churches, and society, anxious to image forth the beauty of the Republic in whatever met its eye and charmed its heart. monument that rears its white shaft to departed Editor's Easy Chair. ITTING in our Easy Chair, and watching with critical and curious eyes the progress of affairs abroad-listening to the clash and clang of arms upon the Danube, and hearing the dull, muffled thunder of explosions of solitary forts in the Baltic the new Field of Cloth of Gold, whereon the Emperor of France has received his ancient foes as friends-we see clearly one thing, and that is, that Sir Charles Napier is coming home to take a fresh dinner and a fresh start. When the present Eastern war commenced, and England resolved to take part, she waved all her banners and charged with all her chivalry. Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B., with an irresistible fleet, was discharged from a triumphant dinner, amidst a roar of hip-hiphurras, and by the time the noise of the toasts, and the speeches, and the general gratulation had died away, we expected to hear the thunder of English guns against the walls of Cronstadt, and the merry reveillé of a returning army of victors. The welldirected dinner was to have landed Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B., plump in the imperial palace of St. Petersburg, where he was to dictate terms to a crest-fallen Czar, and distribute Circassian principalities, ad libitum, to cornets and younger sons. It was so probable that, after refraining from war during all the years of trouble, Nicholas would begin at such a moment and in such a way that a highly-peppery English dinner would at once demolish him! It seems that somehow the aim, or the scope, or something, was miscalculated, and Admiral Sir Charles, K.C.B., must come home and be belched again upon the scene of action by a su perior dinner-power. If the North and the South had ever dreamed of shutting themselves up within the sphere of their own immediate sympathies, the physical laws of the country would have interposed to prevent it. The great events of our history, and especially the war of 1812, and the war with Mexico, have strangely conspired to induce an exodus from the earlier homesteads of our land. North and South have met and mingled on the prairies of the West. North and South have united anew their fortunes and their fame on the Mississippi, the Sabine, and the Sacramento. North and South have bordered the lakes and fringed the far valleys that stretch toward the Rocky Mountains. The laws of circumstances are divine laws. Not on tables of stone or plates of brass are they written, but in the enduring in--catching across the sea some flash and gleam of stincts of our race. And these laws have asserted their supremacy just as much in our recent territorial occupancy as in the original colonization of the continent. Let any reflecting man look at the facts of inter-emigration, and how can he fail to see their tendency to unite and consolidate the great interests of the country? About one-fourth of the American people leave the States of their birth and settle in other portions of the Union. Virginia has sent out in this way 335,000; South Carolina, 163,000; North Carolina, 261,000. Among the Northern States, Connecticut and Vermont have lost 25 per cent. of their population. These persons have scattered over nearly every section of the country. Virginia alone has 85,762 in Ohio, and 41,819 in Indiana. All these individuals, in a greater or less degree, take their home-sentiments with them. But they are soon met by other sectional peculiarities. If, at first, prejudice resists prejudice, a better state of things quickly ensues. The various elements fuse together. A practical compromise silently and effectively follows. Habits of social intercourse, necessities of business, Sabbath worship in the same sanctuaries, bring them into closer alliance. The great American ideas dwell in them all alike, and hence, a common sympathy drawing them toward one transcendent object, they blend in holy, happy harmony. The new regions of the West would seem to be designed to epitomize the united interests of the country. It is astonishing how entirely the war has gone Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, are all there, against Russia-in England. Punch has swept and consequently the peculiarities of physical con- every chord of comedy to sound a laugh against the dition and daily occupations are in full force to ed- Czar. It has even been pathetic, showing the highucate that vast and thriving citizenship into large born ladies carrying jellies and sugar to the bereaved and liberal views. The most prominent Atlantic families of hapless soldiers. For whose comfort States are striving in peaceful emulation to reach this prospective picture was painted, Punch did not their resources. New York, Pennsylvania, Mary-state. It was rather a forcible foregone conclusion land, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, have either projected or extended their railroads into the Valley of the Mississippi. What an influence on the unity and strength of the country must this exert! Independently of our own choice-ay, in despite of ourselves-we are bound together. Mountains and vales, rivers and lakes, prairies and oceans, wheat and cotton, mills and factories, capital and labor, marriage and religion, legislation and providence, have all co-operated to establish and perpetuate our union. One we are, and one we must be. No sophistry can evade this