Such wierd-like music thou hast heard
From panther, fox, and owl,

Whilst the young fawn fled, frightened,
From the wild wolf's dreadful howl!

And thou hast stood when round thee flashed The awful lightning's glare,

And the red bolt fell hissing through

The hot sulphureous air:

While, bruised and scarred with tempest-rack,

Thy co-mates from their berths,

With shriek and groan, and root uptorn,
Bowed their high heads to earth!

How often in the autumn-time,

When the brown nuts appear,
The Indian held his harvest-feast,
The corn-feast of the year:

While through the bland and wholesome air
The wigwam smoke curled blue,
And the warm sun shone smiling down
Thy spreading antlers through.

The scene was changed: the battle-shout
From hill to valley rang,

And thousands of swart warriors
From their dark ambush sprang;
And poisoned dart and tomahawk
With blood were crimsoned o'er,
And the rank earth about thy roots
Smoked hot with human gore!

But o'er the scene where war's fierce tide
Erst rolled ensanguined waves,
Thy shadow in the morning-sun
Falls peaceful on the graves
Of those who fell in angry feud,
Or age's calm decay,

And thou the sole gray witness left
Of those long passed away!

And when the hoary winter's blast
Drove down its frozen rain,

Or, glittering in the moon, the snow
Lay crisp upon the plain,

Thy mossy trunk and iron heart,

Stout limbs- a giant form!

Braved with a monarch's proud despite

The anger of the storm.

But now no more amidst thy boughs

The blue-bird's song shall gush,

To hail the earliest dawn of light
That makes the Orient blush;

No more, when parting day hath tinged
With purple hues the even,

Shalt hear the robin warble sweet

His vesper-hymn to HEAVEN.

TOWARD the end of the month of December, the porters of the Bidault Express distributed a hundred copies, or thereabout, of an invitation, of which the following is an exact transcript:

'MR.:

'Messrs. RODOLPHE and MARCEL request the honor of your company Saturday evening next, (Christmas eve,) to hear a little laughter.

'P. S.-We have but one life to live.'

And enclosed was the following

PROGRAMME OF THE ENTERTAINMENT:

'Ar seven, doors open. Lively and animated conversation.

'At eight, the talented authors of the Mountain in Labor, a comedy refused at the Odeon, will enter and walk about.

'At eight and a half, Mr. ALEXANDER SCHAUNARD, a distinguished virtuoso, will execute on the piano The Influence of Blue in the Arts: an onomatopoeic symphony.

'At nine, reading of a Report on the Abolition of Capital Punishment by TRAGEDY. 'At nine and a half, Mr. GUSTAVE COLLINE, hyperphysic philosopher, will open a discussion with Mr. SCHAUNARD, on the Comparative Merits of Philosophy and Metapolitics.* To prevent any collision between the disputants, they will be tied together.

'At ten, Mr. TRISTAN, a literary man, will recount the story of his first love, accompanied on the piano by Mr. SCHAUNARD.

'At ten and a half, reading of a Report on the Abolition of Capital Punishment by TRAGEDY, (continued.)

'At eleven, Account of a Cassowary Hunt by an Eastern Prince.†

* IF metaphysics is what comes after physics, according to etymology, (though in practice I have generally found to be what comes after liquor,) this new science must be what comes after politics. What in the name of every thing awful is that? The deluge is to come after some politicians, according to Prince METTERNICH and Lord MAIDstone.

+ The structure of this sentence does not make it quite clear whether the Eastern Prince was actually present to relate the Cassowary Hunt, or whether his performance was limited to hunting the animal, and the account of the hunt was to be another person's work. A somewhat similar ambiguity I recollect in a magazine title some years ago: Lines on a Lady Slandered, by Barry Cornwall; which one of our newspapers reprinted so as to cast a grave imputation on the poet, thus: Lines on a Lady, Slandered by Barry Cornwall.

I could see the beautiful faces of their occupants, could hear their wild songs, and the sweet music of

'Ladies' laughter coming through the air.'

