Year: 1860



 No. ONE.

 Warm mellow sunlight prevailing eVefy',n"s III, as I write to you Sunlight everywnere' An' oartb lies bathed in it, quietly enjoying the peh' ;scont beams Sunlight streaming on the river rh;oh hroal the rays with it's little ripples into ,nrr;ods of flashing diamonds, lighting up the hiI-slopes. filling the valleys with splendor. The ,,orv water in the air, aimlessly floating, turned +o dies of gold and this glass of sparkling sherry before me, in which I am soon to pledge you inc good fortune you so well deserve. o ablest of Editors and most genial of friends, look in the glowing rays like magazine of liquid light it. self, stored up ready to be poured out into the general golden lustre of this perfect September day. Just the day my dear H., of all other's to be enjoyed, as you and not long since enjoyed q glowing afternoon, amid the classic shades of Glen Mary, where the laughing babble Of the brook the miehtier dash of the river, the mur muring leaftones from the huge old trees' and the ncessant talk of the multitudinous squirrels combine to form one of the finest of natures quieting symphonies. Her wilder music, she may well reserve for other scenes, for Glen Mary a morning an evening and mignight hymn Of praise and for the rest of the time nothing more stirring than dreamy reverie or pocturne. l fancy that as long as the world shall stand this will be one of it's most beautiful places Nature has done much for it, as large measure oi praise perhaps, is due to the creative art-5he fine taste of the gentlemen, scholar and poet who has made his former home so well known to the world through his incomparable Rural Letters. :"

 But you and know it even better as the abode of scholar and a gentleman indeed, though he has never witched the world with noble"-poesy. But the place is unchanged, the pretty, low-roofed, quiet cottage, embowered in scented shade, the green expanse fading to the brook this same woodland minstrel, singing as if goes like a braye-hearted, cheery man on it's journey to the end, the lovely wood beyond, its quiet depths, each outvieing the others in silent beauty, the whole sweeping around the brow of the hill, sloping to the vast breezy lawn which stretched so widely to the right and left, and in front the glorious rver skilted with trees encir- cling the whole splendid domain. I have rarely enjoyed anything more than row on some bright summer morning under the darkly-wooded banks of this same river, every bend revealing some new and lovely prospect, all this still bears perhaps its finest aspect. The trees hardly as yet really touched by the frost but as if with sure prescience of their coming death robing themselves like as many Hindoo widows for their final exit from this world of beauty, light up the picture with faint warmth of color which to me is finer than the universal living green of June, and over all, the brooding quiet which seems to belong to the scene. Eminently place for silence is it, and solitude, at most, a few friends, and those of the right sort Crowds would here be what the virtuous Barnum in his Tribune advertisement says that they have re gently been at the Museum" unwanted!

 So much for the open air view. Within doors you know what the welcome is genial, hosplta bic and hearty. Just what greeted us when af ter a drive through the rain, dark, damp, and dis agreeable we were at our journeys end. Surely that was glorious evening when enveloped ii the hay and fragrant smoke from amber tubes we discussed the events of the intervening years of separation, art, poetry and politics, men and things, nearly all that was ever dreamed of in one philosophy, a bright joyous evening, which even the drive home through the black night on ly brought out in higher relief.

 May we have many such reserved for us in the dim future from which so much of good or evil or both is to come to us 5.

 Oswego, N. r.. Sept. 30th, 1860.