To me, the latter is conclusive evidence that you do not regard education as a mere parrotry-a tasking the memory with idle verbiage, while the understanding is totally forgotten and neglected. The philosophy of education is not yet thoroughly understood by our countrymen at large, notwithstanding the multitude of schools and colleges among us. It is too much cramped-too confined by old barriers, and restricted to the same unvarying round of grammar, arithmetic, geography, and a few similar studies, while others, intrinsically of more importance, are unwritten in our scholastic code. For instance, what can be more practically interesting to any and every individual, than a knowledge of anatomy? Yet how few educated men are there among us, who can explain the difference between a tendon and a nerve? My dear Sir, you must publish, like Milton, a Tractate on Education,' or if you lack leisure, solicit your accomplished friend, the amiable author of 'Allen Prescott' to undertake a task for which she has, in the performance of her maternal duties, proved herself so admirably qualified. With the hope, that in the exercise of your arduous vocation, you may meet with fewer vexations and more grateful and reasonable patrons than usually fall to the lot of your profession, 'I remain, your obliged friend,

'FRANKLIN HOWARD.'

AND with an equally benevolent hope in thy behalf, gentle reader, that fortune may never realize, in thy own personal feelings, the thankless toils and unrecompensed trials of the schoolmaster abroad' in the barren fields of education, I take my leave for the present. Farewell! Stockbridge, (Mass.,) 1836.

P.

THOUGHTS OF AN EXILE.

FROM A MSS. POEM.

I.

On a wild shore where Nature, as in wrath,
Hath wrought creation with a reckless hand,
And piled, like watch towers, in her giant path
Mountains whose peaks no human eye hath scanned,

I woke to being. Oh! my father-land,

Bright are thy streams, that once my shallop bore;

Soft are thy breezes, as the airs that fanned

My glowing cheek in thy green vales, of yore;

But ah! for me and mine they roll and breathe no more!

II.

There the sun-kindled fruits from blossoms rise,
As if the breath of the Omnipotent

Warmed them to instant ripeness, beneath skies
Flashing, as if their hues magnificent

Forth from the very Heaven of Heavens were sent.
There gem-like flowers are stirred by radiant wings,

Till all the air of sweets is redolent.

There o'er the mouldering arch the ivy springs,

And songs of other days the dark-browed maiden sings.

III.

I never knew a parent's fond caress

I grew uncared for as the desert tree;
Amid my sorrow, there was none to bless-
No lip to smile upon my childish glee :
And yet, my country, memory turns to thee,
As to a mother's breast an unweaned child:
Would to thy solitudes I now could flee,
With thoughts as pure and spirit undefiled

As when, a wayward boy, among thy flowers I smiled!

FIRSTLINGS.

SECOND NUMBER.

'THE very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand.'

THE FIRST OF APRIL.

SHAKSPEARE.

APRIL, Sweet month, 'ye dayntyeste of all!' mounted on the lusty Taurus, wanton as a kid whose horn new buds,' brings in the young and teeming beauty of the year. What is the oft-sung and be-praised Maïa more than elder sister to the young Aperio? - the staid soberness of womanhood succeeding the lovely freshness of juvenility? An April morn, the eternal simile for love's estate, floats over the earth with rainbow-colored wings, diffusing life and light-insuring the production of the riches of the earth in their respective seasons, and driving the tears of winter, shed at a constrained departure, before the sun-lit beauty of her smiles.

A rustic poet has said that

'The earliest flowers are aye the sweetest,'

and April, to the lover of nature, is undoubtedly the most delightful period of the year. The voices of the streams are spring-subdued, and they run their destined course with wonted harmony - their bubbling ripples gleaming in the bright blue glory of an April sky. The swallow tribes return from their long, long flight, and skim across the lea and over the winding rivulet, with short and sudden jerks, in keen pursuit of the innumerable insects which already have been warmed into life. The song birds, up before the sun, are 'cheerily hymning the awakened morn;' the bees are on the wing, with loud and cheerful hum, eagerly sipping the spring dew on the buds. Nature is aroused; and, doffing the cold rigidity of sleep, lovelily smiles in her returning happiness.

On the first of April, according to mythological chronology, Venus arose from the sea - Venus, the goddess of beauty, the mother of love, the mistress of the graces. On this day, the Roman matrons performed ablutions under the myrtle tree, sacred to Venus, and, crowning themselves with its leaves, offered sacrifices to the goddess whose birth-day they had met to celebrate. The marriageable maids repaired to the temples of Fortuna Virilis, and exposing any personal deformities they might happen to possess, prayed the deity to conceal them from the knowledge of those who wished to espouse them. This practice, I verily believe, is the origin of the custom of fool-making upon the first of April: the husbands, who believed the chosen of their hearts to be perfection, and afterward discovered their blemishes, might, while deprecating the imagined influence of the goddess, declare themselves the fools of the first of April.

