get tired: but I'll do as you say." And she returned to her stand; still eager and active, but calm and subdued.

Here we may properly pause for a moment. Time is, at last, the best writer of history. In all the scenes of life, TIME will officiate. The pen may do

its chapter; the sword may do its battle; but TIME brings the maiden to maturity, graduates the pulse of the hero, and best displays the bones of the slaughtered.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

The defeat of Belvedere had not the slightest effect upon his spirits or his humor. He had not permitted himself to indulge in anxious desires or delusive hopes. He knew nothing of those hot and feverish aspirations which fall back exhausted upon themselves, crushing out the intellectual energies. Instead of spending his time in pursuit of position, he labored assiduously to make himself ready for the best that might come,-so that he should be equal to any emergency of duty, or accident of promotion. He was struck with the energetic character of Sterling, and was grateful to that gentleman for his ingenious and manly efforts to elect him speaker. It is not surprising that these two young men should have become bosom friends. Belvedere had changed his apartments, and had procured rooms adjoining those of Sterling. Their parlors opened into each other. Their libraries were mixed;

their studies, in many respects, were the same; and their association much in common. Sterling had more of the world in him, and less of the student; quite as much ambition, but without patience; perhaps he had more genius, but certainly less industry. Sterling expected; Belvedere resolved to rise. The one pulled flowers by the way, the other gathered briars for the pleasure of plucking away the thorns, thus schooling himself to the great duty of a statesman's life-the removing of difficulties.

Belvedere had accomplished a complete education. His love of the classics led him still to cultivate the ancients. His models were perfection. Cicero was his orator; Homer his poet; Hannibal his warrior; Catiline his traitor; Roscius his actor; Lucullus his host, and Cato his statesman. In mu sic alone he gave the preference to a modern, and Orpheus yielded to a Paganini.

"Perfection in art is what we ought to labor for," he would say to Sterling, in his glowing conversations. "The perfection of a fiddler, as well as an orator, indicates the character of the spirit that directs and the genius that achieves. Paganini is as great as Demosthenes. Each retired from the world for the perfection of art; the one laboring to harmonize tones with a pebble, the other with horse hair and catgut. A great song is equal to a great oration; a great opera, to many orations."

"Do you know, Sterling," said Belvedere, as he took up his violin, "when I was at college, I was so given to music and so much absorbed in the fid

dle, that for weeks at a spell, I would abandon everything, and spend my energies in chasing tones all over the campus;-all over the old dormitory, from cellar to dome;-all over the grove, striving to imitate the twitter of the birds; and by the streams touched the strings for the rush of a water-fall or the rolling of the brook over the pebbles. I would lie under a tree and play and twang my strings, so that the mocking bird would linger overhead, and answer me again, as he bent his eye downwards and leaned his fascinated ear to the strange music. It is a truth: there was an old oak near my window, and I never failed to call out the answer of a charmed bird, whenever I touched my fiddle. He would come long before day, and sing in rich screams as if giving me a signal to play for him; and many a time have we carried on this harmonious chitchat for hours. When he heard anything that pleased him particularly, he would change from limb to limb with the utmost impatience, as if struggling to hear it again or to see its source; he would encore most vociferously, and sit perfectly mute and motionless until the playing ceased. He was a charming listener. He never moved his throat while I played. When he found I would not gratify him again-after a few impatient screams, he would tune up his throat and give me such infinite varieties of tone, such rushes and gushes of natural music, that my whole frame would be tremulously alive with the sweetest sensations; my spirits pervaded with harmony. Indeed, there is nothing