THE ROSE OF NORTH ALABAMA. A SKETCH. BY CLYSTON. A perfect woman nobly planned, She lives something over a half dozen miles from the beautiful little village of H—. The house is a long, rambling brick structure, with antiquated chimneys, high, pointed gables and shaded by two antediluvian elms. It was built many years ago, before Alabama was formed into a State, and has not, of course, escaped the defacing fingers of busy Old Time. Their prints can be seen in the crumbling porches, blackened walls and moss-covered roof. It is situated upon rather a rugged, but exceedingly pretty hill-three sides of which slope gradually down into level woodland-the fourth is somewhat precipitous, and overbrows a piece of low meadow-land, dotted with clumps of oak trees, and divided near the centre by a streamlet of clear, running water, fringed with willows and wild rose bushes. In the wood spreading out in the rear of the house, and at a considerable distance from it-probably a half mile—is a spring. The path leading from the house to this spring is an extremely beautiful one. At first it winds around the feet of giant trees, or enormous piles of rock, next over ledges so disposed as to form in many places a rude kind of stairway down the slope of the hill, and still farther along, it passes across a rustic bridge, spanning a brawling little brook, then through a sort of narrow gorge or ravine to a quiet, shady dell, where the aforesaid spring is found, and thence named "Springdell." It is just such a walk, as a young and romantic maiden would select for an evening's stroll with her heart's choice, and the spring, gushing from the base of a gently swelling mound, embowered in trees and prattling joyously as its waters trip along over their bed of clear, white pebbles and brown, sparkling sand-a spot for her to listen to the first silvery whisperings of love. Here it was that I first saw her, whom I have styled the Rose of North Alabama. The time I shall never, never forget. It was near the close of a soft Summer's day. One of those balmy, delicious evenings was it, so common beneath the sunny skies of Andalusia, but very rarely to be met with in our rougher and colder clime-an eve, which has power to call forth at once all the romance of man's nature, to tinge with the magic hues of poetry every object of his sight and to fit him only to muse upon the manifold pleasures of love and the beautiful. There was a light breeze, fragrant as the breath of a seraph singing an anthem in the tree tops. A solitary oriole-that most gorgeous of all our birds-glanced like a tiny rainbow amid the leaves, as he sprang from spray to spray. I was returning to the village from a hunt in the wood with my dog and gun; and upon drawing near the spring, was surprised to discover a young lady, whom I had never before seen, seated, or rather reclining upon a green, mossy bank, close by its marge, with a book lying open beside her. Her position was the perfection of grace and elegance. She was resting her head upon her hand, with her dark, brown eyes, beaming with a light placid and holy, fixed upon a spot of the clear, blue heavens, which appeared through a rift in the tree tops above her. Her raven tresses were dishevelled, and fell in superb flakes about her symmetrical neck and shoulders, contrasting rarely with their more than alabaster whiteAnd ness. Her angel face, As the great eye of Heaven shinèd bright, And inade a sunshine in the shady place. As by the powerful spell of a magician I stood rooted to the ground. I dared not move. Her loveliness and spirit-like appearance, her dress of spotless white, the utter loneliness and matchless beauty of the spot, joined with the soft witchery of the hour, unloosed every curb upon my fancy, and I almost thought her some pure creature of air-haply the presiding Divinity of the place--and was more than half afraid that, were I to awaken her suddenly to the knowledge of my presence, she would, like the beautiful Undine, when abused by the Knight Huldebrand, change into mist, and mingling with the water, gently murmuring at her feet, disappear forever. Motionless and in silence I watched her long. I watched her until the sun sank behind a cloud-crag of violet and purple resting upon the western horizon. As its last, parting beam slowly faded from the glade, she arose and noiselessly glided in the direction of her home. I was then, for the first time, enabled to appreciate fully the words written by James, the Poet-Prince, when the lovely lady Jane Beaufort disappeared from his admiring eyes: To see her part, and follow I na might, When I next met her, it was in the midst of a gay and happy throng of persons, all young like herself. Her calm and serious face was, on that occasion, dimpled with joyous smiles; and her conversation, incessant in its flow, was brimming with cheerfulness, and fragrant with the purest and most delicate wit withal. Her voice, in its every tone, even when she was alluding to things the most ordinary and common-place, had a strangely fascinating an enthralling power. It was soft, And had a touch of gentleness, as 'twere And then her laugh! It was so different from any that I had ever heard before! Never boisterous was it, although its every note was distinct. How it gushed forth as clear as the ring of a golden bell, anon as gentle and subdued as the sound of an Eolian harp. The magic tones of the seraph Israfel could not have possessed a more exquisite melody. It was the soul bubbling from the lips in music. Is there in all nature any sound more delightful than a genuine heart laugh? Scarcely I trow. And yet how seldom is it, that we hear one, in this day of excessive refinement. This day, when a Fashion, as tyrannous as it is indefensible, holds complete sway over our mindswhen all our words and actions are made strictly to conform to its cold and unfeeling decrees. Now, to laugh, and to laugh at all heartily, is considered under all circumstances, shockingly undignified— a piece of unpardonable rudeness and most decided vulgarity. We are taught at present that, to be supremely elegant in manner, we must be natural in nothing. To the young ladies especially does this remark apply in its fullest force. Studied attempts, it even seems, are being madet, hrough a vicious system of early training, to uproot woman's simplicity, that heart-jewel, which, a few years ago, was acknowledged to be the brightest and purest in her coronet. By the aid of French dancing masters, et id omne genus, many of our young women are fast becoming the merest bundles of affectations. But we've wandered. Let us return to the lady before us. Since the time last alluded to above, I have