shall lose nothing." The very next morning he loaded his black servant and another labourer with pick-axes, spades, and hoes, and sent them to dig about and under the tree, with instructions to bring. him immediately whatever curious or remarkable thing they might find there. He was ashamed to go to the spot himself, for ne felt that he had abused the gifts of his benefactress, and was now repaying her kindness with ingratitude. In the evening the labourers returned, having found nothing but a few fragments of a glass bottle, and complained that the water from the rivulet that ran near the tree, soaked through the earth and filled the excavations they were making. Caspar ordered them to dam it up a few rods nearer its source, and turn it into a new channel.

It was July, and a severe drought prevailed all over the country. The pastures looked red and sun-burnt; the hardy house-plantain, before Caspar's door, rolled up its leaves like a segar; the birds were silent; the cattle drooped; nothing was cheerful and lively but the grasshoppers, who always swarm thickest, and chirp merriest, in dry seasons, and the poultry, who chased and caught them by the sides of the road. The poor oak, almost undermined and deprived of the moisture of its rivulet, was the saddest looking tree in the whole country; its leaves grew yellow and rusty, and dropped off one by one; and it is said that once, when Caspar was looking towards it from one of the back windows of his house, just as the twilight set in, he fancied he saw again that fair, sad face, among the boughs, and a white shadowy arm, beckoning him to approach. But he hardened his heart, and turned away from the sight, and the next morning his labourers went on with their task.

One afternoon, on a day of uncommon heat, as Caspar was engaged at a tavern in bargaining for a pair of horses, with a jockey who had come twenty miles on purpose to cheat him, the labourers were driven from their work by a furious tempest. The woods roared and bent in the violent wind and the heavy rain, and a thousand new streams were at once formed, which ran winding all over the open country, like so many serpents. The brook, that formerly ran by the oak, broke over the barrier which diverted it from its course, and coming down the hill, with a vast body of water, ploughed for itself a new channel through the excavations of Caspar's workmen, and completed the undermining of the tree. At last a strong gust took it by the top and laid it on its side, with its long roots sticking up in the air. Caspar's family beheld its fall from the

windows.

Two hours afterwards there was a clear sky, and a bright sun

shining on the glistening earth, and the wet roofs of Caspar's buildings were smoking in the warm rays. A little pot-bellied man, with an enormous hump on his shoulders, small, thin legs and arms, and hideous features, dressed in a suit of clothes that seemed to have been made for a man much taller and straighter than himself, the collar of his coat standing erect about a foot from his neck, entered the house, and began to issue his commands to the servants with an air of authority. At first they only smiled at his conduct, supposing him to be insane, and offered him some broken victuals and a cup of cider. At this he flew into a great rage, and swore he was Caspar Buckel himself, the master of the house. Finding that he grew troublesome, they sent for Mrs. Buckel, who was beginning to talk soothingly to him, with a view of persuading him to leave the house, but what was her astonishment when the misshapen being insisted that he was her husband. Shocked and frighten

ed at this proof of his madness, she ordered the labourer and the black fellow to put him out of the house, which they effected with some difficulty, while he struggled, scratched, bit, foamed at the mouth, and declared, with a thousand oaths, that he was Caspar Buckel, their master. When they had got him out of the door, and had disengaged themselves from him, the black gave him a stroke with the long horsewhip that he used in driving his master's horses, and calling out the dogs, set them upon him. The deformed creature scampered before them into a neighbouring wood, and then the negro called them off.

Caspar did not return that night, and the next morning Mrs. Buckel sent to the tavern to inquire for him, but without learning any thing satisfactory concerning him. The landlord recollected he was there about the middle of the tempest, but could not say when he left the house; he mentioned, also, that after the sky began to clear, a little hunch-backed man had asked at his bar for a glass of whiskey, and having paid for it, immediately went away. As for the jockey, he had gone off with his horses just before the storm began, having been unable to drive such a bargain with Mr. Buckel as he wished.

Mrs. Buckel continued her searches and inquiries for six weary months, after which she concluded that her husband was dead, and remained disconsolate for six months longer. At the end of this period she gave her hand to a young fellow from New England, who had fallen in love with her plump, round face, and well stocked farm. As for Caspar, he was never heard of again; but the old people say that the woods north of

his widow's house are haunted at twilight by the figure of a hunch-backed little man, skipping over the fallen trees, and running into gloomy thickets as soon as your eye falls on him, as if to avoid the sight of man.

THE HUSBAND'S AND WIFE'S GRAVE.

