ated crotchets, maggots, whims, conceits, all peevish, carking, baleful. Nothing is more beneficial to the mental powers than to grant them an occasional vacation, relax the over-tension, restore the elasticity and reïnvigorate them for new exertion; and nothing so well brings about all these desirable ends as a good thorough-going laugh. It reaches to all parts, body, soul, and intellect. Firstly, it promotes digestion, and, as a consequence, internal peace. It is Bacon, I think, who says that rebellions of the stomach are the worst in their kind. This organ, by the way, has more to do with the morals of half the world than their consciences, as I intend showing in a future essay. To return to the laugh. What Burton says of the effects of sleep may be said of it, for it does, as it were, 'moysten and fatten the body; he instances the good case in which dormice awaken from their long hybernation; I adduce the waists of most merry men. Then it shakes out the wrinkles from the heart, leaving no crannies for corroding anxiety and malice and all uncharitableness to cling in; blue devils scamper away before it; it dispels the fogs that hang over the intellect, as Jove's thunder purifies the atmosphere, leaving perception and judgment clear. In fine, as one says who speaks with authority, having laughed much himself, and been the cause of much laughter in others, who bearing his many trials not patiently but jestingly snapped his fingers at what others would have groaned over ; as Hood says, 'it expands the chest, enlarges the heart, quickens the circulation, and 'like a trumpet makes the spirits dance.'"

'THERE are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit.'

And sometimes they do obtain such a garment as they desire. I think that this kind of people could not indeed do better - verily, speaking would be their undoing. This appearance, as if they were like that owl we read of, which 'kept up a devil of a thinking,' is rather a narrow base for a reputation to rest on; its steady, perpendicular maintenance is excusable. But it is still the truth that Trophonius' cave is no temple of wisdom in any kind; gravity no necessary sign, test or product of it. Here come willing witnesses to support the proposition. There is Democritus, the Bacon of antiquity, a constant laugher among the foolish Abderites. Socrates, though deformity and a shrew were against him, was any thing rather than a gloomy Martin Luther played softly on his flute, and drank his glass, and blithely sang:

man.

• Who loves not women, wine, and song,
Liveth a fool his whole life long,'

nor ever dishonored his notes. Cromwell loved his bout and jest with his soldiery; no weak men, he nor they. Nay, Milton, the inspired, 'wrote 'L'Allegro almost not inferior to his greater poem. Wisdom may dress in motley as well as in black. Rabelais, Richter, Sterne, are sound moralists in their way, as sound as though they were quite unreadably dull; and I will add Swift, although he was diseasedly cross and dirty sometimes; and Boccaccio, who gives me my text, as he has given me many other things, directly or remodelled by other poets, although sometimes he grows somewhat too gay for innocence.

Doon decided upon in their ursine brains.

Emerging from a forest, the King reined up his steeds for a moment. A steep iced slope was before him, descending to a valley. In the valley was a river. The stream was frozen at the foot of the slope, but a mile above a cataract was visible where a tributary torrent issuing from the forest delivered its waters into the broken bed of the river through a gulf, frightful with rocks and ice. Perhaps half that distance below the bed of the main stream itself sank, and one standing where the King's steeds halted, looked off over the brink of a

No hand doth pluck for me the golden flowers,
Since thou art gone, my noble lord: alone
I count the going of the slow-paced hours,
And still do hope, though my sweet hope is flown.

Adown the path no foot but mine doth brush
The early dew from off the lush, rank grass:
Within the flowering peach, the tawny thrush
Doth break the air with music, as I pass.

And all the golden joys of other times
Come back in the still hushes of his song:
I hear again your voice repeat the rhymes,
The graceful rhymes that to those days belong.

And in my pain, I shriek your name aloud :

I cry: why did you go, my love, my lord?
Why should you stay, O man, so brave and proud?
Grown strange and cold at one reproving word.

Come back, my love: all that you ask I give,
From red-mouthed kisses rained upon your eyes,
To endless faith, if I may only live

In the sweet bliss your presence now denies.

Watertown, (N. Y.,) Jan. 1860.

А. К. В.

ated crotchets, maggots, whims, conceits, all peevish, carking, baleful. Nothing is more beneficial to the mental powers than to grant them an occasional vacation, relax the over-tension, restore the elasticity and reïnvigorate them for new exertion; and nothing so well brings about all these desirable ends as a good thorough-going laugh. It reaches to all parts, body, soul, and intellect. Firstly, it promotes digestion, and, as a consequence, internal peace. It is Bacon, I think, who says that rebellions of the stomach are the worst in their kind. This organ, by the way, has more to do with the morals of half the world than their consciences, as I intend showing in a future essay. To return to the laugh. What Burton says of the effects of sleep may be said of it, for it does, as it were, 'moysten and fatten the body; he instances the good case in which dormice awaken from their long hybernation; I adduce the waists of most merry men. Then it shakes out the wrinkles from the heart, leaving no crannies for corroding anxiety and malice and all uncharitableness to cling in; blue devils scamper away before it; it dispels the fogs that hang over the intellect, as Jove's thunder purifies the atmnhmas suparus, plunging furiously, and flinging their heads high aloft, notwithstanding two sturdy grooms hung on each bit.

The King sprang into the sledge, and gathered the reins into one hand. 'Let go, you rogues!' he cried, bringing his lash down thrice with all his might indiscriminately over the flanks of horses and hostlers; 'Let go, will you?' The steeds leaped into the air in dreadful rage, dashed the grooms under their feet, bounded forward, jerked the sledge over the prostrate hostlers, and tore out of the castle like sons of the whirl-wind, the long lash of the King, merciless Norse Jehu that he was, describing fearful circles over his head.

