And curtains black as are the eyes of night: Within some nook, amid thick flowers and moss, In waywardness of mirth Oh, come! and hear the hymn that we are chanting Amid the star-light through the thick leaves slanting. Thou lover of the banks of idle streams O'ershaded by broad oaks, with scatter'd gleams Of wavers far off above thee, like the wings Some giant, with an idleness of motion, Thou who dost bless the weary with thy touch, Come with thy crowd of dreams, oh thou! to whom Here touch our eyes, great Somnus! with thy wand- Come up into the sky, with fire-steeds leaping, No. VIII. TO CERES. Goddess of bounty! at whose spring-time call, Pierces the ground each young and tender blade, To whom the laughing earth looks up and yields Of truth and joy upon our souls this night, Oh thou, the Goddess of the rustling Corn! The rich full grapes, and holds the glowing cup And crowns thee with bright leaves to shade thine eye, Upon his beaming brow: If thy swift flight Be on some hill Of vine-hung Thrace-oh, come, while night is still, And greet with heaping arms our gladden'd sight! Lo! the small stars, above the silver wave, Our silent watch for thee, sitting before Thy chariot wheels Shall come, while Ocean to the burden reels Little Rock, State of Arkansas, SIR, It is with much doubt, and many misgivings, I have been induced by the entreaties of some friends in Boston to send the accompanying trifles in verse from this remote corner of the Union-beyond the Mississippi. I would fain believe them worthy a place in your inestimable Maga, which regularly reaches me here, two thousand miles from New York, within six or seven weeks of its publication in Edinburgh, and is duly welcomed as it deserves. Should you judge them worthy of publication, accept them as a testimonial of respect offered by one, resident in South-western forests, to him whose brilliant talents have endeared him, not only to every English, but to multitudes of American bosoms-equally dear as Christopher North and Professor Wilson. Most respectfully, Sir, Your obedient servant, ALBERT PIKE. [These fine Hymns, which entitle their author to take his place in the highest order of his country's poets, reached us only a week or two ago—though Mr Pike's most gratifying letter is dated so far back as last August: and we mention this, that he may not suppose such compositions could have lain unhonoured in our repositories from autumn to spring. His packet was accompanied by a letter not less gratifying-from Mr Isaac C. Pray-dated New York, April 20th, 1839-and we hope that, before many weeks have elapsed, the friends, though perhaps then almost as far distant from each other as from us, may accept this, our brotherly salutation, from our side of the Atlantic.C. N.] SONNET. ON THE DEATH OF A LADY. BY ISAAC C. PRAY, JUN. WITHIN a dell, one Spring, my boyhood knew A silver rill, which played through clustering ranks OUR CHAMBERS. "THREE pair of stairs north, sir," said the treasurer's clerk with a low bow," three rooms, two fire-places, and an escape-door to the roof." "Nobody overhead?" said we. "Not a soul, sir!" said the treasurer's clerk, repeating the inflection; "three rooms, two fire-places, and an escape-door, too." "Enough," said we; "the cham bers are ours-ours from this moment!" The words made us a householder and an elector; and we emerged from the treasurer's office three inches the taller for our newly-acquired dignities. "And now to find these chambers of ours," said we to ourselves, as we stepped out into Aha! gentle reader, you had nearly caught us tripping, but you are not going to find us out so easily as all that we intend to be in our literary, as, alas, we dread to be in our legal character — unknown! We are of a retiring and bashful disposition, and covet not the digito monstrari et dicere hic est: and whether it be Old Square, or New Square, or South Square, or any other square; or Pump Court, or Fig-tree Court, or Churchyard Court, or any other court of an equally cheerful and prepossessing appellation, in which we have taken up our "local habitation," we mean to leave to your ingenuity to discover; supposing, of course, that you think it worth your while to exert it in the enquiry. For the smaller inns, indeed (for we will own this much, that we dwell among the aristocracy of the law), we entertain horror not unmingled with pity-miserable, broken-down, decayed, shabby-genteel looking places they are-masses of superannuated bricks and mortar-full of untenanted rooms and broken windows-silent and sad once the flourishing and favoured children of the larger societies -now neglected and disinherited outcasts-cut off with a shilling by their unnatural parents. We seem to grow mouldy as we pass through them they startle us in the heart of London with the echo of our own footsteps. The very ghosts of old times must feel ashamed to revisit them, and be weary of their perambulations long before cock-crow. "But we must first find our laundress," said we, stopping short at the bottom of the staircase on whose doorpost our own name was soon to figure; so we faced about-obtained her direction at the nearest porter's lodge, and sallied forth for Court, Street. How many times we had to ask our way-how many alleys we threaded how many times we felt our pockets, to convince ourselves of the safety of their contents-how many chimney-sweeps and coal-heavers we encountered in passages where there was only room for one and a half abreast-how many pyramids of oranges, and how