and her own reviving ambition, are a thousand bright objects rejoic accepted her offer-but half self-reproached; and thus they betook themselves to the toilette. "Pray help me fix these curls, Mary-dont you think we look burnt with the sun?-there, that will do -how beautifully that music sounds -that will do-just right-they are promenading, by the sound-indeed Mary you will look prettier than 1, after all that blue belt contrasts very pretty with your neat white muslin-won't you have one bunch of these flowers ?-let me fix them in your hair-how beautifully white they are-why you look like a shepherdess-I am sure, Mary, you won't need to feel awkward"--and thus she kept talking, partly to encourage her cousin and partly to suppress the risings of self-disapprobation which she could not altogether avoid feeling for having accepted her cousin's offer. Prepared to descend, the two cousins, who were yet in their teens by a couple of years, proceeded with fluttering hearts, along with the brother of Isabel, to mix with the assemblage below. Each was attired according to her own taste, notwithstanding the misfortune that had happened. The simplicity of Ma. ry's dress suited the simplicity of her sweet expressive face. Isabel was dressed for effect: she sparkled and glowed with ornaments; while Mary wore a simple chain upon her neck, and the white sprig of flowers in her hair. The beautiful form of Isabel showed with peculiar grace through the light transparency that enveloped it; her cousin's was not less beautiful, zoned with delicate blue. The one was fascinating, the other was lovely. The world was fresh to both. They were yet inexperienced in the illusiveness of its visions. Life to young minds is like the landscape to the traveller. Between the spot on which he stands and the far off outline which limits his vision, there iug in the sun, but when he bas passed beyond them all, and the day has gone down, he looks back on that landscape in its mantle of mist and those thousand bright objects are turned into shadows. Such is experience. And thus lay the world before our young heroines. Yet they saw it in different lights, according to their different tastes, and the different manner in which they had been edu cated. Isabel beheld it in the brightness of a May morning; the more chastened imagination of her cousin was accustomed to contemplate it in the soft but rich lustre of the setting sun of autumn. A week went by, and Pleasure had flown her round, her round of gay assemblages and serenades and dances, when Isabel said to her cousin, as they retired to the rest of their chamber, "I am sick of this place, I am sure, Mary." "Sick! cousin. Why you are the reigning belle of the day. Indeed, Isabel, you are quite the centre of attraction, and the envy of half the fine ladies here." "I am centre to nothing but folly," said Isabel," how could brother George introduce to me that frivolous young Dr. B. of Albany; who had no other claim on his noticeand none at all on mine-than his having been one of George's classmates expelled too, for dissolute conduct :-and what should Dr. B. do of course, but make me the acquaintance of all the whiskered triflers of the place. I am persecuted and vexed with their attentionsabove all with the "civil things" which they utter for compliment. Why did not you contrive to relieve me this evening Mary, from that irksome Mr. Q. who stood up before me, or paraded at my side, be where I would, and was so assiduously polite that there was no detaching myself from him?" "I did think of sending George to beg you to join our pleasant group in the corner, but you seemed quite happy in the society of Mr. Q. I saw you smiling very graciously in reply to his attentions." "Smiles are not always happiness-nor complacency either: I am sure mine were not, for I was tired out of measure." "He seemed a man of fashion." "How I longed to be quit of him! Why he stood up before me, all breathing of perfumes, and entertained me a full hour with nothing but Eclipse, and the great horserace, and his water dog and spaniel, and all such gallant nonsense-besides the pretty compliments which he contrived to mix with it." "The compliments were for you, I suppose: the rest of his discourse was incense to himself." "Mere self-adulation;—and you," continued Isabel, "was all the while enjoying the conversation of the intelligent Mr. L. That Mr. L., by the way, is becoming quite partial to you, I perceive." "You must be very discerning, for he has given no proofs of it." "A secret to you it naturally may be, but it is evident to me." "He does not, at least" rejoined Mary, "attach himself to me wherever I go, like those you complain of." "But his eyes follow you though his feet do not-why you need not color, cousin-I should be prouder of his company than of a hundred such accomplished triflers as I have met with here. He is so intelligent and cheerful, and so manly and sincere, that one cannot help being conscious of pleasure in his society. The others may be beaus, but he is the true gentleman." "The courts of folly," Mary remarked, "sometimes become the school of wisdom. They will prove so to you Isabel. The week you have spent here, though you have not experienced all the light-hearted happiness you anticipated from it, will not be set down among the lost weeks of your life. You have been learning by experience what I learned by precept. My mother has of ten remarked to me, that the world will regard us very much as we regard the world. It will assign us to those circles in which we fit ourselves to