was ready now for love. She had felt the variable temper of society, and there was a presentiment in the heart of receding flatteries, and the winter of life. It was with mournful self-reproach that she thought of the years wasted in separation, of her own choosing, from the man she loved, and with the power to recall Time, she would have thanked God with tears of joy for the privilege of retracing the chain of life to that link of parting. Not worth a day of those lost years, she bitterly confessed to herself, was the wealth they had purchased.

It lacked as little as one week of " the happy day," when the workmen were withdrawn from Revedere, and the preparations for a family breakfast, to be succeeded by the agreeable surprise to Philip, of informing him he was at home, were finally completed. One or two very intimate friends were added to the party, and the invitations (from the elder Ballister) proposed simply a dejeuner sur l'herbe in the grounds of an unoccupied villa, the property of an acquaintance.

With the subsiding of the excitement of return, the early associations which had temporarily confused and coloured the feelings of Philip Ballister, settled gradually away, leaving uppermost once more the fastidious refinement of the Parisian. Through this medium, thin and cold, the bubbles from the breathing of the heart of youth, rose rarely and reluctantly. The Ballisters held a good station in society, without caring for much beyond the easy conveniences of life, and Fanny, though capable of any degree of elegance, had not seen the expediency of raising the tone of her man. ners above that of her immediate friends. Without being positively distasteful to Philip, the family circle, Fanny included, left him much to desire in the way of society, and unwilling to abate the warmth of his attentions while with them, he had latterly pleaded occupation more frequently, and passed his time in the more congenial company of his library of art. This was the less noticed that it gave Miss Bellairs the opportunity to make frequent visits to the workmen at Revedere, and in the polished devotion of her betrothed, when with her, Fanny saw nothing reflected but her own daily increasing tenderness and admiration.

The morning of the fete came in like the air in an overture-a harmony of all the instruments of summer. The party were at the gate of Revedere by ten, and the drive through the avenue to the lawn, drew a burst of delighted admiration from all. The place was exquisite, and seen in its glory, and Fanny's heart was brimming with gratified pride and exultation. She assumed at once the dispensation of the honours, and beautiful she looked with her snowy dress and raven ringlets flitting across the lawn, and queening it like Perdita among the flowers. Having narrowly escaped bursting into tears of joy when Philip pronounced the place prettier than anything he had seen in his travels, she was, for the rest of the day, calmly happy, and with the grateful shade, the delicious breakfast in the grove, the rambling and boating on the river, the hours passed off like dreams, and no one even hinted a regret that the house itself was under lock and bar. And so the sun set, and the twilight came on, and the guests were permitted to order round their carriages and depart, the Ballisters accompanying them to the gate. And, on the return of the family through the avenue, excuses were made for idling hither and thither, till lights began to show through the trees, and by the time of their arrival at the lawn, the low windows of the cottage poured forth streams of light, and the open doors, and servants busy within, completed a scene more like magic than reali. ty. Philip was led in by the excited girl who was the fairy of the spell, and his astonishment at the discovery of his statuary and pictures, books and furniture, arranged in com. plete order within, was fed upon with the passionate delight of love in authority.

When an hour had been spent in examining and admiring the different apartments, an inner-room was thrown open, in which supper was prepared, and this fourth act in the day's drama was lingered over in untiring happiness by the family.

Mrs. Ballister, the mother, rose and retired, and Philip pleaded indisposition, and begged to be shown to the room allotted to him. This was ringing-up the curtain for the last act sooner than had been planned by Fanny, but she announced herself as his chamberlain, and with her hands affectionately crossed on his arm, led him to a suite of rooms in a wing still unvisited, and with a good-night kiss,

left him at the open door of the revived studio, furnished for the night with a bachelor's bed. Turning upon the threshold, he closed the door with a parting wish of sweet dreams, and Fanny, after listening a moment with a vain hope of overhearing some expression of pleasure, and lingering again on her way back, to be overtaken by her surprised lover, sought her own bed without rejoining the cir. cle, and passed a sleepless and happy night of tears and joy. Breakfast was served the next morning on a terrace overlooking the river, and it was voted by acclamation, that Fanny never before looked so lovely. As none but the family were to be present, she had stolen a march on her marriage wardrobe, and added to her demi-toilette a morning cap of exquisite becomingness. Altogether, she looked deliciously wife-like, and did the honours of the breakfasttable with a grace and sweetness that warmed out love and compliments even from the sober soil of household intimacy. Philip had not yet made his appearance, and they lingered long at table, till at last a suggestion that he might be ill started Fanny to her feet, and she ran to his door before a servant could be summoned.

