Miseri solamen, viduæ The wretched, the widowed and the præsidium, orbi patrem, ademptum orphans, bereaved of their comfort, lugent. protector and father, alike lament his loss. STORY FROM VOLTAIRE. We hope to have the pleasure of delighting our readers frequently with the chaste and classic pen of our correspondent M. By a curious coincidence, about the time he was translating the subjoined story from Voltaire, a correspondent of the Richmond Compiler furnished the Editor of that paper with another version, which was published. Without disparagement to the latter however, the reader of taste will find no difficulty in awarding the preference to the one which we insert in our columns. For the Southern Literary Messenger. Below, is a neat and sportive little story of Voltaire's, never before translated into English, that I know of; though containing sufficient point and good sense to make it well worthy of that honor. No one who has ever sorrowed, can fail to acknowledge the justice of {11} styling TIME the "Great Consoler." The balm he brings, has never failed sooner or later to heal any grief, which did not absolutely _derange_ the mind of its victim. By one part of the tale, the reader will be reminded of the philosopher in Rasselas, who, the morning after he had eloquently and conclusively demonstrated the folly of grieving for any of the ills of life, was found weeping inconsolably, for the loss of his only daughter. Whether Dr. Johnson, or the French wit, first touched off this trait of human weakness, is not material: it may be set down as rather a coincidence than a plagiarism. So much of the region of thought is _common ground_, over which every active mind continually gambols, that it would be wonderful if different feet did not sometimes tread in identical foot prints. M. From the French of Voltaire. THE CONSOLED. The great philosopher, Citophilus, said one day to a justly disconsolate lady--"Madam, an English Queen, a daughter of the great Henry IV. was no less unhappy than you are. She was driven from her kingdom: she narrowly escaped death in a storm at sea: she beheld her royal husband perish on the scaffold." "I am sorry for her;" said the lady--and fell a weeping at her own misfortunes. "But," said Citophilus, "remember Mary Stuart. She was very becomingly in love with a gallant musician, with a fine _tenor_ voice. Her husband slew the musician before her face: and then her good friend and relation, Elizabeth, who called herself the Virgin Queen, had her beheaded on a scaffold hung with black, after an imprisonment of eighteen years." "That was very cruel," replied the lady--and she plunged again into sorrow. "You have perhaps heard," said her comforter, "of the fair Jane of Naples, who was taken prisoner and strangled?" "I have a confused recollection of her," said the afflicted one.