sensation of utter powerlessness which has no alternative but escape or prostration the cowardice of a bleeding and undefended heart. Every tree or stone that we see has perhaps the power of calling up a phantom from the accusing past; but we do not think of the trees, or stones, till we see them we are too much occupied by the unwilling contemplation of the shapes which are ever present before us, whether with or without them. THE MAIDEN AUNT. Awakening. THE first moment in which the heart suddenly discovers that it is not estimated as it believed itself to be, whether in love or in friendship, overwhelms it with a kind of astonishment very hard to bear. To the change in the present and the future, it may perhaps submit without complaining; but it is hard to be robbed of the past, which we had believed irrevocably our own, to look back with distrustful regret to the words, and looks, and tones, the interchange of thought, sympathy, confidence, to all of which a new interpretation is now forcibly affixed, making us impatient and ashamed that we ever lent them any other significance; to undo, as it were, by a retrospective act, the union which we now find had only an imaginary existence. THE MAIDEN AUNT. The First Time, THE first time! How much of joy, of sorrow, of hope, of fear, do those words recall! how much of happiness, of misery. They carry us back, as by a magic charm, to the days of childhood and youth. The first remembered kiss and smile from a mother's lips, is again warm upon our cheek, again sheds light within our heart; the morning and the evening prayer is lisped forth, the young face upturned to catch the only divinity it, as yet, can understand, the love that beams in a mother's eye. The winding-sheet, the coffin and the grave follow in quick succession. We look upon Death for the first time; the loved one is borne from our embrace, to the dark and silent tomb. The first sorrow, the first disappointment! Oh, they sink deep within the heart! Years roll on, but their trace remains for good or ill. - The first love! the love of the young bride for him, the chosen one, the rich, the precious affection of her trusting heart for the first time clothed in words. The first child! a - mother may have many children, all equally dear, all equally beloved, but never can she know, again that joy so undefined, so mixed of smiles and tears that thrilled to her soul when she folded within her arms her first-born child and felt that it was for her to train it for immortality. The first dereliction from virtue to vice! how the blood tingles in the cheek at the thought of it! No after deed can ever cause such anguish! It is the nature of the human heart to become hardened to pleasure or to pain; repetition dulls the brilliant colors with which anticipation decked our early joys; repetition softens the aspect of vice till gradually, all fear of her is lost. THE FIRST TIME! Oh, let it be guarded against in all that is evil! Yield not to the first temptation, the second will be more easily resisted. MRS. J. THAYER. The Past. O, HOW memory loves to rove And light the field of the past again, Bringing the blossoms that then were dear, The Calm of Temperament. HAPPY are they whose bosoms are never shaken with passions, whose blood runs softly, whose earliest companions are virtue and peace. If they continue unspotted if they fall not-small is their merit. MISS BREMER. Genius and Talent. CAROLINE showed talent in all she undertook; but Evelyn, despite her simplicity, had genius, though as yet scarcely developed; for she had quickness, emotion, susceptibility, imagination; and the difference between talent and genius, lies rather in the heart, than in the head. BULWER. |