At an

pistol, in which case they fight with heroic des-ality of the remark which startled me.
peration, and sometimes come off victorious.
But a pistol or gun in the hands of the enemy
brings them to terms very speedily-and thus
are they forced to pay the tax that breaks the
camel's back. It ought to be a consolation to
them to know that they do it for the benefit of
civilization. Every dime they pay benefits some
white whisky-dealer in Virginia City or Carson,
or some other civilized place.

other time it might have seemed very trite. It
may have been that it answered an unuttered
question in my mind-Whether character may
be safely estimated from the mere outward ap-
pearance. Or perhaps it was its peculiar fitness
to the time and place.

I said it startled me; but more startling was the train of thought it suggested. In an instaut my feelings of deep love and sympathy were changed to profound admiration and a sort of awe. It frightened as well as humbled me to

its passion, sorrow, and joy from eyes like mine, and of the lips which had uttered such bold, brave words before a host of enemies ;. lips human as mine own, yet seeming hardly human when touched with divine inspiration.

I have mainly confined myself in the foregoing sketches to a delineation of the characteristic features of Virginia City and its surround-think of the giant soul which had looked forth ings, during the excitement which prevailed in the latter part of 1863; reserving for another and more serious paper a detailed account of the mines and mills. The progress of Washoe has been unexampled in the history of mining. No country of which I have any knowledge has made so rapid an advance, and with so little benefit to capitalists or individuals. That there is great wealth of mineral in the country is beyond question, that a very bad use has been made of it, so far, is equally undeniable. In 1860, the amount of bullion shipped from Virginia City was $40,000; in '61, $130,000; in '62, $220,000; in '63, $7,000,000, and in '64 the shipments probably reached $10,000,000; yet San Francisco is nearly bankrupt by its Washoe investments, and Virginia City is no better off, save in this-that what is lost there falls upon outside speculators.

Allow me now, as the result of careful observation and grave deliberation, to whisper a word in your ear, gentle reader. Do you own stocks in the Ophir, the Savage, the Chollar, the Gould and Curry, the Potosi, the Yellow Jacket, or other prominent leads, and would you like to know what you had better do with them--whether sell them or hold on to them? I will tell you candidly; if the stocks were mine, I'd-think about it! Are you the possessor of a few thousand dollars which you'd like to invest to good advantage, and would it be a promising speculation to invest in one of the three companies on the Comstock ledge, that pays dividends at the present writing? Now, I'll tell you candidly what I would do if I had a few thousand dollars to spare-I'd start on a foot tour through Tartary, and wind up with a camel-ride through Persia!

I

FACES.

WAS standing between the two when I heard it; between the two faces of my two ideals; between two types of what a mighty human life could be. On my right was the shadow, but faintly streaked with light; on my left, the steady radiance of one emerged victorious from the cloud. Involuntarily I was saying to myself, "Poor Dante !" "Great, grand Luther!" looking meanwhile from the one to the other, hardly knowing which pleased me better.

"The face is the index of the soul"-this is what I heard. It certainly was not the origin

Ah!-thought I-between us, Luther, what a great, deep gulf is fixed! Only in one point can I approach you; but that one point will soon be broad enough to conceal all differences. In the day when we bow before the throne both faces, yours and mine, will look equally dim before the brightness of the Father's glory!

In

And Dante-I crept away from Luther to look up to him. Then I could not fear. finitely above me in intellect, his soul was too intensely human to leave me very far below. Again I said, Poor Dante! The proud, passionate features are softened by much suffering, but the lines of doubt and weary longing Faith alone can take away! You and I have much more in common. You could not quite penetrate within the veil. Just in the act of tearing it away, you heard, "Touch not with hands unclean!" You were too earthly yet to grasp the mysteries of the Beyond; your eyes too weak to bear the dazzling splendor of heavenly revelations!

What a leap! to come from features marked with soul-beauty almost superhuman, down to features marked not even by positive ugliness; features plain, plain beyond all dispute! What a leap, to come from Luther and Dante down to myself!

And yet one can not always walk in the clouds. The descent to the commonplace will and must be sudden and jarring, however carefully one may let himself down. Therefore, omitting all intermediate steps, passing by wondrous beauty and faces endowed with minor gifts, I come at once into the valley-not the valley of humiliation-I spare myself and the mirror opposite that trial; but into the valley where I find the generality of faces-nothing remarkable in the eyes of the great world.

I went into a school-room one day filled with strange girls. That story of grace and beauty being impersonated in maidenhood, and reaching their climax in a group of maidens, I immediately set down as fabulous-a mere myth. At the first glance I should have imagined them all fashioned in the same mould, enough difference being allowed in the coloring to distinguish them.

I cast in my lot with the group. A year aft

ter, comparing my first and present impressions, And yet we have to thank God that sorrow is I analyzed one of the unnoticed, common faces. not without its complement; that, on the whole, How could I ever have called it common ! To the scales are pretty nearly balanced. To be be sure, the eyes were gray, but the soul be- sure we, wayward, selfish children that we are, hind them was loving, trustful, brave. Nor hardly notice the measure of joy when full to were the less important features either those overflowing, and when the superabundance is of a Venus or a Hebe; yet to me they were the other way wonder why Our Father fills it so radiant with beauty. Ah, how I loved that very, very full. face! I loved it far, far too well. I remember when Death set his seal upon it, and froze to stillness the last, holiest expression of her features. That-thought I-is the face that she will rise with! Looking upon it, the angels themselves will smile as they fling the gate a little wider open, and Christ the Lord will murmur, "Thou art mine!"