conclusion. No logic can overthrow it. No bad blood can weaken its force. The truth-" E Pluribus Unum" -is the moral of our life. It is written on every battle-field of our heroic age. It is written on every page of our national records. It is written on every to present to the eyes of an army partant pour la Syrie, or any other distant and dangerous land. But it was supposed to be sufficient consolation to a soldier hurrying to perish for the Honorable East India Company (for at bottom the quarrel is India) that the lovely Countess of Calvesfoot Jelly would carry some of the same to his weeping Molly. Certainly our sympathy is with England, as against Russia; but certainly also England has managed this quarrel mysteriously. Such marching and countermarching upon the Danube-such sailing of fleets-such progresses across the Continent of royal dukes and generals-such nervous anxiety in the minds of commanders-in-chief about neck-ties and shirt-bosoms-such dreary fun in Punch-such drearier rhetoric in the Times-such masterly inactivity while Omer Pacha led his Turks players of chess are masters of all the moves of the game. It is still chance which, when some grave eye scrutinizes it, is supposed by the spectator to be fully perceived by that eye. But the eye is grave because the brain is astute, and knows that the appearance of gravity deceives the spectator. Your lawyer, for instance, knows little more of your case than you do, for all his fine winking and solemn thinking. And your doctor shakes his own head and that of his cane, but one is quite as wise as the other. to actions which made the world believe better seeing events that are only contingent possibilithings of all Mohammedans-such custard and com- ties. The game of war is not so very profound pliment-such a mild demonstration upon a poor after all. There is a general result aimed atold lonely fort, which, having successfully blown but the processes are very uncertain. The gameup, the allied armies return home to take breath-sters are no more masters of the details than two all these things, seen coolly across the Atlantic, have a very absurd air, and are by no means that pleasing and beautiful mirage, which is popularly supposed to float forever along the eastern horizon. Meanwhile, our newspapers steal a few columns from Nebraska and the elections, to speculate in a sparkling manner upon the chances of battle and the destinies of the world. Old Gunnybags, in his little counting-room, reads with immense interest the theories of French policy and English policy, as they are developed with minute exactness by the "able Editor." Gunnybags is not quite sure where Sebastapolis-but certainly it was a masterly stroke to blow up Bomarsund-and if Cronstadt could only be pitched into, those rascally Russians would get no more than they deserve. It is, therefore, well for the cautious reader to be a little upon his guard against the imposing speculations with which we scribblers in Easy Chairs favor him. Print is very powerful. Count no man happy until he gets into print. The Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's is pleasantly mentioned in books of travel, and Ovid, the amorous old Roman, celebrates the House of Fame. But what are all such facts and fancies compared with this colossal force of print? If you saunter into our office, and lean upon the arm of our Chair, you do not very much mind our wise saws and sombre suggestions. But let the same speculation open upon you in a Few readers, however, care for the painful details of marches and investments in regions hitherto unknown to their geography. The careful analysis of the composition of armies, also, and the views of astute observers in small upper back rooms as to the secret intentions of Louis Napoleon, do not command a very wide nor profound interest. Ask Gunnybags, as you meet him to-morrow morn-many-columned leader of your morning paper, and ing going down town in the omnibus, what is the you are amazed and impressed. You would laugh precise position of the two armies, and you will at the idea of asking your father-in-law if he had discover how vast his knowledge is. Ask him the heard our oral opinion of the final cause of tomanames of the Danubian Principalities, of which he toes; but you ask him with respect if he has seen reads so much every day-demand what he under- this morning's paper, by which you mean our tostands by a Bashi-Bazouk-inquire what the whole mato views, embodied in the solemnity of rhetoric, quarrel is about-and it would not be strange if and given to print. It is the difference between Gunnybags prevaricated so that you would be com- talking to ten and to ten million. Print is an endpelled to doubt his complete mastery of the subject. less echo. The pen speaks and types echo the It is not seldom that we are obliged to enlighten word to the end of the earth. If you remember that the airy gossips about our Chair as to this very fact. each article in the London Times, which is surThe secret of the war is no religious zeal of France named the Thunderer, by reason of the great noise or England, nor any such toleration as would lead with which it states its opinions, is the private them to wish Turkey to have the head in religious opinion of some quiet fallible gentleman, you will cities, rather than Russia. It is no greater sweet-perhaps regard the thunder with less terror. There ness of charity toward Mohammedans than toward Greek Christians. Nor is it a national sympathy with the integrity of Turkey per se. What cares John Bull for Mohammed? 