WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN.

ABOUT the close of the year 1813 there stood on the banks of the Saranac a small neat cottage, which peeped forth from the surrounding foliage, the image of rural quiet and contentment; the scenery around it was wildly yet beautifully romantic; the clear blue river, glancing and sparkling at its feet, served only as a preparative for another and more magnificent view, where the stream, gliding on to the west, was buried in the broad white bosom of Champlain, which stretched back, wave after wave, in the distance, until lost in faint blue mists that veiled the sides of its guardian mountains, seeming more lovely in their indistinctness.

On the borders of the Saranac the little village of Plattsburgh had sprung up, in picturesque wildness, amid the loveliest haunts of nature, imparting to the mind, by its indications of man's presence with the joys and sufferings ever attendant in his train, a deeper interest than a scene of solitary nature would ever have inspired. Of all the lowroofed and shaded dwellings which rose around, the one named above, although less indicative of wealth, was by far the most striking, from its peculiarly beautiful situation. The old-fashioned piazza, which extended in front of the building, was shaded with vines and honeysuckle just budding into life; the turf on the bank of the river was of the richest and brightest emerald, and the wild rose and sweetbriar, which twined over the neat enclosure, seemed to bloom with more delicate freshness and perfume within the bounds of this earthly paradise. It was May-the blue waves of the Saranac, so lately released from their icy bondage, bounded along with music and gladness, to meet and mingle with its parent lake; the fairy isles, so beautifully throned on its sparkling bosom, robed in all the rich luxuriance of spring, and the song of the birds floated forth on the balmy air like a strain of seraph melody.

The proprietor of this lowly mansion was a grey-haired and respectable physician, whose life had been spent in toiling to mitigate the terrors of disease, and to obtain a support for his lovely and delicate family. A few words may serve to describe a character so open and ingenuous, and a fate so common to dispositions like his. Early in life he evinced a studious and scientific turn of mind, and had seized upon the profession of medicine with all the earnestness of youth. Thirsting for knowledge, he plunged into its deepest waters, and, after a few years of unremitting study, entered upon life with a character of firm and unbending integrity, and an almost childlike simplicity of manners and ignorance of the ways of the world. This was a disposition illy calcu lated to gain wealth or even competence; he knew not how to snatch the golden sands that lay within his grasp; he could not be servile to the rich or tyrannical to the poor, and passed through life unblest with

other riches than those of an approving conscience, and the tributes of respect and love from those whose welfare he had promoted at the expense of his own. At the age of twenty-five he saw and loved a beautiful and high-spirited girl, and obeying the impulse of affection rather than the calm reasonings of prudence, he united her fortunes with his own, and settled down for life in this lowly and humble retreat we have vainly attempted to describe. At the time of our simple tale, he was far in the decline of life, but still performing his professional duties. He found his happiness in promoting the comfort of his family and enjoying the quiet pleasures of his cheerful fireside. The circle which had once closed around it was now sadly diminished by the inroads of death, but three lovely plants still clung by the side of their parent tree, and although one of these remaining blossoms seemed already fading from the eyes of her idolizing parents, there was much of pure and refined enjoyment in this lowly cottage, unknown in the haunts of wealth and worldly pleasure. The two eldest children were sisters; the one was seventeen, and the other had nearly attained her sixteenth year. Emily, the eldest, notwithstanding her youth, was the belle of the little village, and the life of her family circle. Her form and face might have been taken for the model of a Hebe-all health and gaiety-her complexion of pure red and white, had never been blanched by the cold touch of disease, and her smiling lip, with its childlike dimples, seemed bidding defiance to care and sorrow, with all their retinue of sighs, tears, and wrinkles; her dark auburn hair curled in natural and tiny ringlets on her soft white neck and shoulders; her full hazel eye wore an expression of habitual smiling archness, and her birdlike voice was for ever bursting forth in snatches of wild and untaught melody. Oh! dearly did her father love, at the close of the long, weary day, to draw forth his beloved flute and practise some soul-stirring air, while the voice of the light-hearted maiden blent with its notes, and her feet danced lightly to its measure. Such was Emily, whose sprightliness and native good sense had rendered her the favourite of her father.