Oh, that singing and gayest laughter ringing out on the boundless air! as if a thousand singing-birds from Paradise had been let fly in the upper ether. It is hushed now, but its tones are in my ear as I write.

Amid all the gaiety and life of landscape and the air, I could not divert my thoughts from my recent rencontre with Mr. Smith, and that awkward business of the fence. So much did it weigh upon my mind that I mentioned the circumstance to my family at the tea-table. My son Newton, who was something of a mathematical genius, proposed to measure the territory in dispute himself. He returned, bringing intelligence which gave me fresh perplexity. The lot had shrunk at least twelve inches; and not only that, he found our own had diminished in a like ratio. He had scarcely finished speaking when a neighbor rushed in, and with some confusion related the observation of a similar phenomenon at his own residence, and ended by declaring that the Day of Judgment must be at hand. I was somewhat alarmed at these reports, although I did not heed his conclusion, as he was a Millerite, and had been accustomed to predict the same thing every month for ten years past. We went into the streets together. The town was quiet, the streets brilliantly illuminated, and the usual crowd of gay promenaders thronged the sidewalks and filled the shops of fashionable resort. As yet the alarm had not spread to any extent; or, if a few whispered their fears of some approaching calamity, not many heard or heeded; or, thinking it an idle tale of the Millerites, took no trouble to investigate for themselves, and laughed at the credulous. As for myself, being rather perplexed than terrified, and not caring to incur ridicule by expressing my own apprehensions, I returned home, and passed the report off to my family as another panic of the confounded Millerites. Yet I was far from being satisfied myself; and all the long night I slept little, or, if I did, dreamed the wildest dreams that ever entered human imagination.

At one time I stood alone upon a vast arid plain, stretching away illimitably on every side, and above it the sky, not pellucid and expansive, but like a dead convexity of copper spanning the desolate plain. And as I stood there, methought the sky of copper seemed to near me, and the vast plain to shrink. And so it did till it was no longer sky and plain, but a most fearful prison, whose walls I could almost reach by putting out my hand, and the air grew close and stifling; and with a strange feeling of compression I awoke. Again, I was far out in space, supported only by a boulder, or, as it seemed, a meteoric stone, which drove fearfully along, whirling, meanwhile, rapidly on its axis-turning and shooting in a dizzy maze, till I was sick with giddiness.

When morning came, there was no longer any room for doubt that some strange change was passing in nature. As the sun rose, and men came forth to their labor, and shops were opened, and the rattle of machinery began to break the stillness, the reports of the evening before gained ground. They spread from mouth to mouth, till half the villagers, now

moved by an indefinable terror, ran hither and thither, measuring and re-measuring, and telling the results with the wildest looks of wonder. By noon, none felt any restraint in acknowledging their fears. Indeed, there was no longer need of measurement by rule or chain, for the shrinking of house-lots, the streets, and even the dwellings, was apparent to the eye. I shall never forget the frenzied confusion of that day. Dwellings and work-shops poured out their denizens, and the streets were filled with an excited and wonder-struck mass. Tradesmen, with pale faces and trembling limbs, stood in their door-ways telling that their shops had shrunk-ay, seemed even to be shrinking as they spoke. Farmers came running in, crying out that as they ploughed in the fields, the earth seemed to stiffen and grow hardwas almost impervious to the plough. Sailors from the river swore that the water was falling away from the banks; and one, who had just bathed, declared that the water buoyed him up in spite of his efforts to sink below the surface.

Going, about this time, to the large village common, I found it occupied by an assemblage of kneeling figures, dressed in long white robes, with pasteboard crowns on their heads. They were shouting, and beating the air and ground with extravagant gestures. And ever as they beat the air, they sang in wildest voices:

'IF you get there before I do,
Just tell 'em I'm a-coming too,
To play on the golden harp,
To play on the golden ha-arp,
To play on the golden harp.'

The chorus was caught up again and again by the excited multitude, and flung up to the sky in most passionate tones. It was a band of Millerites, and I should think there was nearly an acre of them.

