to obtain some proofs of the project of this ambitious queen. She had named, it seems, two viceroys-Troile de Mergonez was to reconquer the north of the continent, and Admiral Strozzi was to take possession of Brazil, after having driven the Portuguese out of the Azores. The two viceroys actually sailed, furnished with secret and signed orders, but an unkind fate ordained that Troile should be shipwrecked and Strozzi defeated and killed in a battle off the Azores. The death of both the leaders brought the royal project to naught, and nothing would have been known of it but for the diligence and perspicuity of the learned librarian. Dundee Advertiser. JULIA WARD HOWE PORTRAIT The memorial portrait of Julia Ward Howe, offered to the Bostonian Society by a committee of Boston citizens, has been accepted by the Society, and the portrait will be placed in the old State House. It will be hung in the council chamber, but on just which wall has not yet been decided. The light appears to be equally good in one place as another, but the opinion of experts will be invited before a decision is made as to the exact position. LETTER OF JAMES MADISON TO REV. A. BIGELOW The body of this letter is in the hand of Dolly Madison. I am among those who are most anxious for the preservation of the Union of the States, and for the success of the constitutional experiment of which it is the basis. We owe it to ourselves and to the world, to watch, to cherish, and as far as possible to perfect a new modification of the powers of Government, which aims at a better security against external danger, and internal disorder.-A better provision for national strength and individual rights, than had been exemplified, under any previous form. THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF NEW ENGLAND ANTIQUITIES The fourth Bulletin of the Society has recently appeared, and shows the Society to be thoroughly progressive. Though but little more than a year old, it has just made its first purchase-of the Ilsley house in Newbury, Mass. This dates from 1670, and is in excellent condition, having been in the hands of the Ilsleys since 1797, and occupied as a dwelling ever since. The Society is to restore it as far as possible to its original style. Another ancient building of the seventeenth century in Salem, known as the "Old Bakery," has been saved from destruction through the efforts of one of the Society's officers. It was then bought by one of the members, and will be restored by the Society as soon as funds warrant. A third house, the Titcomb, in Newburyport, has also been saved through the Society's interesting the Nathaniel Tracy Chapter, D. R., which bought it and will use it as its own home. It would be a great thing if each of the older States had such a society as this. Historical societies do not occupy the same field, (though they could if they would), and what has been done in Massachusetts ought to be capable of doing elsewhere. IN MEMORY OF RUFUS PUTNAM The Rufus Putnam Memorial Association at its recent meeting (Worcester, Mass.), adopted resolutions creating a committee of ten to formulate and carry out a plan to get what shall be known as the General Rufus Putnam Memorial Fund of $100,000. The fund is to maintain the Putnam home in Rutland, support the departments of history and political science and the historical museum of Marietta College, and in any other way commemorate the pioneering enterprise which under the leadership of Gen. Putnam established the first settlement at Marietta, Ohio, and later founded a college on the historic ground. Dr. G. Stanley Hall presided at the meeting. Charles S. Dana made a commemorative address. W CHAPTER XXVIII Continued 'ITH minds of a gentler mould, or even with one lofty as hers, if attempered by the sweet influences of Religion, a quiet and uncomplaining resignation would have been the alternative of one thus weighed down by the hand of fate. But Alida, though her fervid soul was in a high degree characterized by that sentiment of natural piety which, existing in almost every highly-gifted mind, is so often mistaken for the deeper and more permanent principle which alone deserves the name of true religion-Alida had never yet known that sober, and holy-conserving influence by whose aid alone, the preacher tells us, we may possess our minds in peace. She rebelled against the lot to which she seemed doomed as a disappointed, if not heart-broken woman. She would struggle against the blind pressure of circumstance, and war till the last with the fate which only served to exasperate while it overshadowed her spirit. It is strange how, while most minds grow haughty, exacting, and imperious from success, misfortune, so far from bringing humility with it, produces precisely the same effect in others; they seem to harden in the struggle with sorrow, and grow insolent as they gain knowledge of their own powers of endurance. "I'll go no more," said Greyslaer one evening, as throwing himself dejectedly into the saddle, he passed through the gate which opened upon the grounds of the Hawksnest, and turned his horse's head toward the