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the mind of Thekla Mayville with the most unjust suspicions against Edward Fairfield. When Thekla was left alone, she revolved in her mind, again and again, the strange events of the last twenty-four hours. She had ever been accustomed to regard her aunt as an oracle of truth and wisdom. The conflict between the feelings of her heart, and the convictions which the conversation of her aunt had produced in her mind, was long and violent. To crush those feelings which she had indulged towards Edward Fairfield seemed like sacrilege, and harbor them she dare not.

But to return to Fairfield. He congratulated himself that he had at length found a spirit kindred to his own—a lady of sweet simplicity artlessness and sincerity. He despised that artificial state of society which he found in the ranks of fashion, and the mannerism and heartlessness which characterized the young ladies of his acquaintance. He believed Thekla Mayville artless and frank; a girl of genuine enthusiasm, of real soul and sentiment; one who could love without doing it by the rule of three or vulgar fractions, and who could appreciate and return a love deep, tender and enthusiastic as that which he longed to bestow upon some worthy object. She seemed indeed "The boon prefigured in his earliest wish, The fair fulfillment of his poesy,

When his young heart first longed for sympathy."

The party of select friends which Mrs. Thornton had invited on Mr. Fairfield's account, met at an early hour the next evening, and among them was Miss Mayville. As she entered the room Fairfield rose and bowed very courteously, but she returned his salutation so coldly and formally, so differently from what he expected, that a deep sense of disappointment seemed for a moment depicted in his countenance. But it is now, said he to himself, no time for sad feelings, and by a violent effort of mind he lashed himself into conversation with a gentleman who sat near him. During the evening he had a little conversation with Miss Mayville, in which she appeared cold and reserved. He framed various excuses for her conduct towards him, and fondly fancied that when they were free from the gaze of curious eyes, she would appear in her natural character. When the party broke up, Fairfield offered to attend her home, to which she hesitatingly assented. She took his arm with a cautious and scarcely perceptible touch, far different from that cordial and confiding manner which she had manifested the evening before. Fairfield introduced several subjects of conversation, but she showed a studied indifference to every thing he said. He spoke of the interest which his conversation with her the preceding evening, had awakened in his mind, and attempted to draw forth some remarks from her. But what she said was cold and repulsive. She seemed the very opposite of what he expected to find her. How to account for this change he could not divine. At one time he resolved to ask for an explanation, but his acquaintance was too short to warrant such a measure, and he determined to bear his disappointment in silence. As the thought flashed upon his mind, that perhaps he should never see Miss Mayville again, an agony of feeling rushed upon him, which he in vain strove to repress, and he resolved to lay open his whole heart. "Miss Mayville," said he, in a tremulous voice, “we have now almost reached the place where I must take my leave of you. I expect to leave your village to-morrow, and I cannot do it until I have made

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a full declaration of my feelings towards you. Our acquaintance has been brief; yet it has wrought a great change in me. I am no longer the being I was before I saw you. This confession is humiliating to me, for I clearly see from your conduct that my love is not reciprocated. If you can give me one ray of hope that I may ever win you, speak."

Miss Mayville's feelings, notwithstanding her apparent indifference, were almost irrepressible, and she was upon the point of giving vent to them; but the warning of her aunt came like the voice of an oracle upon her ear, and by a desperate struggle she restrained them, and with as much indifference as possible, replied, "I suppose, Mr. Fairfield, all this is a mere farce, to try your power over my heart: I hope I have sense enough not to be duped by your trickery."

"You do me great injustice," said Fairfield, "by supposing me capable of dissimulation or trickery. I aver most seriously and solemnly, Miss Mayville, that I have made a frank and honest disclosure of the real sentiments of my heart."

"I am told," said Miss Mayville, "that loud professions of honor and sincerity, are very trite affairs among gentlemen."

They had now arrived at the door of Miss Mayville's dwelling, and as the lateness of the hour forbade further conversation, they bade each other a formal farewell.