Brand, who observes that nothing is known about the origin of this curious custom of fool-making but that it is very ancient and very general, supposes it likely to be a remnant of the Festival of Fools; but that feast was held about Christmas-time, and not upon All Fool's Day. A correspondent, in the Gentleman's Magazine, April, 1766, supposes

that the strange custom prevalent throughout this kingdom, of people making fools of one another upon the first of April, arose from the year formerly beginning, as to some purpose, and in some respects, on the 25th of March, which was formerly supposed to be the incarnation of our Lord; it being customary with the Romans, as well as with us, to hold a festival, attended by an octave, at the commencement of the new year - which festival lasted for eight days, whereof the first and last were the principal; therefore the first of April is the octave of the twenty-fifth of March, and, consequently, the close or ending of the feast, which was both the festival of the Annunciation and the beginning of the new year.'

In corroboration of his surmise, the writer might have quoted Bloomfield, who, in his history of the antiquities of Norfolk, in England, mentions a pageant exhibited in Norwich, on Shrove Tuesday, in the month of March, when one rode through the town having his horse trapped with tyn foyle and other nyse disgysynges,' crowned as King of Christmas, in token that the year should there end.

Mr. Maurice, the author of Indian Antiquities,' considers the custom of fool-making as one of the sports originally introduced to celebrate the festival of the vernal equinox; but the learned antiquarian has not not been more fortunate in his supposition than the rest of his compeers. The observance of All Fool's Day is not confined to one clime. Upon the first of April, fool-making is, or was, universal. At Lisbon, it is thought very funny to pour water upon the passers-by, or to jerk white powder in their faces; but to do both, is the perfection of wit. The poor monks of the Chartreux, in Provence, were much annoyed by novices being sent for peas (pois chiches) which they were told the monks were obliged to give to every body who would come for them on this day. Toreen, the Swedish traveler, says: We set sail on the first of April; but the wind made us April fools, for we were forced to return.' In Scotland, gowk-making' is a source of much amusement: 'gowk' means a cuckoo, or silly bird, and is a term in frequent use in the north of England for a stupid fellow. The Frenchman's poisson d'Avril is exactly similar to the English April-fool. In the second volume of the Asiatic Researches, Colonel Pearce gives an account of the same custom among the Hindoos. Upon the last day in March, at the termination of the Huli festival, high and low join in making fools of one another. They carry the joke there so far as to send letters, making appointments in the name of persons who, it is known, must be absent from their houses at the time fixed upon; and the laugh is always in proportion to the trouble given. The late Surajah Dowlah, although a Mussulman of the highest rank, was very fond of making Huli fools.

The follies of the first of April have never flourished in America. A practice may occasionally be observed among the recent importations, or in the family circles of some fun-loving folks from the old country; but the clear heads and business habits of the Americans are anomalous to the old-fashioned observance of the day. The custom is declining even in merry England, where the first of April has long been the season for most exquisite foolery.' They have dethroned the King's Jester, and the office of the Lord Mayor's Fool is abolished; no one careth for the observance of All Fool's Day, for personal interest in its

mysteries hath waxed weak. Oh, for the departed glory of the seven wise men! Now-a-days, all are learned! The strides of the schoolmaster have been accelerated by steam, and thousands of ten thousands receive their weekly quantum of intelligence with mechanical regularity. Children no longer cry after cakes, candy is uncared for, gingerbread is becoming obsolete, and a play-thing is a reminiscence. Penny Magazines and Cyclopædias engross the pocket-money of the rising generation; half-fledged philosophers contradict their grandams, and talk ethics in the nursery, and apprentices instruct their masters in the usages of the divine science. There are now-a-days, no 'sealed' books; the treasures of bibliography are attainable for a trifle, and the hoarded wisdom of the sage may be had for a handful of cents.

