account of this wonderful discovery, revived, in favor of John
Pollexfen, the pension which had been bestowed upon Niepce, and which
had lapsed by his death, in 1839; and with a magnanimity that would have
rendered still more illustrious his celebrated uncle, revoked the decree
of forfeiture against the estates of M. Marmont, and bestowed them, with
a corresponding title of nobility, upon Lucile and her issue.

This ends my story. I trust the patient reader will excuse its length,
for it was all necessary, in order to explain how John Pollexfen made
his fortune.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

VI.

_THE LOVE KNOT._

Upon my bosom lies
A knot of blue and gray;
You ask me why tears fill my eyes
As low to you I say:

"I had two brothers once,
Warmhearted, bold and gay;
They left my side--one wore the blue,
The other wore the gray.

One rode with "Stonewall" and his men,
And joined his fate with Lee;
The other followed Sherman's march,
Triumphant to the sea.

Both fought for what they deemed the right,
And died with sword in hand;
One sleeps amid Virginia's hills,
And one in Georgia's land.

Why should one's dust be consecrate,
The other's spurned with scorn--
Both victims of a common fate,
Twins cradled, bred and born?

Oh! tell me not--a patriot one,
A traitor vile the other;
John was my mother's favorite son,
But Eddie was my brother.

The same sun shines above their graves,
My love unchanged must stay--
And so upon my bosom lies
Love's knot of blue and gray."

[Decoration]

VII.

_THE AZTEC PRINCESS._

"Speaking marble."--BYRON.

CHAPTER I.

In common with many of our countrymen, my attention has been powerfully
drawn to the subject of American antiquities, ever since the publication
of the wonderful discoveries made by Stephens and Norman Among the ruins
of Uxmal and Palenque.

Yucatan and Chiapas have always spoken to my imagination more forcibly
than Egypt or Babylon; and in my early dreams of ambition I aspired to
emulate the fame of Champollion _le Jeune_, and transmit my name to
posterity on the same page with that of the decipherer of the
hieroglyphics on the pyramids of Ghizeh.

The fame of warriors and statesmen is transient and mean, when compared
to that of those literary colossii whose herculean labors have turne