many tempers of ancient Irishwomen, we discomposed in our blunderings-how many beau-traps we trod in-how many times we devoted the object of our search to the devil-may be perchance imagined, but assuredly not enumerated. The houses-the people -the sights we saw-the sounds we heard-and, "horrible! most horrible!" the smells we smelt, the pen of Boz might perhaps describe-to our own the attempt would be hopeless. We had nearly given up the quest in despair, when fortune pointed out to us the good-natured face of a semisubterraneous green-grocer in a small way, earnestly engaged in chaffering for his last cabbage with an old woman, who looked as if she could not by any possibility live long enough to eat it. However, the bargain was struck-the stock was cleared-the crone hobbled off with her prize, and the vender of vegetables had time for philanthropy. Kind soul! but for his aid our laundress had never greeted our enquiring eyes, and Court remained as undiscoverable as the longitude. As we entered, the door of which we were in search opened, and the visage of a female well-stricken in years presented itself, just in time to save the inhabitants of the district from the astonishment of a double knock. She was evidently in search of something, and we were not long in discovering the object of her anxiety, in the form of a juvenile truant, who was seated by the side of the kennel at the further extremity of the court, surrounded by a bevy of admiring contemporaries, and busily engaged, as the facetious Thomas Hood has it, "a-playing at making little dirt pies.' Happy innocent! little did he know the service we then rendered him! The storm was rapidly gathering-another moment, and terrible would have been its burst!-the eye was already kindling, the right hand working convulsively, the lip half unclosed_ "Pray," said we, in our most insinuating tone, "does a Mrs Mary Popkins live here?" The hand unclenched-the gathered lightning postponed its flash sine die the figure, drawn up to its full altitude, sank down into a half-inquisitive, half-reverential courtesy. "If you please, sir, I am Mrs Popkins," said the matron. Now, we never yet could understand how, in such cases, it matters one pin's head whether we please or not. We did not, as it happened, feel the slightest gratification at the intelligence; but the woman was Mrs Mary Popkins for all that, and we had nothing left for it but to explain the object of our visit, and to request an immediate inspection of our future domicile. It was our first introduction to that peculiar race of females, who call themselves laundresses on a very ancient and classical principle of nomenclature; because, as the experience of ages has at length most clearly decided, they never do by any chance wash any thing. We were accordingly rather curious in our examination of the outward appearance of the specimen which preceded us to our chambers; and the result of the scrutiny was at least so far satisfactory, that we have never, since that day, been mistaken in pronouncing sentence of laundress or no laundress upon any given woman. A pair of stuff boots, unlaced-a dirty handkerchief, thrown shawl-wise over the shoulders (we have rarely set eyes upon a laundress in a cloak)-a dull-patterned and dull-coloured gown, with an extensive hiatus behind, affording perspective glimpses of various garments of unmentionable names and ineffable dinginess a bonnet, generally black, which may be conceived, by a vigorous exertion of the imagination, to have boasted, at some long-past period, some faint pretensions to a shape— hands of horrid hue-" foreheads villainous low," and faces on which dirt, and snuff, and gin, have set their most indelible signs-may be pronounced the most general characteristics of the tribe;-and when we say that Mrs Popkins possessed them all, with the slight addition, or rather variation, of having but one solitary organ of vision, we feel confident that she is standing before the mind's eye of the reader exactly as she appears at this moment to put our chambers "to rights," in blissful unconsciousness of the immortality to which our pen is even now consigning her. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty steps! Mercy on us! here we are at last. These old women are truly astonishing creatures. Here are we, on the topmost landing-place, with but a light load of years on our back, puffing and blowing like a stranded grampus; and there stands Mrs Popkins, who might well be taken for Methuselah's eldest daughter, as composed as if she had not stirred a foot for these three months. "So these are our chambers, are they?" said we, as we entered a tolerably large room with three windows, and a very time-honoured and time-worn marble chimneypiece. "Yes, if you please, sir," said Mrs Popkins "this is the sitting-room, and this is the bedroom, and this is the" "Just so," said we, interrupting the catalogue;" and pray, Mrs Popkins, what may this be?" "If you please, sir," replied our laundress, pointing to a recess about two feet square, with a board across the front-" If you please, sir, that is the coal-cellar." "The devil it is!" said we, our teeth literally chattering at the intelligence. Our astonishment was too evident to escape the notice even of Mrs Popkins' single eye. "If I might make so bold, sir," said she, with a low courtesy to palliate her audacity, "I should say you had never lived in chambers before, sir." "Never," said we; not feeling, at the moment, very much delighted at |