"You know that I agree with the Bible, that it | Agatha, uninfluenced by the seeming advantages of the proposed change in life, should do what her own delicate feelings prescribed in the matter.

It would be impossible to describe Agatha's astonishment. On this very day, when the magic wand of memory had brought back her youthful hopes and love, to be asked to become the life-companion of him who had made a deeper impression upon her heart than any other man-to be asked, in all frankness and love, to become his wife! She could hardly realize it. The Baroness had ample time to portray all the advantages of this turn of fortune's wheel while Agatha was making up her mind. At last the latter said that she must and should One morning she was sitting diligently empositively decline the proposal. Now the Bar-ployed, to make up for the time that had been oness was amazed in her turn, and scarcely had lost during that period of restless excitement, patience to listen to the reasons which Agatha when again a knock was heard upon the door. assigned. With good-humored indignation she She was so lost in the thoughts and feelings tried for a long time to change this determ- which that previous knock had introduced into ination; but at last reluctantly assented that her quiet life, and of which she was now sud,

denly reminded by this second rap, that she ut- | in North America." He sent out four ships and tered "Come in" too timidly to be heard. She four hundred men, under command of Nicolls, was obliged to repeat it louder. The door opened, and a tall man, with an open countenance, browned by exposure to the sun and air, stood on the threshold. The forester's dress, the dark eyes which looked into hers with earnest affection, as if twenty years had only subdued their former flaming brightness into a more tender glow-all this assured Agatha at the first glance who it was that now seized her hand, and who, trembling with emotion, said:

"You can not confirm the hard sentence of your letter."

And now for Agatha, also, the chasm between the past and the present was sunk in oblivion. Tremblingly she listened to the words of the true-hearted man, who put aside all her apprehensions and all her objections that he would find her so different from the image his fancy had conjured up, which Agatha had stated in her letter. She was still trying to convince her suitor that his youthful prejudices blinded his judgment, when the Baroness softly opened the door, and asked,

"How is it, Herr Head-forester? Do you need any help?"

Just then, as a little girl about twelve years old, who had shyly followed the Baroness, stepped nearer, she said, in an earnest tone,

“How can you refuse to this child a mother's care?"

to take possession of his newly acquired prop-
erty. The news of the probable sailing of this
formidable flotilla threw the inhabitants of New
Amsterdam into great consternation. Governor
Stuyvesant attempted to have the "fort and
palisades" put in military repair; these defenses,
which up to this time were considered well
enough against the Indians, wouldn't do to
protect the city from British ships of war.
The Governor failed in receiving any hearty
support, his efforts resulting in the recruiting
of "a few men," and the possession of "six
hundred pounds of powder."
Nicolls mean-
while entered the harbor without opposition,
landed his troops at "Breuckelen," to storm
the city from its heights, placing his ships in
the North River, so that he could fire into the
rear of "Fort Amsterdam." The city surren-
dered, of course, and thus passed away the su-
premacy of the Dutch flag.

In the year 1735 the English thoroughly repaired the "old fortification," and with great pomp and display christened it "Fort Augustus Royal Battery." Characteristic of many subsequent military ceremonies in New York, a terrible casualty occurred. At the celebration we now speak of, the high sheriff, a beautiful young lady, and an eminent citizen were killed by the premature discharge of a piece of artillery. In the Revolution, the "Battery"

The child now whispered, "Do be my mo- (Fort Augustus Royal was now left out) made ther!"

Agatha no longer made resistance, but fell, weeping, into the arms of her constant lover.

The head-forester had written to the Baroness, who replied:

"Your presence will be the most essential means of overcoming her repugnance to your proposal, and your daughter will be the best mediator."

The Baroness now took upon herself all the cares of preparation for the wedding; and when the happy couple drove off from her door on their way to their home, as the carriage disappeared from sight, the Baroness turned to her husband and said, with a smile,

no show in the struggle; and at the declaration of peace the quaint old defensive works, and the, by nature, magnificently adorned grounds, which had been used for parades and barracks, came into the possession of the pres ent city government. In a few years after this event old Fort Amsterdam quite disappeared. The original foundations, in the shapes of those memorable "black rocks," began to crop out, and for a quarter of a century New York city was without any military defenses.

