We could have lingered over that portfolio for hours, and like Professor Vogel have found something new at each inspection of the same drawing; but the artist seemed to grow gently impatient to show us his wife's Album--the book of which we had heard so much on the previous evening; there it was, carefully cased and covered--and before he opened it, he explained, with smiling lips, that on each of Madame Retzsch's birthdays, he had presented to her a drawing expressive of his devotion, his faith in her virtues, or the hopes or disappointments to which the destiny of life had subjected them. However delicate and endearing may be the love of youth, with it there is always associated a dread that it may not endure until the end--that the world may tarnish or destroy it; that, "A word unkind or wrongly taken," may be the herald of harshness and of estrangement; but when, after a lapse of accumulated years, Cupid folds his wings without the loss of a single feather, and laughs at his arch-enemy "Time," the sunshine of the picture creates an atmosphere of happiness that excites the best sympathies of our nature. While he descanted on these results of his luxuriant and overflowing imagination and affection, never was genius more thoroughly love-inspired; never, as we had heard, did poet pen more exquisite birthday odes, than were framed by the tender and eloquent pencil of Moritz Retzsch on the birthdays of his wife. We did not feel it to be a defect in the graphic allegories, so rich and varied in thought and expression, that they required, or rather received, the eloquent explanations, of their great originator; the scene around that little table was in exquisite harmony; Professor Vogel's expressions of delight were as enthusiastic as our own; he repeatedly said that a visit to his old friend was a renewal of his own youth; he hailed the precious Album with as much pleasure as ourselves, and reveled in the poetry and originality of its illustrations, with a freshness of feeling supposed only to belong to the early years of life. We can not remember that Retzsch sat down once during our long visit; he was standing or moving about, the entire time, and frequently passed his fingers through the masses of his long gray hair, so that it assumed most peculiar styles; but nothing could detract from the picturesque magnificence of his noble head. His restlessness was certainly peculiar, he passed and repassed into the room where his precious drawings were scattered in such rich profusion, returning again and again to the window, enjoying our pleasure, the expression of his face varying so eloquently and honestly, that a young child could have read his thoughts: and then the indescribable brightness of that face; stormy, it no doubt could be at times, but the thunder would have been as nothing to the lightning.