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 satin— Satan?-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-hente, 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' g? 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

straining every woody muscle to hold the wonder up to sight, and by the air of its little top, seeming as plain as words to say, "Look at me and mine, won't you?" Vain, little thing!

Close by, stands another tree of about the same size, and sporting, like its comrade, one big, red apple. But it seems to have learned wisdom from its ambitious little neighbor, and instead of holding out its burden at arm's length, it has taken it at an advantage,' having thrown it carelessly over a limb midway, with two or three glossy leaves disposed carefully over it, for all the world as our grandmothers-God bless them-used to carry their knitting work, with the neatly-folded blue cotton handkerchief, and the white stars in it-(what has become of the blue cottons, and the stars, and the grandmothers? Lack-aday! all alike, worn out, and faded, and gone)-laid carefully over it.

There stood the little tree, as nonchalant as a dead shot, as much as to say, "that's nothing to what I'll do, by-and-by." I'll wager something on that tree. Ah! that by-and-by! There's the song of youth and hope, and the beat of a heart, locked up in it. And who would hush the song and muffle the throb beneath the mantle of worldly wisdom, but a dog and a cynic,

and they are brothers. Sing on! beat on. say I! It is the music of the march of life.

There's a Quince Tree. With its twisted, crooked trunks, springing out of the ground all together, and turning and crowding in every direction, before they make a final shoot upward into the air, it looks as if it had been in such a desperate hurry to get up in the world, that it hadn't taken time to make ready, and hardly knew which way to go, when it got up. There are quite as many Quince bushes of the genus homo as of the "Cydonia Vulgaris," as the schoolmen call it. Well, tarts are pleasant, sometimes, if not too

tart.

How the Woods welcome a breeze, and how varied the modes in which that welcome is given. Have you ever thought of it, and did you ever see a wind? There's one coming now-a mere breath-creeping over the marsh, as if it would take the trees by surprise. Catch its portrait now, while you can. See it run over the tall grass, something like a shadow, with a sunbeam following hard after it. That Elm, with its pensile branches, like lace edging on the border of the meadow ! The wind has swung itself up into it, and sways to and fro, as merrily as a Canary in a ring. Down it glides, and away for that silvery