With the political troubles which culminated in the war of 1812, the necessity of "fortifying the bay" was agitated in Congress; and long after actual hostilities had commenced a

"I stick to it that it is not good for man to small fleet of English war vessels could have be alone."

THE

OUR HARBOR DEFENSES. HE first military work built to protect the city and harbor of New York was founded "upon some black rocks," the surfaces of which appeared above the water at the foot of the island. The first official notice we have of this "fortification" is found in certain orders issued in 1626, "to have the palisade and block-house repaired." In the year 1647 nine men were appointed by Governor Kieft to repair the fort; but they refused, as the city authorities would not appropriate any money to defray the expense. In the year 1664 the Duke of York got a patent for the "Dutch possessions

entered the "Narrows" with the same impunity that Nicolls did in 1664, a hundred and fifty years having elapsed without the erection of a single work of military defense. It was not until some of our Southern ports were blockaded by British cruisers, and active hostilities had commenced, that the people of New York became satisfied that Congress would do nothing, and that they must protect themselves.

In accordance with this spirit a meeting was held in the City Hall Park, Colonel Rutgers presiding. Colonel Marinus Willet, as orator, delivered a thrilling appeal to the immense and excited multitude. The fires of the Revolution literally burned in the hearts of all present. The result was the passage of spirited resolutions, and a call for volunteers to assist in build

ing harbor defenses; and a formidable system | proper location of military defenses, that most was conceived and rapidly carried out.

of the fortifications erected in New York Harbor are so situated that, if they were bombarded, the result would be to destroy the very property these forts were erected to defend. They were also projected and built before the application of steam to war vessels and iron-clad batteries was thoroughly understood and carried out. The time must not be far distant when most of these forts, if not all, except those

are at most costly toys, of no real benefit."

It was very apparent to any one listening to the Admiral that "wooden walls" were to him most efficient, and upon such a suggestion being

The circular structure now known as Castle Garden was erected on the "black rocks," which had twice before served for the foundation of a fort, and called Castle Clinton. The North Battery was built at the foot of Hubert Street; Fort Gansevoort at the foot of what is now known as Eighth Street. On Governor's Island, half a mile south of the city, was built Fort Columbus, with Fort Miller in close prox-used for magazines, will be dismantled. They imity. About a mile westward, on Bedloe's Island, was built another battery; and still an- He very positively expressed himself against other on Ellis's Island. At Hallett's Point, what he termed the unnecessary and impolitic Hell Gate, was built Fort Stevens, with a strong course pursued by government in building and tower, mounted with guns, commanding its rear. | using "iron-clads" in time of peace. He conOn the opposite shore was a fortification at Ben- sidered them expensive to keep in commission, son's Point; and strong walls were erected to and utterly unfit as homes for sailors. protect Gowanus Point. Eight miles below the city, at the narrowest part of the passage between Staten and Long islands, was built Fort Richmond, with Fort Tompkins and Fort Hud-made, he replied: son in commanding positions in the rear. Near "I certainly think well of iron-clads, but I the Long Island shore was built Fort Hamilton; would not have these iron-clad monsters on the and on an island favorably situated Fort Lafay-sea performing civil service. I would build our ette, the strongest, and intended to be the most war ships of wood, and have their armor made perfect, of all these enumerated military fortifi- at the same time. The ships I would put on cations. It is a singular fact that from no de- the ocean; their iron coverings I would have fensive work built by Dutch, English, or under stowed away until demanded. United States authority, in the harbor of New "Our war ships should not put on their arYork, has there ever been fired a hostile shot. Imor until war is declared; in peace let us be In the summer of 1869 we were a fellow-content with our national vessels in undress passenger with Admiral Farragut, on our way from the city to Long Branch, where the soldiers and sailors of the "Army of the Gulf" had announced to hold their first annual reunion. The hero, who was seemingly composed of intellect and cast iron when on the quarter-deck, in social life was singularly cheerful and frank in his conversation. After indulging in the desultory conversation natural to such a trip, the Admiral finally became for a moment quite taciturn; then, as if waking up from a reverie, he expressed himself substantially as follows:

"This magnificent harbor, from its peculiar formation, is one of the most difficult in the world to defend. It has two entrances, both of which are remarkably open to an enemy. These forts," casting his eyes around the harbor, but settling down upon Fort Sedgwick, "are very well if their guns should happen to hit a passing vessel; but the chances are that the vessels will escape without material damage. The defense of the harbor, if it should be attacked, must be made by floating batteries. The naval engagement which must ensue will be fought below the city, and all these expensive fortifications you see dotting these shores, and covering these beautiful islands, will have little or nothing to do with the final result.

"With the surrender of the forts below New Orleans, that city surrendered. With the fall of Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan, at the mouth of the harbor of Mobile, the city, though very strongly fortified, yielded submission. It must be apparent to even the most innocent of the

parade."

FROM MY CHILDHOOD'S DAY.
FROM my childhood's day, from my childhood's day,
Rings an echo of song in my ear;
Oh, how far away, oh, how far away,

All once so near!

What the swallow sang, what the swallow sang,
Who spring and autumn brings;
Through the street it rang, through the street it rang,
And there still rings:

"When I southward flew, when I southward flew,
There was store enough and to spare;
When I came anew, when I came anew,

All things were bare!"

Editor's Easy Chair.

always renewed. Raphael's wear

S delight in a work of art is perennial, criti- | grotesque Dutch ghosts would always, doubtless, Madonnas are the texts of the latest travelers, awaken white-bearded and tattered, and all the and a fresh eye sometimes sees a fresh beauty in rest would follow as we see it. But would the the most familiar work. There are, of course, conception of Rip two or three hundred years traditions of admiration which are universal, and hence be our conception? In this case, while even tyrannical, so that difference from the gen- the costume would be the same, would the chareral opinion appears often to be willfulness and acter remain ? affectation. So we come to the contemplation of some works of art as to shrines at which worship is imperative, and regard them as reverentially and uncritically as the Roman peasant from the Campagna looks at the Pieta in St. Peter's. Yet this is, perhaps, the finest of all tributes to human genius, that when one of its works in any lofty kind has become long renowned, it acquires something of the character of a noble, natural object, and it is as idle and impertinent not to like it as to profess indifference to a beautiful landscape, or to Niagara, or to a sunset.

Such questions ask themselves as the curtain comes down upon what is the most familiar and famous rôle in the American theatre to-day-the Rip Van Winkle of Mr. Jefferson. He lately played it for one hundred and fifty times in succession. The Easy Chair saw him in the evening, when he had played it in the afternoon, but it seemed as fresh as it could ever have been. There seemed to be no reason why he should not play it every day and every night without end, so unwearied was he, and so large and delighted the audience. They who wonder whether he does not tire to death of it forget that a man never tires of telling a good story to a fresh audience. We all know excellent gentlemen who still dine out, and still tell to a new and delighted generation the same old stories that their fathers enjoyed. A public speaker who repeats the same discourse incessantly knows that each new audience is a new interest, and there are speakers who do not feel that the discourse is in proper form unless it has been spoken for at least a dozen times. And it is unquestionable that the Lyceum audience which hears a lecture on the fiftieth evening of its delivery is very likely to hear a very much better lecture than those who heard it upon the first evening. The first repetitions are like varnishing days to the painters before the exhibition opens. Their pictures are hung, but they must be touched into proper effect. A picture studied upon the easel in the studio is a very different work from the same picture seen upon the walls of the gallery.