move. If we affect the society of the gay-if we assume a dress and manner to attract their admiration, it is natural to expect that we shall make them our companions; and as the vain idolators of dress and fashion gather about us, the truly refined will leave us to our congenial associates. How many mistaken people, my mother is accustomed to observe, by adopting an ostentatious style of living, and by educating their sons and daughters with a view to fashionable accomplishments rather than to a true elevation of character, attract to the acquaintance of their families those who are far from being of the best class of society, in respect either to cultivation of mind or true refinement of manners. Light-minded triflers become the companions of their sons, and fops flatter their daughters. And in proportion as this sort of people became familiar at your house, your more valuable acquaintances will gradually fall off. You may invite them ever so sincerely and make them ever so welcome, yet they will hardly persuade themselves that their unostentatious manners are congenial to a place where a different sort of people are so free to come." "Your mother," replied Isabel, "is a happy exemplification of her doctrine. With the means of magnificence, all about her is simple and plain; and I am always struck with the goodness and good sense of the conversation in her parlour. Every body is charmed with her society, and feels a consciousness of elevation in the circle of her friends. I have always respected her good sense and revered her worth, while I thought her plan of education not quite so happy. But I shall learn to make her model my own.-It is getting late, Mary, and I will bid you good night; and when we next visit the Springs you shall wear your fine things yourself." "And have your fine beaus too, at my elbow, I suppose," replied Mary; "I thank you indeed, cousin." POSTSCRIPT. There is a sequel to this story, which the lapse of several years enables me to add. But it hardly need be told, especially since the moral is furnished in the above conversation. Our heroines returned to their homes, and Isabel, no doubt, was soon forgotten of all her fickle admirers; and would have been glad to have as soon forgotten them. Nevertheless they had taught her a lesson which it would be happy if other young ladies would learn as well as she. The two cousins returned to the Springs the next season-Isabel as bride-maid to Mary. The happiest of brides she had reason to be, if excellence of heart and mind, still more than the grace of his manly person and manner, could make Mr. L. a partner according to her fancy. RECOLLECTIONS OF CICERO. Did the mind perish, like the blaze of an extinguished taper? Did thought and passion die? Did genius sleep forever? Was there no hereafter-was all beyond this narrow sea of troubles blank nonentity, and stark oblivion, where virtue, and friendship, and glory, and all that we have loved, or sighed for, or toiled after here, possessed not even a shadow or a name? No! he exclaims, I will not think it. "Si in hoc erro, quod animos hominum immortales esse credo, libenter erro,"-if I am deceived in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I am willingly deceived; nor let the illusion which I so much love to cherish be taken from me while I delector, dum vivo, extorqueri volo." live," nec nihi hunc errorem quo I never see Voltaire and Paine, and all infidels, in so odious a light, as when I contemplate such a man as Cicero straining after a gleam of that light, from the full blaze of which they voluntarily turned away; and I see their folly aggravated by the reflec tion, that while the orator, with all his anxious reasonings, could only attain to earnest hope, rather than calm be lief, they, with all their wicked sophisfrom their minds. Both experienced try, could never banish conviction the painfulness of doubt; but in him it sprung from the lofty principle of hope, and the untaught consciousness of a noble nature; while in them it was the sting of conscience, and the “Oh, but to die and go we know not base-born principle of guilty fear. where!" THERE was always something affecting to me in the manner in which this great man was wont to talk of the immortality of the soul. He scemed to have looked forward with that vehement desire to penetrate the future, with that intense longing after a knowledge of what should be beyond the present life, which Gray expresses in his poem on the Grave; "O that some courteous ghost would blab it out, What 'tis you are and we must shortly be!" It is remarkable that while the sacred writers speak so much of the light of nature, as teaching the being and providence of God, and man's accountability, and by plain consequence, man's existence after the present life, the wisest of the heathen writers never seem to perceive that light, either as it reveals the Deity, or shines upon the immortality of the soul. Most of them inferfalse premises and wrong concep red the immortality of the soul from tions of what the soul is. Some regarded it as a part of ether, and therefore indestructible, being in its physical nature incapable of decay. Some imagined it to be an emanation from those eternal fires in the sky, as they called the stars; or rather perhaps from the divine minds by which the stars were animated. Cicero, in his Somnium Scipionis, argues its immortality thus: "Since then it appears that that is eternal which is self-moved, who shall deny this property to the soul. For that is inanimate substance which is put in motion by an impulse from