a portrait of my wife," said the artist modestly.

"Your wife!" repeated one of the women, and then, nothing abashed,
added, "Who are you?"

"My name is Powers, madam," he answered very politely. This discovery
evidently disconcerted the impudence even of these visitors, and they
immediately left the studio.

As the day approached for my departure I visited all my old haunts, and
dwelt fondly upon scenes which I might never see again. My dear old
music-master cried when I bade him farewell. Povero maestro! He used to
think me so good that I was always ashamed of not being a veritable
angel. I left Florence when

All the land in flowery squares,
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
Smelt of the coming summer.

My last visit was with the maestro to the Cascine, where he gathered me
a bunch of wild violets--cherished souvenir of a city I love, and of a
friend whose like I "ne'er may look upon again."

MARIE HOWLAND.

THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.

While Philadelphia hibernates in the ice and snow of February, the
spring season opens in the Southern woods and pastures. The fragrant
yellow jessamine clusters in golden bugles over shrubs and trees, and
the sward is enameled with the white, yellow and blue violet. The crocus
and cowslip, low anemone and colts-foot begin to show, and the land
brightens with waxy flowers of the huckleberry, set in delicate gamboge
edging. Yards, greeneries, conservatories breathe a June like fragrance,
and aviaries are vocal with songsters, mocked outside by the American
mocking-bird, who chants all night under the full moon, as if day was
too short for his medley.

New Orleans burgeons with the season. The broad fair avenues, the wide
boulevards, famed Canal street, are luxuriant with spring life and
drapery. Dashing equipages glance down the Shell Road with merry
driving-and picnic-parties. There is boating on the lake, and delicious
French collations at pleasant resorts, spread by neat-handed mulatto
waiters speaking a patois of French, English and negro. There spring
meats and sauces and light French wines allure to enjoyments less
sensual than the coarser Northern climate affords.

The unrivaled French opera is in season, the forcing house of that
bright garden of exotics. Other and Northern cities boast of such
entertainments, but I apprehend they resemble the Simon-Pure much as an
Englishman's French resembles the native tongue. In New Orleans it is
the na