ion was hearty, spontaneous, and delightful from its frankness
and fulness, but it was not pointed or brilliant; you remembered the
healthy ring of the words, but not the words themselves. We recollect,
that, as we were standing together on the shores of the lake,--shores
which are somewhat tame, and a lake which can claim no higher epithet than
that of pretty,--he said: "I suppose it would be patriotic to say that
this is finer than Como, but we know that it is not." We found a chord of
sympathy in our common impressions of the beauty of Sorrento, about which,
and his residence there, he spoke with contagious animation. Who could
have thought that that rich and abundant life was so near its close?
Nothing could be more thoroughly satisfying than the impression he left in
this brief and solitary interview. His air and movement revealed the same
manly, brave, true-hearted, warm-hearted man that is imaged in his books.
Grateful are we for the privilege of having seen, spoken with, and taken
by the hand the author of "The Pathfinder" and "The Pilot": "it is a
pleasure to have seen a great man." Distinctly through the gathering mists
of years do his face and form rise up before the mind's eye: an image of
manly self-reliance, of frank courage, of generous impulse; a frank
friend, an open enemy; a man whom many misunderstood, but whom no one
could understand without honoring and loving.

* * * * *

PER TENEBRAS, LUMINA.

I know how, through the golden hours
When summer sunlight floods the deep,
The fairest stars of all the heaven
Climb up, unseen, the effulgent steep.

Orion girds him with a flame;
And, king-like, from the eastward seas,
Comes Aldebaran, with his train
Of Hyades and Pleiades.

In far meridian pride, the Twins
Build, side by side, their luminous thrones;
And Sirius and Procyon pour
A splendor that the day disowns.

And stately Leo, undismayed,
With fiery footstep tracks the Sun,
To plunge adown the western blaze,
Sublimely lost in glories won.

I know, if I were called to keep
Pale morning watch with Grief and Pain,
Mine eyes should see their gathering might
Rise grandly through the gloom again.

And when the Winter Solstice holds
In his diminished path the Sun,--
When hope, and growth, and joy are o'er,
And all our harvesting is done,--

When, stricken, like our mortal Life,
D