tiful mirth. May there not be some sphere unknown to us where it may have an existence ? They say our words, once out of our lips, go travelling in omne œvum, reverberating for ever and ever. If our words, why not our thoughts? If the Has Been, why not the Might Have Been? Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries of fancies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and delight in masterpieces which poets' and artists' minds have fathered and conceived only. wrong, was to be called out of the world's fight and struggle, to lay down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere where even a noble indignation cor ulterius nequit lacerare, and where truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage war. she suddenly said to her husband, "If you had not been with me, I must have been writing now." She then ran up stairs, and brought down, and read aloud, the beginning of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband remarked, "The critics will accuse you of repetition." She replied, "Oh! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times before I can please myself." But it was not to be. The trembling little hand was to write no more. The heart newly awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, was soon to cease to beat; that intrepid With a feeling much akin to that outspeaker and champion of truth, with which I looked upon the friend's that eager, impetuous redresser of the admirable artist's unfinished work, I can fancy many readers turning to the last pages which were traced by Charlotte Brontë's hand. Of the multitude that have read her books, who has not known and deplored the tragedy of her family, her own most sad and untimely fate? Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that has known her books has not admired the artist's noble English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman? What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors! At nine o'clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and relative had gone to bed, the three poetesses the three maidens, Charlotte, and Emily, and Anne Charlotte being the "motherly friend and guardian to the other two " began, like restless wild animals, to pace up and down their parlor, ' making out' their wonderful stories, talking over plans and projects, and thoughts of what was to be their future life." One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat with her husband by the fire, listening to the bowling of the wind about the house, I can only say of this lady, vidi tantum. I saw her first just as I rose out of an illness from which I had neve:: thought to recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions. (I have smiled at one or two passages in the Biography," in which my own disposition or behavior forms the subject of talk.) She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the Lon- | seen shall be clear! As I read this little fragmentary sketch, I think of the rest. Is it? And where is it? Will not the leaf be turned some day, and the story be told? Shall the deviser of the tale somewhere perfect the history of little EMMA's griefs and troubles? Shall TITANIA come forth complete with her sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the forest around her, and all the stars of summer glittering overhead? don folk prematurely; but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and highminded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, so How well I remember the delight, lonely of that passion for truth- and wonder, and pleasure with which of those nights and nights of eager I read "Jane Eyre," sent to me by study, swarming fancies, invention, an author whose name and sex were depression, elation, prayer; as one then alike unknown to me; the reads the necessarily incomplete, strange fascinations of the book; and though most touching and admirable how with my own work pressing upon history of the heart that throbbed in me, I could not, having taken the vol this one little frame of this one umes up, lay them down until they amongst the myriads of souls that were read through! Hundreds of have lived and died on this great earth those who, like myself, recognized and this great earth? - this little speck admired that master-work of a great | in the infinite universe of God, genius, will look with a mournful inwith what wonder do we think of to- terest and regard and curiosity upon day, with what awe await to-morrow, the last fragmentary sketch from the when that which is now but darkly noble hand which wrote "Jane Eyre." THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. I. ON THE DISINTERMENT OF NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA. Y DEAR - It is no easy task in this world to distinguish between what is great in it, and what is mean; and many and many is the puzzle that I have had in reading History (or the works of fiction which go by that name), to know whether I should laud up to the skies, and endeavor, to the best of my small capabilities, to imitate the remarkable character about whom I was reading, or whether I should fling aside the book and the hero of it, as things altogether base, unworthy, laughable, and get a novel, or a game of billiards, or a pipe of tobacco, or the report of the last debate in the House, or any other employment which would leave the mind in a state of easy vacuity, rather than pester it with a vain set of dates relating to actions which are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a parcel of names of people whom it can do one no carthly good to remember. It is more than probable, my love, that you are acquainted with what is called Grecian and Roman history, chiefly from perusing, in very early youth, the little sheepskin-bound volumes of the ingenious Dr. Goldsmith, and have been indebted for your knowledge of our English annals to a subsequent study of the more vo luminous works of Hume and Smollett. The first and the last-named authors, dear Miss Smith, have written cach an admirable history, that of the Rev. Dr. Primrose, Vicar of Wakefield, and that of Mr. Robert Bramble, of Bramble Hall, in both of which works you will find true and instructive pictures of human life, and which you may always think over with advantage. But let me caution you against putting any considerable trust in the other works of these authors, which were placed in your hands at school and afterwards, and in which you were taught to believe. Modern historians, for the most part, know very little, and, secondly, only tell a little of what they know. As for those Greeks and Romans whom you have read of in " sheepskin," were you to know really what those monsters were, you would blush all over as red as a hollyhock, and put down the history-book in a fury. Many of our English worthies are no better. You are not in a situation to know the real characters of any one of them. They appear before you in their public capacities, but the individuals you know not. Suppose, for instance, your mamma had purchased her tea in the Borough from a grocer living there by the name of Greenacre: suppose you had been asked out to dinner, and the gentleman of the house had said, "Ho! François! a |