MISS CHESEBRO' was born at Canandaigua, where she has always resided with her family. Her first literary articles, a series of tales and sketches, were written for Graham's Magazine and Holden's Dollar Magazine in 1848. Since that time contributions have appeared from her pen in The Knickerbocker, Putnam's, Harpers', and other magazines, and in the newspapers, to which on two occasions, in Philadelphia and New York, she contributed prize tales. In 1851 she published a collection of tales and sketches, Dream-Land by Daylight, a Panorama of Romance. The title is suggestive of the fanciful, reflective, and occasionally sombre character of the work, qualities which also mark Miss Chesebro's later and more elaborate productions, Isa, a Pilgrimage, and The Children of Light, a Theme for the Times, tales, each occupying a separate volume, and written with energy and thoughtfulness. The scene of these writings is laid in America at the present day. They are grave in tone, and aim rather at the exhibition of mental emotion than the outward, salient points of character.

THE BLACK FROST.
Methinks

This word of love is fit for all the world,
And that for gentle hearts another name

Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.

It was a clear, calm night. Brightly shone the innumerable stars: the fixed orbs of giant magnitude, the little twinkling points of light, the glorious constellations in their imperial beauty stood they, gazing upon the mysterious face of darkness-a clear, calm, terribly cold night.

Winter had not as yet fairly set in. There had been no snow, but it was very late in the autumn, and the grass, and the flowering shrubs and trees, looked as though they had each and all felt the cruel breath of the Destroyer, as he pronounced the doom upon them.

People rubbed their hands, and talked with quivering lips of the hard winter coming, as they hastened, in the increasing shadows of the night, to their homes. The children, warmed and gladdened by the bright fires that were kindled on the hearthstones, romped, and frolicked, and prophesied, with knowing looks, about snow-balling, sleigh-rides, skating, and all manner of fun. The young girls met together, and talked merrily of coming gaieties; the old man wondered whether he should see another spring-time; and the poor crept to their beds at nightfall, glad to forget everything—cold, hunger, and misery-in sleep.

Midnight came. More and more brightly shone the stars they glowed, they trembled, and smiled on one another. The cold became intense-in the deep silence how strangely looked the branches of the leafless trees! how desolate the gardens and the forest-how very still the night did seem!

Close beside an humble cottage, under a huge bush of flowering-currant, had flourished all the autumn a tiny violet-root. And still, during the increasing cold of the latter days, the leaves had continued green and vigorous, and the flowers opened

There had been an arrival at the cottage that day. Late in the afternoon, a father and inother, with their child, had returned from lorg wandering in foreign lands.

A student had watched their coming. In the morning, he had gathered a flower from that little root in their garden, and now, as he sat in the lot g hours of night, poring over his books, he kept the violet still beside him, in a vase which held the trea sures of a green-house, and his eyes rested often on the pale blue modest flower.

At nightfall, a youthful form had stood for a moment at the cottage-door, and the young invalid's eyes, which so eagerly sought all familiar things, at last rested on those still living flowers-flowers, where she had thought to find all dead, even as were those buds which once gave fair promise of glorious opening in her girl-heart! Unmindful of the cold and dampness, she stepped from the house, and passed to the violet-root, and, gathering all the flowers but one, she placed them in her hair, and then hastened with a shiver back to the cottage.

In the fast-increasing cold, the leaves that were left bowed down close to the earth, and the delicate flowers crowning the pale, slender stem, trembled under the influence of the frost.

The little chamber where Mary lay down to rest, was that which, from her childhood, had been set apart for her occupation; a pleasant room, endeared to her by a thousand joyful dreams dreamed within its shade-solemnized to her also by that terrible wakening to sorrow which she had known.

She reclined now on her bed in the silentness, the darkness; but she rested not, she slept not. The young girl's eyes, fixed on the far-off stars, on the glorious heavens, her thoughts wandered wild and free, but her body was circled by the arm of Death.

She had not yet slept at all that night; she had not slept for many nights. Winter was reigning in Mary's heart-it had long reigned there. She was remembering now, while others nestled in the arms of forgetfulness, those days that were gone, when she had looked with such trust and joy upon the years to be-how that she had longed for the slowlyunfolding future to develop itself fully, completely! how she had wholly given herself to the fancies and the hopes of the untried. Alas! she had reached, she had passed, too soon, that crisis of life which unfolds next to the expectant the season of winter— she had seen the gay flowers fading, the leaves withering, the glory of summer pass. And yet how young, how very young she was!

