Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics.

iquarian Journal, ye who imagine that there can be no intelligent and practical reply to the cui bono? shake of the hea

o question his literary infallibility? So if you do not take kindly to the solemn rumble of the Johnsonese mail-coach of a sentence in which we set out, receive the purport of it thus: It is of

e-way selection. That a somewhat experienced advocate, who had resisted for three years the fascinations of city belle-ship, should spend the legal vacation in a visit to an old gentleman he never saw before, and return affianced to a lady nobody had ever heard of,-I own there was something temptingly discussible in the circumstance; and knowing that fine relish for personal topics which distinguishes the Ame

was the name: it had a great deal to do with it. And if you will allow me to step back a little into the past, and

swers offered to this inquiry of the Democratic Sphinx are, as we all know, various enough. Some men, of ready assurance and fluent speech, go into politics; some doze in libraries; some get up trotting-matches and yacht-races; while others dodge the difficulty altogether by going to disport themselves among the arts and letters of a foreign land. Colonel Prowley, with considerable originality, was moved to find employment in letter-writing, pursuing it with the same daily relish which many people find for gossip or small-talk. And this is the way in which I came to be favored with the good gentleman's communications. About three years ago a friend in England procured for me a book that I had long coveted,-Morton's "New English Canaan," printed at Amsterdam in the year 1637. This little volume, after the novelty

r, in which the purchaser of the right of grab fumbles with pleasing uncertainty as to whether he is to draw forth a hymn-book or a shaving-brush, a packet of note-paper or a box of patent polish for stoves. At one time he would com

the fact they expressed, they must have improved what was good, and gibbeted more effectually what to the times seemed evil. Who would now think of designating a parcel of serious savages "the praying Indians of Natick"? And yet there is a sound and a power about the words that would go far to convert the skeptical aborigines in their own despite. Why, there was something rich and nervous in the talk of the very lawmakers. "The accursed sect of the Quakers,"-what a fine spir

ncient style of thought that fitted well the method of conveyance. Indeed, a good course of Bishop Copleston's "magic-lanthorn school" made me peculiarly susceptible to the

rs persistently in some parts of New England, seemed to concentrate itself and envelop him as in a cloud. He had attained the age of sixty a bachelor,-perhaps from finding no person in Foxde

together by those mysterious affinities which, like the daughters of the horse-leech, are ever crying, "Give, give," a few bi

ries about progenitors of mine who had originally settled in that place. He advised me, as a son, in my reading and business; and although I often dismissed his suggestions as the whims of an old-fashioned recluse, I was always touched by the simplicity and sincere interest that

had everything to recommend it was broken off I have sorely puzzled myself to conjecture, but linger always in the labyrinths of doubt. Some months ago I received a catalogue from the Soggimarsh College in the Far West, to whose funds I had contributed a modest subscription. I was thrown into an ecstasy of astonishment, when, in glancing over the names of the honorable Faculty, my attention was arrested by words to this effect: Miss Hurribattle, Professor of Calisthenics and Female Deportment. Of course, I wrote to her immediately, and received right cordial replies to all inquiries. She seemed much interested in the union of the families that was

were sensible and feminine, I thought how odd it would be, if something should come of it, after all. I often found myself skipping Colonel Prowley's accounts of old Doctor Dastick, Mrs. Hunesley, and other great people of his town, and pondering upon the notices of his Western correspondent. I began to have a mysterious presentiment-which, in view of the calisthenics, I could not explain-that we might be not unadapted t