New Publications, Art Notices, etc.,....439, 550 The Old Fort. By ISAAC MCLELLAN,..

Portrait, (The.) By L. A. RANDALL,....... .241 Upper Tendom: a Picture in a Gilt Frame,. 52

In the fine old gubernatorial mansion that gave dignity and beauty to a street which, but for its presence, would have been beyond the verge of the fashionable world, lived the Isham family.

The ancient house had been in the possession of the first governor of the State, a man of mind and will, who dignified his station quite as much as it honored him; a man of intellectual cultivation, pure purpose, and sterling courage, whom the office had sought and compelled and entreated to occupancy, on account of his unrivalled qualifications for filling it to its utmost capacity.

the governor's house

Some time after his death- he died in office was offered for sale; his widow choosing to remove into more retirement than could readily be commanded in the place where such royal hospitalities as marked her husband's time had been dispensed, and Mr. Isham, a man of great fortune, became the purchaser. His grand-son was now in possession of this mansion, and was the father of half-adozen children. His eldest daughters, Lucretia and Ada, were already in society. George, the oldest son, had finished his collegiate course, and gone abroad. Everett was still under governors and tutors, and there were two young daughters yet in the nursery.

The family presented the appearance usually presented where children have been carefully trained for a high station, which is their birth-right. They came of a tranquil race, and an even prospect was before them; no mountain-climbing, no depth-descending for them; no turbulences arising from unmanageable propensities, either for good or evil, might be traced to their door.

George Isham was an unexceptionable youth, whose person, prospects, and attainments gave him unmitigated satisfaction. His character had no marked traits to distinguish him. He had no exuberant animal life, and his taste led him to shun convivial sports and company. He was faultlessly correct in conduct. His temper was as smooth as his long black hair; his character as reproachless as his dress; he would have endured a suspicion of the one with as much equanimity as of the other, and for an equally elevated reason. He went abroad unpossessed of the spirit of enterprise, and would return, if ever he returned,

without enthusiasm. A love of a man was he;' a great many young ladies, who walked in the public places in their newest 'love of a bonnet,' rendered this favorable judgment; but Tom, the tinker's son, soiled and grim, who brushed his carroty locks, pulled down his shirtsleeves, and made himself decent to chat an hour with the house-maid in the basement over the way, was a prince compared with him. His position and his life were nobler, for his occupancy of them made them so.

There was no material difference between Lucretia and Ada Isham and their brother; but they made more of a sensation in the world, because their training, essentially the same as his, had, though essentially the same result, a different manifestation.

They were women, and we are content- - are we not ?-that women should fulfil their destiny, as these young girls had been prepared to do, in adding to the glitter of our rooms on state occasions and other, and smile upon us when we ask them, as lonely Adam in his heart asked of the LORD GOD in the garden a help-mate. Are we not content? then why have we preferred to make wooden troughs to feed from, when it was expected of us that we should fashion costly golden vessels for the altar and the temple of love?

They were tall and handsome ladies. Lucretia had more kindly and considerate ways than her sister, and was more likely to win friends and favor, but there was a pride in her heart which would make of her a quite different being from that of which her young maidenhood was beautifully prophetic, if it were once allowed full sweep. Ada laughed at the ways of the world and surrendered to them, ridiculed society and sought its admiration, satirized her acquaintances but compelled them to troop in her train, and would have died of ennui had the world been a whit less wicked and less foolish than it was. These girls were not vulgar and grossly calculating members of society, but they knew how to deliberate in act with something less than the righteousness of true souls.

What their advantages were to them was indicated in their manner of receiving them. To Everett, their younger brother, these same privileges, meeting with a somewhat different reception, had a very different proving. His domestic relations, if the same in one respect, were in another more happy, more honorable than theirs. He had been subject to those evils which a renowned author well portrays as falling with peculiar force on the eldest and youngest members of a house. He had not grown over-bearing and presumptuous on the strength of his actual importance in the family, nor riotous and unmanageable in disposition and in will from the excessive indulgence of tenderness, which is so frequently the lamentable fate of the youngest born of the family. He had been left to himself more than the others; in his case it was a salutary neglect, if neglect it could be called. He was sent to school, clothed and fed as became his station, remembered on the holidays, but for the rest allowed to follow the bent of his own inclinations, inasmuch as they interfered in no respect with the comfort of the house, and required no control.

He was of a studious turn of mind, and mature beyond his years; he

was a young fellow of promise, not of brilliant but reliable capacities and powers; he never astonished his class or his companions, but the unweariedness of his application, the quickness of his perception, the depth of his insight gave a good promise which the future was almost certain to redeem. His capacities admitted of a large degree of culture, and his taste implied a necessity of cultivation; he was equal to a sterling pride, but incapable of vanity; and in this was like and unlike his sister Lucretia. He saw the world through the same medium with Ada, but he could not laugh at and scorn it as she did; for he had a wider vision, saw farther into the depths, and knew that tears rather than railing were the world's due. There was in him the sterling merit of a fixed and independent purpose of doing for himself the best he might.