They who saw the shadow brooding over her, out of which she could not move, they who loved, who almost worshipped her, the father and the mother, had in every manner sought, how vainly! to stop the course of that disease which fastened upon herthey could not dispel the sorrow which had blighted her life. She also, for a moment, desperately as they, had striven with her grief, but now, in the cheerless nutumn time, she was come back to her home, feeling that it would be easier there to die.

Gazing from her couch out upon the "steadfast skies"-thinking on the past, and the to-come-the

to-come of the dying! Yet the and judgment terrified her not. find mercy and heart's ease in which the merciful is king!

thought of death Surely she would the Heaven over

But suddenly, in the night's stillness, in the coldness and the darkness, she arose; and steadfastly gazed, for an instant, upward, far upward, where a star shot from the zenith, down, down, to the very horizon. She fell back at the sight, her spirit sped away with that swift glory flash-Mary was dead!

In that moment the student also stood beside his window. The fire in the grate had died away, the lamp was nearly exhausted; wearied with his longcontinued work, he had risen, and now, for an instant, stood looking upon the heavens. There was sadness and weariness in his heart. The little violet, and the travellers' return, had strangely affected him for once he found not in his books the satisfaction which he sought: he felt that another life than that of a plodding book-worm might be led by him. His dreams in the morning hour were not pleasant as he slept. They were solely of one whose love he had set at naught for the smiles of a sterner love; of one whom he now thought of, as in the spring-time of his life, when she was all the world to him. And now that she was come again, and he should see her once more! ah, he would bow before her as he once had, and she, who was ever so gentle, so loving, so good, would not spurn him: she would forget his forgetfulness, she would yet give to him that peace, that joy which he had never quaffed at the fountains of learning!

Up rose the sun, and people saw how the Black Frost was over the earth, binding all things in its hard, close, cold embrace. Later in the morning, a little child, passing by the cottage, paused and peeped through the bars upon the violet-root. Yesternight, when she vent home from school, she saw the flowers bloo ning there, the pale, blue, fainthearted looking flowers-and now she remembered to look if they were there still. But though she looked long and steadfastly where the sunlight fell beneath the currant-bush, she could not see that she sought for; so passing quietly through the gate, she stooped down where the violets had been, and felt the leaves, and knew that they were frozen; and it was only by an effort that she kept back the fastgathering tears, when she looked on the one flower Mary had left, and saw how it was drooped and dead.

But a sadder sight, and one more full of meaning, was presented in the pleasant chamber, whose window opened on the yard where the blossoming bushes grew. For there a woman bent over the bed whereon another frost-killed flower lay, moaning in the bitterness of grief, the death of her one treasure!

Still later in the day another mourner stood in that silent place, thinking of the meteor and the violet. It was the student, he who in remorse and anguish came, bemoaning the frost-blighted. Too late, too late, he came to tell his love-too late to crave forgiveness, too late to soothe the brokenhearted! Now stood he himself in the valley of the shadow of woe.

And the snow and the storms abounded. Winter was come!

EDWARD MATURIN,

THE author of several historical novels, and of a volume of poems of merit, is the son of the celebrated Irish novelist and dramatist, the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin. He has for a number of years been a resident of New York, and has married an American lady.

Mr. Maturin has published Montezuma, The Last of the Aztecs, a spirited prose romance, drawn from the brilliant and pathetic history of the Mexican chieftain, followed by Benjamin, the Jew of Granada, a story the scene of which is laid in the romantic era of the fall of the Moslem empire in Spain, and in 1848, Eva, or the Isles of Life and Death; a historical romance of the twelfth century in England, in which Dermod M'Murrough acts a leading part.

In 1850 he published Lyrics of Spain and Erin, a volume of genuine enthusiasm, and refined though irregular poetic expression. The author, who shows much of the poet in his prose writings, finds in the stirring historical ballad of Spain and the pathetic legend of Ireland his appropriate themes.

The latest production of Mr. Maturin was Bianca, a passionate story of Italian and Irish incident, published by the Harpers in 1853.

THE SEASONS-FROM A POEM "THE WOODS."