Patient reader my story is most done. Thekla Mayville, by indulging the suspicions whispered or rather thundered in her ears by her aunt, gave them strength and permanency till they became a part of her own mind. The false construction put upon the conduct of Fairfield, and the continued struggle of months and years to suppress every generous sentiment towards him, have changed her into the very image and superscription of her aunt. Her lovely frankness and sweet simplicity are gone. Suspicion, dark, gloomy, detestable suspicion, has left its withering curse upon her and made her a monument of its blighting power.

Edward Fairfield, left the village of H, in moody silence, and returned to the University. The conduct of Miss Mayville had changed his views of her character and the sex. I will not describe the alternations of feeling through which he passed before he became confirmed in his suspicions that deception and artifice are universal characteristics of woman-kind. He has become a rabid satirist of the sex, and devotes the powers of his fine mind, when disengaged from professional pursuits, to the detection and exposition of their wiles and tricks, as he bitterly and sneeringly calls woman's sweetest smiles and kindest sympathies. He has thrown himself without the pale of social sympathy, and delights to scandalize and ridicule the fairest work of God, man's choicest boon, and jeers at

"Domestic happiness, the only bliss

Of paradise that has survived the fall."

Reader, my story is finished. Do you say the events are too hurried and rapid to be natural. Be it so- -I will not contend with thee. Yet it describes nothing but what I have gathered from real life by personal observation. But I wrote it for the sake of the instruction and moral which it contains. Suffer then for a moment the word of exhortation. Art thou a young lady

in the pride of thy youth and beauty? Torture not thy own heart, and that of thy lover by regarding him with a suspicious eye. It is the very way to make him suspect and distrust thy sincerity. It is the very way to secure the reputation of a suspicious disposition, and at length to crown thee with the withered laurels of perpetual celibacy. Art thou a young man, I beseech thee for the honor of our sex prove, demonstrate by thy conduct, that the charges preferred by Thekla's aunt are a libel on our sex and without foundation, and verily thou shalt have thy reward.

Art thou a disaffected old bachelor, of the same school with Edward Fairfield. What shall I say to thee. Thou art indeed in a sad dilemma. But there is yet hope for thee, if thou wilt renounce thy suspicious temper-and give honor to whom honor is due. Tears of repentance may again restore thee to the sympathies of society and perhaps to the bosom of female affection.

For the Microcosm.

CHILDHOOD'S SCENE.

WELCOME ye grassy mounds and moss-grown rocks,
The haunt of boyhood's pastime, and the joy
Of pensive thoughts when long and far away.
Oh, ye are unchanged all! and here, in days
Which now are garnered with departed years,
I oft have set, and drank the music in

Of tuneful streams and whispering winds, and felt
Within vibrating chords which echoed back
The harmony: I loved to trace the stream
Meandering thro' the thymy vale, or mark
The line of distant hills retreating still
And still more dimly seen, until it seemed
The bending skies recumbent on them lay:
I loved to watch the mountain clouds pile up
Their pyramidal forms, and longed to soar
Away, that I might climb those mounds so pure,
And on their sunny sides reclined, with them
Ride round the world. Here sitting I have watched
The thunder-cloud rise from the west and spread
Its sable mantle o'er the sky-Oh! it
Was ecstacy to mark the burning lines
The crinkling lightning wrote upon the clouds,
And hear its mighty voice that filled the vault
Of heaven: And the calm sunset too-I loved
To see the crimson sky flushed with the beams
The setting sun poured forth, just sinking 'neath
The glowing hills; and then to watch the line
Of shade and darkness, as it in the east

Arose, and ushered in the pageantry

Of stars-I deemed that just behind them stretched

The plains of heaven, where eyes unseen looked down
On mortal men, to watch their paths and guard
From harm.

Childhood's Scene.

The stream and vale and mountain top
Remain, the clouds still roll across the sky,
And stars look out at evening-yet the power
To fill the mind is gone; 'tis only now

At intervals they flash across the soul
The full and perfect vision of the past,

And sweep the chords of sweet yet mournful feeling.
Yet they are still the same-it is the mind
Has changed: it cannot now, free as the wind,
Unloose itself and move at every impulse;

Strong lines round it are drawn, and channels deep
Of feeling and of thought are worn; nor can
It deem this childhood scene is all the world.
The mind once taught to take within its grasp
The world, with all its thousand hills and vales
And all the varied forms of teeming life-

Or taught to span the heavens, and by the strength
Of thought expansive to combine in one
Harmonious whole, the vast infinity

Of worlds and complicated systems, that
Are rolling on in harmony, and to

The mind bringing the numbers full and sweet

Of heavenly music-so accustomed,

The mind cannot look on a childhood scene
As once it looked,-tho' in it is a strange
Mysterious power to wake emotions deep
And full of sacredness.

