sal arch hides the key passing for ages down the grand hie rarch of nature. "Many a fervent hope climbs up the mountain minarets, to the celestial city, purer and holier than some stifled prayer, struggling up through long-drawn aisle and fretted vault.' I took an old uncle to the city once. He said he should tire of those long brick rows-and then there was ne'er a mountain there. The scent of these mountain breezes lingers round the old leaves of the heart after long years of absence. Little mountain evergreens keep their freshness in the heart's herbarium, while we press the dusty highway, or turn the musty ledger. These mountain memories, like tented angels, have encamped about my heart, guarding it from many a temptation for many weary years." For years!" uttered Nepenthe-and then, astonished at her frankness, perhaps presumption, she paused suddenly. "Yes I have not lived many years, but I have seen many a long day when I have sent out my heart like a dove far and near to find some olive leaf of comfort," said Carleyn. They stopped the carriage and threw the top back, as they were now under the shadow of those waving branches where matin birds were warbling as they looked up at those blue mountains in the distance. "I have often," said Carleyn, "when a child, looked up to that tall mountain yonder, and wished I could climb to its top. I felt sure if I could only reach the top, I could touch the golden clouds, and grasp the stars, Heaven seemed so near. And now, when I see some great object I wish to attain, it rises up high like a mountain of ambition, mocking and tempting me to climb. I feel if I could only reach the summit, I could touch the cloudy skirt of Fame, and grasp the stars she holds in her hands. Our greatest thoughts are all like mountains, whose shadowy summits are high up from the low plain of our common thoughts. If we could only climb from thought to thought and reach the summit of our highest soul's peak, looking into Heaven from the top of our giant thoughts, we could almost scale the clouds and touch the stars, and bring Heaven down to us. We do not revere that we tread upon, but we do revere, admire and worship that for which we have to climb, pant and struggle. By the window of that little cottage at the foot of the moun tain, I have sat on my mother's knee, and said my little prayer: "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord iny soul to take.' And I really believed if I did die in my sleep, some angel would take me up from that green mountain top to Heaven. I thought there was the gate through which angels walked up and down the mountains of clouds above, which seemed like the projected shadows of the mountains beneath. My mother loved mountains. I am enthusiastic about them, for in that little cottage at the foot of yonder mountain, one Sabbath evening, my young mother died. It seemed to me, that with transfigured robes, her pure spirit climbed the mountains she loved, till it ascended to walk through the open gates of Paradise. I remember my mother's telling me those mountains often called her thoughts up to Heaven. Now she is gone, I associate these mountains with thoughts of Heaven. Her happy spirit, far above me, may now be climbing some lofty spirit range, some sapphire ridge of glory, some golden peak of immortality. Her soul may climb forever, rising higher and higher in exalted perspective of bliss, warbling as it soars from peak to peak of glory, gaining new views of the river of the water of life, winding beneath, and those glistening, pearly gates, on which the sun never sets. "Sacred is the memory of mountains, for there, lighted by vestal stars, the great High Priest went up, entering the veil of curtained clouds, baptizing the mountain's brow with the divine tears of sympathizing humanity." I hope Levi Longman, that inane and buckram individual, so fond of the exact sciences, so indefatigable in calculating the sum of probabilities, will never read the conversation recorded in the foregoing. He would shake his head, shrug his shoulders, frown his eye-brows, and say, "Strange, that two persons, entire strangers, should talk so long about dreams, trees, and mountains." He would call it highfalutin, stilted. Stilted was a favorite word of his. But it is a long time since he was young. His imagination was born blind and lame, so he has never taken any flights of fancy. He never dreams, day-dreams nor night-dreams-he always sleeps right through, like a sensible man. There is a sign on the front door of Levi's brain, which any one that sees him can read: "To these head-quarters, no admittance except on business." Levi feels no spiritual shocks of joy or sorrow, sensible to nothing but "positive cuffs and downright hard blows." Levi Longman's and Frank Carleyn's spiritual horizon might stretch on like parellel lines for years, forever, they would never meet or harmonize. Levi was