He has left his home in the starry North We bow to his sceptre's supreme behest; While deep in his bosom the heart lies warm, Its genial depths embracing, perisheth; The mountain heard the sounding blast Of the winds from their wild horn blowing, And see them now as away they go, And the blue arch bending o'er them, The shrub looked up and the tree looked down, And the forest shone in gorgeous array, So on the joyous skaters fly, With no thought of a coming sorrow, For never a brightly-beaming eye Has dreamed of the tears of to-morrow. Be free and be happy, then, while ye may, And rejoice in the blessing of to-day. COUNTRY LIFE. [Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty. The poet, Hölty, was born December 21st, 1748, at Marien see, in Hanover, where his father was a preacher. His early education was superintended by his father. He gave precocious indications of a love of learning, but his health was feeble from his childhood up. He was sent to school in Celle, and in 1766 entered the University of Göttingen as a student of theology. He occupied himself much with poetry, and assisted in forming the Poetical Society. He died September 1st, 1776.] Happy the man who has the town escaped! To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks, The shining pebbles, preach The whispering grove a holy temple is Whereby he kneels to Heaven. The nightingale on him sings slumber down- Then he admires thee in the plain, O God!- Where coolness gushes, in the waving grass, Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests: Inhales the breath of prime, His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun, And play and hop, invites to sweeter rest To him the plumy people sporting chirp, Chatter, and whistle, on his basket perch, And from his quiet hand Pick crumbs, or peas, or grains. Oft wanders he alone, and thinks on death; The stone beneath the elders, where a text Of Scripture teaches joyfully to die, And with his scythe stands Death, An angel, too, with palms. work-people's children also have aristocratic feelings. We, who were the children of well-to-do people, had never given Happy the man who thus hath 'scaped the it a thought, either that Gitje could be the town! Him did an angel bless when he was born,- With flowers celestial strewed. GITJE. [Busken-Huet, though not the greatest Dutch novelist, may yet be pronounced representative of national life, for in his pages we meet with realistic pictures of Dutch every-day existence, such as are revealed to us by the paintings of Brouwer, Ostade, Teniers, Jan Steen, De Hooghe, and others. Busken-Huet was born at the Hague 1828, and educated at its public school. In 1844 he became a student at the University of Ley abbreviation of Brigitta, or that our seamstress could allow herself the luxury of a family name. Still you might say van der Plas sounds modest and simple enough. Three or four times a week Gitje came to practice her trade at our parents' house. One of her regular occupations was to mend our blue-and-white-striped blouses, in whose sleeves we managed to tear such wonderfully large holes. At other times she would iron upstairs in the nursery, the windows of which looked out on the garden, in which also stood a mangle and a linen-press. She was a beautiful ironer. When she had put her irons to the fire and all was in order, she would take the ironing-board from the wall against which it leaned, and put it down in the usual way, i. e., like a bridge, with one end resting on the trestle-table and with the other on the back of a chair. Thus Gitje, standing in the middle, had plenty of room to move her arms and put her things down. The board was swathed in a half-scorched woolbeauty in this work, though it is marred by many len blanket, and reminded us of a thin old den, and passed thence to Switzerland, completing his studies at Geneva and Lausanne. In 1851 he was ap pointed minister to the Walloon congregation at Haarlem. Huet is not only, or chiefly, a novelist, though he has produced many novelettes of the kind of which we give a short specimen. He has also written a novel in two volumes, called Lidewyde. There is no lack of blemishes. The work proved that Huet could never become a great novelist, and what he has published since confirms this opinion. His most remarkable productions are his essays, especially his Eerste Fantasiën.] If any one had asked us at that time we speak of our childish, our boyish years -concerning the name and appearance of Brigitta van der Plas, we should have answered, "Whom do you mean? We have not the honor of knowing such a lady.' Had the rejoinder been, What! you do not know Brigitta van der Plas, the seamstress, who was in the service of your parents so many years!" we should have replied again with the exclamation, "Ah, you mean Gitje, our seamstress! Yes, indeed, we know her very well. Give us a pair of scissors and a piece of paper; we will at once make you a likeness of her. But how could we have thought that Brigitta van der Plas was the same person as our Gitje?" woman covered with a flannel vest. There was nothing more amusing than to watch Gitje when she ironed our sister's balldresses. After they had been damped and rolled up sufficiently long, she would take up a dress, and, lifting the ironingboard at one side, slip the frock over it. Then she took one of the irons out of the red-hot iron pot at her left-hand side, held it for a moment very close to her cheek to feel if it was as hot as she wanted, rubbed it lightly on a cloth lying for that purpose at