Your mother is willing to set off what property belongs to you, and let you have the whole control, now and forever, if you choose; but I advise you to leave it where it is, for it will burn, like as not, in your pockets.

I have seen more of your friend, Hope, and I maintain what I said, the fellow is a quiz, whether he knows it or not. A good boy, though, and I am glad he takes so much interest in you. The rarest thing in this life is a true friend. Interest ties us mostly together, and our chains are made of bank-bills. The golden bracelets of love

unite very few.

Your Uncle,

DICK.

LETTER IX.

EDWARD ASHFORD TO JAMES LOPE.

How much more we see of nature in some moods, than in others. It seems, I could be for an instant content in the sunny beauty of the calm, autumn day. I cannot blame my constitution, that varies its sympathy so often, but I mourn I am cold and indifferent to the common customs and occupations of men. If each man has been entrusted with the gift of doing some one thing better than another, how happens it, I discover no pursuit which seems my rightful destiny?

At times, I think I must be a poet; and am armed with a strong resolve to compose some verses, which shall utter the music of my thoughts. The rhymes come, the essence is wanting, and what I meant for song, has only its form. I am desirous to be as humble as a child. If I am granted any success, how proud I shall feel; I never ask for a greater blessing. I have this ardent desire after verse, if I begin to write, I can think of nothing else, either when walking, or in the house. Some spirit inhabits the else empty chambers of my mind, and leads me after this mirage, over the bare fields of existence, and entreats me to quench its thirst at the sweet spring of poetry. When I write, and see what poor success I meet,

I feel more dispirited than before. Was it once thus with the masters of song? I should be glad, had they left the record of their experience in their mighty vocation, for I might then be better prepared to fail. There remains only their beautiful success, and it is impossible to believe they faded beneath these harrowing disappointments, under which I lie cold and sorrowful. I read the sublime strains dejected by my feeble trial to follow their daring footsteps, and have concluded many times, that I cannot be a poet. Again the desire comes, again I long to sing, and add a new thorn to my pillow in my failure.

You cannot think how singular it is, you should say I was born a poet. Your keen eyes, that usually search every secret, have been blinded by love. You do not see, with the impartiality of a stranger, of what in another, you call trifling with the muse, you think, because I send it, poetry. I lately wrote some verse which I send you, as I do not feel like writing more to-day.

E. A.

AUTUMN.

A VARIED wreath the autumn weaves
Of cold grey days, and sunny weather,
And strews gay flowers and withered leaves
Along my lonely path together.

I see the golden-rod shine bright,

As sun-showers at the birth of day,

A golden plume of yellow light,
That robs the Day-god's splendid ray.

The aster's violet rays divide

The bank with many stars for me,
And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed,
As moonlight floats across the sea.

I see the emerald woods prepare

To shed their vestiture once more,
And distant elm-trees spot the air
With yellow pictures softly o'er.

I saw an ash burn scarlet red

Beneath a pine's perpetual green,
And sighing birches hung their head,
Protected by a hemlock screen.

Yet light the verdant willow floats
Above the river's shining face,
And sheds its rain of hurried notes
With a swift shower's harmonious grace.
The petals of the cardinal

Fleck with their crimson drops the stream,
As spots of blood the banquet hall,

In some young knight's romantic dream.

No more the water-lily's pride

In milk-white circles swims content,
No more the blue weed's clusters ride
And mock the heaven's element.

How speeds from in the river's thought
The spirit of the leaf that falls,
It's heaven in this calm bosom wrought,
As mine among those crimson walls.

From the dry bough it spins to greet
Its shadow in the placid river,

So might I my companion meet,

Nor roam the countless worlds forever.

Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent
With the same colors, for to me
A richer sky than all is lent,

While fades my dream-like company.

Our skies glow purple, but the wind

Sobs chill through green trees and bright grass,

To-day shines fair, and lurk behind

The times that into winter pass.

So fair we seem, so cold we are,

So fast we hasten to decay,

Yet through our night glows many a star,

That still shall claim its sunny day.

SOCIAL TENDENCIES.

THE DIVINE END IN SOCIETY IS HUMAN PERFECTION."

[Continued from Dial for July.]

OUR organic reforms are not organic enough. Or rather organic reform throughout all forms and all organism will never reach to the life which is in the organ, and that most needs reform. Change the present social order altogether, and introduce forms entirely new; let the organs of exhibition and imbibition for social man be newly created, still man himself, who is the being in the organism, remains unchanged. He is thereby made no better, and it is his bettering which is the one desirable end. Whereas if he were elevated, the organization and form of society would necessarily be also elevated. Were man drawn to the centre, all his circumferential motions would be harmonious. Few truths are now more obvious than that reformers themselves need to be reformed. So will it be visible with regard to associative experiments. They cannot be better than the men and women who jointly make them; upon whom, after all other expedients, the work of reform has to be commenced.

It is not then by means of a vision seen from his present state, that man can project a better life. But by living up strictly to-day to his deepest convictions of rectitude, there may be opened to him new and deeper consciousness to-morrow. Thus not from day to day will he project new schemes, but from day to day he lives new life. And in this faith, both the scoffer and the hopeful may find a common ground for union. This seems to be the mastering obstacle. This is the thread which it is so difficult to wind up, a golden thread too, hanging down from heaven to earth preserving unbroken man's celestial relation. Man appears to progress by a certain law in which time is not an essential element. He may be as long as he will, before he takes a second step, but he can never attain to the third until the second is complete. Social infancy has no fixed period, but youth must come next, and manhood afterwards. Let the boy be ever so old in years, yet as long as his delight rests in playing at marbles and other childish pursuits,

he never ranks as an adult. Our social youth stays too long playing at commerce in the market-house. His commercial marbles have rolled into all places and things, foul and clean, from heaps of human flesh to linen and silk, and his fingers are yet unwashed.

Though none of our projectors may yet have alighted on it, there is undoubtedly somewhere discoverable the true avenue to human happiness. The idea of a true life is almost a universal intuition, and by consequence that the present life is false. Admitted to be possibly in order when contemplated as a whole from beginning to end, yet by the pain we experience, we know it to be but the order of disorder. Invisible, inaudible, intangible as are pain and pleasure, of their reality none can doubt, and such knowledge should suggest that deeper realities are also in the hidden and spirit-world. Amongst such realities this of a true life may there be learnt. In no other quarter may it successfully be sought. Whence man receives the intuition of true life, thence he should seek the knowledge of what it is. They, who have received this information from men by tradition, will naturally look to men for the solution, and to scientific facilities as the means. But they, who have the higher authority of a nature for it in themselves, will look in the same direction for further advice. To such the question now remaining is rather that one only, "What are the hindrances to the realization of true life?" For they no longer doubt that there is a true earthly life to be realized.

Consistently with their metaphysics, the advocates of the omnipotence of circumstances may plead, that the great and prevailing hindrances to heroic and virtuous existence lie in the very many untoward conditions by which humanity is surrounded. But the really courageous heart takes a different view; and, looking broadly as well as deeply at the facts, is free to admit that the great difficulties do not reside in the circumambient materialities or spiritualities; neither in the world of actual life nor in that of opinion, but in the being itself. Human degeneration is a self-act. To an escape from degeneration human volition is necessary. The primary hindrance to holy life is to be found in the Will itself. Men are not yet disposed for it; they are not yet Willing. In their self-willedness, active and