66 'Nobody cares for any body, you know," said an agreeable diplomatist, at a select dinner. The truth is, that Turkey is a convenient barrier between Russia and the Mediterranean and the East. England dreads to see Russia upon the sands of Africa. The lion growls as he scents the cold coming of the bear. Russia once seated upon the Mediterranean, and pouring down through Central Asia, would naturally want to sail up the Nile and cross the desert. Her direct force would be gathered about the narrow gate through which England passes to her Indian Paradise. Is there not a remote possibility of a collision under such circumstances? and in that event would Russia be in the worst situation for success? Thus taking our place among the astute observers in small upper rooms, we play Sir Oracle in our Easy Chair, and expound the Eastern Question. And it is truly in some sense a home question. If a pestilence were desolating Africa, should we not feel that we were not quite safe? And if not from a pestilence, how can we suppose that in no event should we be drawn into interest in a war? We do not suppose that kings are so much longer-headed than other mortals, nor that Nesselrode and other imperial chancellors have the faculty of fore is always a strong other side. Here is Surtout, who insists that Rum is the only Beelzebub, and that the blaze of burning distilleries is the red dawn of the millennium. He has capital reasons, and a splendid array of facts on his side. Dreadnought, on the other hand, considers Surtout a milksop, and not a philosopher at all, and laughs at his fancy that he has found the secret of sin. Dreadnought has great common sense, and somehow the private conviction of many other men upon his side. Now if you consider Surtout to be an editor, with the advantage of print to support him, remember that Dreadnought, reading the editorial over his mutton chop, and interiorly protesting, is precisely of the same weight, minus the echo. A man's opinions are no truer because he roars them through a trumpet. We will put in our text at the tail of our discourse. What we say is, that we express our own opinions when we speak in our Easy Chair. You have no occasion to get red in the face, and swell, and swelter, because we say what you may not think to be true. You have a perfect right to your opinion, and to divulge it from your Easy Chair. There is only one thing in the world equally true; and that is, that we have precisely the same right. Don't be juggled by this legerdemain of print. When you read the newspaper, or pull open an Editor's Drawer, or lean your head upon your el why believe that the charity was not sincere and gracious? bows and go to sleep upon an Editor's Table, or sprawl lazily and aimless in an Editor's Easy Chair, you have only had to do with that small, unimportant individual, for whom personally you have no very high consideration, and therefore, can not like him any the better, nor believe in his observations any more unreservedly because he talks from a fog, through which you can not see him. Let us hold on to our individuality, whatever else we may let go. Judge England, and France, and Russia, according to the facts stated by the "able editors," and not according to their estimate of those facts. Every man his own "ablely in the deep waters which have overflowed your editor," would be a good motto for us. OUR sympathies can not all exhale along the marshy shores of the Danube. Other shores and rivers nearer home Shall we say that it was, at this time of heated difference, doubly pleasant to see the North extending its hand to the South, in the church, and amidst the offices of religion? The hymns had a sweeter sound that day, the prayers a diviner unction. Had we not just confessed that we were all miserable sinners? Was it not perfectly true, whatever the peculiar kind of sin which we preferred? Did not this service of Christian fellow ship seem to say, "Here, you men struggling brave fields, we are not agreed in many things, and we do not spare each other hard names, when the sun shines and we are all prospering. But the day is changed; this is a real woe, and we too are human. Next year fire may lay us low, as water has now smitten you; what are we on this earth, if we do not help each other? Here are our hands. Take them to help yourselves; and let us mutually believe, that where there is so much genuine sympa thy, there must be warm feeling in common; and that therefore, however widely we differ, yet we also most closely agree. In those fierce waters be some of the acerbity of our differences drowned, some of the bitterness burned away in the fire of that fever!" After such a sermon, would not the benediction seem indeed a blessing, and the Sunday sunshine more softly fall? "A voice of weeping heard and loud lament," during the few weeks that ended the summer. Ruin in the most awful forms, pestilence and storm, has been rioting and reveling at the South. The acccounts that have reached us describe a state of things as terrible as that in Philadelphia during the yellow fever scourge at the beginning of the century. One city fled into the fields and encamped there. In another hotels were closed and business suspended. In all reigns a sorrowful silence and desolation, the palpable presence of death. There is nothing in the memoirs of the plague in Eastern cities which is more melancholy than the stories of this summer's tragedy at the South. Scarcely had the reports of cholera, the strained