heaven?" "I'd like to go to heaven with Miss Ellen," he replied. To round off the romance he ought to have died; but nothing ever does happen to me out of the common line, and, accordingly, he took a little "whik-sey" and vermifuge, and got well.

And now he has left us. While I write this he is journeying towards the going down of the sun, and I am resolved to set my affections on no more Irish children. The Great West will swallow up this little bubble of life, and I shall never again rejoice in its prismatic, ever-changing light. O fair and fruitful prairie-land, receive my little wanderer tenderly, and entreat him kindly. He comes to you in innocence; restore him, I pray you, in holiness. He comes to you a little child, a fresh young soul, loving and loyal, believing in God, in his father and mother, and in all goodness and purity. What will you do for him?

XX.

MAGAZINE LITERATURE.

IME was when a book was indeed, as Choate once said, the only immortality. But at present there is a vast amount of transient immortality floating about in the columns of the daily paper, the monthly magazine, and the quarterly review. Scarcely a New England home to which one or more of these messengers does not find access. Whether the extensive prevalence of periodical literature be a benefit or a disadvantage, is not yet. fully settled. It has decided opponents, as well as warm advocates. The dissemination of knowledge, say the former, vulgarizes knowledge. A subject which is to be treated in the pages of a monthly magazine cannot be adequately treated. It can neither be probed to its depths, nor grasped in its breadth. Its scope must be diminished to meet the requirements of the case. The first duty of a magazinist is to be readable. He may be profound, logical, systematic, exhaustive, but if

he is heavy, or abstruse, it is all over with him. The public is willing to be instructed, but it will be amused. A pill in the sugar if you can smuggle it in, but the sugar at all events. Now sugar is not a wholesome diet. Amusement is not the stamina of great men, not the material wherewithal nerve and muscle and strength are created.

Moreover, they say, such treatment degrades the subject. Problems that require a lifetime to elucidate, and a volume to express, are treated in twenty pages of a magazine, or sixty of a quarterly,- treated fragmentarily, flippantly, frivolously, but in a sparkling, easy style; and the multitude, because they understand the writer, think they understand the subject, because they comprehend his views, fancy they comprehend the object viewed, — and, deeming the matter finally disposed of, go on their way self-conceited and satisfied with shallowness, while men who would devote to a theme the time and study of which it is worthy are forestalled by penny-a-liners, and the public is cheated of its due.

The far-reaching periodical literature acts, too, in another way. Old authors that have stood the test of time are summarily set aside for the local gossip, the political scandal, the namby-pamby romance, tinsel rhetoric, crude criticism, and random speculation of the periodicals. Matters of temporary interest and small importance usurp

the time that should be devoted to the giants that lived on the earth in former days, and in gaining a knowledge of those secrets which the earth stands waiting to reveal to-day. Small welcome will the greater part of the literature of 1861 receive from 2061. It has neither ballast to steady it, nor sail to carry it down the years. Why, then, should it receive such homage at our hands?

Now there may be truth in these remarks, if it be first proven that amusement is incompatible with benefit; that a subject cannot be partially, and at the same time justly treated, and that the people who write and read magazines would, if there were no magazines, write and read elaborate and exhaustive volumes on the subjects discussed therein. But it is of great importance to have it clearly asserted, and stoutly maintained, that reading is not to be a penance. An object is gained when writers are made to know that bald statements are not enough, that bare reasoning is not enough, that pure mathematics is not enough. The earth softens its granite outlines with verdurous dimples, relieves its bare surface with majestic trees and smiling lakes, flecks its sombre hues with brilliant colors, opens its heart everywhere to the sun's fervid kiss; and the result is, that the earth is not only prettier to look at, but better to live on. But poor human nature is jealous of its pleasures. It has become so accustomed to medicine, that, if its food is not bitter, it immediately

suspects sawdust. Yet Macaulay and Motley have shown that the truths of history may be clothed upon with far more fascination than the fictions of the imagination; and Romance in her most gorgeous attire is eclipsed by Science robed only in her native honor. The times of the schoolmen are past. They did yeoman's service in their day, but their day is gone by. The presumption now is, that the writer who is most interesting is the best. The history that is as hard to lay down as a novel or a play, is likely to be the truest history. For the two differ only in this, that history is a portrait, where the novel is a study. The one is a special likeness, but both must have a general likeness. History is a novel "founded on fact."

It is probable that periodical literature, so far from diminishing, really increases the number of "solid" readers; that the great mass of its readers are taken, not from above, but from below its plane. They are people who, without the magazines, would not only not read Bacon and Plato, but would not read anything. The Ledger, whose vast circulation was a thorn in the sides of so many of its more cultivated contemporaries, need have given little anxiety. It was seen in the hands of those who read nothing else, and doubtless they were elevated and improved by it. The avowed object of the proprietor was to awaken a taste for reading in classes where such taste did