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the old lady insisting on some good luck being about to befall them, and the children joining, with the buoyancy of thought of the young, in her fancy. Heinrich urged ahead to the place of dinner.

The day was cloudless, and of course, in August, hot. The lake was calm and as quiet as peace itself. Its waters were the mirror of the sky, and 'the blue above and the deep beneath' answered in loveliness to each other, while the transparency of the fluid made it easy to count the very pebbles at the bottom, for fathoms in depth. They had now arrived at the Cedar Heights, and Lucille proposed that, under its pleasant shade, they should give their horses and themselves a temporary rest and shelter. Heinrich rather demurred at stopping so near their dining-place, but Lucille was so like her mother that he never had the heart to refuse her any thing. So 'the team' was fastened to a tree, and the family sat down on the verge of the heights; the pleasant foliage above, and that calm and beautiful lake beneath them.

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The noon-hour is always the quietest even in the quiet country; the meal has drawn to the house the cultivators of the field, and there is what Bryant truthfully designates a slumberous silence.' While Lucille and the old lady were devising all manner of improbable fancies as to the particular form in which the good luck was coming, as the latter was sure, on this St. Agatha's day, it would come, Heinrich and the boys continued to talk, and hope while they talked, of the garden west. He did not like the rocks of old Pike much, as they rose to view in his mind, Just at this juncture a noisy but he was determined to press forward. watch-dog, that professed to guard the nearest farm-house, deemed it, very absurdly, his duty to tear down the road and commence a furious barking in front of the horses. There was more consequence in his bark than he imagined; just as great results often ensue from the noise that the foolish make. The horses, aroused from their doze, started suddenly back, and thus broke their halter, and, frightened by its dangling about their heads, reared, plunged, and by way of climax, commenced a vigorous run-away. The old chest rattled as they ran, and this, added to the continued noise of the dog, who thought he had achieved a victory, aroused. Heinrich and the family, who followed after in a spasmodic attempt to arrest the flight. The human part of the chase was distanced, but the valiant dog kept up with the horses, and barking and jumping furiously at the nigh horse, he crowded the team to the lake side of the road, so that while going at full speed they suddenly turned to the right, and dashed down the small ravine, the locality of which the tourist can see, by the unpainted wooden boat-house at the place where the little glen is terminated by the beach. The descent is very rapid, and the ravine narrow. The horses, wild with excitement and goaded on by the dog, tore through the defile, and suddenly turning to the left as they came on the beach, the wagon crushed over, and its contents were violently thrown out. The chest struck with great force upon a rock, and its cover was dashed in and broken, and out rolled into the bright waters a complete rain of gold and silver coin, which lay among the smooth stones, tesselating the bottom, as it were, with a brilliant pavement of glittering metal and many-colored pebbles, the transparency of the water causing all to seem as if cased in crystal. The dog, struck in its fall by the chest, went barking back,

the blow the only reward of his over-zeal. The onward flight of the horses, encumbered by the capsized wagon, was readily arrested by one of the boys.

Heinrich had bitter feelings as he saw the wagon go down the ravine. 'Good luck with a vengeance,' cried he, 'if this is it. A wagon to pay for, and all our goods in the water probably. If this is St. Agatha's day, it is a sad one.' But he worked as well as talked, and in a few moments he and the family were at the scene of the disaster, and the old lady followed with all possible dispatch. There lay the broken chest, and all around it shone and sparkled in the sun's bright rays the gold. The long-kept secret of the corsair's treasure, a treasure probably gathered in the fierce and terrible conflicts of the wild seas, was revealed on the margin of a calm and gentle lake, in the country far off from the Old World.

'My chest, my father's chest!' cried the old lady; but,' as if her heart struggled for an instant with one emotion, did I not tell you St. Agatha's day would bring us good luck? The ocean gave it to him, and the lake has given it to us.'