anxiety of the public business mind, the general low spirits and apprehension of the hot season, begun to subside at the North, than from the South came, like an echo more fearful than the sound which summoned it, the reports of devastat-nunciation. But if the orator you are scathing falls ing disease, followed by an elemental storm, which, sweeping from the coast along the quiet rivers, bore destruction on every hand far inland. Men lost fortunes in the fury of a moment. Whole crops were ruined. The year's income was drowned in irresistible waters. Fields were submerged and buildings carried off. Did any listener hear in the wild uproar of the tempest, a piercing voice wailing and wailing, "Riches take wings and fly away?". Perhaps, if there were oftener great misfortunes of this kind, we could better estimate the amount and the force of real sympathy between the men of one section and those of another. When appeals are partisan only-when differences can be transferred to the domain of theory and abstract discussion-there is no limit to hot feeling and sharp de suddenly in a fit, or breaks his leg, or loses his best beloved child, or parent, or wife, there is an instant demand upon your great human sympathy, which will not only help him and honor you, but will inevitably pour balm into the yawning wound of difference that galls you both. We are sure there must be hearts who feel this now, and who felt it when the news of the heavy affliction of sickness and storm came from the South, and was met by the hearty sympathy of the North. But men's manliness was not swept away with their garnered crops. The very individuals who It is our privilege to have singular questions resuffered most largely were instantly hard at work ferred to us for decision. It is perhaps considered helping those who had suffered less. At the North, that an Easy Chair gives opportunity for that quiet Southern gentlemen who, either resident for a sea- relaxation and reflection which are supposed to be son or traveling for the summer, learned by the mail so auspicious an atmosphere for the solution of that their fortunes were diminished by thousands doubts. We receive numberless letters-some not of dollars, headed subscriptions for the relief of the in a masculine hand-desiring advice upon a thougeneral calamity, and charged themselves with col-sand points which he were a wise man who could lecting and managing the funds. In the churches decide. Some, we would have you to know, are sermons were preached and collections taken. Let not purely literary. There are correspondents us record with joy that they were ample and cor- who offer us the implied flattery of supposing that dial. It was a practical Christian charity, and we we can worthily suggest proper action in the most were all the better for knowing it. It was suggest-tender circumstances, as, where Sybilla lately deed that there were mercantile reasons at the core of the charity; but we are very slow to believe it. In the country church where we saw the collection taken, the commercial reason must have been very imperfectly comprehended. In great misfortune, even more than in great happiness, the world recognizes its common kindred. A sudden crisis annihilates conventions, and the mouldy traditions of etiquette fall shriveled before the throb of a genuine emotion; and even if mercantile shrewdness happened to be this time on the side of charity, sired to know whether, when a gentleman of ample income offered to marry her and she consented, she was bound to relinquish him at the end of three months, when he protested that he loved her no more. "When he came wooing," wrote Sybilla, "he mentioned his ample income, and I, being desirous of generous means, accepted him. Now, what fair ground of separation has he in saying that he loves me less, when he does not say that his income is impaired? Had he said that his income was gone, but his love was tenfold greater, I should have answered that our original compact was null, and that he was at liberty." We did not answer, except in the most general way, this epistle of Sybilla; but we sent by the next post to the lover to urge him to persevere in parting. A more perplexing, if not more generally interesting problem was only yesterday presented to us. A young man, who gave his name as Narcissus, and who was evidently young in authorship, called upon us, and modestly suggested that he had a question to ask, if he could only summon the necessary courage. Admonished by our bland reception of him that we should undoubtedly hear approvingly and decide wisely; he ventured, after a little prefatory discourse upon the weather, to open the subject which weighed upon his mind. never seen. But it is only an aggregate of parts of various flowers that you have seen; and you may describe circumstances that never occurred in the sequence in which you state them, but they are still reminiscences or new combinations of possibilities -the essence of the possibility lying in the fact of general resemblance to actual events. "Now in coming to treat real characters as subjects of literary art, the author is to remember that the little peculiarities of manner, or appearance which individualize a person, whether ludicrously or otherwise, are things which instantly proclaim the personality. And they injure the artistic effect, so far as the resemblance, by being unmistakably individual, is inevitably confounded with, and interpreted by, the person. Thus, if you should write a novel, and depict a naval hero