be felt even by the poorest and least instructed of the community. As the spring-time came, I used to escape on the Sunday into the pleasant parks and country lanes in the neighborhood of Paris. There, in the sylvan glades and hills of St. Cloud, among the alleys of the wood at Vincennes, or in the funereal forest-shades of St. Germains, I used to spend the long sunny days alone, with a book of my own thoughts. I was resigned, if not happy; and my book progressed with the weeks and months as they went by. There was one of the attendants at the Bibliothèque Royale, in whom I took a considerable interest. He was called M. Benoit. I first remarked him for the respectability of his appearance, and for the courtliness of his address. My surprise was one day excited by the discovery that he read the Oriental languages with facility. It happened thus: I had written the name of a rare Arabic work upon a slip of paper -as is the custom of the place—and handed it to him to procure for me. He looked at it, and shook his head. "It is useless, Monsieur," he said; "that work is not in the collection. I have been often asked for it, but in vain. If Monsieur will write for this work instead, I think he will find its contents very similar." And he wrote the title of another book upon the back of my paper, and wrote it, moreover, in the Arabic characters. "It may be original, Monsieur Henneberg, without being new," replied the old gentleman. "That it is original in your mind I know decidedly; for the MS. in question has never been copied, and, indeed, I think, has never been read excepting by myself and the writer." "Perhaps you are the writer!" I exclaimed, hastily. "Indeed I am not," he said, musingly; "but I knew him well—very well. He was a professor in the College Royale de France, and from him I received the greater part of my education in the Oriental tongues. He was a great sufferer, and he loved me dearly. I was his favorite pupil; I attended his death-bed. Just before he died he gave the MS. into my care, and bade me present it to the Bibliotheque Royale. I did so, and read it. It is utterly unknownit lies amidst thousands of others; and I believe no person has ever perused it before or since." "I should like to see this work," I said. "Très-bien," he replied, "I will show it to you to-morrow." I could not rest that night for thinking of what the old librarian had told me. I felt greatly disquieted that another should have been before me in this path, which I had hitherto believed a virgin solitude. My self-love, my ambition was wounded, and I rose in the morning feverish and unrefreshed. Precisely as the hour of admittance arrived I "You understand Arabic ?" I exclaimed, entered the reading-rooms of the library. I with amazement. He smiled sadly. "I was once a rich man, Monsieur," he said, with a sigh, "and my education is all that I have not lost." I looked around in every direction, but M. Benoit was nowhere to be seen. I tried to read-to work; but it was in vain. I could not keep my attention fixed for five minutes together, and I turned my head every instant toward the door. More than an hour elapsed before he came; but at last he entered the room and advanced to the corner where I was sitting. "It is here, M. Henneberg," he replied, pointing to a packet beneath his arm. "I had some difficulty in finding it, for it has lain there untouched these twenty years." After this I had many conversations with M. Benoit, and he frequently visited me at my apartments in the Faubourg St. Germain. learned that he was the son of a wealthy build- "Where is the manuscript, M. Benoit ?" I er; that he had received one of the most learn- said, eagerly-"the manuscript on Oriental lited and expensive of educations; that his prop-erature which you named to me last evening?" erty had been entirely lost in the boundless destruction of the Reign of Terror; that he had barely existed, for some time, upon the charity of a few compassionate savans; and that during the Consulate he had obtained this subordinate situation through the interest of an early college-friend. I compared this poor old man's condition with my own, and learned a lesson from his patient cheerfulness. Soon I entertained almost an affection for him. I found his conversation learned, often profound; and I gradually unfolded to him the plan and purpose of my book and of my opinions. One evening I had been reading a chapter to him, and we were arguing upon certain inductions which I had therein made from the system of Zoroaster. "It is very strange," said M. Benoit, "but it strikes me that we have a MS. in which the author has anticipated you on this subject." "Indeed!" I cried with a feeling of disappointment. "I had hoped that my views were original." Slowly, and with the tremulous fingers of age, he untied the papers in which it was enveloped, and placed the manuscript before me. The exterior was soiled with the dust of years, and the paper yellow like parchment. I opened the leaves at random; I started back; I rubbed my eyes, to be sure that I was not dreaming; then I sat staring, cold, silent as a stone image on a tomb: the handwriting upon those pages was my own. I think I have already said that mine was a very peculiar hand. It partook strangely of the curves and idiosyncrasies of Eastern characters. It was unlike any other, and at Leipzig it had frequently been the subject of remark. There was no mistaking it; and here it was reproduced before my eyes, in a manuscript written probably years before I was born! By a powerful, almost a