Our friend Monroe is now a partner in the house of Lindsay & Co.  He makes frequent visits to the villa at Brookline, and is always welcome.  Mr. Lindsay considers him a most sensible and worthy young man, and his daughter Clara has implicit confidence in his judgment of literature as well as in his taste for pictures.  One fine day last summer, Mrs. Monroe was prevailed upon, after some weeks of solicitation, to get into a carriage and take a drive with her son.  “She’s a nice girl,” said the mother, fervently, on their return; “and if you must marry anybody, I don’t think you can do better.”  Walter’s smile showed that he thought so too, although the alternative was hardly so painful as she seemed to consider it,—­from which we infer that his relations with the senior partner of the house have become, or will be, still more intimate.

Mrs. Sandford has left Boston and gone to live with her relatives some fifty miles distant;—­the place Mr. Easelmann can tell, as he has had occasion to send her a few letters.

The personages of our drama are all dismissed; the curtain begins to fall; but a voice is heard, “What became of the Bulls and Bears?” What became of Mars and Minerva after the siege of Troy?  Men die; but the deities, infernal as well as celestial, live on.  Fortunes may rise like Satan’s chef d’oeuvre of architecture, may be transported from city to city like the palace of Aladdin, or may sink into salt-water lots as did the Cities of the Plain; success may wait upon commerce and the arts, or desolation may cover the land; still, surviving all change, and profiting alike by prosperity and by calamity, the secret, unfathomable agents in all human enterprises will remain the BULLS AND BEARS.

* * * * *

THE SPHINX.

  Go not to Thebes.  The Sphinx is there;
  And thou shalt see her beauty rare,
  And thee the sorcery of her smile
  To read her riddle shall beguile.

  Oh! woe to those who fail to read! 
  And woe to him who shall succeed! 
  For he who fails the truth to show
  The terror of her wrath shall know: 

  But should’st thou find her mystery,
  Not less is Death assured to thee;
  For she shall cease, and thou shalt sigh
  That she no longer is, and die.

A CHARGE WITH PRINCE RUPERT.

  “Thousands were there, in darker fame that dwell,
  Whose deeds some nobler poem shall adorn;
  And though to me unknown, they sure fought well,
  Whom Rupert led, and who were British-born.”

DRYDEN.

I.

THE MARCH.  JUNE 17, 1643.