What spirit moves within your holy shrine? 'Tis Spring-the year's young bride, that gladly

pours

Above-around-an effluence Divine

Of light and life, falling in golden showers-
And with her come the sportive nymphs in dance
Like waves that gambol in the Summer's glance,
Untwining bowers from their Winter's sleep,
Unlocking rivers from their fountains deep,
Tinting the leaf with verdure, that had lain
Long-hid, like gold within the torpid grain,
Chaunting her choral song, as Nature's eyes
First greet the bridal of the earth and skies.
The Spring is past;—and blushing summer comes,
Music and sunshine throng her scented way;
The birds send gladly from their bowered homes,
Their pæan at the birth of flowery May!
From close to shut of Day; yes, far and near
The spell of mystic music chains the ear;
All Nature, from her bosom pouring forth
Sounds such as make a Temple of the earth
Returns in one full stream of harmony
The angel-echoes that she hears on high-
Beautiful Summer! fling thy crown of flowers
O'er this dull earth through winter's weary hours;
Let them not fade-oh! let not sere and blight
Darken thy prism'd couch with shade of Night;
Let not thy music ever break its spell,
Like heaven-bound pilgrim bidding earth Fare-

well!"

Oh! silence not thy music-let thy flowers
Be earth's bright stars responding to the skies;
Wreathing her graves with those immortal bowers
Thy rosy hand 'twined 'round the Dead in Paradise!
Oh! not a vision here but it must pass
Like our own image from Life's spectre-glass;
Summer is faded, and the Autumn sere
Gathers the fallen leaves upon her bier,
And, like the venomed breath of the Simoom
That turns Zahara's desert to a tomb,
Breathes on the buried Summer's shrined abode,
And leaves a spectre what she found-a Gol!
'Tis thus, ye woods! your melancholy tale
Hath more of truth than rose and lily pale,
When the bright glories of the summer vie
To make the earth a mirror of the sky.
In Autumn's time-worn volume do we real
The sacred moral-All things earthly fade;
And trace upon the page of every leaf
That first and latest human lesson-grief!

But hark! that dreary blast that rolls Like heart-wrung wailings of unburied souls, "Tis winter's breath

That comes from the land of Death
Where the Arctic fetters the main;
Like the lightning it darts

When its meteor parts

And dissolves, like the cloud in rain;

And now pale Winter cometh frore

From the dark North's drear and lifeless shore;
And round his form, trembling and old,
Hangs his snow-robe in drifting fold,

As that ye see on the mountain-height,
Like Death asleep in the calm moonlight-
His diadem gleams with the icicle bright,

And his sceptre of ice to destroy and to smite;
Like a monarch he sweeps from the mount to the
vale,

In his chariot that glistens with hoar-frost and hail:
His palace the iceberg adorned with spars,
Like a wandering heaven all fretted with stars.

WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE

Is a native of Lexington, Kentucky. He received his education in that state, studied law and came to New York, where he has been since a resident. In 1848, he published Alban, a Poetical Composition, "a romance of New York, intended to illustrate the influence of certain prejudices of society and principles of law upon individual character and destiny.* In 1851, he published Meditations in America, and other Poems. They are mostly marked by a certain grandeur of thought and eloquence of expression.

OF THINE OWN COUNTRY SING.

I met the wild-eyed Genius of our Land
In Huron's forest vast and dim;

I saw her sweep a harp with stately hand;
I heard her solemn hymn.

She sang of Nations that had passed away
From her own broad imperial clime;
Of Nations new to whom she gave the sway:
She sang of God and Time.

I saw the PAST with all its rhythmic lore:
I saw the PRESENT clearly glow;

Shapes with veiled faces paced a far dim shore
And whispered “Joy” and “Wo!"

Her large verse pictured mountain, vale, and bay,
Our wide, calm rivers rolled along,
And many a mighty Lake and Prairie lay
In the shadow of her Song.

As in Missouri's mountain range, the vast
Wild Wind majestically flies

From crag to crag till on the top at last
The wild Wind proudly dies.

So died the Hymn.-" O Genius! how can I
Crown me with Song as thou art crowned?"
She, smiling, pointed to the spotless sky
And the forest-tops around-

Then sang-"Not to the far-off Lands of Eld
Must thou for inspiration go:
There Milton's large imperial organ swelled,
There Avon's waters flow.

