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"Bugs" and Beauties.

FOR the last five minutes, a MILLER in a dusty suit of "silver gray" has been fluttering round the candle. Yesterday afternoon, his royal cousin, the BUTTERFLY, that some body, so Cowley-like, called "a winged flower," was fluttering round a sunbeam. But no dusty miller was this, in sober gray, for when Nature painted it, she spared no tint of the richest and rarest that would render it beautiful-that would "show" in the sun. There's a fellow in dark brown now, creeping over the sheet as I write. It stopped at the word, Butterfly,' and crawled contemptuously over it. This Mr. Brown is never seen in the daytime, but looks well enough by lamplight, starlight, or moonlight. Any thing more would be useless, because unsight, unseen," as the boys say. Had it been other than a night-walker, it would have been spotted with gold, specked with vermilion, tricked out with indigo-blue legs, or rigged with transparencies. Nature is altogether an artist, and though with all the dyes of the rainbow at command, and to spare, exhibits a most remarkable and commendable economy

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in her adornings. Show me a flower opening only at night, and I will almost always show you one that has taken the white veil or affects a demure gray. She is equally judicious in her varnishing: the upper surfaces of millions of leaves-how glossy and polished! Three coats of paint and six of varnish, by the palette of Reubens! But the lower surfaces, just as nice, but neither so green nor so glossy; it would be of no use, and besides, they could not breathe freely through new paint.

Speaking of coloring: isn't it a little queer, or is it just as might be expected, that JOHN GALT should come all the way across the ocean, out of two thicknesses of London fog, to tell people "to the manor born" what color an American sky is, in the summer, toward sunset? Or that they should marvel to learn it is an apple-green-the reflection of those great emeralds of earth, the Prairies, and those miles on miles of forest billows, that roll up and up, and fling their green spray into heaven? Poetasters, poor fellows! how blank they'd look-wouldn't they?— should a law be passed, forbidding their babble about azure, blue, and cerulean skies; and they compelled, if they spoke at all, to say, 'Oh! apple-green heavens !'

Nature is not half so pains-taking with very early

morning as with the later day, and for the best reason in life, there's no body "up" to see. So she makes it a neat steel-gray, inlaying a piece or two of pearl here and there, and looping up round the edges, a few odd bits of red ribbon. Noon she doesn't mind much. To be sure the coloring is rich and warm, but then, nothing like a master-piece. But 'come night,' when the labor of the world is pretty near done, she 'lays herself out' in the West, exactly where every body would naturally be looking, and gathers there, the pearl and gold of morning, the glow and glory of noon, and the Tyrian tints of night. She spreads there, unbended rainbows from dismantled clouds; she gives there, patterns for the sea-shells to tint bya red and a white that set the pattern for York and Lancaster themes for a thousand preachers, and songs for a thousand bards.

On such a night, in such a June, who has not sat, side by side, with some body, for all the world like "Jenny June?" May-be it was years ago; but it was some time. May-be you had quite forgotten it; but you will be the better for remembering it. Maybe she has "gone on before," where it is June all the year long, and never January at all; but God forbid!

There it was, and then it was, and thus it was:

The Beautiful Riber.

Like a Foundling in slumber, the summer day lay

On the crimsoning threshold of Even,

And I thought that the glow through 'the azure-arched '

way,

Was a glimpse of the coming of Heaven.

There together we sat by the beautiful stream :

We had nothing to do, but to love and to dream,

In the days that have gone on before.

These are not the same days, though they bear the same

name,

With the ones I shall welcome no more.

But it may be, the angels are culling them o'er,

For a Sabbath and Summer for ever,

When the years shall forget the Decembers they wore,
And the shroud shall be woven, no, never!

In a twilight like that, Jenny June for a bride,
Oh! what more of the world could one wish for beside,
As we gazed on the River unroll'd,

Till we heard, or we fancied, its musical tide,

When it flowed through the Gate-way of gold?

Jenny June, then I said, let us linger no more,
On the banks of the beautiful River-

Let the boat be unmoored, and be muffled the oar,
And we'll steal into Heaven together.

If the Angel on duty our coming descries,

You have nothing to do but throw off the disguise
That you wore while you wandered with me,
And the Sentry shall say, "Welcome back to the skies;
We have long been a-waiting for thee."

Oh! how sweetly she spoke, ere she uttered a word,
With that blush, partly hers, partly Even's,
And that tone, like the dream of a song we once heard,
As she whispered, 'That way is not Heaven's;

For the River that runs by the realm of the Blest
Has no song on its ripple, no star on its breast-
Oh! that River is nothing like this!

For it glides on in shadow, beyond the world's west,
Till it breaks into beauty and bliss.'

I am lingering yet, but I linger alone,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

'Tis the twin of that day, but the wave where it shone, Bears the willow tree's shadow for ever!

Ploughshares and
and Sorrows.

GREAT grief in the clover just now, and every body but "Rachel, weeping for her children." For a few days past, they have kept a thing, a machine, a monster, going in the Clover Field, that they call a "breaking-up plough," and it is well named for an ill business; inasmuch as it interferes with more domestic arrangements, and destroys more domestic happiness and hopes, than "Consuelo or the Last War—in fact, it breaks

up whole families.

Talk about "beating swords into ploughshares!"

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