works, would put Persians and East Indians to their trumps. The first thing she did was to give the wheel of time a tremendous whirl forward, and throw a respectable couple, if not exactly into "kingdom come," at least into the generation on before, and transform them into grandfather and grandmother in a twinkling; turn innocent young women into aunts, and roistering boys into uncles, before they knew it, and cap the climax, by making a young pair, who fancied, a minute ago, they had their fortunes to make, independent for life. And all this time, and doing all this, she never said a word! She But this Charmer wrought other wonders. made an error of one in the tables of a Census-taker, miles away, and puzzled him sadly; she prolonged a piece of delicate flannel then going through the loom, just three yards; gave the spool of the ribbon-weaver a dozen turns more than was intended; kept the weary lace-maker, in spite of herself, full two hours longer at her task, she wondering, the while, why she tarried at her toil. And so she went on with her witchery, further than I have time to think or patience to tell, and yet-people profess to believe that the days of enchantment have passed away! 'The name of this Charmer?' inquires some body, and there he has me at fault. She is nameless, like the clouds and the flowers. She came unannounced. She bore no letters of introduction. She presented no card; and indeed, 'saving and excepting' the wonders she works, she is an emphatic no body. Strange world, isn't it? Strange visitors enter it, don't there? An Unscientific Chat about Music. THERE is, as every body knows, a trumpet-shaped little instrument, delighting in the barbarous name of Stethoscope, made at some small expense of wood, ivory, and skill, wherewith the surgeon plays eavesdropper to the clink of the machinery of life; and there's a thought in it alike for the preacher and the poet. It is sublime, indeed, to bring one's ear close to the heart's red brink, and list the tinkling of the crimson tide; but there is something more sublime than this. Beneath that wave incarnadine, in every heart, lie pebbly thoughts in rhyme, and gems "of purest ray," beyond the ken of surgeon, and beyond his skill-the emotion half uttered in a sigh, the hope half written in a smile, the grief betokened in a tear. Now that sublimer something is—POETRY. " ! ?” —Yes, most Incredulous, Poetry-for what is it, after all, but the stethoscope of the soul, whereby we hear the music of a healthful heart, and the footfall of lofty thought in the hall of the spirit? What is it but the thought itself, warm and living, throbbed out by one heart, only to find lodgment in another? And what is MUSIC, but the melodious wing that wafts and warms it on its mission round the world—that will not let it droop-that will not let it die? "Auld Lang Syne"-here it is, glittering with the dews of its native heather - -sung last night in a hovel, sung this morning in a hall. 'When shall we meet again?" Within one little year how many lips have asked-how many knells have answered it! Where pipes Cape Horn through frozen shrouds, the mariner hums "Sweet Home," to-night; where hearths are desolate and cold, they sing "Sweet Home," in Heaven. With how many blended hearts, from Plymouth to the Prairie, "Dundee's wild warbling measures rose" last Sabbath morn-the strain the Covenanters sang-the tune that lingers yet along the banks of murmuring Ayr! The "Star Spangled Banner" strong voices hymn on deck and desert, in bivouac and battle, where beats a heart beneath Columbia's flag. The "Exile of Erin" will sing the mournful strain, while grates his pilgrim bark upon a foreign shore; they'll chant "Marseilles," and sound the simple "Ranz des Vaches," till Revolutions are no more, and Alpine altars cease to kindle in the evening beam. "Those evening bells," and "Sweet Afton," and all that long array of sweet and simple melodies that linger round the heart, like childhood's dreams of heaven-whence came their breath of immortality, if not from Music, the pinion of the Song? And then those sacred tunes that floated round the old gray walls of the village church, and haunt our memories yet; St. Martin's, St. Thomas, and St. Mary's, immortal as the "calendar;" Old Hundred, Silver Street, and Mear, and sweet old Corinth-Denmark, Wells, and Peterboro'-chance breaths caught from the choir above! The faces of the Singers have changed since then. The girls are wives-the wives are dead. Those plaintive airs they sang around the open grave, beneath the maple's shade! Lay your hand upon your heart, and tell me what is nearer to it than those old strains-tell me, can they die, while that beats on? Die till the "great congregation," the missing ones all gathered home, strike up the sleeping song anew, in "temples not built with hands"? There's Tallis' Evening Hymn, the vesper of two hundred years! They sing it yet-sing it as they sang, in twilight's hush, and charmed our youthful ears. They! Who, and where are "they"? The loved-in Heaven! Perhaps they sing it there. Who will not say with Christopher North, "blessed be the memory of old songs for ever"? And—“ mind the step down"—the fashionable "scores" of these days of science and "executions”the music of the parlor and soirée, thrummed on pianos, twanged on guitars, drawn out from accordions the sounds that swing scientifically from round to round, up and down the ladder of song-now swelling like a Chinese gong-now quavering in the alto of feline distraction-now at the height of the art, and now in the very Avernus of the science-what element of melody or of soul have THESE, to charm the ear, to reach the heart, to live for ever? Was it Wesley who said the devil had most of the good tunes, after all? And what did he mean, save that out of the church and the drawing-room-off the carpets; on the bare floors of this great caravansary, in the street, and the cane-brake, and the theatre, where they clat |