'neath the dusky vestment of Ishmael's desert sons, that always beats the dead-march of the past-some thoughts are sleeping there, "dewy with tears."

over.

Try him with an old song as he sits thoughtfully by the fire, between sunlight and lamplight-one of the sweet old songs our mothers sang. Hum it softly There's an impatient gesture. That's not the one? Another, then. He does not seem to hear you, but he does. Perhaps he looks fierce-perhaps "accompanies" you with tongs and fender-perhaps seizes a quill with nervous emphasis, as if to make a pen. No matter-sing on. He has cut it to the feather, ruined a best "Holland." You have him now. You will play sunrise with this Memnon, by and by. "Where did you learn that?" says he, with a dreadful scowl. You need not tell him; he neither wants a reply nor waits for it. "'Tis a silly thing, and none but silly people sing-don't you know it?" Then comes a silence. Slowly he resumes the longforgotten thread of thought. "It's a long time ago, since I heard that foolish song-twenty years-the evening before I left home"-then he had a nestling place once-" my sister sang it"-and a sister, too— "and she-is dead now. Do you know the whole of it?" he asks abruptly, turning to you-"sing it,

then." He listens awhile, grows uneasy, lights a lamp, opens a ledger, and pretends to write. "Pshaw." he mutters; he has written his sister's name across the page. He seizes his hat, turns toward you with a face at least a lustrum younger, and says, "there, that will do," and slowly leaves the counting-room. Now look at that ledger's page. It is blotted. Did he blot it? He, whose books are a fair transcript of his character-precise, unquestionable, and without stain or erasure! Yes, a blot, but not of ink. You have made a better man of him-started the dormant mechanism of his heart again, and set the little handful of irritable muscle playing, as of old. And an old-fashioned tune-words in a primer, notes no where-that old-fashioned people sing with old-fashioned voices-alas! for that—trembling like a fastfailing fountain-such a melody has done all this.

'But the charm is attributable to association.' Is it? Approach the cage of the fiercest of his racea Hyrcanian tiger, and softly play a sweet air upon your flute, but it must be a good one, for though tigers have little talent for music, they have a great deal of taste. He lays his huge head against the bars of his prison; his stormy breath is lulled by the magic potency of sweet sounds; he is a kitten again;

and yet, the time when, wrapped in a little striped blanket of his own, he slept in the mountain cave, with the tempest for his lullaby, has very little to do with the "charming."

And the bright serpent-will my fair reader pardon the illustration?—that ribbon of living satinSatan?—how does he,

"That rolled away loose as the sea-wave,
sweep up his coil

Surge upon surge, and lay his gorgeous head
With its fix'd, sleepless eye i̇' the centre ring,
The watcher of his living citadel,"

when the Hindoo charmer breathes a tune upon the thrilled and slender reed? How does he arch his glossy neck, and quiver to the strain, his tongue like a lambent flame moving the while in mute accompaniment, thoroughly exorcised in the name, and by the spirit of harmony!

I cannot silence such a voice as that," said the human tiger, and he returned the steel gilded for the Singer's bosom, uncrimsoned to his own-an offering snatched from the altar of blood, and transferred to the altar of song.

Yes, there are strings in every heart-don't you believe it?-that are not all worsted-that were not

spun in a factory built with hands-not stolen from a silkworm's shroud-not continuations of the pursestrings; chords of a nobler harp than Apollo swept, that sometimes play Eolian to the wings of angel thought.

Here, then, music has its origin-hence, like the winged courier of the ark, it goes forth, and hither it returns, with the blessing and the song of peace. All hearts-gentle Charity, look the other way while I write it—all hearts are not full strung, but what of that? Paganini made his fortune by playing upon one string, and Nature made some to be like him.

Physiologists tell us that if one, with whom the "daughters of music are brought low," stand on the sounding shore amid the thunder of ocean, he can distinguish those softer tones, that had floated round him inaudible in the silence. And so it is with the bird-like voices of the purer and the past, that wander by unheard on muffled wing, yet sometimes amid the din and hurry of the thronged and dusty world, thrill ear and heart, and charm us, for a moment, back to our better selves, ere the spring array of life was doffed for the rustling gold of harvest, or bound in the sheaf to fade upon the floor of the thresher.

Age must bring its dower of the silver tress, but

what of that, if the heart be young? Music, as I am regarding it, is the great cosmetic that keeps it from growing old with years. But to be this, it must also be heart-born. If it springs thence, it will rise like a fountain to its height again—fountain? aye, that's the word!—and fall like it, in hope and beauty, over some other fountain that has ceased to play melodiously as of old-its sublime mission of beauty and blessing unended, till "the pitcher and the wheel are broken, when the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit unto God who gave it.”

The Wind and the Night.

SOME of the fruit-trees hereabouts have strange ways of their own; indeed, I suspect a little appletree of being partly human. About tall enough to speak Everett's

"You'd scarce expect one of my age,”

there it stood, in full leaf, every one newly varnished, holding on with all its might to a huge apple, pendent from the very extremity of a limb, its first sole offering to Autumn and its owner. There it stood, as if