There steals ofttimes

From out the mausoleumed past a voice
Of living power. It calls again to life
The faded visions of departed years,
Investing with a holy light each point
Of radiant bliss; and we in fondness wish
To live again, as once we lived, amid
Those scenes, fondly imagining that we
Should feel all the awakenings again
Of former joy-forgetful that the soul
Has changed. 'Tis not in childhood, nor
In scenes of former joy, to bring the bliss

They once bestowed. Each day-each passing hour-
The thousand incidents of life-all leave
Upon the soul their traces deeply drawn.

Its stronger ken demands a wider view,

And objects large and more commensurate

Are needed for its larger powers. The scene
Is fitted to the soul: before it opes

Immeasurable fields, endless as time

And wide as God's creation-onward still

They stretch and sweep thro' all the untold rounds

And cycles of eternity. Backward

At times, amid its course, the mind delights
To look, and listen to the sounds that come
With all the mellowed sweetness of the past,
And view again the scenes of its young hopes
And early joys.

18

187

LESBOS.

For the Microcosm.

THE INFLUENCE OF FICTION UPON THE MORAL FEELINGS AND DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

It was evidently the design of his Maker, that man be governed by reason. Every trace of the Divinity that may yet be seen in his fallen mind, clearly shows that he was created for a noble end—that the purpose of his being is to fill the cup of existence with happiness, to shed a healing and cheering influence around him, and to prepare his immortal nature for the future state to which it is destined. But this truly benevolent design of our Creator can only be accomplished by viewing things soberly and rationally. Fiction, is a miserable agent to be employed in bringing the mind into a proper frame, preparing it to feast upon the real and substantial enjoyments of this life, and to be cheered by the anticipations of that into which we are yet to be born. If a fondness for it be contracted, and that fondness be indulged, it mars the symmetry of the mental and moral frames, and destroys the beautiful proportion which nature has made in the affections; to preserve and adorn which, should be one of the leading objects of life. Why then should we spend our energies in the pursuit of shadows, and exhaust our powers in dwelling upon the sickly and often corrupting productions of imagination? Is it wise for us to pursue objects which can exist only in the world which imagination creates, while we live amid scenes which require the most calm contemplation and sober thought? The human constitution is such that we are inclined by nature to fall into reverie, and trains of thought full of the unreal and wonderful; and if this natural fondness for fiction which is implanted in the human mind, be fostered by continually tracing the steps of imagination in her airy flights, the mind will most certainly become wild, be thrown from its balance, and made to exist forever in a state of unhappy deformity. How mournful the spectacle, when what is exalted in its nature and capacities, is ruined and lost! We must beware how we trample upon mind. As it is the most noble and divine of all created things, when shielded from all that would corrupt, so when it does go to ruin by the corroding influences which are suffered to reach it, its wreck is most vile and loathsome! There can, we think, be no doubt of the baneful influence of fiction upon the moral feelings. When did folly and impurity of thought, feeling, and language, prevail to a more lamentable extent, than during the age in which fiction may be said to have had its origin? Then it was noble to be vicious, and to give loose reins to the most groveling and malignant passions of the human heart. The taste of that era has been perpetuated, and has fixed a stain upon the soul which, it is feared, will not soon be removed. It will descend from sire to son, and from the generation now upon the stage to that which is yet to come from the land of silence; corrupting the source of every moral, social, and reciprocal feeling, until the days of primeval purity shall return, and moral beauty and excellence shall be esteemed as they ought. Lest, however, our real sentiments upon this subject should be misapprehended, it becomes us to state, that we would by no means include all fiction in these objections; for we believe some adapted to purify, rather than corrupt the heart; and to elevate the affections, rather than bind them more closely to the folly and impurity with which our world is filled. We would be slow to condemn the perusal of such fiction as that of Goldsmith,

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