They receive all their witchery from the imagination of him who surveys them. This faculty is potentially mingled with all that is most real in nature; nay, it would seem to be as much a reality as any thing else we call such. The preacher calls the world a vain shadow, and the Berkleyan philosopher calls it a huge accident of the five senses; and Shakspeare is inclined to think there is nothing that is but thinking makes it so. The practical men, therefore,—the directors of railways, the managers of stock, and the owners of electric telegraphs cannot be considered to have matters all to themselves. The poet and the romancist control as much of the “thick rotundity of the world” as they; and certainly the most enchanting portion. Schiller gives us in an admired lyric, the idea that the imaginative being was forgotten by Jove in the distribution of the earth; but received a general invitation to the Court of Olympus. Our nether “maker,” or “finder,” does still, of course, avail himself of this privilege; but not as one without alternative. He has a great share and dominion in all sublinary things; and his castles in the air may be found as firmly fixed, after all, and as well tenanted, as any existing on any other element. * * * * * WINTER. BY ALICE CAREY. Now sits the twilight palaced in the snow, Hugging away beneath a fleece of gold Her statue beauties, dumb and icy cold, And fixing her blue steadfast eyes below; Where in a bed of chilly waves afar, With dismal shadows o’er her sweet face blown, Tended to death by eve’s delicious star, Lies the lost day alone. Where late with red mists bound about his brows Went the swart Autumn, wading to the knees Through drifts of dead leaves shaken from the boughs Of the old forest trees; The gusts upon their baleful errands run O’er the bright ruin, fading from our eyes, And over all, like clouds about the sun, A shadow lies. For, fallen asleep upon a dreary wold, Slant to the light, one late October morn, From some rough cavern blew a tempest cold, And tearing off his garland of ripe corn, Twisted with blue grapes, sweet with luscious wine, And Ceres’ drowsy flowers, so dully red, Deep in his cavern leafy and divine, Buried him with his dead. Then, with his black beard glistening in the frost, Under the icy arches of the north, And o’er the still graves of the seasons lost, Blustered the winter forth. Spring, with your crown of roses budding new, Thought-nursing and most melancholy fall, Summer, with bloomy meadows wet with dew, Blighting your beauties all.