The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train, Now searching the furrows-now mounting to cheer him; The gardener delights in his sweet, simple strain, And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him; The slow-ling'ring school-boys forget they'll be chid, While gazing intent as he warbles before them In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red, That each little loiterer seems to adore him. When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er, While spring's lovely season, serene, dewy, warm, The green face of earth, and the pure blue of heaven, Or love's native music have influence to charm, Or sympathy's glow to our feelings is given, Still dear to each bosom the bluebird shall be;. His voice, like the thrillings of hope, is a treasure; For, through the bleakest storms, if a calm he but see, He comes to remind us of sunshine and pleasure! ILSON, AUGUSTA JANE EVANS, an Ameri can novelist; born at Columbus, Ga., May 8, 1833. Her earlier novels were published under her maiden name of Evans. In 1868 she was married to L. M. Wilson, of Mobile, Ala., where she has since resided. Her novels include Inez (1856): Beulah (1859); Macaria (1864); St. Elmo (1866); Vashti (1869); Infelice (1875); and At the Mercy of Tiberius (1889); A Speckled Bird (1902). Mrs. Wilson's books have been very popular with romantic young women in and out of boarding-schools for many a day. Her heroines are often marvels of learning, yet full of romance and ready to succumb to the fascinations of heroes generally superbly handsome, daring, and accomplished, who are weighted down with "pasts" full of romantic mystery and unhappiness. But Mrs. Wilson does not write trash, withal; her style, if a little strained and, again, heavy, is, on the whole, good; her depiction of Southern plantation life in ante-bellum days is vividly correct, and her gentlemen and gentlewomen are such in the true sense of the words. The excerpt printed below illustrates the surroundings in which she loves to place her heroes, and explains the good-natured banter from reviewers who fully appreciate the sterling value of her work. THE LIBRARY AND THE "HERO." When the echo of her retreating steps died away, St. Elmo threw his cigar out of the window, and walked up and down the quaint and elegant rooms, whose costly bizarrerie would more appropriately have adorned a villa of Parthenope or Lucanian Sybaris than a countryhouse in soi-distant "Republican" America. The floor, covered in winter with velvet carpet, was of white and black marble, now bare and polished as a mirror, reflecting the figure of the owner as he crossed it. Oval ormolu tables, buhl chairs, and oaken and marqueterie cabinets, loaded with cameos, intaglios, Abraxoids, whose erudition" would have filled Mnesarchus with envy, and challenged the admiration of the Samian lapidary who engraved the ring of Polycrates — these and numberless articles of virtu testified to the universality of 66 what St. Elmo called his "world scrapings" and to the reckless extravagance and archaistic taste of the collector. . . . On a verd-antique table stood an exquisite white glass lamp, shaped like a vase and richly ornamented with Arabic inscriptions in ultramarineblue a precious relic of some ruined Laura in the Nitrian desert, by the aid of whose rays the hoary hermits whom St. Macarius ruled had broken the midnight gloom, chanting "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison," fourteen hundred years before St. Elmo's birth. Several handsome rosewood cases were filled with rare books - two in Pali - centuries old; and moth-eaten and valuable manuscript some in parchment, some in boards - recalled the days of astrology and alchemy and the sombre mysteries of Rosicrucianism. . . But expensive and rare as were these treasures, there was one other object for which the master would have given everything else in this museum of curiosities, and the secret of which no eyes but his own had yet explored. On a sculptured slab that had once formed a portion of the architrave of the Cave Temple at Elephanta was a splendid marble miniature, four feet high, of that miracle of Saracenic architecture, the Taj Mahal, at Agra. The elaborate carving resembled lace-work, and the beauty of the airy. dome and slender, glittering minarets of this mimic tomb of Noor-Mahal could find no parallel, save in the superb and matchless original. Filled though it was with sparkling bijouterie that would have graced the Barberini or Strozzi cabinets, the glitter of the room was cold and cheerless. No rosy memoirs of early, happy manhood lingered here; no dewy gleams of the merry morning of life, when hope painted a peopled and smiling world; no magic trifles that prattled of the spring-time of a heart that, in wandering to and fro through the earth, had fed itself with dust and ashes, acrid and bitter; had studiously collected only the melancholy symbols of mouldering ruin, desolation, and death, and which found its best type in the Taj Mahal, that glistened so mockingly as the gaslight flickered on it.- St. Elmo. τα ILSON, JAMES GRANT, a Scottish-American biographer; born at Edinburgh, April 28, 1832. He became a colonel, afterward a general, in the Civil War, and subsequently settled in New York. Besides addresses and articles, he has published Biographical Sketches of Illinois Officers (1862); Love in Letters (1867); Life of U. S. Grant (1868); Life of Fitz-Greene Halleck (1869); Sketches of Illustrious Soldiers (1874); Poets and Poetry of Scotland (1876); Centennial History of the Diocese of New York (1886); Bryant and His Friends (1886); Commodore Isaac Hull and the Frigate Constitution (1889); The Memorial History of New York City (1891-93); The Presidents of the United States (1894); and Thackeray in the United States (1903). In collaboration with Mr. John Fiske he edited Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biogra phy (6 vols., 1886–89). The amusing series of verses known as The Croakers, first published in 1819, were the joint production of the attached friends and literary partners, Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake - the "Damon and Pythias" of American poets. The origin of these sprightly jeux d'esprit, as eagerly looked for each evening as were the war-bulletins of a later day, may not be without interest to the authors' troops of admirers. Halleck and Drake were spending a Sunday morning with Dr. William Langstaff, an eccentric apothecary and an accomplished mineralogist, with whom they were both intimate (the two last mentioned were previously fellowstudents in the study of medicine with Drs. Bruce and Romayne), when Drake, for his own and his friends' amusement, wrote several burlesque stanzas To Ennui, Halleck answering them in some lines on the same subject. The young poets decided to send their productions, with others of a similar character, to William Coleman, the editor of the Evening Post. If he published them, they would write more; if not, they would offer them to M. M. Noah, of the National Advocate; and, if he declined their poetical progeny, they would light their pipes with them. Drake accordingly sent Coleman three pieces of his own, signed "CROAKER," a signature adopted from an amusing character in Goldsmith's comedy of The Good-Natured Man. To their astonishment, a paragraph appeared in the Post the day following, acknowledging their receipt, promising the insertion of the poems, pronouncing them to be the productions of superior taste and genius, and begging the honor of a personal acquaintance with the author. The lines To Ennui appeared March 10, 1819, and the others in almost daily succession; those written by Mr. Halleck being sometimes signed "Croaker Junior," while those which were their joint composition generally bore the signature of "Croaker and Co." The remark made by Coleman had excited public attention, and "THE CROAKERS soon became a subject of conversation in drawing-rooms, book-stores, coffee-houses on Broadway, and throughout the city; they were, in short, a town topic. The two friends contributed other pieces; and when the editor again expressed great anxiety to be acquainted with the writer, and used a style so mysterious as to excite their curiosity, the literary partners decided to call upon him. Halleck and Drake accordingly, one evening, went together to Coleman's residence in Hudson Street, and requested an interview. They were ushered into the parlor, the editor soon entered, the young poets expressed a desire for a few minutes' strictly private conversation with him, and, the door being closed and locked, Dr. Drake said "I am Croaker, and this gentleman, sir, is Croaker Junior." Coleman stared at the young men with indescribable and unaffected astonishment, at length exclaiming: "I had no idea that we had such talent in America!" Halleck, with his characteristic modesty, was disposed to give to |