The rooms were open, and the bed had not been occupied. The candle was burned to the socket, and on the easel, resting against the picture, was a letter addressed— "Miss Fanny Bellairs."

THE LETTER.

"I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in the path you have marked out for me. It has brought me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I started under your guidance, and if it had brought me back unchanged— if it restored me my energy, my hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray heaven that it would also give me back my love, and be content-more than content, if it gave me back also my poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surroundings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all these absent years-years of degrading pursuits and wasted powers -and it now impels me from you, kind and lovely as you are, with an aversion I cannot control. I cannot forgive you. You have thwarted my destiny. You have extingushed with sordid cares a lamp within me, that might, by this time, have shone through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect.

"With a heart sick, and a brain aching for distinction, I have come to an unhonoured stand-still at thirty! I am a successful tradesman, and in this character I shall probably die. Could I begin to be a painter now, say you? Alas! My knowledge of the art is too great for patience with the slow hand! I could not draw a line without despair. The pliant fingers and the plastic mind must keep pace to make progress in art. My taste is fixed, and my imagination uncreative, because chained down by certainties; and the shortsighted ardour and daring experiment which are indispensable to sustain and advance the follower in Raphael's footsteps, are too far behind for my resuming. The tide ebb from me at the accursed burnings of my pencils by your pitiless hand, and from that hour I have felt hope receding. Could I be happy with you, stranded here in ignoble idle. ness, and owing to you the loss of my whole venture of opportunity? No, Fanny!-surely no!

"I would not be unnecessarily harsh. I am sensible of your affection and constancy. I have deferred this explanation unwisely, till the time and place make it seem more cruel. You are, at this very moment, I well know, awake in your chamber, devoting to me the vigils of a heart overflowing with tenderness. And I would-if it were possible-if it were not utterly beyond my powers of self-sacrifice and concealment-I would affect a devotion I cannot feel, and carry out this errour through a life of artifice and monotony. But here, again, the work is your own, and my feelings revert bitterly to your interference. If there were no other obstacle to my marrying you-if you were not associated repulsively with the dark cloud on my life, you are not the woman I could now enthrone in my bosom. We have diverged since the separation which I pleaded against, and which you commanded. I need, for my idolatry, now, a creature to whom the sordid cares you have sacrificed me to, are utterly unknown--a woman born and educated in circumstances where want is never feared, and where cal

"And what!" said the lady of Falkenberg, as she suffered the arm of Adenheim to encircle her slender waist, "didst thou not grieve for her loss?"

Why, verily, yes, for the first week; but in thy bright eyes I found ready consolation."

At this moment the lord of Adenheim thought he heard a deep sigh behind him; he turned, but saw nothing, save a slight mist that gradually vanished in the distance. Where was the necessity for Ida to reveal herself?

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"And thou didst not, then, do thine errand to thy lover?" said Seralim, as the wronged Ida returned to Purgatory. "Recommence the torture," was poor Ida's answer. "And was it for this that thou hast added a thousand years to thy doom?"

"Alas!" answered Ida, " after the single hour I have endured on earth, there seems to me but little terrible in a thousand years of Purgatory!"

Appleton is publishing a very neat and handsome edition of valuable religious books. Among them is the Disce Vivere of Sutton, Prebend of Westminster, in 1626,—one of the choicest specimens of rich and pregnant English that I have lately seen. Two sentences from his Preface will give you an idea of his style, in which every word seems to drive a nail :

"If to live were no other but to draw in and to breathe out the soft air, as the wise man speaketh, a needless labour were it, good Christian reader, to lay down any instructions to the world of "learning to live ;" for this is done naturally, both of men and beasts, without any teaching or learning.

"If to live were no other but to cast about for the favour and riches of the world, as some men are wont to call it,

TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER:

NEW-YORK, October 24, 1843.