The whole affair had taken but a few minutes in its occurrence, and the neighbor farmers had been too much occupied with the serious duty of dinner to heed the noise, most of which was indeed the volunteer efforts of the dog. In a moment, Heinrich and the old lady and Lucille and her brothers were engaged with the utmost zeal in recovering the lost treasure, and the pure waters, in their transparent truth, kept none of it back. And now a new council was held, and the old lady, seated on the broken chest, was the chief orator. She told them the story of her father's wild adventures, and of the strange things he had seen and done in his life on the seas. She said that she could readily account for the wish expressed by him, that the chest should not be opened in his day; since gold, won as she feared his was, would only be a fearful though glittering history of the past. She did not regret that she had loved her father's memory as she had, for now, at their utmost need, they would have the benefit, in these new and fresh scenes of the New World, of the treasure. And under the shade of these cedars, in the rich recesses of the verdure of these heights, new plans were formed, and a vision of comfort and possessions in the rich west soon superseded the destiny for old Pike. The returning journey northward was commenced, and at Springport, around a good dinner, the designs for the future were carefully reviewed and matured. The means now at their command were used in wisdom and prudence, and a few weeks thereafter found Heinrich in possession of one of the finest locations in Wisconsin that the government land-office could furnish. The boys were delighted, and while they never, like true-hearted men as they grew to be, forgot their old country, they had a kindred love for their new home. Pike county was not forgotten; for while the Pennsylvanian in a few years thereafter carried Lucille there as a bride, she wrote to her father that though the soil was not so fertile as in Wisconsin, there could be no happier home than hers was. They all remember the Cedar Heights and St. Agatha's day, nor will they ever forget it, though the father and the aged mother teach the family that it was not good luck, but a kind Providence, that then so suddenly changed their destiny.

A REVERIE.

BY 'IONE.'

Ir is a night

Of deep and intense beauty: such an one
As brings to the wo-burthened, world-sick soul
Its own sweet influence of waking dreams,
And steeps it in the sense of earnest rest.
Oh! at such times, when the full worth of life,
And its deep meaning, falls upon the heart,
And we essay to grasp, with finite mind,
The thought of IMMORTALITY, how vain
Seem all the things for which we daily strive-
For which we daily pay that coin of Heaven,
The precious hours of life! On ev'ry side
We find Infinity. The countless stars,
The thousand ages that have passed away,
The unknown wonders of forthcoming years,
The unsolved mystery of our own being-
All these can make us lose ourselves in thought,
And send the baffled Soul in weariness
Back from the oft-tried effort to achieve
Their comprehension! Here is the true school,
Where we may learn humility; where we
Must own our power powerless, and turn

From vain self-worship to that high source whence
Comes all we have. Could we this lesson learn;
Could we remember when, sore vexed with cares,
Or when our hearts are filled with grief- with grief
That knows no cure- - that then the night

Of Death must come, and bring us rest and dreams
Of untold joy, through all eternity;
Should we not meet our ills with stronger hearts,
And nerve us well to pass the grand ordeal
With less of trembling fear, and firmer trust
In GoD-the 'great ALL-FATHER' - than if we
Were wont to contemplate throughout our lives
Our own small greatness only? Tell me not
That we should bind us to the Actual,
Nor let Imagination e'er take wing!
Let Fancy have her flight, and though she bring
Us back nor coin, nor any worldly store,

And for this lack be deemed a useless bird

By those who think the only thing in life

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Is the Almighty Dollar' - still will she

Be sure to lift us for a while from all

The petty thoughts that so engross our souls,
And keep us far from Gop. Oh! if such hours
Were daily visitants, our lives would be

Far purer; and surely He would have less need

To send dark sorrow to our hearts, to teach

Backward our way toward HIM. But we must have
Blow after blow, ere we can learn to look
From earth,' and bless the Hand that chastens us
In pity and in love.

A

VISION OF CRIME.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

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Ir is midnight! The bright sun is extinguished.' His resplendent rays, which tinged the harvest twilight with purple, azure, green, and gold, gilds at this hour the meridian of the antipodes. The shades are cast in the 'deep watches' of the silent night. The fleecy atmospheric haze of approaching early autumn, the doubtful, atomic light of stars, and the arid gusts of the heated forest, pervade alone our nether world. The robin has sung his evening song of praise, and gently sleeps upon his guardian bough; the honest watch-dog's deep-mouthed bay' has ceased, and man has gone to his habitation. The silvery moon has not 'hung out her lamp' to-night. The peaceful aria of the zephyr, the yielding ripple of the lake, the alternating flap of cordage upon its riding masts, the light floating clouds with mildly-crimsoned coruscations at intervals, the slightly-bending trees and waving foliage with its delicious fragrance, and the sounding rivulets- these, and only these, reveal to us the truth of being and of life.