"No Alien-Bard where Tasso's troubled lyre
Made sorrow fair, unchallenged dwells-
Where deep-eyed Danté with the wreath of fire
Came chanting from his Hells.

Griswold's Poets of America, Art. Wallace.

"Yet sometimes sing the old majestic themes
Of Europe in her song enshrined:
These going wind-like o'er thy Sea of Dreams,
May liberalize the mind.

"Or learn from mournful ASIA, as she lies
Musing at noon beneath her stately palms,
Her angel-lore, her wide-browed prophecies,
Her solemn-sounding psalms:

“Or sit with AFRIC when her eyes of flame

Smoulder in dreams, beneath their swarthy lids. Of youthful Sphynx, and Kings at loud acclair: On new-built Pyramids.

"But know thy Highest dwells at Home: there

Art

And choral Inspirations spring;

If thou would'st touch the Universal Heart, OF THINE OWN COUNTRY SING.

CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED,

THE only son of the late Rev. John Bristed and Magdalen Bentzon, eldest daughter of the late John Jacob Astor, was born in New York in 1820. He entered Yale College, where he took the first Berkeleian prize for Latin composition solus in the freshman and sophomore years, and divided the Berkeleian classical prize of the senior year with A. R. Macdonough, a son of Commodore Macdonough. He was a frequent contributor at this time to the Yale Literary Magazine. Having completed his studies at Yale, he went to England, and passed five years at the University of Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree at Trinity College in 1845. At Trinity he gained a classical prize the first year, the under-graduate and bachelor prizes for English essays, and the first prize-cup for an English oration. He was also elected foundation-scholar of the college in 1844. In the university he gained the under-graduate's Latin essay prize in 1843, and was placed eighth in the Classical Tripos of his year.

Having returned to America, he was married in 1847 to the daughter of the late Henry Brevoort, one of the earliest friends and collaborators of Washington Irving.

(Mrusted

Mr. Bristed was at this time and afterwards a frequent contributor of articles, poetical translations, critical papers on the classics, and sketches of society, to the Literary World, Knickerbocker, the Whig Review, and other journals. Mr. Bristed edited in 1849 Selections from Catullus, a school edition, by G. G. Cookesley, one of the assistant-masters of Eton, which he revised, with additional notes.

In 1850 he published A Letter to the Hon. Horace Mann, in reply to some reflections of the latter on Stephen Girard and John Jacob Astor, in a tract entitled "Thoughts for a Young Man."

In 1852 appeared The Upper Ten Thousand, a collection of sketches of New York society, contributed to Fraser's Magazine; which being written for an English periodical, were minute in description of matters familiar at home, but this particularity gave interest to the life-like narra

tion in America as well. A certain personal piquancy added to the attraction.

At the same time Mr. Bristed published two volumes of a graver character, Five Years in an English University, in which he described with spirit, in a knowing, collegiate style, the manners, customs, studies, and ideas of a complex organization and mode of life but little understood in America. In a rather extensive appendix to the first edition of this work the author added a series of his college orations and prize essays, and of the examination papers of the university. The work was an acceptable one to scholars, and those interested in the educational discipline on this side of the Atlantic, as well as to the general reader.

Of late years Mr. Bristed nas passed much of his time in Paris, and in the summer at BadenBaden. In a frequent correspondence with the New York Spirit of the Times he has recorded the life of Europe passing under his eye, in matters of art, literature, the drama, and the social aspect of the times. He has also resumed his contributions to Fraser's Magazine on American topics. An article in the number for July, 1855, from his pen, treats of the relation of the English press to the United States.

The writings of Mr. Bristed exhibit the union of the man of the world and of books. His pictures of society are somewhat remarkable for a vein of freedom and candor of statement. As a critic of Greek and Latin classical topics he is diligent and acute, displaying some of the best qualities of the trained English university man. He has also published numerous occasional clever poetical translations of classical niceties from Theocritus, Ovid, and such moderns as Walter de Mapes.

