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"It is with great pain that I sit down to make the following communication; but a sense of duty compels me to the task. "I have had a long and interesting interview with your very worthy and excellent father. He informs me that he can never consent to what we had both so earnestly wished; I had not supposed his objections to be so strong. He thinks, that my character and habits are such, that he could not trust to me the happiness of his daughter. Perhaps he is right. I know, at any rate, that my dear Miss, could never be happy if, in so serious a matter, she disobeyed the commands of her parents. I trust she will do justice to the delicacy which induces me to release her from a promise too inconsiderately asked, too rashly given. May some better man-but, perhaps, the eagerness of my friendship is leading me to the verge of impertinence. I enclose a lock of your hair ;--and remain, with great respect, Your sincere friend,

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"It will cost me--my life!" said Fanny, and she burst into tears and left

the room.

"I hope not," said her father ;---" It cost me---humph!"

What could Fanny do? She kept her bed, and cried for three days, and for some weeks longer she was sullen, and out of spirits.—

Fanny!" said her papa one morning, with a peculiar smile, "Mr.

is coming to see you this evening.

"I won't see him," said she pouting.

Alas! alas! we cannot always be wretched! Time, time, obliterates all feelings--all recollections. She did see him--an active young man in the Jobbing business.

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Fanny detests handsome young men now; and abhors romance and novel-reading. She is a good wife; and a very notable woman.

THE OUTCAST.

[BY MISS VANDERSTEIN.]

"As thou hast with others, will Fate with thee deal,
And that heart which pride smothers, be yet taught to feel,
Thou wilt doat upon one whom all others condemn,
And thy heart when undone will regard him like them."

QUIVORLEY.

Aye, they may condemn him,

Yet so will not I,

When the storm clouds are darkest,
The rude blasts most high,
When denounced, and forsaken,
He shrinks from the storm,
Be my heart as unshaken,
My bosom as warm.

A love deeper than mother's,
Thou 'lt find mine for thee,
And deserted by others,

Be dearer to me.

Oh! how little thou knowest
The strength of that faith,
Which the proud spirit keepeth,
Through danger and death.

In the sunshine of fortune,

It hides from the world

Its love, like the eagle,

With proud pinions furled; But when rises the tempest

O'er those it loves best, Like the eagle it battles,

And dies for its nest.

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THE ART OF MAKING POETRY.

[BY AN EMERITUS PROFESSOR.]

I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, suppers, and sleeping hours excepted-it is the right butter women rate to market.-As You Like it.

Cardinal Richelieu is reported to have said once that he would make so many dukes that it should be a shame to be one, and a shame not to be one. It appears, however, that he changed his mind afterwards, inasmuch as down to St. Simon's time there were only twelve or thirteen dukes in France, besides the blood-royal. At present they are more plenty, though it is even yet some distinction to be a duke, out of Italy; and in Poland there is an express law against the title being borne by any man who has not a clear income of three hundred dollars a year to support its dignity. In Bavaria, you may be made a baron for 7000 rix-dollars (or $5250) -or a count for 30,000 rix-dollars, but in this last case you must not follow any trade or profession; bankers, accordingly, content themselves with baronies usually, like sensible men, preferring substance to sound; as in fact, when it is perfectly well-known you are able to buy a dozen counts and their titles, the world gives you credit as for the possession,-perhaps more. But what Cardinal Richelieu threatened with regard to dukedoms has, in fact, been effected by the progress of the world with regard to another title as honorable, perhaps, as that of duke, though few of its possessors could retain it if the Polish regulation mentioned above were to be applied to it and enforced. I mean the title of poet. To be a poet, or rather, for there is still some reverence left for that name, to be a versifier, is in these days a shame, and not to be one is a shame. That is, it is a shame for any man to take airs or pique himself on a talent now so common; so much reduced to rule and grown absolutely mechanical, and to be learned like arithmetic and, on the other hand, for these same reasons, it is a shame not in some degree to possess it, or have it for occasions at command. It is convenient sometimes to turn some trifle from a foreign language, to hit off a scrap for a corner of a newspaper, to write a squib or an epigram, or play a game at crambo, and for all these emergencies the practised versifier is prepared. He has, very likely, the frames of a few verses always ready in his mind, constructed for the purpose, into which he can put any given idea at a moment's warning, with as much certainty as he could put a squirrel or a bird into a cage he had ready for it. These frames may consist merely of the rhymes, or bouts rimés, being common-place words such as would be easily lugged in apropos to anything; or they may be very common-place verses ready made, upon which an appropriate travestie could easily be superinduced; or, finally, their place may be supplied by the actual verses of some