her right hand, and then began her real operations. The ball-dress, first a limp, draggled, shapeless mass, gained crispness and form with every touch of the iron. My sisters were only half satisfied if they were going to a ball and any one but Gitje ironed their dresses. Once a month* the scene of Gitje's A wash once a month in a Dutch household is called a children's wash. The house-linen and the body You may be sure we never heard her linen of the grown-up people are only sent away to be called anything but Gitje. The future master or mistress begins already as a child to show an aristocratic, no doubt, a well-educated indifference to the fate and the circumstances of the servants. But washed three or four times a year. The above description applies to the present day, with the exception that the mistress does not now generally help in the work, and that instead of the breakfast-room, the linen is dressed in the upper or lower parts of the house. labors was down stairs in the breakfastroom. This happened when the linen had come home. The family to which we belonged was a very large one, and consequently our washing was also large. Now we purpose to describe the management of a very large one; large not in the etymological sense, but in the technical. Gitje's help was indispensable. She descended from the less sacred sphere of the nursery, and was closeted with our mother in the breakfast-room, the holy of holies. Nothing was more fascinating than to watch our mother and Gitje stretch the numerous tablecloths and sheets. They did it exceedingly neatly; ay, not only neatly, but with energy, with enthusiasm. They stood at the head and foot of the large oblong table. The sheets, still unstretched, lay in gradually diminishing piles on the left-hand side, while those already stretched lay in an ever increasing heap upon the right. In the middle lay their present victim, several yards long, and pale as death, while they pinched it between their fingers. Their elbows pressed closely to their sides, their right feet forward, the upper part of their body thrown backwards, stood the two women, the mistress and the maid, and stretched, stretched, stretched as fast as they couldtypes of simplicity and fulfilment of duty, and pictures of Dutch home-life. For us, who looked on passively, but nevertheless with the greatest interest, the question of questions was will Gitje presently draw our mother over the table? or will our mother be quicker than she and draw Gitje across? Will our mother drop the sheet? or will Gitje open her fingers, and, as a preventive measure proceeding solely from a principle of permissible self-defence, play a trick upon our mother? or will the sheet tear in the middle? Will Gitje keep one end in her hand and our mother the other? and will the sorrowful close of the matter be that Gitje's head will fall against the mantelpiece, while our mother's will recoil against the wainscot, and thus both of them be hurt? Meanwhile the dexterous women stood immovable, emulating each other in perseverance. The pile on the right grew bigger and bigger, and before dinner-time the heap on the left had disappeared. With the beginning of autumn came the preserving of greens and fruits. Good gracious! what a number of things were brought into our house with Gitje's assistance! We, who never felt too grand to help for a little while, if required, with the mangling, used also in our childhood, under Gitje's guidance, to string a great many beans, especially the small French beans. Afterwards, when we could be trusted without danger with a knife, we also helped with the large beans, which, as you know, are so much more difficult to manage. Besides this, we saw Gitje throw numberless white cabbages into a cask, after she had cut them into little bits. Then she pressed them down with a wooden pestle, and, last of all, she covered them with a few heavy stones placed on a board nearly as large as the width of the cask. This is to induce fermentation in the contents of the cask, in contradiction to the Dutch proverb,, "What lies in the cask does not ferment." What lies in the cask does not turn sour. So people say; and it would be ignoble to undermine the hopeful trust in the future embodied in this proverb. Gitje too spoke in this manner as often as she thought of Leendert van Kuyk, and this happened now and then. You ask why? Well, here our narrative takes quite a new turn. He was, and had been for years and days, her lover. At the time of which we are speaking the silver wedding of their engagement already lay far, far behind them. Incredible!" you exclaim. Well, I cannot give you faith. We can assure you, as a well-sifted and well-confirmed fact, that Brigitta van der Plas had been for twenty-seven years the sweetheart of Leendert van Kuyk. And then? Then Leendert van Kuyk died of the cholera at the age of fifty-five. His profession was making fishingtackle. We used to buy angling-rods, fishing-lines, hooks, and floats in great quantities at his little shop; and sometimes, poor though he was, he would make us a present for Gitje's sake. At that time we really did not know that he led such a poor life. On the contrary, we thought him very well off indeed. Had he not a large stock in his little shop, an enviable abundance of fishing tools? Did it not make our mouths water to see his angling-rods, his trammels and drag-nets; his imitation breeze-flies, dunflies, gadflies, beetles, and other kinds of bait? We dreamed of nothing more precious or desirable than his worm-boxes, made of |