HUSBAND and wife! No converse now ye hold,
As once ye did, in your young day of love, ·
On its alarms, its anxious hours, delays,
Its silent meditations, its glad hopes,
Its fears, impatience, quiet sympathies;
Nor do ye speak of joy assured, and bliss
Full, certain, and possessed. Domestic cares
Call you not now together. Earnest talk
On what your children may be moves ye not.
You lie in silence, and an awful silence;
'Tis not like that in which you rested once
Most happy-silence eloquent, when heart
With heart held speech, and your mysterious frames,
Harmonious, sensitive, at every beat

Touched the soft notes of love.

Stillness profound,

Insensible, unheeding, folds you round,
And darkness, as a stone, has sealed you in.
Away from all the living, here ye rest :
In all the nearness of the narrow tomb,
Yet feel ye not each other's presence now.
Dread fellowship!-together, yet alone.

Is this thy prison house, thy grave, then, Love?
And doth death cancel the great bond that holds
Commingling spirits? Are thoughts that know no bounds,
But self-inspired, rise upward, searching out
The eternal Mind-the Father of all thought-
Are they become mere tenants of a tomb ?-
Dwellers in darkness, who th' illuminate realms
Of uncreated light have visited and lived?
Lived in the dreadful splendour of that throne,
Which One, with gentle hand the veil of flesh
Lifting, that hung 'twixt man and it, revealed
In glory?-throne before which even now
Our souls, moved by prophetic power, bow down
Rejoicing, yet at their own natures awed?
Souls that Thee know by a mysterious sense,
Thou awful, unseen Presence-are they quenched,

Or beam they on, hid from our mortal eyes
By that bright day which ends not; as the sun
His robe of light flings round the glittering stars?

And with our frames do perish all our loves?
Do those that took their root and put forth buds,
And their soft leaves unfolded in the warmth
Of mutual hearts, grow up and live in beauty,
Then fade and fall, like fair unconscious flowers?
Are thoughts and passions that to the tongue give speech,
And make it send forth winning harmonies,
That to the cheek do give its living glow,
And vision in the eye the soul intense
With that for which there is no utterance-
Are these the body's accidents ?—no more?
To live in it, and when that dies, go out
Like the burnt taper's flame?

O, listen, man!
A voice within us speaks that startling word,
"Man, thou shalt never die!" Celestial voices
Hymn it unto our souls: according harps,
By angel fingers touched when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sound forth still
The song of our great immortality:

Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain,
The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned seas,
Join in this solemn, universal song.

-O, listen, ye, our spirits; drink it in

From all the air! 'Tis in the gentle moonlight;

'Tis floating midst day's setting glories: night, Wrapt in his sable robe, with silent step

Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears:

Night, and the dawn, bright day, and thoughtful eve,
All times, all bounds, the limitless expanse,

As one vast mystic instrument, are touched
By an unseen, living hand, and conscious chords
Quiver with joy in this great jubilee.

-The dying hear it; and as sounds of earth
Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls
To mingle in this heavenly harmony.

Why is it that I linger round this tomb?

What holds it? Dust that cumber'd those I mourn.
They shook it off, and laid aside earth's robes,
And put on those of light. They're gone to dwell
In love-their God's and angels'. Mutual love
That bound them here, no longer needs a speech
VOL. II.
9

For full communion, nor sensations strong,
Within their breast, the prison, strive in vain
To be set free, and meet their kind in joy.-
Changed to celestials, thoughts that rise in each,
By natures new, impart themselves though silent.
Each quickening sense, each throb of holy love,
Affections sanctified, and all the glow

Of being, which expand and gladden one,
By unison mysterious, thrill and live

In both immortal frames :-Sensation all,

And thought, pervading, mingling sense and thought!
Ye paired, yet one! wrapt in a consciousness
Twofold, yet single-this is love, this life!

Why call we then the square-built monument,
The upright column, and the low laid slab,
Tokens of death, memorials of decay?
Stand in this solemn, still assembly, man,
And learn thy proper nature; for thou see'st,
In these shaped stones and lettered tables, figures
Of life: More are they to thy soul than those
Which he who talked on Sinai's mount with God,
Brought to the old Judeans-types are these,
Of thine eternity.

I thank Thee, Father,
That at this simple grave, on which the dawn
Is breaking, emblem of that day which hath
No close, Thou kindly unto my dark mind
Hast sent a sacred light, and that away
From this green hillock, whither I had come
In sorrow, Thou art leading me in joy.

Y.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATHENEUM MAGAZINE.

MESSRS. EDITORS:

No man can be said to know the world, till he is in some measure shut out of it. It is then he becomes a looker on, surveying with a disinterested and philosophic coolness, that great conflict of passions, prejudices, and interests, which, as it were, boils and bubbles, in the turbulent waters that dash about his little secluded isle. I speak from experience, when I say, that I have learned more of life and human character, within the last half year that I have been confined to a very small portion of space, than in all the rest of my life besides; and should I