There has been much written on this crisis of the national existence, and there is room, we fancy, for still more. These contradictions that meet us as we venture into the depths--this wayward, changeful, human mood, which seems to make it impossible to have great principles brought into immediate contact without those strange anomalies--he would do well, who should treat of those on a broader ground than that of vindication or reproach of the actors on either side. We ourselves, at this day, are producing contradictions and paradoxes as strange as these; and many combining circumstances point us back to the days of the Stuarts, the climax of the old world--the seed-time of the new. For the little story subjoined, the Author has nothing to say, unless it were to beg for it that gentle consideration which the lovers of art do sometimes extend to those sketches, which the artist intends only as studies for a larger painting. APRIL, 1851. CALEB FIELD. CHAPTER I. “Behold Beneath our feet a little lowly vale. A lowly vale, and yet uplifted high Among the mountains; even as if the spot Had been from eldest time, by wish of theirs, So placed to be shut out from all the world! Urnlike it was in shape, deep as an urn With rocks encompassed, save that, to the south, Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close-- A quiet, treeless nook, with two green fields, A liquid pool that glittered in the sun, And one bare dwelling, one abode, no more! It seemed the home of poverty and toil, Though not of want: the little fields made green By husbandry of many thrifty years, Paid cheerful tribute to the moorland house. The small birds find in spring no thicket there To shroud them--only from the neighboring vales, The cuckoo, straggling up to the hill-tops, Shouteth faint tidings of a gladder place.” WORDSWORTH.