Rather airy, up here! The cream of those small seas in the harbor has cooled the breeze for us, and the light over all, unless the sun-spots have grown since, is the unmixed original of the first day. The groaning of the streets comes up softened occasionally with a shout, or merry laugh, like a mocking-bird's in a menagerie; and overhead, a few clouds float about, idle to all appearances, yet each one is doing its errand of the morning, with a perfection far beyond your particular range. Some are rolling over and over in the sunshine; some just touching and parting, like women with dresses too large to salute; and in the upper heavens, a few long fellows, like ships upon the sea, are scudding in an entirely different direction. Just as you are up or down in the world, Sir, will the wind carry you.
Having looked about us, you may laugh or be sad, as you please. I advise neither; but there below us is the material, from the smile to the tear, and thousands of hearts now leaping to one or the other. Some perhaps at this moment making their first exclamation in the world, to large points of admiration from the just-made mother; and some dropping a last broken word upon the bounds of another world. Between these points are the variety of interjections, the oh! ah! pish! pah! hurra! and Hallelujah! that make up human life.
There has been a lull for a while; and now New-York has dined, and the soft pattering of feet tells us that beauty is thronging down the pavé, to settle the dinner, and the pleasures of the evening.
Has your brain cooled? Take that glass, and tell me if the archangel Gabriel has unsexed and fallen—into Broadway. How elate that motion, as though she were walking on a mountain-top, and as the whole world were beneath her, but not too far for her to be a part, and the glory of it! Beauty and grace go with her, like sunshine playing on a fountain. One who has just passed is sunning his heart in the delusion that she looked at him. Poor fool! Her thoughts are not promenading. Some things in this world are rather riddlesome—rather. You would not say that sorrow had touched her heart, and that passions are coiled there like serpents sucking her very life-blood; some half-dead with gorging, and some casting their coats for new life and vigor. Lost? As the star that is falling, which nothing but the hand of God can stay! Follow her home, and as the street-look is laid aside with her scarf, how sad that face! Calm and still, with now and then a faint smile flashing over it; but sheet-lightning, my dear Sir, for with her the storm had passed. The flash shows the cloud, to be sure; and to-morrow's sun may nurse it into more thunder; but these are unpleasant reflections. We should not have looked down.
There comes another, whose heaven is in another part of the universe, separate entirely. She needs study, like an old painting; but even with that, you never would know her, unless you were of the same Heaven. Her sweet voice would be like any other, with a difference that you would wonder at, but never understand.
And now the up-towns have gone up again, and night comes on, with the stars out in the upper heavens, and the lights as stars below. Between two heavens will not do, when either can be reached.
'Ride up—Broad-w-a-y!' The boy has music in him. Good night to the Top of New-York!
Julian.
[THE BIRTH-DAY.]
Another year is added to thy life,
And it hath left its impress; we can see
The change that one short year hath worked in thee;
In thy full eye, with deeper meanings rife,
And in thy form—a scarce expanded flower,
Just blushing into perfectness. Thy words,
The mingled melody of warbling birds,
Express maturer thoughts and deeper power,
And they too mark the change. O! may the day
That prompts these simple lines, ne'er bring the truth
That hearts like thine, in changing from their youth,
Can change in their affections; that I may
Keep it as now, from other days apart,
Shrined like a second Sabbath in my heart!