TO A PALM LEAF. Gathered from a tree that shades the grave of Paul and Virginia, in the Isle of France. I've looked on thee, wan leaf, Till thou dost seem the messenger of fear, And my heart thrills as grief, I see the gathering storm, Darkness, and whirlwind, and the roaring main,- She rests, that lovely maid, Wan leaf, she rests beneath thy parent tree, Her heart-struck lover slumbers peacefully. They need not glory's wreath, To keep their memory from the blight of years, And from the full soul wring a gush of tears. But autumn winds will rise, And scatter far our forests' waving glory, Yet not a leaf that flies, Will whisper to the heart this moving story. For nature hath no tongue Till Genius breathes upon the slumbering mass; We heed no shadows beckoning as they pass. But all is still and dark, And men may die unheeded as the rain Falls round the gliding bark Urging her rapid course athwart the main. Yes, more the cherished worth Of all men strive for in their earthly race, If Genius smile not on their dwelling-place. Then Genius, with the free Come dwell our broad land with thy presence fill, Shall have a spell to move, a voice to thrill. CORNELIA. THE SPECTRE. "Look! my lord it comes!" It was a lonely spot almost out of the world, where my father, after many years spent in laborious mercantile pursuits, chose to retire with his accumulated wealth, consisting principally of an excellent wife, and ten ruby faced children, together with their ancient nurse, Wilnor, a most persevering and accomplished dealer in gossip, ghosts and snuff. So much indeed did the latter commodity abound, that we were actually preserved in it like so many pickled herring. Or to use a more classic metaphor, we were daily embalmed and laid in a cradle. This anti-putrescent mode of cultivation, although we were perhaps sometimes in danger of losing our breath from suffocation, was, nevertheless, attended with most salutary effects, as it proved a very powerful preventative against hooping-cough, measles, sore throat, and all those pestiferous diseases to which children of less fortunate culture, are ever exposed. My mother aware, doubtless, of these happy results, never interfered in the snuff department, and the embalming process went on without interruption,-not much however, to the satisfaction of Dr. Croup, the family physician. As for gossip,-it was considered of the highest importance that we should learn to talk. What else would distinguish us from so many Egyptian mummies? We were therefore early instructed in that most useful and polite language called baby talk, which prevails so extensively even in this enlightened age, and which for the honor of mothers, we are sorry to say, is not confined exclusively to children and nurses. After becoming sufficiently versed in the lisp, the clip, the stammer and the whine, that is to say, the orthography, etymology, syntax and prosody,—or in other words, the grammar of the nursery, we were by degrees initiated in its more abstruse sciences. And since the days of king Saul and his celebrated coadjutor--she of Endor-I am bold to affirm, there never existed a more profound and able teacher in all that constitutes the arcana of witchcraft, ghost and goblin, than our nurse Wilnor. She understood the surest spring by which all their diurnal and nocturnal machinery was put in motion, and could predict the time of a ghost's appearance and disappearance, with as much accuracy as an astronomer his favorite star. She knew moreover, the laws of affinity, or chemical attraction, necessarily employed in compounding shadows; and never did Sir Humphrey Davy, by help of the voltaic battery, analyze mineral substances, or resolve earths and alkalis, with readier skill than did nurse Wilnor compose and decompose apparitions. With no other apparatus than her own visionary brain, would she, from the faintest ray of moonshine, or at most, a white napkin, conjure up as terrific a spectre, as the most learned, scientific, ghost-monger could wish to see. She knew too, the laws of licence and etiquette, which have ever marked their intercourse with mortals-what was the most fashionable hour for a nocturnal promenade-how near they might approach-how far it became mortal man to recede--what kind of dress and address were most befitting and long and eloquently did she labor to impress on the minds of her infant open-mouthed auditors, the solemn important fact, that a modest, genuine, well-bred ghost would never speak until he was spoken to. A good practical lesson that to some upstart dwellers in the flesh. Had her knowledge, like most of the learned great, been the result of speculation merely, nurse Wilnor, nor my very gentle readers, never would have been acquainted with the spectre heroine of these pages. But, founded as it was, on the authority of sixty years' experience, every lesson which she gave, was