as thin and ardent, with one arm, and an absorbing devotion to another man's wife, you would have simply painted a portrait of Nelson, with more or less success. But you might very properly make your idea of Nelson the substance of your naval hero, and, by omitting the betraying details, show in an entirely unprejudiced light the quality of his character and its play in life. in her own circle, and whose character may or may not be justly apprehended by that circle, it seems to be perfectly legitimate for you to describe her with all the delicate discrimination you can command; and if some sharp eye, having seen the original as you do, should also detect the likeness, it can only "I have lately published a small effusion," said he; "a tale, in which, under imaginary names, I have described actual characters, and in circumstances only slightly altered from the fact. Scarcely did it appear when I was waited upon by the brother of the young woman whose character had suggested to me my little sketch, and he summarily, and in a dangerously bellicose manner, demand-Or if among your friends there be one only known ed if I meant to insult his sister. I replied, that, far from any intention so base, I was full of profound admiration for the many noble and virtuous qualities of that lady, and could never mean harm to her or to her friends. He then inquired why I had allowed myself, under the thin disguise of a fictitious name, and a mild paraphrase of circum-recognize the truthfulness of your work. No such stances, to publish incidents which were purely observer can have the right to challenge your choice. private, and expose the character of a woman justly "It resembles Perdita,' he may say. so admired. I replied again, that purely private cir- "Do you think so?' you may answer. cumstances did not become public by being pub- "But you intended it?' he may demand lished, for the very reason that only the most limited "I have not said so,' you may reply. circle knew that there were any such circumstances, "It is the treatment of circumstances of which you and that circle was very sure not to betray the must beware, my dear Narcissus, because circumknowledge; and then, that no character was ex- stances realize and individualize. There is a cerposed by any such publication, because all the fig-tain sanctity in all privacy-an old Easy Chair has ures of fiction were studied from life, and in the multitude no single figure could fairly be selected as a subject of especial complaint. The bellicose brother, upon hearing my defense, and partly, perhaps, from seeing how truly mild and womanlike my manners were, here raised his hat, in a distantly polite but unconvinced way, and bowed himself out. Now, my dear old Easy Chair, I want to know what are the limits which must bound an author's treat-who know them say directly "this is the unhappy ment of subjects. How much may he choose from life-how nearly exact may he make his portraits of character-how accurately should he reproduce circumstances. In truth, is not a private fact as much fiction when it is published and removed from the setting of privacy, as if it were what is called a pure invention ?" Narcissus seated himself as he concluded, and we also lay back for a few moments in our Chair, that we might better consider what we had to say. Unfortunately we had no scribe at hand to record our words, but our thoughts were these: "The material of Literature is Life and the play of human character, just as the material of Art is Nature. It is Shelley who says of poets, in his Julian and Maddalo, 'They Are cradled into poetry by wrong, And learn in suffering what they teach in song.' Human experience thus lies at the foundation of all literature. Pure fiction, in the rigid sense, is about as impossible as the pure ideal. You, my dear Narcissus, may paint for me a flower you have no right to run into the parlor and shout aloud that it heard you making love to Perdita in the garden; but it has a full and free right to describe you and Perdita as it conceives you both to be, and to depict you in the attitude of lovers. There is nothing so pointedly singular in the circumstances as to occasion or to justify remark. The moment that there is such peculiarity in the circumstances that all Narcissus who perished for the love of Perdita," then the sanctity of privacy is violated, and every delicate and sensitive mind recoils. It is more important that some secrets should be kept, than that men should benefit by the knowledge of them. But even this you may do if you will only remove the circumstances into an infinite remoteness. Transfer the scene of your tale from New York to New Zealand, and make Perdita a woman of a thousand years ago. This will not be always possible, for often the very point of the story will require the modern manners and dress. Then let it be done so that nothing more is published than is already known. You read the Newcomes, but you do not know how much is accurate daguerreotyping of actual character and circumstance. You say, in general, that you know people like Barnes Newcome and the Countess Dowager Kew. But the author might take you to the opera and show you the individuals of whom those characters are the most accurate likenesses he could draw. Probably he would not do it. There is great virtue and good policy in keeping a secret. But you see, Narcissus, that the originals of those characters are not in- us. Narcissus listened blandly. "I agree fully," said he, "and I feel acquitted. I see that no one