We shall not say it was an accident that brought Paul and Eve side by side, and a little separated from the others; for a secret sympathy had certainly exercised its influence over both, and probably contributed as much as any thing else towards bringing about the circumstance. Although the Wigwam stood in the centre of the village, its grounds covered several acres, and were intersected with winding walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, in the well-known English style, improvements also of John Effingham; for, while the climate and forests of America offer so many inducements to encourage landscape gardening, it is the branch of art that, of all the other ornamental arts, is perhaps the least known in this country. It is true, time had not yet brought the labours of the projector to perfection, in this instance; but enough had been done to afford very extensive, varied, and pleasing walks. The grounds were broken, and John Effingham had turned the irregularities to good account, by planting and leading paths among them, to the great amusement of the lookers-on, however, who, like true disciples of the Manhattanese economy, had already begun to calculate the cost of what they termed grading the lawns, it being with them as much a matter of course to bring pleasure grounds down to a mathematical surface, as to bring a rail-road route down to the proper level. Through these paths, and among the irregularities, groves, and shrubberies, just mentioned, the party began to stroll; one group taking a direction eastward, another south, and a third westward, in a way soon to break them up into five or six different divisions. These several portions of the company ere long got to move in opposite directions, by taking the various paths, and while they frequently met, they did not often re-unite. As has been already intimated, Eve and Paul were alone, for the first time in their lives, under circumstances that admitted of an uninterrupted confidential conversation. Instead of profiting immediately, however, by this unusual occurrence, as many of our readers may anticipate, the young man continued the discourse, in which the whole party had been engaged when they entered the gate that communicated with the street. "I know not whether you felt the same embarrassment as myself, to- day, Miss Effingham," he said, "when the orator was dilating on the glories of the republic, and on the high honours that accompany the American name. Certainly, though a pretty extensive traveller, I have never yet been able to discover that it is any advantage abroad to be one of the 'fourteen millions of freemen.'" "Are we to attribute the mystery that so long hung over your birth- place, to this fact," Eve asked, a little pointedly.