By the force and purity of his character, he was attracted irresistibly toward the worthiest men and women of those among whom he was thrown. He had a rare faculty, young though he was, for discerning their positive points. Mendacity met with no mercy at his hands when it put itself upon him for a treatment, and would not be avoided. He had the most austere, and yet, I think, not rare perception of justice; men err too frequently in the weakness of their commiseration for those with whom they have to deal. I say this in the face of all the carping criticism uttered with intent to kill, reckless denunciation, ignorant and evil-minded judgments men pass on one another. Hasty and violent denunciation is one thing, deliberate and earnest disapproval is another. GoD tempers his justice with mercy; and man abrogates himself when he refuses a like merciful and strict administration. The loving justice of the HEAVENLY FATHER, though it be tempered, is never temporizing. His strict conduct and exposition of His own unapproachable and indefeasible rights is what brings into light and establishes the virtue of His creation. He chargeth His angels with folly, but endureth them evermore about His Throne! I trust the reader will perceive a reason for this digression, and so pardon it.

Everett Isham had a virtuous perception of justice; for with a pure heart and clean hands, not ignorantly, not vaguely, he sought to learn her ways; he never stooped to temporize with her adversaries, nor made an effort to persuade or reclaim them, for his time had not yet come. He could not yet speak as one having authority. He was yet but a beholder of the splendors of the camp, and had not sought a commission to fight the battles of his race.

If thou knowest such a youth, treat him with reverence, nor attempt to laugh down his convictions; that thou canst no more do than could the scoffing people allay the flood that drowned the world; for his convictions are as real and prophetic as the Being and Providence of God. For thine own sake, not for his-his victory is sure greet him with gladness and encouragement; the world has vital need of such, and cries aloud for them. The chivalrous of virtue demand the heartiest, most solemn benison thou canst give; defraud them of it, all the loss is thine own

This was Everett Isham's character. His justice and his virtue formed its underlying and impregnable basis. The character did not

stand out formidable in its proportions, as might be supposed. The severity of judgment, the undeceivable clear-sightedness, the lofty scorn of the cringing and temporizing spirit that distinguished his time, much of this appeared in the daily man.

Not from design, not from any hidden motive, did he veil himself from others. The easy grace and dignity of his intercourse with those around him was the natural garb of the man. His sense of superiority was as innocent of vanity as Job's assertion of integrity was free of presumption. His righteous judgment, not haughty depreciation, never showed itself in rude utterances and actions; his refinement of spirit and association was too real for that. Such manifestation would not have been according to his natural method of expression. He might have grown into that misfortune under certain methods of treatment, if the cruelty of wilful misapprehension, or wilful neglect, or rough thwarting, instead of kindly training, had found any thing to do with his management. The method of his education had probably been the very best for him, and he approached his manhood firm in the acceptation of his responsibilities, gazing upon the various forms in which they had found demonstration, with the brave intent of a thoroughly furnished being.

His sisters, yet unmarried, were on the verge of matrimony when he had arrived at an age that, in accordance with his mental habits, required of him a seeking in every phenomenon the cause of its special expression. It was inevitable that he should turn his thoughts with some scrutiny to the form of this new relation, whose occupancy they anticipated, and to their provision for entering into it.

Before she put on long skirts and dressed for company, Ada had been his play-fellow; but since that time they had seen as little of each other as was possible for them, living under the same roof. The avoidance was not of course a deliberate one; but a woman entering on the full tide of fashionable life, having once submitted to the current, finds herself borne irresistibly along with it. She may strike out for life against this current, and breast the waves, and reach the shore, and return like the prodigal, but such a course requires the vigorous exercise of a spirit that is rarely found in operation among women who have been educated from their birth to float gracefully along the tide; the home-sickness does not often demand an escape so fraught with danger as that it is commonly allowed to run its course, and has no breaking; and the manifold inevitable misgivings as to what the end shall be, are lived down, are, for a time at least, got rid of. All this is true enough to make a parent shudder who is looking forward to the success young daughters in the world.

of

Everett was of course admitted into none of the fine lady councils of the house; if it occurred to any of them in a moment of vexation which demanded a decision to look to his clear and cool judgment for an opinion, it was to Ada; and there was always something lying remotely among her convictions, of which she obtained some dim perception, that kept her from the confidence when she came in sight of his quiet, thoughtful face, and magnified, in the contrast with his youth, the severity of his expression. In these matters therefore he