an unexcitable nil admirari man-Carleyn had a soul coated with sensibility, on whose surface every passing thought daguerreotyped itself. Most everybody has solemn and enthusiastic thoughts at times. Frank Carleyn differed from most of us in this-he thought aloud; and Nepenthe's life had been so real that none but her real thoughts came to her lips. 66 Why did Nepenthe Stuart go to the Elliott's ?" said the voice of a lady in close conversation with an old friend, on the deck of a southern steamer, two months after this mountain ride through Titusville road. She can't be very happy there, for Mary Lamont heard Miss Florence talking with her mother the day after Miss Stuart's arrival. She heard Florence say in her overbearing way, I'll know why this Stuart girl is here. I think her presence an intrusion. We have lived here so long interrupted, I don't see why you have brought her here.' It was not to gratify you that she came,' said Mrs. Elliott. 'I have reasons I do not choose to tell. I cannot be opposed in this matter. I am under obligations of which you know nothing, and of which you never can know.'" CHAPTER XVIII. CARLEYN AT WORK. "The past is very tender at my heart; On a forgotten poem of my youth. I went aside and read each faded page, Warm with dead passion, sweet with buried Junes, Given by loving hands no more on earth, Which dims all else, has never touched its light.' Down THERE was no light from the world around. through the sky-light above, it shone clear and pure. None but the stars looked in, where art and the artist held high communion. Weary feet grew tired as they climbed-but the long flight of steps once ascended, they found fair and bright thoughts resting there, which had climbed far higher ideal flights Night and day toiled the artist to bring out on canvass in the face God had made, the soul he had so mysteriously half hidden, half revealed. There was one picture on the easel nearly finished. To the rapt artist, that one picture seemed the whole world, as he added the last touches, and stood back and gazed, and gazed again. "It is done, and well done," said he. "I have succeeded. I will call it Dawn-the expression of that face has dawned upon my soul like some radiant mountain sunrise." He held his hand on his tired forehead, and gazed again. Not often did he thus dwell in the land of the ideal, and this was his first ideal. He had painted week in and week out, the portraits of dull living faces, for money, winning fame, and fame's golden reward. He wished he was never obliged to handle money, he always dreaded to ask for it, when his labors were finished. His soul was so peopled and crowded with beautiful visions, he longed to paint them -but this one picture is the only idea he could now afford leisure to take. He would not sell it for any sum. He couldn't tell why he painted it, only the lovely face seemed ever looking in at the door of his soul, pleading with earnest eyes, "Paint me-am I not beautiful?" 66 This may be the dawn of my future fame," thought he ; "it is better finished than any of my old pictures. Let me put it where the first morning light will dawn upon it." "Come," said Douglass, one morning, as he met his friend Selwyn, "let's go in and look at Carleyn's studio. If he has no one sitting with him, we'll look around. He's a fine fellow-I'd like you to know him." "I don't care to visit any more studios," said Selwyn, dejectedly; "I have recently visited the picture gallery of Dresden, which is a perfect palace and paradise of art. There are more than twenty-two hundred pictures, and none of them are inferior. There is one known all over America by plates, but I wish you could see it there in the original. It is Raphael's Madonna. I think this picture must affect any man, if he were not a clod. It represents the Virgin Mary as ascending to Heaven with the child in her arms; one of the Popes and St. Barbara at her feet, and beneath, two angelic children. The faces of these children and St. Barbara are very beautiful, but the power of the picture is in the soaring, in the majesty ascending form of the Virgin. It stands by itself, in a room set apart for it alone. As I entered the door, the picture came over me like a spell. Beautiful as are all the other paintings, the transition to this is abrupt and great. I have seen demi-gods of Phidias. I have visited galleries of Venice, Genoa, and Florence. I have looked at French copies and Italian originals and American imitations. I take no interest in anything now. I wish to form no new acquaintances"-but as he saw how disappointed his friend looked, he added, "I will go if you wish it, if the artist is a friend of yours." Reader, have you never seated yourself in the morning for a good, quiet, comfortable day at home, when some sudden impulse or persuasion has led you, half against your will and wishes, to start out and go into some out of the way |