garrison; "I'll go no more. Had her reception been merely cold and formal after the long interval I have ceased visiting her, I should not have complained of such notice of my neglect; for she, perhaps, never suspects the cause that keeps me away. But those two fingers so carelessly accorded to my grasp, with that light laugh as she turned round in speaking to that group of idlers, even in the moment that I was expressing my pleasure at seeing her-pshaw! there are no sympathies between that woman and myself; there never was, there never can be any "; and he struck the rowels into his horse almost fiercely, as, thus bitterly musing, one angry thought after another chased through his mind. "And what if she be?" he exclaimed, reining up suddenly again. to a slower pace. "What if she be wayward, fretful, and exacting to me alone of all other men? Forgetful of the devoted and all-absorbing love I have borne her; forgetful of the feelings which, save on that terrible night only, I have always kept trained in obedience to what I deemed her happiness. She never attempted to inspire this misplaced and mistaken interest; she never lured me on to the avowal; she never trifled with the emotions that prompted it. What right have I to arraign her conduct, to sit in judgment upon her manner toward me? Her character is the same that I have ever known it. Her manner toward me? Am I, then, such an egotist that that is to change my estimation of her? She does not love me, she cannot love me; and if she did, is there not this hideous bar between us? What care I, then, for this show of interest, when the reality can never be indulged? No! iny part is taken-irretrievably taken, and I would not recall my choice. For me there is no fragment of happiness that I can save from the wreck of the past, but I will still drift with her wheresoever the sea of events may hurl us." It is well for us that it is only in very early life that we are thus prodigal of our chances of happiness, and willing to concentrate them all upon a single issue. Alas! how soon do we learn, in maturer years, to shift our interest from scheme to scheme; to see wave after wave, upon which the bark of our hopes has been upborne, sink from beneath it, until the very one upon which it was about to float at last triumphantly, strands us upon the returnless shores of the grave! But, though many a worldling has commenced his experience of life with views hardly less romantic than those of Max Greyslaer, his was not the mere wayward devotedness of youth to its first sorrow. The very constitution of his mind was of a loyal, venerating kind; (for, deeply imbued as he was, by the classic culture of his mind, with that ancient, intellectual spirit of republicanism which had at once determined his political position in the present civil struggle, Greyslaer, under another system of education, would probably have turned out almost a bigoted royalist;) and the sentiment which still attached him to Alida was nearly akin to that which, in another age and under other circum stances, would have inspired his self-devotion to some dethroned and expatriated prince, like him for whom one of his maternal ancestors had suffered upon the scaffold. Had he never declared his passion for Alida, he might have succeeded in crushing it; he would certainly have attempted to reason it away the moment that he discovered that he must love in vain; but, the avowal once made, he never dreamed of withdrawing the adhesion he had thus given in, much less of transferring his affections to another. He had made an error of choice; a most unhappy, a most cruel one; but still he would abide by that choice, whatever consequences might accrue. The part which Max Greyslaer had thus chosen would, in a rational point of view, become only an ill-regulated, almost, we might say, a half-besotted mind. Yet the weakness of choosing such a part is precisely that which has dwarfed the growth and distorted the otherwise noble proportions of minds naturally the most masculine and commanding. But the feelings and reflections of Greyslaer, upon which we have dwelt, perhaps, somewhat too minutely, received a new direction at this moment, as he heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs rapidly approaching in an opposite course to that which he was travelling. The speed of the coming horseman seemed to announce that he was either fleeing from pursuit, or riding upon some errand of the utmost urgency; and, ere Greyslaer could make out the figure of the strange rider amid the darkness, his conjectures as to his character were cut short by an occurrence which may best be told in another chapter. CHAPTER XXIX THE DISCOVERY There was a blacksmith's shop at the forks of the road, a few yards in advance of the spot where Greyslaer, the moment he became aware of the stranger's approach, had reined up to challenge him in passing. For, in these times, when almost every passenger upon the highway was an object of scrutiny, a horseman who sojourned so hotly by night naturally awakened suspicion as to his character. Max, remembering the neighborhood of the blacksmith's hovel, |