Music seems to be the passion of the hour in New. York. Wallack had a house that would hardly pay expenses last night-even the Ravels have somewhat fallen off as they were going off-while Damoreau, Wallace, and the "Hutchinson Family" draw well. The latter are four children of a New Hampshire patriarch—(four out of fifteen, as they say in an autobiographical medley which they sing) and having been born with a singular natural talent for music, they are turning it to account in a musical tour. There are three brothers under twenty years of age, and a very young sister. Their voices are good, (particularly the girl's, who is about fourteen,) and they confine themselves to simple melody, such as would suit the least practised ear, while it cannot fail, from the truth || and expression with which they sing, to please the most fastidious. Their concerts are exceedingly enjoyable.

Mrs. Sutton, well known everywhere as a most charming singer, is about to perform a short engagement as a prima donna to the Italian company at Niblo's. I wish the success of the experiment might bring Castellan and Cinti Damoreau upon the stage. The latter, by the way, is the daughter of a French door-porter, and might easily have been "the grave of her deserving," but for her perseverance and ambition. Maroncelli is preparing a memoir of her, under her own direction.

There is a particular season of the year, (this is it) when, as most people know, the law forbids the killing and vending of certain game-the zest of illegality, of course, giving great flavour to the birds, and, of course, more than nullifying the law. Not the least in connection with this remark-I was very much astonished a day or two since, dining with a friend at a neighbouring hotel, to find fairly printed in the bill of fare, "Second Course-Roast Owls." On the succeeding day, at another table, I was startled with the enrolment of a dish called "Just Try Me”—which, || on experiment, I found to be a bird-(with an egg-shaped breast and a very long bill thrust through it-decently laid on his back, and covered with a pork apron! The latter name seemed very much to the point, and explained the bird's errand. The former I was puzzled with-but knowing the landlord of that hotel to be very much ultra crepidam, I was induced to look into ornithology for his meaning. I find that the peculiarity of the owl is “an external toe which can be turned behind at pleasure"-symbolical of the perverted beak of the woodcock, (as well as the making of false tracks to evade the law,) and serving in the same manner to prepare an orifice for the sauce of lemon-juice and cayenne. When this man cozens, you see, he cozens with edifying knowledge and discretion.

Machiavellians, the better livers. Somewhat more than is required to live Christianly than so, and that all shall one day find, than either drawing in and breathing out the soft air, or the plotting to compass the pleasures and profits of the world."

Morris has written a song to the air of Yankee Doodlea song" with a redound," as the Troubadours used to saya drum and fife well played in every line of it.

A letter has been received in New-York from Miss Edge. worth, speaking very complimentarily of the papers published in the New Mirror under the head of "Recollections of John Randolph." They are by a very eminent scholar and merchant of this city.

A cold-water procession is going under my window at this moment, in a very propitious shower of rain. From my elevated look-out, the long line of umbrellas, two and two, gives the street the dress look of a fashionable Taglioni coat, with two rows of big buttons down the middle. I noticed yesterday, by the way, a most stalwart and gallant-looking company of firemen, in an undress military uniform, marching out for exercise at the target. Everything about them was all right, except that their guests of honour were placed be. fore instead of behind—making of it a prisoner's guard instead of a military escort.

I see criticised, in one or two papers, a poem which was sent to me some time since as "printed, not published," called "Donna Florida," by Mr. Simms, the author of Southern Passages, &c. It is in the stanza and intended as an imitation of " Don Juan." The author says in his preface that he fancied" he might imitate the grace and exceeding felicity of expression in that unhappy performance-its playfulness, and possibly its wit-without falling into its licentiousness of utterance and malignity of mood. How he has succeeded in this object, it would not be becoming in him to inquire." One of the easiest things fancied possible, and one of the most difficult to do, is an imitation of the qualities of that same poem of Don Juan-and Mr. Simms, who has talent enough when he stumbles on his right vein, has made a woful mistake as to his capabilities for this. Two extracts will show his idea of the slap-dash-ery vein:

And

"One moment grows she most abruptly willing,
The next she slaps the chaps that think of billing."
speaking of woman again—

"Ev'n from his weakness and abandonment

Had woman her first being. Thus hath grown
Her power of evil since;-still uncontent
Hath she explored his weakness and o'erthrown;
And, in the use of arts incontinent,

No longer pacified by one poor vein,
She grapples the whole man, brawn, beef, and muscle,
Helped by the same old snake, and flings him in the tussle."
We feel in the air to-day, the snow that has fallen on the Hud.
son. It is raw and cold, though the weathercock points south.