But of all arts, none is so difficult to comprehend as acting; and it is doubtful whether the "playing" of any actor could ever command that universal and unfading admiration, irrespective of times and fashions and feelings, which is given to certain buildings and pictures and statues and music. If Garrick should play at Booth's Theatre, should we enjoy the evening with the same naturalness of emotion with which we enjoy Goldsmith's "Deserted Village?" Would Mrs. Oldfield craze the golden youth of New York? Would Mrs. Siddons, even, seem to us the superb Muse of Tragedy which Sir Joshua painted? It may be fairly replied that the question answers itself. For only his own time can see the great actor, or hear the great orator and singer. There is something contemporary in the very nature of such art. It is suggested by every detail. We can not conceive of Lord Chatham without his wig. But how much would a bewigged Lord Chatham move an American assembly with his eloquence to-day? If Mr. Booth or Mr. Fechter should It is probably so with the actor, and doubtless enter as Hamlet, wearing the Shakespearean cos- it is only gradually and by constant repetition tume which Garrick wore, the theatre would ring that he satisfies himself with his rendering of a with merriment at the melancholy Dane. But character. Like an orator, he feels his audience nothing can touch the noble grace of the Parthe-at every moment, and is constantly studying it, non, nor make Raphael's Virgins quaint or old, nor harm the proud beauty of the Venus of Milo, as it was so long called. They borrow nothing from accidents. Like the line of the horizon, they are always beautiful to every beholder.

There may possibly be something of this unchangeableness even upon the stage when the play is the telling of a familiar story, in which the costume itself is defined. If "Rip Van Winkle" is played a hundred years hence in New York, or elsewhere, it must be substantially as it is now. There may be actual houses instead of painted scenes; there may be turf and sand upon the stage instead of boards; but the changes will not be essential nor comical. There will be a sleepy colonial village upon the river; a tavern, with the sign of King George; the landlord and the usurer and the shrewish wife and the goodfor-nothing Rip; and they will be dressed as we see them, because the costume of the time is perfectly well known, and any innovation would be resisted by that severe censor, the public. The

and adapting himself to the method of producing the impression he seeks. And the character itself develops and reveals itself to him by greater familiarity. It is no more likely that Mr. Jefferson is tired of his part, and of its success, than a beautiful belle is tired of her conquests, forever renewed, or of the dance in which she glides, enchanting, every evening. The Easy Chair, indeed, was surprised to find a friend near it who had also not seen the play. It had supposed that in regard to Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle it was like the friend of Dickens, to whom he wrote at the time of the Crystal Palace Fair: "I see; you are ambitious of notoriety-you wish to be the only man in the world who didn't come to the Great Exhibition." It did not occur to the Easy Chair that the rest of the audience had come, like itself, for the first time, because it had been constantly told that the pleasure was greater at the third or fourth seeing. But what a pleasant feeling it is, as you sit in the parquet waiting for the curtain to rise, and glancing around at the quiet, ex

pectant audience, to know that they are all there | ing for him. "So he died, and the good people to enjoy themselves; and how instinctively you hurried to bury him and all his nastiness out of wonder whether the enjoyment will be like the sight; but they might as well have tried to bury sweet vapor that breathes from soda-water, or the sunshine!" Mr. Jefferson shows us this kind like the sparkling foam that leaves a clear, sweet of character perfectly-the man who is beloved wine below! by children and the unprosperous, by hostlers and fishermen and plow-boys, who brings no dinner to his wife unless he has had good luck in shooting or trapping, but who, despite all, is a kindly human soul.

If any body has in his mind an image of Rip Van Winkle before he went up into the mountains and slept his long sleep, it is, doubtless, just the good-humored, careless, affectionate, shrewd, loitering fellow who comes in with the "Yes, but look at it," says Conscience, in the children hanging all about him; and those chil-sixth row from the stage, here is a good-fordren, with the little lovers afterward at his knees, give us the key to the man. They are his good angels always. Unconsciously, in the midst of his idleness, and the maudlin folly that exasperates his wife, the children plead for him in our hearts. He is not bad whom children love. Shiftless, reckless, even drunken, he may be, but not bad. The wife orders him out into the black night and storm, but the little daughter clings to him. He, after all, is a child, and they mutually love with the fondness of children. The pathos of the play culminates in Rip's fearful consciousness that his child does not know him. Perhaps the author was wiser than he knew. But Rip would not be so perpetually absolved by us, as we look, if we did not know that the children love him.