author, who should, however, be, if possible, but little known, which may be travestied impromptu. This will be better understood by an instance, and as I am now making no secret of the matter, I will take those well-known lines of Moore.

"Vain was that man-and false as vain,

Who said, were he ordained to run
His long career of life again

He would do all that he had done.
It is not thus the voice that dwells

In coming birth-days, speaks to me;
Far otherwise, of time it tells,

Wasted unwisely-carelessly."

Now suppose I wish to make love in poetry. I am a despairing lover-or will suppose myself one for the present, and my griefs may be poured out in this same measure, and with so many of these same words as to leave no ground for any claim to authorship for me in the following stanza.

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And now take the same stanza, only change the circumstance to something as different as possible. I am a flaming patriot, the enemy is at our gates, and I am to excite my fellow-citizens to arms. will go to the self same tune and words.

Our country calls, and not in vain,
Her children are prepared to run
Their father's high career again,
And may we do as they have done.
In every trumpet voice there dwells
An echo of their fame for me;
Oh, who can hear the tale it tells,

And pause supinely-carelessly.

It

Again, which is a more possible case in our country, I am disgusted with an unprincipled mob orator, some indescribably low, but gifted scion of perdition, one whom no prose can reach; why have at him with the same arms,-they are always ready.

Thou bad vain man, thou false as vain,

If Satan were ordained to run

A free career on earth again,

He would do all that thou hast done.

It is of him the voice that dwells

In thy gay rhetoric speaks to me,

Of horrors scoffingly it tells,

Of crime and suffering carelessly.

Or, lastly, for one may get too much of this--I am enraged with a bad singer or musician, and want to gibbet him,-lo, is not Tom Moore my executioner.

I stop my ears, but all in vain,

In vain to distant corners run,
He imitates the owls again,

And will do all that they have done.
Of roasting cats the voice that dwells
In such discordance, speaks to me,
Of Tophet up in arms it tells,

With doors left open carelessly.

There is absolutely no end to this, and any man may practice it to any extent, who has musical ear enough to dance a contre-danse in correct time, or march decently after a drum. He must not take his implements or frames out of Moore, he would do better to tax his own ingenuity for the making of them; or, if he have none, he can do very well without it, if he only possess a little memory, and a competent knowledge of the dictionary. The examples given above are intended to prove that the words and the ideas have but little to do with each other, and that anything can be made out of anything else, and that, therefore, in compositions of this kind, it is perfectly legitimate procedure to cook your dolphin before you catch him. Make your verses, and look about you afterwards for ideas,-any man who has two, and there are many such in society, will give you one. But I must exhibit the whole process, for, after all, there is nothing like example; and with the assurance, gentle reader, that up to this moment I have no more notion than you have of what they are to be, I shall proceed now to make eight lines of verse, and endeavour to make you understand, as I go along, how I do it. And, as I have shown already how the ideas may be inserted or changed in ready-made verses, I propose now to show how the verse may be worked up when the idea is ready; and, to begin at the very beginning, I will shew also how I got the idea. This very evening-I am now writing at midnight-a highly-gifted and beautiful lady has been telling me of some conversation or circumstance, in the course of which she was compared to the full moon, a comparison upon which the comment arose of itself most naturally to my lips-that, not to criticise it further, the lady had at least the advantage in her expression,--for which the moon is not remarkable. Very well, we will try to versify this, and we will succeed too, after some sort of a fashion, and that by virtue of intelligible rules.

The subject is a lady's face and a question of resemblance-face is a good word for a rhyme, and trace comes in very well with it, and has also some sort of bearing on the matter in hand; the moon is to play a part, there is light, and night to rhyme with it; sky also and

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