superhuman effort, I mastered the emotion by which I had been over- | evening, and I went into the inn and dined excome, and, bending down that he might not ob-ecrably. When returned to the vehicle to reserve the deadly pallor of my face, I said, hoarsely, "And so it was a countryman of yours who wrote this, M. Benoit ?" "A kind friend and master of mine, M. Henneberg," replied the librarian; "not a countryman." "Indeed!" I said. "Was he not French ?" "Ah, mon Dieu! no; he was a German." Again I started. I turned to the beginning of the work; my eyes fell upon the first few sentences.... I had half expected it. Their import, though not their phraseology, was precisely the same as those which commenced my own book! "And pray from what part of Germany did your friend come, M. Benoit ?" I asked, with forced composure. "From the confines of Bohemia." "And his name?" "Karl Schmidt." "May I ask the date of his decease?" The old gentleman removed his glasses, and brushed a tear from his eyes. sume my night-journey, I found the three vacant places already occupied by three new passengers, and thus we went on toward Frankfort. In about a fortnight I arrived at Interlachen, and liked the place so well as to resolve upon staying there for several weeks. One day, sitting idly in the salle-à-manger of the Hotel Suisse, I happened to take a copy of Galignani's Messenger from the table. One of the first things that caught my eye was the following announcement: "MAY, 1854. "Died suddenly, on the evening of the 4th instant, in his chambers, at the College of, in Leipzig, Heinrich Henneberg, Professor of Oriental Literature, in the 65th year of his age; greatly beloved and regretted." And so this was the end-dead! and on the anniversary of his birth! Some people to whom I have read the foregoing memoir say that these things are coincidences, and that too much learning touched my poor friend's brain. It may be so; but there was a strange method in his madness, after all; and who can tell what revelations in psychology may yet be in store for "Hélas, mon pauvre ami! He died on the future generations? evening of the 4th of May, 1790." The very date and moment of my birth! I rose suddenly, and, leaning on the back of my chair, pressed one hand on my heart as if to still its fearful palpitation. I gasped for breath; I felt as if the ground were sinking from beneath my feet.... "Help, my friend!" I gasped help! I-I am dying!" LOVE EXPERIENCES OF AN IMPRES- IT I. is my misfortune to have what is called an impressible nature; that is to say, a nature intensely susceptible to surrounding influences. So easily does my heart take the stamp of conIn another moment I had fainted. I was very tiguous objects, that one would say it was made ill for some days after this; but as soon as I of wax; while, on the other hand, so rapidly do had sufficiently recovered to bear the fatigue of the different impressions disappear, that it might so long a journey, I left Paris for Leipzig. I be said to be made of sand. I have a theory, have never since gone beyond the boundaries however, which is much more satisfactory; it is of this city. Here, in the apartments which I that the heart is composed, like an onion, of an occupied as a youth, I live an aged and an aus-immense number of layers, and that the consectere man. Here I shall soon die, and so endutive impressions made upon it do not become my "strange, eventful history." Such is the story of my life—a life cursed and withered by glimpses of a past, which is known only to God. I have remembered scenes and people I have beheld palpable evidences and traces of myself in former stages of my being. Whereunto do these things tend? Will death bring me to a full knowledge of these mysteries? or is this spiritual particle, which men call the soul, destined to migrate eternally from shape to shape, never rising to a higher and diviner immortality? Alas! I know not; neither, friend, canst thou reply to me. Life is a problem; Death, perchance, a word! Will no hand lift the curtain of eternity? obliterated, as would seem, but sink deeper and deeper below the surface, so that when the layers come finally to be removed-or, in other words, when the heart comes at last to be peeled-each impression will be discovered in regular order, and the common saying that "first impressions are deepest" will be found to be literally true. But there is as much difference in hearts as in onions. The layers of an Englishman's heart, for example, are coarse and thick; this is especially true of the outer layer. To make an impression upon it is next to impossible. It appears to be of a tough substance, not unlike gutta percha. To make a distinct mark, you must come down upon it like a trip-hammer; once made, the impression lasts, to be sure, for a long time; but this is an advantage which is more than counterbalanced by the fact that an Englishman never gets more than half a dozen vivid impressions during his whole life, so that his heart is, in the end, but little better than a blank scroll, and will hardly pay for the peel It was nearly dusk by the time I had arrived at the end of the Professor's MSS., and the castle and church-spires of Gotha were already in sight. Presently the diligence stopped at an inn in the town; a party of young men surrounded the novel-reading student, and bore him off with tumultuous congratulations. The priest alighted, and wished me a civil good-ing. An Irishman's heart, on the contrary, or a Frenchman's, is very rich in impressions; every layer, way down to the core, is full of