Then fill to-night, in our halls of light, The toast on our lips shall be— “The sinewy hand, the glittering brand, Our homes and our altars free.” Ho! ho! ho! etc. * * * * * LUCY LEYTON. BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER. I have been induced to a brief series of heart-histories by a remark of Longfellow, in Kavanagh. In speaking of the ever sanguine yet irresolute schoolmaster, who was “forced to teach grammar when he would fain have written poems,” he says, “Mr. Churchill never knew that while he was exploring the Past for records of obscure and unknown martyrs, in his own village, ——, the romance he was longing to find and record, had really occurred in his neighborhood, among his own friends.” Again, Emerson says, “Every roof is agreeable to the eye until it is lifted, and then we find tragedy, and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands, and deluges of lethe.” There is truth in this. Beneath every roof-tree some romance is at work—some heart-history compiling. The evening lights twinkle from cottages sleeping peacefully upon the hill-sides and valleys—music and mirth break on the air from brilliantly illuminated dwellings—then the night wears on—the cottage-lights no longer gleam—silence wraps the abode of wealth—and from out the majesty of the heavens encircling all, the gentle moon and bright, flashing stars look down alike on sheltered cot or marble dome. Yet, “lift the roof,” lay bare the heart which pulsates in every bosom, and we shall find each has its own tale of romance woven from life’s mingled threads of grief, of love, of happiness—perhaps of shame. Let me, then, from out the “simple annals” of a quiet country town, sketch, with a faithful pen, these heart-histories—these romances from real life.