personally knows the heroine of my sketch any the more because I have described her, and the circumstances are as fabulous to you and to all other readers as those of Sidney's Arcadia." "But how would she feel, Narcissus, if she came to read your sketch ?" He was silent a moment; then replied, "If she recognized it, which I doubt, because she knows herself so little, she would be indignant." "What right have you to pain her for the amusement of an uninterested and dull public ?" Narcissus was again silent; then said slowly, "I suppose I have none at all." "Certainly not, my dear young friend. If you mean to describe people and things do it so that the description shall not be destroyed in beauty and influence by its personal individuality." If every young author listened as blandly to our advice and followed it so faithfully as Narcissus, what a very Easy Chair of counsel would ours immediately become. Yet it is something to have raised one rose, even though we may not have a garden; and we are glad to know that Narcissus, at least, will never again, even in the remotest manner, allow any friend of his, or of his friends, or indeed any person whatever, to feel harmed by the sketches he may write. press Eugenie has failed to inoculate us with a frenzy for white velvet and gold powder, what more can we hope from France? We have indeed heard allusions to hoops; but they were mainly in the circles of retired dealers in commodities which require the use of barrels. It was even whispered that an eminent belle from Greytown had figured at the Florida Springs, before the bombardment of her native city, in undisguised hoops. And it is perfectly well known that in the most fashionable of the summer resorts, upon occasion of the public street-sweeper falling ill with the cholera, a company of the most lovely ladies, eminent at charity-schools during the winter, proceeded to sweep the streets with their own silk dresses. It is believed that for this generous act they are all to be presented with the freedom of the town. Nor is it to be supposed that their charity is confined to particular places; for we learn that since their return to their various native cities the same young ladies have been seen engaged in the same public duty. The heroism which such a proceeding implies, may be partly estimated, if it is only considered that the young men, of whose admiration these young ladies may be innocently desirous, are naturally repelled from ladies whose dresses are frayed and soiled by contact with all the garbage of the streets. The Epicurean youths, deceived by the appearance, do not know in what an act of self-sacrifice the ladies are engaged, and really seem to be entirely forgetful of the public good. The pigs, too, which have been accustomed to a monopoly of street-dirt, and which have been immemorially regarded as natural scavengers, are reported to regard our new benefaotors with grunts of dissatisfaction. If hoops are uncertain, the long skirts are matters of fact. How far they will go, no one as yet ventures to predict. Nor is it quite agreed among the commentators whether the long skirts in the street owe their origin to the Empress Eugenie or the Queen of the Cannibal Islands. This seems, however, a secondary question while they do their work so well. If it is not fair to look a gift horse in the mouth, how much less so is it to speculate upon the origin of things which do the State such service? But while Osric was discussing these weighty matters with us, his cousin came in; and, upon learning the subject of conversation, said with a smile, "I am going to introduce a novelty." We demanded its nature, and he answered gayly, “I am going to live cheaply. I am going to have my gloves mended and cleaned. I am going to have my coats turned, and wear old boots. I am going to walk when the weather does not compel my wife to ride. I shall have friends to eat a simple dinner, and not have more expensive wine than the Czar. I shall play whist at a shilling a game, and not five dollars, and I shall laugh at the man who underWE have been diligently inquiring among our takes to pity me or to look solemn. I will get on young friends of the Osric breed, as we met them with old things when I can not afford to buy new. among the promenaders at Castle Garden, and as I had rather live within my income than out of they swarm around our Chair, what novelties and some other man's pocket. In short, if I am poor I surprises will adorn the world of fashion during the shall not pretend to be rich, nor be afraid to deny coming season. Osric smiles and shakes his head, myself what neighbor Midas enjoys because he can and, in his English way, says that "the Governor" afford it. And as my wife is of the same opinion, grumbles about hard times, and economies, and ex- and because I love her and she loves me, I do not travagances, and little matters which do not inter- anticipate a very dreary winter," perorated Osric's est Osric, and which he had much rather have cousin, smiling gayly and turning upon his heel. omitted. It seems to be generally understood that Clearly my cousin's wife is not one of the cha after so disastrous a summer there must be a placiditable young ladies who are to receive the freedom winter. There will be less disposition to plunge of the town of which we were speaking," said Osfiercely into the revels which resound so gaylyric as the door closed upon our friend. through the long cold nights. And since the Em- But certainly his proposition is a novelty, and if |