them; his heart, in the end, will be found to be like a volume of Harper's Magazine, every leaf of which is a picture of animated life. This is also true, to some extent, of the American heart, which, like a well-prepared daguerreotype-plate, is always ready to receive any kind of an image, good or bad, and equally ready to have it rubbed off, or, according to the above theory, sunk out of sight, to make place for a new one. Such is the case, at any rate, with my own heart-or, rather, such was the case once, for I fear me that at present it is little better for impressional, or any other than reservoir, purposes than a fossil. What I have now to say of it, therefore, refers to the past. To begin: been thirty-five, while the latter should have been twenty-five, but was (or the family Bible fibbed) exactly eighteen. My story commences with the day I first took my seat at the Whittles table; and I should say here, lest I forget it, that whoever took a regular seat at the Whittles table became at once a regular member of the Whittles family. Mrs. Whittles, or Mother Whittles, as we used to call her, was a widow "A beauty-waning and distressed widow, In the afternoon of her best days." Her husband had been absent from the present scene of things for about ten years; but the worthy defunct was always present in the spirit, for his portrait (unhappily not a speaking one) smiled upon us all from the dining-room wall, "the very picture," as his relict used to tell us, "of the best provider in the world-poor, poor Whittles, now cold in his grave!". - a speech usually followed by a long silence, and a murmuring round the table of the words, "Poor, poor Whittles!" In the summer of 1830, being then at the ripe age of five-and-twenty, I was living in Boston,* which I considered to be the only habitable city in the world, and which was, at any rate, the only city I had ever inhabited. If any one with Aside from the weakness, always excusable whom I came in contact pretended to prefer in a forlorn widow, of constantly alluding to her New York, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore, I took detached half, Mother Whittles was a very exhim at once to Faneuil Hall. If that didn't emplary and eminently maternal person. Her bring him to his senses, I conducted him (hur- table might, indeed, have been more liberally rying over Charlestown Bridge) to Bunker Hill; supplied, but then her terms were moderate, and and that failing, I promenaded him round the what we lacked in food we made up in fun. Common, and buried his prejudices - I forget Moreover, none of us were ever troubled with how many inches deep-in Frog Pond. Of dyspepsia. For myself, I naturally thought the course, if I had lived in any other city I should house, in all respects, a model establishment; have been equally in love with that, which serves, I wouldn't for the world have changed any thing at least, to show that I was not a true Bostonian. in it. I took comfort even in the self-satisfied In fact, I have since been domiciled in some doz- look of the great provider-who, by-the-way, I en different cities, each of which, for the time have since learned, was a great consumer also, being, I believed to be as much superior to any and did invariably provide "the very best the other as "modern Athens," in the opinion of market afforded," promptly paying for the same all Massachusetts men, is superior to what an-out of his wife's purse. cient Athens was, or what any other city, in the Old World or New, ever can be. To Miss Olivia Whittles I didn't at first take. She talked a little too much (a weakness with old maids) about her dear minister, Rev. Mr. Sturgeon, but when I came to hear that worthy divine, I was converted at once to her opinion tha the was "the gracefulest preacher in Boston;" and the next day hired a seat in the Whittles pew, which I occupied for over three weeks, and might have occupied much longer, only he "exchanged" one Sunday with Rev. Mr. Pike, And what I thought of Boston I thought of Boston folks and Boston things. Byles himself is not more thoroughly Bostonian than I was. There were no streets like Boston streets; no merchants like Boston merchants (wasn't I one of them myself, and my father before me?); no ministers like Boston ministers; no horses like Boston horses; no mayors like Boston mayors; no cream-cakes like Boston cream-cakes; and-whom I thought more unctuous, and to whom I to come nearer to the point-no women like Boston women. In this last respect, certainly, there could be no mistake. I was willing to give up the ministers, give up the horses, give up, if necessary, even the merchants and the creamcakes, but sooner than give up the women, I would have given up the ghost. listened till his pulpit was occupied for a fortnight by Rev. Dr. Perch, whom I then followed; after which, for similar reasons, I became a parishioner, first of Rev. Mr. Carp, then of Professor Haddock, and, finally (changing my sect as well as my minister), of Rev. Mr. Nightingale, under whom I sat, though he was rather a heavy man, till I left Boston to settle in New York, where I now attend the ministrations of the eloquent Dr. Hawks. But to return to Miss Olivia. Having taken a seat in the Whittles pew, it became one of my religious duties to wait upon that churchgoing belle to and from service-a duty which I performed not exactly with alacrity (her gait being too slow for that), but with prompt and pious resignation. On our way to church, I was generally edified by the most precise instructions as to personal carriage