"They raised the winding sheet. There was peace in the face of the dead. A sunbeam fell on it; a swallow, in its arrow-flight, darted into the new-made arbor, and in its flight circled twittering over the dead man's head. "How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out old letters from the days of one's youth, and read them: a whole life, as it were, then rises up, with all its hopes and all its troubles. How many of those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of them for many years--them whom we once thought we should always cling to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with! "The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the friend--the friend of his school days--the friend for life. He fixed this leaf on the student's cap, in the greenwood, when the vow of friendship was concluded for the whole life. Where does he now live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign conservatory plant, too fine for the gardens of the North. It looks as if there still were fragrance in it. _She_ gave it to him--she, the lady of that noble garden! "Here is the marsh-lotus, which, he himself has plucked and watered with salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters! And here is a nettle; what do its leaves say! What did he think on plucking it?--on preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley, from the woodland solitudes; here are honeysuckles from the village ale-house flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass. The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead man's head; the swallow again flies past--'qui-vit! qui-vit!' Now the men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse, whose head rests on the 'Mute Book'--preserved--forgotten!" The book, to those who are not repelled by a certain quaintness of manner from the enjoyment of a work of true genius, will form a permanent and delightful addition to those pictures of many lands which the enterprise and accomplishment of modern travellers is creating for the delight of those whose range of locomotion is bounded by the limits of their own country, or by the four walls of a sick chamber. Andersen has grown old in years, and with age he has increase of art, but he was never younger in spirit, and his genius never blossomed with more freshness and beauty. VERSES WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY R. H. STODDARD. My desk is heaped with niceties From tropic lands divine, But this is braver far than all-- A flask of Chian wine! Brim up my golden drinking-cup, And reach a dish of fruit, And then unlock my cabinet, And hand me out my lute;