HENRY R. JACKSON

Was born at Athens, Georgia, in 1820. He is the son of Dr. Henry Jackson, formerly professor of natural philosophy in Franklin college in that state. He was educated to the bar, and early held the office of United States district attorney for Georgia. At the commencement of the war with Mexico he raised at Savannah a company of one hundred men, called the Jasper Greens; marched to Columbus to form a regiment; was elected colonel, proceeded to Mexico, and served with distinction. On his return he was appointed Judge of the Superior Court of the Eastern District of Georgia. He is at present Resident Minister at Vienna, to which he was appointed

in 1853.

In 1850 Mr. Jackson published a volume, a collection of fugitive verses, Tallulah and other Poems. Its themes are chiefly local, and of a patriotic interest, or occupied with the fireside affections. The expression is spirited and manly. His Georgia lyrics, and his descriptions of the scenery of the state, are animated and truthful productions.

THE LIVE-OAK.

With his gnarled old arms, and his iron form,
Majestic in the wood,

From age to age, in the sun and storm,
The live-oak long hath stood;

With his stately air, that grave old tree,
He stands like a hooded monk,
With the grey moss waving solemnly
From his shaggy humbs and trunk.
And the generations come and go,
And still he stands upright,

And he sternly looks on the wood below,
As conscious of his might.

But a mourner sad is the hoary tree,

A mourner sad and lone,
And is clothed in funeral drapery
For the long since dead and gone.
For the Indian hunter beneath his shade
Has rested from the chase;

And he here has woo'd his dusky maid-
The dark-eyed of her race;

And the tree is red with the gushing gore
As the wild deer panting dies:
But the maid is gone, and the chase is o'er,
And the old oak hoarsely sighs.

In former days, when the battle's din
Was loud amid the land,

In his friendly shadow, few and thin,
Have gathered Freedom's band,
And the stern old oak, how proud was he
To shelter hearts so brave!

But they all are gone-the bold and free-
And he moans above their grave.

And the aged oak, with his locks of grey,

Is ripe for the sacrifice;

For the worm and decay, no lingering prey,
Shall he tower towards the skies!

He falls, he falls, to become our guard,
The bulwark of the free,

And his bosom of steel is proudly bared
To brave the raging sea!

When the battle comes, and the cannon's roar
Booms o'er the shuddering deep,
Then nobly he'll bear the bold hearts o'er
The waves, with bounding leap.
Oh! may those hearts be as firm and true,
When the war-clouds gather dun,'
As the glorious oak that proudly grew
Beneath our southern sun.

HENRY W. PARKER.

THE REV. HENRY W. PARKER, of Brooklyn, New York, is the author of a volume of poems published at Auburn, New York, in 1850. It is a delicate book, with many proofs of refinement and scholarship, while a certain philosophical texture runs through it. An appendix contains several ingenious and fine-thoughted prose papers.

In 1851 Mr. Parker recited a poem, The Story of a Soul, before the Psi Upsilon Convention at Hamilton College.

THE CITY OF THE DEAD.

Go forth and breathe the purer air with me, And leave the city's sounding streets; There is another city, sweet to see,

Whose heart with no delirium beats;
The solid earth beneath it never feels
The dance of joy, the rush of care,
The jar of toil, the mingled roll of wheels;
But all is peace and beauty there.

No spacious mansions stand in stately rows
Along that city's silent ways;
No lofty wall, nor level pavement, glows,
Unshaded from the summer rays;

No costly merchandise is heaped around,

No pictures stay the passer-by,

Nor plumed soldiers march to music's sound,
Nor toys and trifles tire the eye.

The narrow streets are fringed with living green,
And weave about in mazes there;
The many hills bewilder all the scene,
And shadows veil the noonday glare.
No clanging bells ring out the fleeting hours,
But sunlight glimmers softly thro',

And marks the voiceless time in golden showers
On velvet turf and lakelets blue.

The palaces are sculptured shafts of stone
That gleam in beauty thro' the trees;

The cottages are mounds with flowers o'ergrown;
No princely church the stranger sees,
But all the grove its pointed arches rears,
And tinted lights shine thro' the leaves,
And prayers are rained in every mourner's tears
Who for the dead in silence grieves.

And when dark night descends upon the tombs,
No reveller's song nor watchman's voice
Is here! no music comes from lighted rooms
Where swift feet fly and hearts rejoice;
"Tis darkness, silence all; no sound is heard
Except the wind that sinks and swells,
The lonely whistle of the midnight bird,
And brooks that ring their crystal bells.

