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pleasantly, if we would 'live long and see good days.' One of the good novels or brilliant essays of the present day, read aloud to the family circle, after tea, is more potent than champagne in dispersing the day's cares or vexations. The sore or weary track left in the mind by toil and trouble, is more effectually effaced by a bright, cheerful book, than by any more noisy or showy expedient. Happy those who have discovered this!

The times of year, too, ask their various tones of reading. The book for January suits not well with the dog-days; the tender green of Spring harmonizes with one set of thoughts and studies; the mellow coloring of Autumn with another. There are, indeed, books for all seasons; a few written with such a universality of sympathy and fitness, that in joy or sorrow, at morning or evening, in summer or winter, we never open them without finding, by a sort of miracle-for is not genius a perpetual miracle ?-something exactly suited to our wants. Putting aside the Book of books, as out of all question, this remark applies especially to Shakspeare; but there are also, at whatever distance, other writers that never come amiss. In general, however, we have our times of year for different classes of books, and sometimes, when we are fastidious and whimsical, feel that there are none too many.

Considering, then, the wondrous applicability of books to the needs and notions of us all, and the welcome which the right ones are sure to receive, it is not to be wondered at that some of us love to write them. Especially does the writer who has already found favor count upon an intimate and kindly reception. The old-fashioned expression, 'Dear Reader,' has its propriety. Readers seem like old friends when we have been able to interest them. Affection depends more on the heart and

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mind than on the eyes, and those who sympathize with us in thought and feeling soon become dear. We talk of favorite authors;' authors have favorite readers, too; those who are willing to be pleased!

But, to leave face-making and begin,'-let us not be thought fanciful in offering our new book for the amusement of those cool, delicious hours that relieve the summer exhaustion, and incline the mind to quiet reading.

The names of such books are nothing more than a sort of poetic shadowing forth of their contents. If one writes a novel or an essay, a satire or a poem, its title may be a direct and natural growth of the subject or intent; and even for a miscel laneous gathering, grave and gay, it used to be distinctive enough to call it such. Yet there has always been confessed some difficulty about the naming of books, and the world has been subject to periodical whims with regard to it. We all know the quaint and absurd titles that have been given, not only to fanciful and poetic tomes, but to the most solemn, warning, and exhorting works. For ourselves, being imperatively called upon to find an appellation for this third miscellany of ours, (publishers are very tyrants in these matters!) we thought it not worth while to puzzle over the nice adaptation of a name, but best to take the first comprehensive or vague one that came obedient to our call, and trust to justifying it in one way if we could not in all. In this, as in other respects, we trust much to the indulgence of readers who have already shown themselves kindly willing to be pleased.

ISLAND HOUSE, Bellows Falls, Vermont,

Aug. 1, 1853.

SUMMERING.

THE season of returning to town is apt to be the time when we ask ourselves why we ever go away. Home looks so delightful after absence; the joyous faces of meeting friends so cheer our hearts, and lift our spirits above the influence of fatigue and care, that we sometimes think it has been foolish to leave all these pleasant things, to wander over the face of the earth, to lie in strange beds, to toss on uneasy seas, to endure the company of strangers, to renounce one's favorite employments, and, above all, to relinquish the society of those whose society is the chief pleasure of life to us. Very wise people reproach us with all this; they say, what we cannot deny, that we should have been much more comfortable at home; that our own houses are more comfortable than hotels, our own beds than steamboat berths, our own dinners than any that we shall find elsewhere. These sensible remarks make us quite ashamed of our wanderings, perhaps. Comfort is so much the business of life with most of us, that we are quite sensitive to the reproach of having mistaken the way to it. The reasons for going are less obvious than the reasons for staying, and the joy of returning makes us feel them with peculiar force.

But do we remember that this joy of reunion and return is

purchased by the absence and the journey, with all their trials and inconveniences, and could not have been felt without them? Iteration wears out even our best pleasures; emotions are not to be summoned at will; the home that we have never left is not the home that beams upon us after a temporary renunciation. Love our friends as we may, we love them better after we have lost sight of them for a while. Our employments tire, even in proportion to the ardor with which we pursue them, and their zest is only renewable on condition of some intervals of complete repose or change of object. So that for the mere purchase of intenser pleasure, it is worth while to refrain for a time; but there are stronger reasons for summer jaunting.

Supposing that our life has only a certain fixed amount of power, and that both happiness and duty command us to make the most of this power for the work that is given us to do, seasons of complete change and relaxation, even of new fatigue. and voluntary privation, in unaccustomed directions, must be advantageous to our bodily and mental condition, since aching heads, and pinched and anxious hearts, often admonish us that too long perseverance in a single track is not congenial to so varied a nature as ours. Even the unbroken enjoyment of home luxuries and ease, is conducive to anything but strength, either of character or muscles. City life, especially, is notoriously unfavorable to vigorous and enduring health; its excitements tend, more through their ceaselessness than their intensity, perhaps, to insanity and premature decay, or sudden failure of the energies of nature. We are not of those who believe city life to be necessarily unwholesome. It would be so to animals, doubtless; but man's bodily condition depends so much upon ample and judicious exercise of his mental and

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