ance, others purpled in shade; all these, to
use the language of an auctioneer's advertisement, 'are too
tedious to mention, but may be seen on the premises.' I know of
but one picture which will give the reader an idea of this
etherial spot. It was the view which the angel Michael was polite
enough, one summer morning, to point out to Adam, from the highest
hill of Paradise.'

Many and many a young father will recognize, in the following, his own
emotions, as he looks in moments of thoughtfulness upon the little
'olive-branches' around him, in whom he lives over again his own earliest
years:

'To those who are disposed to glean philosophy from the mayhap
less noticeable objects of this busy world, there are few sights
more lovely than childhood. The little cherub who now sits at my
knee, and tries, with tiny effort, to clutch the quill with which
I am playing for you, good reader; whose capricious taste, varying
from ink-stand to paper, and from that to books, and every other
portable thing--all 'moveables that I could tell you of'--he has
in his little person those elements which constitute both the
freshness of our sublunary mortality, and that glorious
immortality which the mortal shall yet put on. Gazing upon his
fair young brow, his peach-like cheek, and the depths of those
violet eyes, I feel myself rejuvenated. That which bothered
Nicodemus, is no marvel to me. I feel that I have a new existence;
nor can I dispel the illusion. It is harder, indeed, to believe
that he will ever be what I am, than that I am otherwise than he
is now. I can not imagine that he will ever become a pilous adult,
with harvests for the razor on that downy chin. Will those golden
locks become the brown auburn? Will that forehead rise as a varied
and shade-changing record of pleasure or care? Will the classic
little lips, now colored as by the radiance of a ruby, ever be
fitfully bitten in the glow of literary composition!--and will
those sun-bright locks, which hang about his temples like the soft
lining of a summer cloud, become meshes where hurried fingers
shall thread themselves in play? By the mass, I can not tell. But
this I know. That which hath been, shall be: the lot of manhood,
if he live, will be upon him; the charm, the obstacle, the
triumphant fever; the glory, the success, the far-reaching