and street etiquette. I must walk erect; I must not carry my hands in my pocket; I must turn my feet inside out; I must select clean and smooth crossings; I must not hurry; I must not tread on my lady's dress; I must keep my face out of her bonnet, and not press too close to her (precautions now haply unnecessary); I must not ogle other ladies, etc., etc. On our way from church, I was edified at still greater length by comments on the sermon, of which my lady always remembered the text and the heads; on its pointed application to her neighbors, one of whom was not far off; and on the personal appearance of the preacher, whose neck-tie was always faultless, whose handkerchief was always of the whitest, and whose gestures were always the perfection of grace. And I may here say that Miss Olivia thus laid me under everlasting obligation; for to know how to conduct one's self in the street, especially on Sunday, and to know the kind of conversation meet for the day, are as important to a man of the world as to know the etiquette of a ball-room, or the kind of gossip suited to an evening party; and but for Miss Olivia I might have remained in heathen darkness on these points to my dying day. "Why, my dear sister, I didn't say a word about Mr. Sturgeon; in fact, I think him a very fine preacher; but Mr. Nightingale is as good any day, besides being younger and much better looking." "What!" shrieked Olivia; "Mr. Nightingale better looking than Mr. Sturgeon! Well, I never—I—” In fact, she nevered away for ten minutes at least, when Mehitable interrupted her in the middle of a sentence, and turning to me, said: "Come along, Mr. Green. You must go with me, for I've got no umbrella, and I'm sure you wouldn't let me go alone in all this rain if I had; besides, it won't hurt any body to go to our meeting once-that's certain." What could I do? Of course I went, and, for the first time, gave Miss Mehitable my arm, and Mr. Nightingale my ear. How it rained and blew, and what difficulty I had in managing my umbrella, which jumped about as though it had the St. Vitus's dance, and turned itself inside out at least a dozen times! Olivia would have been frightened out of her skirts, but Mehitable enjoyed the fun of the thing, though she clung to me like a drowning woman to a log. Fortunately for all three of us (Mehitable, myself, and the umbrella), we had not far to go, and arrived without serious damage. There was little chance for conversation on the way, but enough was said for me to per Miss Mehitable was of a different "persuasion" from the rest of the family, and went to a different church, presided over by my subse-ceive that my companion was something of a quent friend Nightingale; indeed, it was by her instigation, and under her youthful auspices, that I myself became one of his flock. I may as well tell how. One rainy Sunday, Miss Olivia having a new bonnet, and being in uncommonly low spirits (for what can be more depressing than a rainy Sunday?), decided to spend the day in her room, where she had an excellent portrait of Rev. Mr. Sturgeon, done in oil, and a splendid copy of his printed sermons, bound in red morocco, which would enable her-so she saidto "pass the hours as profitably as if she were in her accustomed place." Now the idea of going to church alone (and I should have mentioned before that the widow was generally escorted by a gallant bachelor by the name of Scraggs, who was an old friend of the departed Whittles, and always took the head of the pew) was to me insupportable. Miss Whittles remonstrated, and I was persisting, like a backward child, that I couldn't "go alone," when in came Mehitable, and insisted that I should go with her. "What! go to hear Mr. Nightingale! Why, Mr. Green, he is a Methodist!" exclaimed Olivia. wag, and was observant far beyond her years. "Look at that lady just in front of us," said she. "Do you suppose she would have come out such a windy day as this if she hadn't had a pretty foot?" "Do you judge others by yourself?" I replied, not daring to glance downward, but gazing steadily at the clouds. "Of course I do," said she. "Catch 'Livia out such weather!" Now, for a young girl of seventeen I thought this was rather fast, so I sought to put a check upon her by remarking that if the heart was all right, it didn't matter much about the feet. "Hearts, indeed!" she exclaimed. "Luckily for us all, they can't be seen. By-the-way, Mr. Green, do you believe all hearts are of the same size and shape? I don't. I'm sure my sister's heart is shaped like a pepper-box, and that mother's is as round as an orange. for father's, dear good man, I don't believe it had any shape at all, but it was as big as a hogshead." As "And your own. What is that shaped like ?" said I, pressing her arm. "Oh, mine! Well, I have always had the idea that it was shaped (looking at me very hard) something like a fox-trap!" "Well, what of that ?" said Mehitable; "so was mother once, and she changed only because By this time we were at the church steps, she thought the Episcopal Church more fash- when Mehitable at once smoothed down her ionable." dress, shook the wrinkles out of her face, and, "Wicked girl!" rejoined her sister, "to say taking the lead, conducted me to her pew, where I was seated next to a demure little lady, from whom I could hardly keep my face during the whole service, though I heard every word of the sermon, which was from the singular text: "What shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?" (Solomon's Song, viii. 8.) Service over, Mehitable shook hands