It is wholly a study of character. There is no proper action in the play. The plot is slight: a good-natured, drunken idler squanders his property, and leaves his wife to scrub and toil hopelessly. She loves and frets and despairs, and he, drunk or sober, only smiles good-naturedly, until, stung by the fatal discovery that his pretended affectionate sympathy for her passionate sorrow is only a trick to steal the bottle from her pocket, she delivers in one terrible sentence the accumulated heart-break of a life by bidding him begone from the house, which is hers, and never to return. He obeys, although, as the door opens into the awful tempest, she prays him to turn back. He disappears in the storm; reappears upon the mountain, and among the ghostly crew of Hendrick Hudson; drinks, and sleeps for twenty years; then awakens, an old man, and descends to the village to find himself forgotten, his wife married to the usurer, who beats her, his house itself destroyed, and even his daughter repelling him. Then comes the proof that it is he-that his property was never rightfully lost; and with his restored wife and daughter pressing upon him the cup which has caused all the sorrow, the curtain falls.

Rip is a racy original, one of the men who are every where, and always delightful, from what is fondly called their profuse human nature, by which we really mean entire simplicity and kindliness-a heart overflowing with love and sympathy, but brave as a lion under all. This character is portrayed by Mr. Jefferson with such subtile felicity that if we only fancy him sometimes writing poetry, we can imagine that we see Robert Burns. There are always those in the audience who feel toward Rip as many good people in Dumfries felt toward Burns. They were impatient with him. They were ashamed of human nature when they thought of him. He was an idle, dissolute reprobate. If Death hadn't wanted him, says Robert Collyer in his noble lecture upon Burns, the sheriff was wait

nothing rascal, who wastes his substance in riot-
ous living; who breaks his wife's heart, and en-
slaves her to the hardest labor; and when the
catastrophe comes, what happens?
He goes
quietly to sleep for twenty years, and she, for her
daughter's sake, marries a man who abuses her,
and she is wretched beyond words, as if she had
been guilty; and at last my lazy lord opens his
eyes, and rubs them, and descends after his sound
nap to have his wife fall upon her knees before
him, as if she were the sinner, and to beg him
to drink at his pleasure in seculâ seculorum.
What do you think of this for a moral lesson ?"
asks Conscience; "what do you think the Rev.
Dr. Sabine would think of it?"

But, if we come to morals, what do we think of the prodigal son? Is not its best significance this, that while eating the husks and living riotously, he was still a human being to be loved and not despaired of? And if Conscience insists upon this kind of morality, is it not the excellence of the representation of Rip that, under all the shiftlessness and idleness, we love the human sunshine that will not be buried? Besides, Dan Conscience, if you will be so stringent, did not his wife banish him from her hearth? and was it no atonement or no penalty for the folly of his youth that he slept all his manhood away unconscious? Your debit and credit morality, and your trial balances of virtue and vice, are not very satisfactory. In the moral estimate of life temperament and circumstances are often the most powerful elements. The virtue of an untempted doctor is not very seraphic. It is Anthony who is truly saintly. You may take your most material text, and tell us whether you think that young Ferdinand, who sits entranced beside you, is likely to choose idleness and drinking for his profession in life because he is so delighted with the play, or the curly-haired Miranda approve her future husband's dissipation because she sees Mrs. Van Winkle, so broken-hearted with Rip, so abused with her second spouse, at last proffer the cup to Rip's passionless and unthirsting lips? If we are on the look-out for a moral, shall we not find it in the perception that, however good-for-nothing a man may be who means no ill, and however wretched he may make his family, he is still a man, and to be tenderly entreated?

How delicately and with what exquisite tone, as the painters would say, Mr. Jefferson plays the part, every body knows. People return again and again to see him, as to see a lovely landscape or a favorite picture. Indeed, it is the test of high art that it does not pall in its impression. There is no acting, perhaps, so little exaggerated as this of Rip Van Winkle, but there is none so effective. It is wholly free from declamation, and from every kind of fustian. It is absolutely na