But how shall I describe, in words, the high-souled, the almost ethereal Melanie? Oh! that memory could paint on other tablets than on those of the heart! Oh! that we could transfer to lifeless paper the warm and glowing images which she has there implanted! then might I picture that fragile form, which seemed every day fading into more spiritual fragility; that broad, high brow, through which the blue veins coursed like silken threads, so fecble and transparent; that veil of dark and luxuriant hair parted so meekly above it, and flowing, in long, waving tresses, on her neck; that cheek, now pale as the snow of December, now flushed with a hue too intense for health; and that eye, one moment melting with the warmest tears of earthly emotion, and the next, sparkling with the radiant light of angelic inspiration! She seemed not a being of the present, all her confidence in the happiness of earth was buried with the past, and all her hopes of pure, exalted blessedness were merged in the vast future of eternity. Ardent and enthusiastic in her temperament, she had loved. Highly and poetically imaginative, she had invested the object of her affection with the highest and most exalted qualities of our nature, and when stern, unbending truth dissolved those bright dreams of fancy in which she had lived and revelled when she beheld in sober reality that he upon whom she had bestowed her affections was unworthy of the sacred trust, her mind

received a shock only to be felt or imagined by a spirit like her own— gentle, confiding, and, at the same time, bearing within itself a standard of lofty honour, of pure sentiment, and high and heavenly virtue, by which she judged of the world around her, it was indeed an overwhelming blow; but hers was not the mind to waste itself in fruitless repinings, and bury all its wealth of intellect and affection in the grave of one disappointed hope: far from it! Upon its first short voyage on the cold waters of life, her little bark had been wrecked, and it now turned back to the quiet haven of home with a meek and gentle confidence, to bestow upon her family that love which was still treasured in her heart, and direct her powers of mind to higher and holier purposes than before. But if her spirit was strong in misfortune, her delicate frame partook not of that strength: although the stream of affliction had passed over the fragile flower, it had planted in the pale blossom the germs of decay-she seemed a spirit in the home and with the friends of her childhood-she was with them, but not of them. The light faded from her eye, the buoyancy from her step, and her voice no longer mingled with the gay-hearted carols of her sister. Her hopes were now rested upon a firmer foundation than that of earth, and while she walked day by day more deeply into "the valley of the shadow of death," her soul and its pure and heavenly faith waxed brighter and brighter to the close. The dark mists of receding time seemed to blend with the brilliant foreshadowings of a blessed eternity, and impart to her manners an habitual and subdued mournfulness, changed at times to the loftiest elevation, as she caught some unwonted flash from that far land of light towards which she was slowly and hopefully journeying.

Her heart, with its warm and glowing tenderness, still clung to the beings of her early love, and when she saw how deeply they mourned her visible decline, with a sad sweetness she resumed her wonted avocations, though each word and act was tinged with the lofty and spiritual enthusiasm of her nature. If she read, her mind sought fitting aliment in the holy sublimity of Milton, or the melancholy force and grandeur of Young; if she drew, faces and forms of aerial and unearthly beauty sprung from her pencil; and if she sung, the wild and tremulous melody of her voice thrilled while it charmed the listener. She was dying! For the brief space of sixteen years she had been a habitant of earth-she had tasted of its purest joy and its keenest sorrow, and now, with a calm and trustful earnestness, she was hastening to the home of the weary. Still there were deep and tender ties which bound her below. Her mother she adored; her spirited and highly-gifted little brother she watched with a mother's fondness; the sister, the beautiful and lighthearted Emily, she loved with more than sisterly affection; and her country, again threatened by the power of a foreign throne, while scarcely shadowed by the banner of its new-born freedom-her country, its struggles and its welfare, was still a theme of deep and engrossing interest. Such was Melanie Mentreville-such, as far as language can imperfectly pourtray, the lovely yet too unearthly form unfolded to my "mind's eye," like an aerial vision-such the gentle yet elevated spirit which is mingling with every dream of fancy, and would fain embody itself in words.

Those who seek in these few pages for a regular and eventful tale, will rise disappointed from the perusal; it is nothing more than a faint and imperfect sketch of sentiments and scenes which have long since

passed away, with their actors, "to dim burial isles of the past," and which, still living as vividly as ever in the ideal world of memory, I would once more introduce upon the stage of life as beings of real and actual existence.

It was a glorious evening in May; the sun was just retiring to his couch in the west, arrayed in all the splendid livery of a northern sunset; the groves of pine and elm upon the lake shore were bathed in his golden hue, and their tall shadows were reflected in the clear depths beneath; the distant mountains of Vermont, which bounded the horizon, were shrouded with a veil of dream-like glory, blending shade by shade with the blue tints above, till heaven and earth seemed one; and that heaven! oh that pen could describe its calm and solemn magnificence; the clouds of amber and gold, tinted and fringed with crimson, floating over the pure depths, moving as in sleep to their bright western home, while a rich blending of purple and green rose up from the horizon as if darting to meet them on their mid-career. It was at this glorious sunset hour that the two sisters had repaired to the piazza of their little cottage to breathe the invigorating air of spring; and each to enjoy with their peculiar feelings the lovely and solemnizing influence of the scene. With the last ray of the golden sunlight playing over her pale upraised features, Melanie stood beside one of the vine-wreathed columns, her head resting on her hand, and her full dark eyes bent earnestly upon the wild and purified drapery of the heavens, now fading into dimness, now combining and bursting forth hues more gorgeous than before. Emily was bending over a rose-tree in the little enclosure, twining a fairy wreath of the wild sweetbriar, while the lively air which she almost unconsciously warbled, as if in unison with the character of the scene, died away in tones of plaintive and tremulous sweetness. For a few moments the silence was unbroken, until Emily, springing lightly to her sister's side, exclaimed, while her fine features beamed with an expression of affectionate gaiety, "How can you look so sad, Melanie, when all around us is breathing the very spirit of happiness? Do not the clouds you gaze upon make your heart feel light and airy as themselves! Will not these sweet flowers I have twined for you, impart something of their own hue to your cheek and your thoughts?"