met her often; and the many brilliant qualities, of which she at first appeared possessed, I have since discovered are truly hers-besides others, if possible, more brilliant. Her mind is pre-eminently beautiful. It was cast by nature in a powerful mould, and has been most excellently trained. A sturdy and healthful growth has been therein cultivated, though not altogether to the exclusion of the flowers-those graceful, but frail and delicate flowers-which, in the education of our women, have generally obtained so disproportionally large a share of their attention. Her learning, for one so young, is really immense. With many of the ancient and modern languages she is conversant. Several of the master-pieces of Greek, Latin, Italian and Spanish literature have been read by her in the originals. With English literature from the Canterbury Tales of Old Chaucer to the Poems of Mrs. Welby, she is well acquainted. Nor, as strange as it may seem, has she even failed to grope somewhat amid the dark and labyrinthian mines of German metaphysics. She has examined the productions of the vigorous and analytic mind of Kant, of the brilliant and imaginative Schelling, the severely concise and logical Fichte, besides those of others, whose names are scarcely less renowned in this branch of literature. Many will doubtless say that these studies are unwomanly. I shall not dispute it. Of this fact, however, I am well assured: they have done this lady no harm. With all her learning, she has lost none of the original delicacy and softness of her character. She never makes a show of her erudition. On the contrary, she keeps it too nearly buried in the earth. But few of her friends even are acquainted with the vast amount of learning that she has heaped together in the last few years. She seems to be scarcely aware of it herself. It may be said, in the language of Sir Philip Sydney, "that her excellencies stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge." Having passed the whole, or almost the whole, of her young existence, amid the freshness and serene beauty of rural scenes untouched by the varied frivolities and frozen formalities of city-life, she is as guileless and innocent, as her face is lovely, or, her learning great. Hers is truly a pure heart-pure as that of Eve, when first she opened her eyes upon the myriad beauties of Paradise. Its every impulse originates in an earnest desire for the accomplishment of good-the promotion of her own happiness and the happiness of others, both here and hereafter. The severe studies, to which, she has, since her early girlhood, devoted herself, have not, in her case, as in that of many others, tinged the spirit with a sombre hue. It is true that when the features of her face are in repose, they bear an expression so serious and thoughful, that it even appears one of sadness. But it is only an appearance. At the proper moment she can be as gay as the gayest. And otherwise than contented I never saw her. Her heart has known no care-no sorrows. Its tranquil waters have never been ruffled by a single storm; the gems of hope brightly sparkling in their limpid depths have never had their lustre dimmed; and if upon their surface there have ever brooded shadows, they were only the shadows of passing May-clouds, or, of May-nights, all softened by the light of silver moon-beams : "In her is youth, beauty with humble port, vance. HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. 378 VIOLET. BY WILLIAM RODERICK LAWRENCE. I. The lake lies spread before me, Hanging graceful o'er the tide; II. And there sitteth here beside me, Formed by Nature's self to please. Slowly, like a passing dream. III. Resting on the mossy bank, 'Mong the blossoms rick and rank, With her golden curls outflowing, On the bosom of the lake- 'Mong the circles that they make,— Our future destinies thus showing, Which indeed were worth the knowing. IV. As the branches float together, 'Neath the boughs of every tree, And in all her rosy beauty, Bringing them with smiles to me. V. Violet indeed is lovely, And a sister fond and true; PICKINGS FROM A PORTFOLIO OF AUTOGRAPHS. Few pursuits of elegant leisure to which men are addicted, are regarded with so little sympathy by mankind at large as the collection of autographs, and none are followed by their votaries with a keener interest and more passionate ardor. We have seen collectors of many kinds in our day. There is the bug fancier, for instance, who ranges all over the world in search of rare specimens of entomology, to be run through with a pin and arranged in glass cases for the admiration of such as take any delight in natural history. There is the botanist, ransacking four continents for his herbarium, who can see nothing anywhere but the flowers under his feet, who finds the gentian and the Alpine rose the only objects worthy of attention in the Bernese Oberland, and shuts his eyes to the beauty and sublimity of ocean while hunting varieties of sea weed on the lonely shore. There is the numismatologist, (Oh, gemini! what a long word we have to use in designating him,) who spends his days in searching after coins, and to whom the discovery of a Roman sestertius affords the highest delight of which his nature is capable, a delight far beyond that of seeing Niagara or hearing Jenny Lind. And then there is the collector of pictures, who "talks of his Raphaels, Correggios and stuff," cager on the scent of an old master, and finding in the cracked canvass and the dustdarkened back-ground of an antique painting, evidences of the highest excellence. But the autograph collector surpasses all these in the zeal with which he follows up the pursuit of his leisure moments, and secures for himself, perhaps, more of the good-natured ridicule of others than any collector of them all. It seems so frivolous a thing to the unreflecting, this gathering up of old wormeaten manuscripts, that they cannot be brought to believe that its results are sometimes in the highest degree valuable. And yet we are prepared to show that from no source can the history of a period be so satisfactorily ascertained as from a large collection of the autographs of that Showing the age and body of the time than we can obtain in any other way. Let it not be thought from this that the enthusiastic collector attaches no interest to the mere chirography itself. On the contrary he sees in it a great significance and recognises a connection between a man's handwriting and his mental development. A simple signature often typifies character, as is strikingly shown in the Declaration of Independence, where not a name, from the bold sweep of the pen of John Hancock to the tremulous marks of Ste |