exemplified by so many unquestionable ' matter o' fact' proofs, of her own occular discoveries. She had seen the ghosts of nearly all her deceased relatives and friends. Sometimes they had come beforehand to warn her of their approaching dissolution, and sometimes they had put it off until after their decease, to warn her of her own-though this she had by some sleight of hand manœuvre, always contrived to elude. Probably they were bribed by her excessive politeness, to prophecy smooth. things. She had, moreover, been favored with abundance of minor sights and sounds, such as voices. in the air-groans in the garret-lights in the cellar-and often was she visited of a stormy night through the key-hole, by the old woman of the broom-stick, without any head-- discoursing most eloquent music' by the help of an ivory comb and a bit of brown paper, while multitudes of antipodean lilliputian goblins, danced their applause heels upwards. But I must forbear to enumerate her one thousand and one' enchanting visions of less note, and hasten to disclose the grand catastrophe which cost her many a dolorous groan, and which I hope, will cost my readers many a heart-felt glow of sympathy. My father (to the everlasting praise of my mother be it spoken) bore the rule in his own domicil. And as he was no necromancer nor free mason, he held all mysticism of whatever kind, in sovereign contempt. He was a firm believer in divine revelation; but he took the liberty to expunge the doctrine of witchcraft entirely from his creed. He even carried his heresy so far as to deny the validity of dreams and warnings; and as for ghosts, not one of their shadowy tribe, ever dared to present its spectral, ghastly visage within sight of him. And as my mother, like all discreet, wise mothers, leaned decidedly to her husband's opinions, the consequence was, nurse Wilnor's 'white-faced gentry' were obliged to be extremely circumspect in their midnight gambols. And I have no doubt, but many a worthy apparition has been defeated in its charitable designs of holding communication with that benevolent sister spirit, from downright fear, lest it might be intercepted on its way by some anti-apparitionist of the household. Of the ten hopeful shoots which graced our nursery withal, I myself happened to be among the eldest; and of course, on being ushered into the light and life of the parlor circle, was one of the first to show my contempt of nursery manners and customs, by railing at snuff and baby talk. And my righteous indignation has lost nothing of its native asperity to this hour-nay, it has daily grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength. But to eradicate the profound reverence I had acquired for the manners and customs of ghosts and goblins, was not the work of a moment. So effectually was my imagination imbued with a sense of their marvellous sublimity and grandeur of character, that often as I watched the dim twilight on my way through the shrubbery, or as I listened with quaking wonder to the fearful hoot of the kingly owl, I saw, or thought I saw, unearthly forms move in solemn pomp before me. Sometimes I muttered a short, rhapsodic prayer, but they never had the politeness to respond to itsometimes I shut my eyes closely, in order to take a keener look; but when I looked again, they were gone, ble tells us whither.' Sometimes I made my best courtesy, and commenced such gracious salutation as instinct prompted, or such as memory could help me to, from nurse Wilnor's inexhaustible stores; but they were off before I could half finish my sentence. And at other times I rushed forward with daring intrepidity, as if to know the worst, and seized hold on-vacancy, with a violence that nearly dislocated my neck. no mar Such unmannerly treatment from creatures of a moment, together with a few profitable hints which I received from my parents, staggered my faith amazingly. I began to doubt, and by degrees my doubts resolved themselves into the most obdurate unbelief. And that point being once settled, I entered the nursery and made free to interrupt one of nurse Wilnor's best ghost stories, by declaring that the whole spectral community from the ghost of Goliath down to Tom Thumb, were all a set of impostors, downright impostors; and that those who patronised them were no better! Never shall I forget her screech of horror, nor the accompanying look. She raised her hands to an angle of ninety degrees-her head erected itself to a bold perpendicular-her eyes moved loftily upwards, as if keeping time with the bias of her thoughts, and I made my mortal escape, just as she was about finishing a kind of prophetic malediction, the winding off of which was, We shall see. And we did see! Start not my terrified reader, but read on The next morning I paid a visit to my friend Laura, who had just returned from boarding school. As her character |