do these hold over us an eternal spell?  Are they as a part and property of an unvarying course of nature?  Have they aught which is unfailing, steady—­same in its effect?  Alas! their attraction is the creature of an accident.  One gap, invisible to all but ourself in the crowd and turmoil of the world, and every thing is changed.  In a single hour, the whole process of thought, the whole ebb and flow of emotion, may be revulsed for the rest of an existence.  Nothing can ever seem to us as it did:  it is a blow upon the fine mechanism by which we think, and move, and have our being—­the pendulum vibrates aright no more—­the dial hath no account with time—­the process goes on, but it knows no symmetry or order;—­it was a single stroke that marred it, but the harmony is gone for ever!

And yet I often think that that shock which jarred on the mental, renders yet softer the moral nature.  A death that is connected with love unites us by a thousand remembrances to all who have mourned:  it builds a bridge between the young and the old; it gives them in common the most touching of human sympathies; it steals from nature its glory and its exhilaration—­not its tenderness.  And what, perhaps, is better than all, to mourn deeply for the death of another, loosens from ourself the petty desire for, and the animal adherence to, life.  We have gained the end of the philosopher, and view, without shrinking, the coffin and the pall.—­New Monthly Magazine.

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SCOTT AND COOPER.

An example of Mr. Cooper’s appreciation of his illustrious rival, Sir Walter Scott, occurred while he was sitting for the portrait that accompanied the New Monthly Magazine for last month.—­The artist, Madame Mirbel, requested of a distinguished statesman.—­“No,” said Cooper, “if I must look at any, it shall be at my master,” directing his glance a little higher, to a portrait of Sir Walter Scott.

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FRANCE.

France, “with all thy faults I love thee still!” No man should travel from his cradle to his grave without paying thee a visit by the way:  with a disposition prone to enjoyment, it lightens the journey amazingly.  The French are a kind people, and it must be his fault who cannot live happily with them.  Pity it is, possessing, as they do, whatever can contribute to the felicity of a people in a state of peace, that war should be indispensable in order to render their idea of happiness complete. La gloire and la guerre form the eternal burden of their song—­as if the chief business of life were to destroy life.  They would fight to-morrow with any nation on earth, for no better an object than the chance of achieving a victory.  Laugh at me, if you please, for uttering what you may consider a foolish opinion, but I look