Melanie gently took the wreath from her hand and replied, "You mistake me, sister, I am not sad-never perhaps did I experience a moment of more exquisite joy, for I thought, that ere those clouds had many times fleeted away to their bright homes in the west, my freed spirit might soar above them and the great orb which imparts their brilliance; to the source of all light, all love; that ere those flowers had faded with the blasts of autumn, I might rest in that fair land, where flowers of undying bloom bathe for ever in the river of the waters of life; where there is no more winter to chill the bright buds of nature, or the far more fragile blossoms of the heart."

"Oh, Melanie! Melanie!" said Emily passing her arm around her sister's neck, and bursting into tears; "you will break my heart. Would you so gladly leave us all-father and mother, and me-and-"

"No, no," replied Melanie, earnestly; "but even though you should see me no more, I feel, I know, that I shall not leave you, my own, my only sister. The thought may be a presumptuous one, but something within tells me that I shall see you, shall love you as dearly as now

perhaps, even be permitted to watch over and protect you, and oh, Emily, were not this happiness!"

She replied only by a warmer pressure of the pale hand within her own, and borne away by the suggestions of her wild fancy, Melanie continued

"Yes, Emily, though this weak and wasted frame may be gone from among you, my spirit shall be with you; yours will be the blessed task of soothing the pillow of disease, when our beloved parents shall tread the pathway I have trodden; but think not that Melanie, the child of their love, will be far from them in that parting hour-when you are in sorrow, my soul shall plead for you at the throne of eternal mercy-and when you are happy, my voice shall whisper in your soul of that Heavenly Father, from whose treasures of love cometh all happiness on earth, and all your hopes of blessedness in Heaven! Do not weep, Emily, I shall love you all with a purer and holier love. My kindhearted and ingenuous father, my high-souled, my beloved mother: you, my sweet blossom; and you also, my noble little brother," she added, as the lovely boy bounded over the threshold, and she placed her hand carelessly on his long dark curls.

"Oh! sister, sister!" cried Alfred with all the eagerness of boyhood, "oh! the sights I have seen to-day! I have crossed the river in a canoe, and I have been up to the old fort, and I have seen the militia-men training, and the flags, and the drums, and the big cannon, and all!— didn't you hear it fire? Sister Emma and Mr. Selden said I should be a soldier. Shall I not, dear sister?" and with a martial air the miniature hero strode up and down the piazza as if courting admiration.

Fie, Alfred!" replied Emily, to whose lips the smile had returned as before," has the red coat and the gay epaulettes charmed you so soon? Remember, my little brother, that the life of a soldier is a life of hardships, and his employment a fierce and deadly one; those glittering bayonets have made many a mother childless, and those gay cockades cover many a worthless or deceitful brain. No! never be a soldier, Alfred."

"Say not so, Emily," exclaimed Milanie; "though we now smile at the proud step and flashing eye of the mimic warrior, I can read his fate in them. If his life is spared, that sprightly and slender form will expand into the tall and athletic man, and the spark that is now warming into life his unfledged fancy, will strengthen into a glowing and unquenchable flame; and as it now prompts to those tones and gestures of mock defiance and command, it will lead him on to deeds of high and lofty daring. Yes! thou wilt be a soldier, my little Alfred-noble, generous, high-souled, and brave; all, all-" her voice trembled as she added, "all I once thought another."

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Yes, I will be a soldier," echoed the youthful candidate for famea brave and an honourable soldier;" and he bounded away through the open door, while the hall rang with his shouts.

For a few moments Melanie stood with her hands clasped upon her bosom as if in mental prayer for the interesting boy whose fate she had prophesied; and Emily seemed buried in deep revery, her head bowed, and her hand unconsciously pulling the leaves from a splendid moss rose, which was half concealed in her bosom. The silence was at length broken by the soft voice of Milanie. "Whence came that sweet rose, sister Emily ?" The maiden started from her revery, blushed deeply, and drew the bud from the folds of her handkerchief.