Still hung the moon in the mid-heaven, and still the great northern stars shone gloriously in the deeps of darkness. The watchman on the tower of the King's gate stood looking at the awful brilliance of those orbs, and in his heart did reverence to them, the champions that girt themselves with fire and confronted with serene guardianship the evil ones, enemies of men, that have their abode in the outer blackness of darkness. The King's horses thundered through the portal and roused the watchman from his musing. 'King Rolf is loose,' he said, 'and drives toward the Gulf of the North Fires. All the north-land will be awakened, and high time for it too.

Away, away, flew the horses of the King. Winged lions were they for speed and fierceness, 'swallowing the ground' in wrath. Far over the plain they sped like a scud of drifting snow, driven by the fiercest gust of winter, and the charioteer - Jehu Barbarossa that he was-standing in the sledge, whirled his lash and shouted as if he were a demon from the infernal hippodrome. The Forest of Firs

1

nor ever dishonored his notes. Cromwell loved his bout and jest with his soldiery; no weak men, he nor they. Nay, Milton, the inspired, wrote 'L'Allegro almost not inferior to his greater poem. Wisdom may dress in motley as well as in black. Rabelais, Richter, Sterne, are sound moralists in their way, as sound as though they were quite unreadably dull; and I will add Swift, although he was diseasedly cross and dirty sometimes; and Boccaccio, who gives me my text, as he has given me many other things, directly or remodelled by other poets, although sometimes he grows somewhat too gay for innocence.

Emerging from a forest, the King reined up his steeds for a moment. A steep iced slope was before him, descending to a valley. In the valley was a river. The stream was frozen at the foot of the slope, but a mile above a cataract was visible where a tributary torrent issuing from the forest delivered its waters into the broken bed of the river through a gulf, frightful with rocks and ice. Perhaps half that distance below the bed of the main stream itself sank, and one standing where the King's steeds halted, looked off over the brink of a second cataract into an abyss, hideous with its heaps of stranded ice, while the iron walls of a mountain rose sheer into the air on one side, and precipices, to the very verge of which the fir-forest crowded its giant timber, overhung the other. The mountain opposite and above the King was of a dark and forbidding appearance, and extended in a curve with the white floor of the river at its base, till at the point where the eye's tangent touched its circumference, the inclosing wings of the forest seemed to cross the river and join the mountain's side.

The royal charioteer paused but a moment, and then the steeds ran headlong down the slope and crossed the river diagonally to the very corner of the lower and greater cataract. Here a precarious road-way was disclosed in the side of the mountain. Nothing doubting, the horses galloped down the slippery path, finding perhaps their only safety in the very madness of their speed. In a moment they stood at the bottom of the abyss, with the frightful Arctic Niagara thundering about their hoofs. Silently towered the iron wall of the mountain above their heads. But on the opposite side a crag, not smaller than one of the old world's ancient cathedrals, pierced by the wedge of the frost, broke in a seeming agony from the cliffs, and in one bound plunged to the watery abyss with all its load of growing timber, churning the deep as though the chasm were a cistern.

Once at the bottom of the ravine, the King saw, what before was not apparent, a narrow pass opening in the mountain, and into this the steeds turned. It was a deep, winding gorge. But the horses rushed through the defile as furiously as before, whirled the sledge

VOL. LV.

31

around the arching precipices, and suddenly sprang into a vast, open space. The monarch drew the reins with all his might, but did not check the headlong course of the horses till they stood on the very brink of a chasm of appalling obscurity, to which no bottom could be seen. Then they started back in affright, and Rolf, rough Jehu that he was, leaped from his sledge into the midst of them, and laid about him with both hands, cuffing and boxing till he fairly tumbled the whole six heels-over-head backward from the gulf. He then stood for a moment, as if to survey the place which he had so abruptly entered. It seemed at first sight a portion of a vast, obscure amphitheatre, inclosing a gulf. One would instinctively cast his eyes over the chasm at the first to catch the outlines of the opposite wall, if any there were, but vision failed to pierce the shadows which overhung that fearful pit. He might believe himself standing on the coast of the universe, with the illimitable Blackness of Darkness before him. Just at hand, it is true, were walls of stupendous magnitude, with their curve visible for many leagues, sweeping around as if to inclose the chasm with a rim; but being presently lost in the darkness, it could not be known whether the circuit was completed.

Horrible was the gulf for its blackness and unimaginable depth. It seemed the very shaft of hell, for truly the mouth of the infernal mines could not be blacker or wider or deeper. One leaping from the wall, except above the platform or gallery upon which the visitant and his horses stood, would fall plumb down-down - whither?

There was something passing strange about the obscurity which prevailed in the space. In the world without, it was high Arctic noon-day, the moon broad and wealthy, and the stars shining with clear brilliance. But the orb which without hung from the top of the sky and lighted the whole North with its white lamp, here was seen betwixt two pinnacles of the mountains, a dead, heavy globe, almost lustreless. There were no stars above the gulf, or beyond it. It seemed almost as though a trunk of darkness rose from it to the sky. One entering this fearful place would look to see the prince of fallen angels standing on the brink of the gallery, and spreading wide his vans, before he dropped his mighty bulk into that throat of hell.

King Rolf blew a loud blast upon his trumpet. The sound ran along the wall, but of the thousand echoes which the cliffs returned, none came from beyond the gulf. Thereupon, there arose from below, one of aged yet almost fierce aspect, wearing a robe and girdle, and bearing in his hand a rod.

Hail! Old Fire-master, the King said.

'I heard thy horn, Rolf of Northall, the other said, 'and therefore I have arisen."