As the day wore on, fresh reports brought fresh wonder and terror, until every man stood aghast and speechless, waiting for further developments. It was now four o'clock, I remember, and the air-express that brought the hourly edition of the city papers came whizzing through the atmosphere. When the mail was opened, I seized the Aerial Telegraph eagerly, though with an instinctive dread. I had hoped and believed that this strange phenomenon was entirely local; that this shrinking of the earth and houses might be attributed to some sectional agitation beneath the surface of the earth, some hitherto unknown convulsion, more terrible than the earthquake, indeed, but yet not general. How was my hope dashed, and my wildest speculations out-jumped, when the following paragraph met my eye:

'APPALLING PHENOMENA!

'MOST TERRIBLE RUIN IMPENDING!

JUST as we are going to press with the tenth edition of to-day, (circulation one million) confirmed accounts reach us of fearful phenomena, with which we have been unwilling heretofore to alarm our readers. Every where, the fields, highways, and all standing on the surface of the earth, seem to be shrinking and growing smaller. Our city has not escaped. The streets have become visibly narrower since yesterday. The water in the docks is sinking, the town is filled with frightened faces, the air is dolorous with notes of woe. Since the Act of the one hundred and thirtieth Congress that every man should shave his head, our city has not been thrown into such a tumult. The

the sun and stars, and with insane laughter make merry with dissolution, was appalling!

Sick and stricken, as with infinite terror, I fled from the village and the haunts of men-alas! of men no more. All sensation of hunger and thirst, and indeed every feeling but that of utter desolation, had left me, and I wandered on blindly and madly, any where any where from the sight of human anguish. For the first time, I noticed that the days and nights were growing shorter, but this did not impress me so much then as it did afterward. Still I wandered on and on, until at length I stood upon a broad, barren prairie; here, at least, I should escape the awful spectacle of sinking dwellings and crushed men.

FROM this period I can give no account of time: day and night were alike to me. I think I must have swooned and slept for days, and perhaps months. Yet I knew all the while that the earth was continually condensing; that the days grew shorter and shorter. When full consciousness returned, the prairie had shrunk to the size of a mere grassplot. Leaving that, I wandered to the north-east, in the neighborhood of the Great Lakes. I found only diminutive ponds. The mighty catăract of Niagara, which I had thought would endure for ever, was no longer visible; and in vain I searched for any trace of those great northern metropolises, Detroit, Chicago, and Sault Sainte Marie. Every where was the desolation of death. The vast northern forests had vanished, and which ever way I turned my footsteps, I met the same chilling silence. Home or shelter there was none on all the dreary earth; it mattered little whether I laid down on Arctic snows, or in the fervid tropics sought in vain the cool refreshment of spice-bearing forests that overgrow so rankly there. Listless, and almost emotionless, I roamed like a vagabond, denied every thing but life. How often I wished I had slept in a quiet grave on the banks of the Hudson, long ago, when the mounds were green there!

At one time I stood on the shore of the Atlantic. Its surface was waveless smooth as polished marble. Thinking to bathe my aching limbs, I stepped forward; but it yielded not to my feet; it was firm, solid as adamant. Walking out upon it, I looked down, down into its crystal depths. The rays of the sun, gliding into its bosom, returned to my eye in all the hues of the rainbow, and all the mighty ocean sparkled and glittered like a huge diamond; while below me, in infinite number and form, the tribes of fish and sea-monsters lay motionless and still as if bound in iron.

Again, straying southward, I stood beside Chimborazo. It had shrunk to a little hillock. And sitting down on its peak, I looked along the range of the Andes, now mere dots on the earth's surface, and off over the calm Pacific. All its coral islands, that sat 'very glorious in the midst of the sea,' vocal with song of tropical birds, stirring with busy traffic, and swarming with traders from the ends of the earth, had long ago been engulfed. All the ships that used to skim its surface, laden with wealth and the products of man's industry, and all the men who manned them, where were they?