with my demure pew-mate, whom she called Abby, and who addressed her as Hitty; and Abby having said to Hitty that she was "Very well, I thank you, how do you do?" and Hitty having made the same novel remark to Abby, and both Hitty and Abby having agreed that it rained terribly, but that, nevertheless, they were glad they came out, for Mr. Nightingale had never preached such an excellent sermon, the two friends continued chatting together for about ten minutes, at the end of which time Abby was introduced to me as Miss Pettigrew, who thought it very kind of me to wait upon Hitty to meeting, and hoped I liked their minister, and finally said to me that she had asked Hitty home to dinner with her (only two doors off), and wouldn't I join them? which I very gladly did. son. | world; so that, whatever the shape of her heart (if it had any regular shape), I doubt if it was ever in the same place two consecutive days. There was nothing regular about her but her irregularity, which was constant and unchangeable. This peculiarity extended even to her face. I don't believe her eyes were ever of the same color for more than five minutes at a time, and her other features, equally changeable, produced the effect of being scattered about promiscuously. In the matter of dress she was simply careless, though there was a certain natural elegance in the girl which gave something like grace even to her carelessness, or perhaps her sprightliness and wit diverted attention from it. However that may be, she never appeared untidy, and yet was always in disorder. Her hair, for example, always seemed to me to be left to regulate itself; sometimes it was parted on one side, sometimes on the other; then, again, somewhere near the middle; but generally not at all. She always wore it short, to save her trouble, it being one of her favorite sayings that she might be a slave to her husband, if she had one, but never to her hair. But then it should be added that her locks were very curly and beautiful, and never looked so well as when they were left free; and who knows but she had some faint idea of that fact? Imagine Hitty and Abby seated together at table, and I sitting between them-I, the most susceptible of men, between two young ladies of exactly opposite characters, and each working off impressions upon my poor heart with the rapidity of one of Hoe's double-cylinder presses! And imagine, while you are about it, what was every moment becoming of the thousand-andone impressions previously made by that still more powerful press, Olivia! For know that such was the plasticity, and such the gallantry of my nature, that, whether the last lady brought to bear on me were young or old (within certain degrees, excluding, for example, Mrs. Whittles), she was sure to impress me as the best of her sex. Miss Pettigrew I found to be the most precise little personage I had ever seen. Every thing about her appeared to be measured; she stepped with the regularity of a soldier, and spoke with the deliberation of a statesman. She was what might be called a well-balanced perI verily believe that each of her eyebrows had exactly the same number of hairs as the other, and that, if one of her feet had been larger than the other, or one shoulder higher than the other (which is the case with most people), she would have had the sinning member pared down. Her hair, parted exactly in the middle, revealed a head of such even dimensions, and so devoid of "bumps," that it would have set Professor Feeler, or any other phrenologist, quite crazy. I looked to see if there was not some difference in the size of the eyes (not an uncommon phenomenon); but no, every thing about her, even to the shape of the nostrils and the form and position of the teeth, was as orderly and regular as if she had been cast in a mould. And what was true of her person was equally true of her dress; every thing fitted (though it would have been impossible not to fit her) to a hair, and there was the same regular balance throughout. Her collar described a circle about her neck-which might have been turned in a lathe-as exact as if drawn by a geometrician; her bonnet, without any artful contrivance, preserved its position so perfectly that it seemed to be a part of her; her dressing to my onion theory-sunk out of sight. hoops were not then in vogue-hung as evenly upon her as if she were one of the lay-figures one sees in the shop-windows; every ribbon was in its right place, every plait was the exact repetition of every other, and, in short, every thing about her was adjusted in the most perfect and painful order. Mehitable, on the other hand, was one of the most irregular and disorderly persons in the It is high time now for me to inform the reader that, being fully conscious of my peculiar weakness, and having no faith, therefore, that any impressions made upon me, by no matter whom or what, would remain for any length of time, I had resolved that, however much I might be affected for the moment by any young lady, I would on no account ask her to marry me; lest, peradventure, she should decline an answer (and what if it should be in the affirmative?) till the impression had gone, or—accord Hitherto I had found no great difficulty in keeping this resolution, for, being, like all susceptible persons, of an extremely bashful temperament, I had naturally kept my impressions to myself, and after a short time had utterly forgotten them. But now I felt as I had never felt before I was in a state of singular embarrassment. Judge. I found that the young lady who figured at |