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sailed till the forest echoed, and the prowling bear fled for very fear, and the bowl was passed. 'Tis called the cursed bowl, I cried, but they speak false who say there is poison in it, who say it makes me mad; 'tis the joy of life; it makes me strong. I drank and dashed the wrestlers breathless upon the ground.

"The night become the morning of but yesterday, as it were, and I wandered along the gentle stream, whose banks I trod in childhood's happy days; the little mounds of sand which I raised in sport and gazed upon with so tearful eyes, on the day we left forever our home to seek another in the noble forests, were standing still; the flowers all blooming just the same, bent in waves to the gentle breeze; the birds sung as sweetly, and flew with glossy wings from tree to tree, from bank to bank in joyous mirth.

"But once more, and I stood among the tall forests that shade my humble home. 'Twas a day of feasting; friends, neighbors, relations, all pressed around the board, and filling high, pledged me many a welcome home. But dearest among all to me, were my dark-eyed girl and her ruddy son-my wife and child. But my wife and child!" repeated the recovered madman, gazing searchingly around, as the thought of them recalled him from the mazes of his dream, "where are they? Where are they?" None dared answer, nor need they, for his eyes following the gaze of his sad friends fell upon their mangled forms. They had been the spectres of his madness! With a shriek that froze the heart-throbs of all who heard it, and was the expiring knell of his reason's flickering torch, he rushed with a velocity none could follow, and was forever lost in the dense and trackless forest.

THE SENTIMENTAL. Hammond,

"What a title!" methinks I hear some unfortunate reader exclaim, as he takes up the new Indicator, with a determination to read it through," two naps in reading the first page, and a sound sleep before finis is reached." (Here he is seen to turn and look after "finis.") But think not, dear reader, though we have chosen such a title, we

intend to give you any specimens; indeed we confess, in our case, it were impossible. We merely wish to give a history of sentimentalism as it has been, or is being developed; perhaps in your case, reader, from the time you commenced your first composition with, "How beautiful is Spring," until you learned to murmur sweet things in the ear of the Moon, or

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Nor are you alone in the indulgence of this feeling; the popular literature of the world has itself passed through the incipient stages of the same course, commencing with the time when bards first learned to pour

"The unpremeditated lay;

when the poet of to-day was the Warrior of to-morrow, who was ready to make good his superiority in song or arms with any competitor, whose compositions, like the school boy's, were few and far between, and whose sentimentalisms too, like his, were of that milder kind which can describe beauty without sublimity, love without passion.

But, at length sublimity and passion became more necessary ingredients in song, as in real life. The poet tells no longer of brutal wars, carried on by half savage men, whose only pleasure was in their savageness, but rather of Knights who fight for holy purposes, who delight in tilts and tournaments, and who are in honor bound to risk their all for the protection of innocence and virtue. Under his hand the horseman's lance is converted into a Cupid's dart, and the Knight who fights without a lady were as great an anomaly as he who loves without one. He sings of lovers ever ready to shed their heart's best blood for the honor or even the pleasure of the loved; while the loved are described as the personification of every human virtue, and, not unfrequently, as possessed of attributes which trespass even on the divine.

While the school-boy arrived at this stage, is one who has got some idea of what love is, and who chooses him out, from among his mates, a girl to whom he devotes himself with all the ardor of a full-grown lover, helping her in and out of all her little quarrels and difficulties,

and standing ever ready to fight if necessary for the privilege. Now he is found swearing eternal fealty to her, and that not l'fe nor death should part them, and now, in a manner no less chivalrous, flogging an envious schoolmate. Is she rebuked, he shares it. Has he an apple, she eats it. His sentimentalisms are of a kind, which might be called tragic. He longs to die for her, that she may be convinced of his devotion.

But the modern lover, how different is he! True earnest passion, the really sublime, are known to him only from books. He is one that is truly

"at home on a carpet, And mightily likes his ease,"

though, could you believe his own protestations, never was there an arm more ready to help, never a heart more ready to feel. His heroism is of that kind, which vents itself in loud descriptions of deeds to come, but in the hour of danger, cools itself down into a "would rather be excused." His sentimentalisms too are of the very kind which for form's sake he pretends to despise; now exhibiting itself in meaningless descriptions of the would-be beautiful, and now in the claiming of feelings which are as far from being his, as he is from being a man; or perhaps he would be melancholy, and struts around with folded arms, talking poetry, and even, it may be, in a fit of desperation mentioning suicide.

The literature which should truly represent him, cannot be developed until every spark of true heroism is extinguished; when the principal character in every plot must either be in love or expecting soon to be, and when every incident affords an opportunity for a stereotype folio of sentimentalisms. But though such a literature would well represent him, still it is not a literature which he would choose to read, for mankind dearly love their opposites. He prefers to read of "rare adventures" and "hair breadth escapes," of real heroic courage that will brave any danger, and surmount every obstacle to gain a desired end; while that literature to which he corresponds is sought after by those whose life is one of constant exertion, who stand ever ready to face death in any form, and who would even go out of their way to meet it.

Perhaps there never was a better instance of such men, certainly never of such a literature, than was furnished by the Italians of the sixteenth century, when, in active life, quarrels between the nobles

and people, or between the people themselves were never ceasing, when every "honest man" was a noble, and he who would live by husbandry had better not live at all, while their literature abounded with sentimentalisms of a nature so purely silly, as it would be impossible for any modern to withstand.

Since then, literature has been advancing from a sentimental towards a heroic cast; while men have been advancing the other way, from a state heroic to a state sentimental; which "advances backwards" may be disputed. Modern literature, however, is not yet of a purely heroic cast, nor are moderns all sentimentalists; both appear to be in a kind of mongrel state, neither heroic nor sentimental, but possessing some characteristics of each.

And here a question may arise, whether or not popular literature will continue to advance, until it becomes purely heroic; and whether men are all fated to become sentimentalists. We think not; but rather that they will continue to oscillate from one to the other, approaching either extreme with less momentum at each succeeding oscillation, until, at last, literature will be satisfied with describing what is, and not what might be; while men, if they still love their opposites, will find enough to satisfy them in scenes drawn from real life. The man of business will read about the man of ease, and the man of ease about the man of business: the villain will seek for descriptions of an honest man, while the honest man will tremble over accounts of the villain. None will be forced to rack their brains or to torture common sense, in the pursuit of either the heroic or sentimental.

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II

He heeded not the taunt,

The laugh, or the wanton tone, But with his calm undaunted front, He bore him proudly as his wont,

On a soil he claimed his own;

As if he scarce could deign to scorn,
The crowd that gazed upon his form.

III

He heeded not the chain,

That bound him where he stood, And his eye grew bright, but not with pain, For he saw his own home back again,

In the shade of the maple wood; He saw his wife-his child-his allThat held his spirit in its thrall.

IV

He knew that he must die,

Yet a dream came o'er his soul,

Not of grim spectres flitting by,

Or the isles of his sires that brightly lie,
In the sunset's burning goal;

But a dream of his home, like a bird at rest,
Had folded its wings in his throbbing breast.

V

He saw the placid lake,

With its calm and azure sheen,
He heard its murmured ripples break,
And traced the wild deer come to slake
His thirst from the pastures green;

He heard the trill of the water-bird,
In his reedy nest by the wild wind stirred.

VI

He saw the sun-bright hill,

Where his forest home was made, The song of his young Bride seemed to fill

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