Then, when the brief, sweet day is done, And stars above begin to blink, As home the swift lake bears us on, Our sweethearts meet us on the brink. Then gather’d round the cheerful blaze, While gusts without are blowing shrill, With laugh, and jest, and merry lays, We pass the jocund evening still. Around the board our feats all told, Comes nature’s welcome hour of rest, And slumbers never bought with gold, Sit light on each untroubled breast. No lagging pulse impedes our sleep, No startling dreams our couch annoy, But health and peace, in quiet deep, Smile hovering round the country boy. Then, when the morning bright and clear, Springs gayly o’er the glistening hill, With hardy sports we hail it near, Or hardy labors bless it still. Newburyport, Massachusetts, January, 1841. * * * * * THE SYRIAN LETTERS. WRITTEN PROM DAMASCUS, BY SERVILIUS PRISCUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, TO HIS KINSMAN, CORNELIUS DRUSUS, RESIDING AT ATHENS, AND BUT NOW TRANSLATED. Damascus. Servilius to Cornelius—Greeting: Your reply to my last epistle, my dear Cornelius, was the more pleasing, because so unexpected. The speed of its transmission shows the great measure of our obligation to the sagacity and enterprise of Constantine. For who, until our emperor bent to it the considerations of his active mind, ever knew of such rapidity of communication? In the fair lines before me, I again greet the face of a friend, and hold cheering communion with one divided by long distance. I promised in my last to give you some description of the curious ceremonies of those worshippers, and I find you are urgent that I should fulfil it, since I was so fortunate as to witness some of the hidden mysteries. You esteem it strange that I, a foreigner, and but a few hours in Baalbec, should have stood at once upon such good terms with Mobilius, as to have induced him to conduct me to one of the most secret recesses of the temple—with all the perils of exposure through my carelessness. I have nothing to offer in answer to your surmise but conjecture. Mobilius was certainly upon some familiar footing with the priests, and perhaps being partly moved by the hope that the imposing magnificence of the ceremonial would win a convert to his creed, he ventured to introduce me. If such was his anticipation, how signally in error! how vain to fancy that the sense can blind the judgment! that the splendor of the cloud that curtains some yawning chasm in the mountain side, can be mistaken for the solid pathway.