Visions are for the most part innovations and nondescripts, representing the dross or scoria arising to the surface in the fusion of our purer thoughts and ratiocination. Those of the ambitious and corrupted are always ominous, but the dreams of the conscientious and the upright are rarely prescient of evil. It was all a dream,' exclaimed Richard, whose recent vision of Bosworth field pictured to his tortured senses a routed army and a lost kingdom. 'I had a dream which was not all a dream,' said the greatest of modern poets, whose language, iteration, and embodiment are unique in the world. Men are egregiously addicted to day-dreams as well as others, and some of them assume the garb of principles and even philosophy, and imbibe in their theories the admixture of things both good and evil, wise and unwise. That which follows may indeed have been partly a dream: true, it presents a lurid picture of crime and its sentient cause, and partakes sufficiently of the horrible to elicit the highest degree of thankfulness that it has no pretence to, or foundation in reality.

The incongruity of our dreams, like the flitting aurora-borealian prototype in nature, we can in no way satisfactorily account for, neither in inception nor development; nor assuredly, were it possible, would it be advisable, as doubtless the delving into the penetralia of dreams would have no other effect than the spoiling of the aroma, and the disrobing of their mystery. It is their dissonance to the waking sense, and the regularity of thought only, that distinguish them. But we proceed with our vision.

Fancy portrays to us a wide extended prairie of the west, with a boundless plane toward the setting sun, and a distant forest limiting the south. A long line of craggy, serrated bluffs are visible in the

north, and a broad expanse of lake may be seen in the east. A large, white, plain-structured, frontier farm-house, environed by a few prairie oaks and out-houses, the latter of which form the angles to an enclosure or yard, which is surrounded by a sort of paling or chevaux-de-frise, must serve as the locum somnium. The occupants of this domicil consist of two men, as many adult females, and two boys of about the ten years, and seem to be Irish. The children, it would appear, are visiting relatives, and direct heirs to a considerable sum of money, which otherwise would have descended to the possession and behoof of this family.

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Gold, says La Harpe, is ever the incentive to crime; and here, as it proves, we have a correlative dream-murder, and the shade of gold for the cause:

'0, si sic omnes!'

Would that the Baconian theory might here obtain, and that all future murders might be of similar bloodless kind; mere hypotheses, which we all, as regardless of bacon as was the factory boy of De Quincey, might be at liberty to kick at. But we suppose that this is not to be, and that so long as one of that coëxtensive class of the human species called rogues exists, by so long is the promised GOLDEN RULE, the subtend of the Decalogue and the higher law, to be delayed of full verification. The millennium alone is to terminate this pandemic and primitive law of na

ture.

As long as sin pervades the earth, and the exigency of social government abides, so long is the expiation of this foul crime to stain its judicial annals, and the only coëval panacea for it is the 'ne plus ultra' of the law of Moses, Magna Charta, and hemp. This Mosaic lemma was not changed by the Advent; and the induction of statute-law, or farther legislation of any kind, upon this subject, is consequently uncalled-for and unnecessary. Revenge and cupidity are coëval, and possibly cousingermans; but gold, we think, is not necessarily evil, though aesthetical women, and men like them, are ever ready to contend that money is the root of all evil. This however is not the case; it is not money, but the love of it, which constitutes the bane. There is no evidence that Pandora's box contained any cash, or Prometheus, who was an astute fellow, and doubtless shrewd at a bargain, would not have distrusted her; but on the contrary, had he heard within it the clink of coin, would have taken her at a venture, and in so doing have saved his liver, though he might have lost his heart. But we leave these reflections, and return to the old white house and its inmates.

We are there! Several recognized and familiar forms of persons are there, in various aspects and features, from the bold, full-developed, strongoutlined, plainly-visioned, descending to the dim, adumbrant, faint, fainter still, and extinct. How or why we came thither I know not, but only recognize the fact that we were there. The mind, in self-action, (the body being asleep,) is conscious of position, and the change of position, but not of travelling. Indeed the mind is no traveller, being as devoid of nether perambulators as Cato assures us the belly is of ears; and any imaginary movement or gliding motion of ourselves, not of outward things, usually restores us to consciousness. Neither is the mind con

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