that a sincere female friendship can survive all the chances and changes of this ever-varying world, life would be a blank indeed. But that, like fine gold, the more it is tried, the more it is purified! How many tests your's has already stood! how many more it may have to endure, ere your poor heart-broken friend is removed from burthening its sweet consolation, God only knows! Still, you will never weary of well-doing, I feel assured; but, will persevere unto the end, that my last moments may be gladdened by the sole ray of earthly beatitude, capable of warming and radiating their gathering gloom!

"My future letters, I trust, will be of a less sombre character; indeed, I shall make it a point of duty to render them so; but, after a protracted absence, and many sad and startling trials, the heart must speak, or burst, on the first gush of feeling which the scenes of youth and happiness naturally awaken. Mine, now that it has partially relieved itself of its oppressive load of vain remembrances, feels infinitely lighter; and if not yet able to sign myself, your contented, I can say, your resigned, and still undeviatingly attached,

"MARIA COURTENEY."

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There were also several poetical effusions, in round, and German text, evidently the first glowing efforts of some youthful aspirant for my friend's favour, long antecedent to the more mature lovemaking in the bower, so pathetically alluded to, in Maria Courte ney's affecting letter, with lockets innumerable, containing every conceivable shade of hair; none above the value of half-a-crown, so far as the precious metal was concerned. One, however, struck me as pretty, and interesting in its design; two doves, in white enamel, holding in their united bills a curl of that bright, beautiful hair, we know, at the most casual glance, must have belonged to one of those fair sunny creatures, who render the hearth-stone of some home so refulgent by its presence, so dark when snatched away! In this opinion, I was confirmed, by reading on the back of the locket," Clara R., aged seventeen." I was vexed at finding only the initial of her name, and endeavoured to supply the hiatus, by running over in my mind all the most familiar ones, commencing with that letter; stopping instinctively at Ritchie, not from its being peculiarly euphonious, but that it has been bathed in the liquid stream of sweet and touching poetry, and appeared, therefore, most appropriate to the beautiful possessor of that silken curl. But, after a time, I grew dissatisfied with this conjecture, at first so pleasing; and, discovering that I could never gaze on the locket without a train of vague and perplexing thoughts occurring, I ultimately gave it to a very romantic young lady, who fell violently in love with the charming design of the pretty little doves so amorously billing together, and whose giddy and

inconsequent brain I knew would never puzzle itself with the astute subtleties which had so frequently made mine ache, to give the departed owner of that tress a local habitation and a name ; and the remainder, with the letters and verses, tell it not in Gath, I quietly submitted to the fire, without one compunctious visiting of conscience, either. Indeed, if those funereal pyres were forbidden by the laws of a false delicacy, or, even sincere affection, where would there be found magazines sufficiently extensive to contain the various accumulations collected for generations? Women being proverbially hoarders of those sweet memorials, which constitute the wealth of the heart, but not, alas! of the purse; yea, from the moment when poor distracted Eve snatched the rose from her nuptial bower, when driven out of that lovely Paradise, which the Almighty had himself embellished with all that was beautiful and attractive, down to the present hour; they have heaped relic upon relic, noting them on the tablets of the soul, to revel over, when the sterner realities of life drove them to retrospection for that felicity, which their actual position denied them.

I myself am one of the most inveterate of the above-mentioned class; but, then I really do collect things of stirling value; having, amongst other treasures, several autograph notes from the finest periodical writers of the day, which I have taken especial care to signify in a memorandum, are most invaluable, not knowing what price they may bring in some future sale of such celebrated rarities; when, having outlived the present petty envy, which hates the merit which it cannot reach, and, worse still, the horrid utilitarian mania which now prevails, of seeing worth in nothing, except a rail-road; they will not be considered the mere rubbish they are now, I fear, and, consequently, swept down the gulph of that oblivion which renders nothing back, but which my restless spirit, cognisant of, would bewail as the most irretrievable of all epistolary losses, to which that of Junius would have been a matter of comparatively trifling importance, as his name is fictitious, while mine are undoubted, real, and delightful facts

LITERATURE.

NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

The History of the Girondists, or Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution. Vol. II. London: Bohn.

LA MARTINE'S second volume is a narrative of surpassing interest. The style is clear, the descriptions are graphic and animated. We would willingly extract some of the brilliant passages it contains, were it not that it is published at such a price as to place it within the reach of all.

Essay on the Constitution of Society as Designed by God. London : Arthur Hall and Company.

THIS is the work of a thoughtful man desirous of doing good; as such we commend it, though it is written in too fragmentary a form, and in a style by no means popular.

History of the Hawaiian Islands, embracing their Antiquities, Mythology, Legends, Discovery by Europeans in the Sixteenth Century, Re-discovery by Cook, with their Civil, Religious, and Political History from the Earliest Traditionary Period to the Present Time. By JAMES JACKSON JARVES. Third Edition.

WE have given at length the title of Mr. Jarves's able and not uninteresting performance. Everything relating to the history or present state of the Hawaiians is to be found in it. It is proved to be a standard work of its kind-accurate, impartial, profound. The friends of mission, and missionaries, will thank our author for the testimony he has given on their behalf.

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