H.C.  WOOD, JR., M.D.

SONNET.

Young bride, that findest not a single star
  Shining to-night with longed for prophecy,
Though snowy drifts are swelling near and far,
  They need not chill thy happy hope and thee. 
If blue had overarched the earth all day,
  And heaven were brilliant with its stars to-night,
“A happy omen!” many a guest would say,
  And think that Fortune blessed the sacred rite. 
Be superstition far from thee, sweet soul: 
  This snowy robe, in unison with thine,
Nature will doff to-morrow, and the whole
  Of this white waste in spring-like freshness shine. 
If love be strong, then all adversity
Will melt like snow, and life the greener be.

     CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF HIRAM POWERS.

There are—­or were—­many at Florence whose recollections of Hiram Powers stretch over the best part of a quarter of a century; and there are few men of whom it could with equal truth and accuracy be said that such recollections are wholly pleasant in their character to the survivors and honorable to the subject of them.  He was in truth universally respected by people of all classes, and by Americans and English, as well as Italians, in the city of his adoption, and personally liked and esteemed by all who had the good fortune to be among his friends.  Recollections such as these are, I say, the property of very many at Florence.  But there is no one in that city—­there was during his life no one in that city, not even she who during a long life was a companion, friend, partner and helpmeet in every sense admirable for him—­whose recollections went back to so early a period as mine did.

When I came to Florence with my mother in 1841, intending to make a home there for a few years, we found, with some surprise and much pleasure, Hiram Powers, with a wife and children, settled there as a sculptor.  It was long since, in the course of the changes and chances of life, we had lost sight of him, but the meeting was none the less pleasurable to, I think I may say, both parties.  It was at Cincinnati in 1829 that my mother and myself first knew him.  My mother, who had long been an acquaintance of General La Fayette, became thus the intimate friend of his ward, Frances Wright.  Fascinated by the talent, the brilliancy and the singular eloquence of that remarkable and highly-gifted woman, and at the same time anxious to find a career for one of her sons (not the well-known author of the present day, but another brother, long since dead), whose wishes and proclivities adapted him for a life of more activity and adventure than that of one of our home-abiding professions, my mother was persuaded by her to join her in a scheme which at that time was engaging all her singularly large powers of energy and enthusiasm, the object