A city strange and still!-its habitants

Are warmly housed, yet they are poor-
Are poor, yet have no wish, nor woes and wants;
The broken heart is crushed no more,

No love is interchanged, nor bought and sold,
Ambition sleeps, the innocent

Are safe, the miser counts no more his gold,
But rests at last and is content.

A city strange and sweet!-its dwellers sleep
At dawn, and in meridian light,-
At sunset still they dream in slumber deep,
Nor wake they in the weary night;
And none of them shall feel the hero's kiss
On Sleeping Beauty's lip that fell,
And woke a palace from a trance of bliss
That long had bound it by a spell.

A city strange and sad !-we walk the grounds,
Or seek some mount, and see afar
The living cities shine, and list the sounds
Of throbbing boat and thundering car.
And we may go; but all the dwellers here,
In autumn's blush, in winter's snow,

In spring and summer's bloom, from year to year,
They ever come, and never go!

CHARLES G. EASTMAN,

OF Vermont, for some time editor of the Vermont Patriot at Montpelier, is the author of a volume of Poems published in 1848. They are marked by facility in the use of lyric and ballad measures, and many are in a familiar sportive vein.

A PICTURE.

The farmer sat in his easy chair
Smoking his pipe of clay,
While his hale old wife with busy care
Was clearing the dinner away;

A sweet little girl with fine blue eyes
On her grandfather's knee was catching flies.
The old man laid his hand on her head,
With a tear on his wrinkled face,

He thought how often her mother, dead,
Had sat in the self-same place;

As the tear stole down from his half-shut eye,
"Don't smoke!" said the child, "how it makes you
cry!"

The house-dog lay, stretched out on the floor
Where the shade after noon used to steal,
The busy old wife by the open door

Was turning the spinning wheel,
And the old brass clock on the mantel-tree
Had plodded along to almost three,—

Still the farmer sat in his easy chair,
While close to his heaving breast,
The moistened brow and the cheek so fair
Of his sweet grandchild were pressed;

His head, bent down, on her soft hair lay-
Fast asleep were they both, that summer day!

JOHN ORVILLE TERRY,

The

Or Orient, a village of Suffolk county, Long Island. published in New York in 1850 a volume of characteristic rural life, entitled The Poems of J. O. T., consisting of Song, Sitire, and Pastoral Descriptions, chiefly depicting the Scenery, and illustrating the Manners and Customs of the Ancient and Present Inhabitants of Long Island. book answers to its title. The verses are written with ease and fervor, though sometimes carelessly, and have a genuine flavor of reality in the portraits of individuals, the various characteristics of nature and the seasons, the sea, and landscape. In his patriotic and satirical effusions, the author has something of the spirit of Freneau.

AUNT DINAH.

Embowered in shade, by the side of a wool,
The cot of aunt Dinah delightfully stood,
A rural retreat, in simplicity drest,
Sequestered it sat like a bird in its nest:
Festooned with the brier, and scented with rose,
Its windows looked out on a scene of repose,
Its wood all in green, and its grass all in bloom,
Like the dwelling of peace in a grove of perfume.
Tho' the skin of aunt Dinah was black as a coal,
The beams of affection enlightened her soul;
Like gems in a cavern, that sparkle and blaze,
The darkness but adds to the strength of their rays;
Or the moon looking out from her evening shroud,
Or the sun riding forth from the edge of a cloud,
So benevolence shone in her actions alway,
And the darkness of life became radiant with day.
What tho' she were poor, aunt Dinah's estate
The world was unable to give or create,
Her wealth was her virtues, and brightly they shone.
With a lustre unborrowed, and beauty their own;
Her nature was goodness, her heart was a mine
Of jewels, more precious than words can define,
And she gave them with such a profusion and grace,
Their light gave complexion and hue to her face.
Aunt Dinah has gone to the land of the good,
And her ashes repose by her favorite wood,
But her lonely old cottage looks out o'er the plain,
As if it would welcome its mistress again;
And long may it stand in that rural retreat,
To mind us of her we no longer may meet,
When we go after blackberries, joyful and gay,
And forget the kind hostess who welcomed us aye.

CHARLES OSCAR DUGUÉ,

THE author of several volumes of poetry in the French language, is a native of Louisiana, born at New Orleans, May 1, 1821. His parents were