without, but that which is living being, moves by its own inherent activity; and this is the proper nature and force of the mind. If then the mind alone of all things possesses the power of action within itself, it surely is not the subject of production and decay," "neque nata est certe et æterna est." This reasoning argues the soul's pre-existence no less than its future, and endows the brutes with immortality as well as man. This is perhaps the worst example of Cicero's speculations on this subject. It is however, if any Christian philosopher be disposed to smile--quite as good a demonstration of his dark and painful problem as that famous one by Dr. Samuel Clark for the being and attributes of God, which is still lauded in our theological schools. friendship and love of country, as well as freedom from the more odious of crimes. Thus Cicero makes Africanus enjoin it on Publius Scipio to exercise himself in the care of the public weal, as the noblest of services, and contemplating the things which lie beyond himself, to live abstracted as much as possible from sensual pleasures,--quam maxime se a corpore abstrahet,-because, he tells him, the souls of those who make themselves the slaves of voluptuousness and obey the impulses of their lusts, conduct injuriously both to gods and men; and when they leave the body, shall be buffeted about the world, nor ever be received thither (to the fancied heaven in the skies) unless after having been driven up and down for ages. But most disbelieved the doctrine, and, like all infidels, turned even their heathen infidelity to a bad account. They embraced the same sentiment which Paul found among the Corinthians, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Thus Catullus advises to live in pleasure, because "The sun that sets, again will rise, And Moschus,--beautifully rendered by I know not what English writer: "But we, or great, or wise, or brave, Once dead, and silent in the grave, Senseless, remain; one rest we keep, One long, eternal, unawakened sleep." Lucian also, and Perseus, and Horace, and many others, inculcated the same sentiment. They sat down upon the edge of the dark gulf of oblivion, to spend their short life in pleasures, corrupting to both bedy and soul. REVIEWS. Lectures addressed to the Young Men of Hartford and New-Haven, and published at their request. By JOEL HAWES, Pastor of the First Church in Hartford. Hartford: Oliver D. Cooke and Co. 1828. pp. 142. SINCE Johnson sat upon the throne, there has been no monarch in the empire of letters. Pretenders indeed, have successively urged their claims to his sceptre, but with out success. The form of government has been changed, and seems now to be fixed on a solid republican foundation. In regard to books, as well as politics and religion, men are accustomed to think and judge for themselves. In this country, especially, it is in vain to think of making or unmaking a book at pleasure. If it has real merit it will be found out and appreciated; and no fraternity of reviewers can put it down. If it lacks sense and solid worth, no puffing can long keep it up. When a new work pleases an intelligent reading community, they will say so, and will buy it, whether the periodicals notice it or not. When they find it dull and common-place, no pompous recommendation can give it lasting cur rency. It must doubtless be not a little mortifying to us critics, that while we are gravely making our pencil marks in the margin, and sharpening our critical pen, and considering what we shall say of the new volume before us, a second edition should be announced. But so it has happened in the present case, and we must contrive to make the best of it; though the dilemma into which it has thrown us, has rather sharp horns. If we highly commend these Lectures to the Young Men of Hartford and New Haven, in accordance with our original de sign, besides having lost the credit of being the first to discover and announce their merits, (a grievous loss, as every body knows, to men of our profession,) we shall become a mere echo of the public voice, and expose ourselves to the charge of courting popularity, by falling in with a current which we cannot resist. If on the other hand, we put on our spectacles and look remarkably wise, and tell our readers that this book is much over-rated, and that it will not live to see the dawn of the next half century, we shall be suspected of feeling a little provoked with those, who by word and deed, have so cordially expressed their approbation without waiting for our high permission. But like wise men, (as we needs must be,) of two evils we shall choose the least, and say, ex animo, that we have read these Lectures with a great deal of pleasure. We are glad that a second edition has so soon been called for, and hope that a third and a fourth may soon follow. But to say we like the book extremely well, is hardly sufficient. We must give some of our reasons. And, 1. We like it because it is a neat little volume, printed with a beautiful type, on good paper, well done up, and afforded at a reasonable price. We do not offer this as one of the principal recommendations of the manual; but as the one which first strikes the eye; and we mention it, because we do not like poor paper and bad print, especially when the matter is entitled to a handsome dress. 2. We like these Lectures be cause they are addressed exclusively to one class of persons. We do not mean to say, that every book ought to be thus exclusive in its plan for certainly there are many subjects in which all classes have an |