* * * * * THE EYES OF NIGHT. BY MISS MARY SPENCER. Night has eyes—sparkling eyes! Some soft, some bright; The flashing fire ne’er dies From eyes of night. Night has many wooers To watch her eyes, To love her silent hours And mellow skies. Night has a witching spell To bind the heart; Its silent glances quell And awe impart. A perfumed breath has Night: It wafts the sighs Of flowers young and bright Around the skies. Night has a breathing tone Like distant swell Of softest music, thrown From fairy’s knell. Oh! how I love the Night! Its sparkling eyes— Its softened shadowy light— Its melodies. * * * * * THY NAME WAS ONCE A MAGIC SPELL. BALLAD. SUNG BY MR. DEMPSTER. WRITTEN BY THE HON. MRS. NORTON. _Philadelphia_: John F. Nunns, _184 Chesnut Street_. [Illustration: musical score] Thy name was once the magic spell By which my heart was bound, And burning dreams of light and love, Were wa-ken’d by that [Illustration: musical score] sound my heart beat quick, When stranger tongues with idle praise or blame, Awoke its deepest thrill of life, To tremble at thy name. Long years, long years have pass’d away, And alter’d is thy brow, And we who met so fondly once, Must meet as strangers now; The friends of yore come round me still, But talk no more of thee; ’Tis idle e’en to wish it now— For what art thou to me? Yet still thy name, thy blessed name, My lonely bosom fills, Like an echo that hath lost itself, Among the distant hills, Which still with melancholy note, Keeps faintly lingering on, When the joyous sound that woke it first, Is gone, for ever gone. * * * * * REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. In commencing, with the New Year, a New Volume, we shall be permitted to say a very few words by way of _exordium_ to our usual chapter of Reviews, or, as we should prefer calling them, of Critical Notices. Yet we speak _not_ for the sake of the _exordium_, but because we have really something to say, and know not when or where better to say it. That the public attention, in America, has, of late days, been more than usually directed to the matter of literary criticism, is plainly apparent. Our periodicals are beginning to acknowledge the importance of the science (shall we so term it?) and to disdain the flippant _opinion_ which so long has been made its substitute.