To return to the first of April. Charles H, a young artist, depended upon his professional exertions for the support of himself and his widowed mother. He was of a good family, well educated, and possessed of that high spirit of independence which gives a keener pang to the stab of poverty. For the sake of a genteel direction, he occupied a third floor in a bye-street turning out of the principal avenue in one of our Atlantic cities; and while peeping over the little yellow muslin window-curtain, frequently gazed upon the charming face of a young lady who resided with her mamma, in the house immediately opposite. Admiration speedily ripened into love. Miss Emily W had noticed his passionate but respectful glances, and felt something like a wish to know more of so handsome a young fellow, with such fine eyes, and pale, romantic face. Charles, taking advantage of his exaltation, eagerly watched for her appearance at the breakfast table in the front parlor. 'Love has eyes.' H- soon observed that Miss Emily frequently walked to the window, before she sat down to breakfast, and under pretence of pulling up or letting down the blind, raised her beautiful sparklers to see if her third-floor watcher was at his post. This soon became a regular practice, and Charles once or twice felt sure that a sweet smile graced his Emily's countenance, and he could not but observe that she paid a greater attention to the becoming appearance of her morning dress. This was enough. Charles H was not more vain than a gentlemanly, handsome young fellow ought to be; but he did think, although the lady was an heiress, and moved in the first circles, that if he had a chance of forming an acquaintance with Miss W, he should soon be beloved. He devoured fewer muffins and less beef than usual; became more pale and sentimental, and painted myriads of angels, sylphs, and lovely Emilys. If he was employed upon the likeness of any lady, the portraiture was sure to be-Émily. Had he to depict a snub nose, he converted the nasal naughtiness into the lovely Grecian proboscis of his ladye-love. How could he paint misshapen lips, or teeth jagged as old paling, while Emily's parted coral and rows of pearl were so constantly before him? Her intellectual smile gave beauty to the fleshy insipidities he was expected to portray. The voluptuous and Psyche-like softness of her large blue eye, the curling richness of her chestnut hair, hanging in luxurious tendrils around a neck and shoulders whose touch they seemed to covet; her small and delicately-formed ears; her forehead, not sufficiently high nor bumpy to please a phrenologist, yet exquisitely shaped, and smooth and polished as the ivory on which he painted-each and all were

delineated in the portraits of his employers. This but increased his reputation. Ladies care not about their likenesses being like, if they are but made to look pretty. Emily was excessively handsome; and soall parties were satisfied.

Á lover is nothing without a confidant. Charles could not 'babble of green fields' to his aged parent; so, making a friend of a school acquaintance, he revealed his hopes and fears. He was in time supremely miserable. A dashing, whiskered-faced foreigner had frequently driven out Emily for a morning's ride; and once, as the handsome equipage whirled past him at the corner of the street, the high-spirited horse splashed poor H from head to foot. He wiped off the mud from his best suit of black, and saw at once the utter nothingness of his pretensions.

At this moment, a little three-cornered note, containing some few lines written in a small crow-quill hand, on paper of exquisite texture, delicately tinted and perfumed, and looking altogether more like an embodied sigh from Paphos than a letter upon business, was put into his hands.

Mrs. W respectfully requests Mr. Hto favor her with a call to-morrow morning at any hour most convenient to himself, to make arrangements respecting Miss Emily W's portrait.'

Charles absolutely jumped over his easel! Here was the long-wished-for introduction! He was to paint the likeness of his love-to sit close to her, and have authority to gaze upon her beauty to peep into the soft corners of her dear blue eyes to catch the balmy sweetness of her breath! Gods! what a picture it should be!

After a sleepless night, he dressed himself to the best advantage, and tied his white cravat some half dozen times, (it was before the universality of black stocks,) till he had formed a bow, which, like his charmer, he thought was perfectly faultless. He placed himself at the window to watch the usual matinal advent of his love. She came — their eyes met and she-blushed!

Poor H! It was the first of April! His cold hearted friend had taken advantage of his generous confidence, and most rascally had hoaxed him. To make the confusion more complete, the scoundrel had addressed a note to Mrs. W——, and in the name of the unfortu nate artist had requested an interview, on affairs of the greatest delicacy respecting her daughter's happiness!

Mrs. W received Charles with all civility. The weather and other usual nothings were soon despatched; an alarming pause ensued, when the old lady requested a knowledge of his communication. Hwas in agonies, and stammered out something about the portrait. Mrs. W stared the notes were produced, and the hoax discovered. The old lady pitied the artist's distress, and as the burning flashes of mortification and shame suffused his handsome countenance, and his eye lighted up at the thought of the degrading situation in which he was placed, she kindly endeavored to soothe his agitation; said she was proud of this opportunity of making his acquaintance; complimented him upon his filial attention, and insisted on an immediate introduction to his worthy and respectable mamma. What need of words? Charles did paint the portrait of his Emily; the smothered flame of her love did not evaporate in smoke, but burnt clear and full, fanned by his vows, and cherished by the warmth of his affection. The traveler soon