, and Godfrey Wallace would have been immortalized by the bard of Italy! But, reader, this jesting is sacrilege to my feelings; romance has been my presiding star, at times an ignis fatuus, at times the source of actual and positive enjoyment. Experience has not yet diminished it; and I am afraid that age itself will not ultimately destroy it.

The life of a dreamer is for himself alone; his biography would be sneered at, because it could not be understood. The world consider him a useless member of the civil compact-and perhaps he is so; but, so far as enjoyment is the question, he would not change places, minds included, with any plodding son of Plutus, who could show even the wealth of the Peruvian Inca, piled in solid wedges of gold round every room of his palace, or his person.—I am a dreamer, a very dreamer.-Reader, do you wish an illustration? You shall have it without further peri

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