And it was not merely faces dear to me which assumed new aspects as I learned to know them. The whole school-room had become a little busy world alive with the passions that come up upon the surface of life. Sometimes, daring to dive through the billows, I had even caught the glimmer of the pearls below.

Truly Carlyle was wiser than I when he said, that in the commonest human face there lies more than Raphael will take away with him. If Raphael, that wonderful soul-painter, must leave something behind in his search for the minutest beauties, how can I, with coarse, unpracticed eyes, hope to discern these hidden things? Therefore, fearing to lose myself immediately in such a delicate maze of expressions, I will attempt to touch only upon several phases of the human countenance universally acknowledged to be true pictures of the soul.

I think the picture of the most perfect, unalloyed joy is found in the face of a little child. Indeed I think that childhood is the only period of life in which one can feel, I am perfectly happy; where there is not the lurking shadow of a sorrow or a dread. Not that children are without their troubles. I have not got so far beyond "Where the brook and river meet," that I can say that and think that I speak truth. their cares are light and transient. It is possible to fling them off entirely.

But

Analyze a child's face. Round, fat, fair. No wrinkles; none of those deep, ugly lines that mark an inward warfare. No weariness or languor either, as if one had lived his happiness away and wanted only to get through. Nothing is seen but little shadows, appearing and vanishing as quickly, to break the monotony.

With this lack of keen and heavy sorrow, which they are so blessed in, comes also another lack. Human nature certainly is capable of a higher enjoyment than mere freedom from care and suffering. This negative happiness is not suited to an earnest, fighting man. There can be nothing in a child's countenance to thrill or charm you. It wants the look

"Such as soul gives soul at length,

When, by work and wail of years, It winneth a solemn strength." The strength and peace interspersed with and crowning the life-struggle are proportioned to this "work and wail of years."

The steps are many and steep which lead from pure to intense happiness-up from the blank joy of a baby's face to the expression of that joy which "passeth understanding.” Between these

Perhaps sorrow is the most familiar. I, with the rest of mankind, have received and seen my portion. I remember when the terrible news came. I was sitting by the window, alternately looking at the sunshine without and within. They were chatting-my brothers and sistersin that pleasant undertone which accompanies only pleasant talk. Very fair they looked to me; young, innocent, untouched with grief or care. You could have told it from the sweet-the baby's and the saint's-we find faces emlines about the mouths, and the bright lustre of their happy eyes. Even a stranger would have known that life had been as yet an easy, pleasant thing. I was sitting thinking thus, when, glancing opposite, I saw a face which I had never seen before; the same features, but that which makes the face, the whole expression, was one entirely foreign to our walls. It was

not agony.
Even that would have been better.
I thought of a dark cloud-dark with the fiercest,
blackest rains-and I knew that it was soon to
break, that duty was forcing out the storm. I
waited and he spoke. He told it. Not a groan,
not a cry.
Our tears and hearts alike were
frozen. Only our eyes seemed to dilate with the
new, strange terror as we looked at one another,
and white rings to shape themselves about our
lips. It was more than common grief; that
would have poured forth in words its bitterness;
this bound itself all up into our faces. What
little, little faces to contain a world of woe!

bodying the advanced joys of earth. Grand they are of their kind indeed; feeble only when compared with the joy of him who "seeth the invisible."

Love, it is said, irradiates every feature, banishes other intruding expressions, and reigns supreme over the entire countenance. My little experience certainly confirms this truth. Wisdom and sense usually take flight very willingly, I believe that is, if the simpering smile of gratified vanity and the complacent smile of a petty ambition are granted to belong to true love. If not, and the word be used in a restricted sense, there is very little to be said upon the subject, as the eye of the public is seldom permitted to behold the transfiguration.

The various expressions of Affection are more common, and if less exquisite, are not without rare beauty.

Among the family affections, perhaps that of a mother manifested toward her little helpless

child is the most beautiful. Just as tightly she
binds her love around it just as firmly she ties am
her life and hopes down to it, as if the baby-soul
were able to give back an answering devotion.
It is such a sweet, holy expression, that of the
mother-love-the very reflection of the baby's
own for meekness, but withal so strong; so able
to breast the storms and brave the tempests of
life for her little one. With the feeble humani-
ty clinging about her, her frailty becomes might,
her fear boldness.

"Made like God, and, though undone,"

"Not unmade for love and life."

I forget that originally God created us in "His own image," and that if we enter in the gate we shall again be like Him. I forget that all the expressions of our earthly features approaching the heavenly will remain, changed only as they are glorified.

Would that my face might be among the sanctified that mine might be among the number from which pride, prejudice, and passion are uprooted, fit only to glance up and meet his smile!

Filial affection ranks hardly inferior in beauty of expression. I watched a little child one day gazing with a sort of adoration upon the face of its fair young mother. Somebody remarked that by the love of years he could not repay or equal the love of his mother to him. How passionately he resented it!-vowing to prove it false. And when he going up the hill, she down; his boyish face becoming strong, her womanly face weak-that vow turned to action, the adoration growing day by day, until he could worship the real face no longer, worshiping only the glorified, as he saw it through the adamantine walls reflected on the jasper sea-till denied or satisfied, until I either sink

Ah, that face of faces! that face where the perfection of beauty dwells! Sometimes I seem to see it faintly, looking down upon me through the mists of woe-the mists which are too black and thick for any gaze but the Divine to pierce. I fancy that the meek eyes pity me, and that the glory of the halo round the head softens before my anguish. It is very sweet, this dim appearance, comforting and strengthening my soul. I know that I could not bear more, and yet the yearning to behold it plainly will not leave me

"Where myriad faces, like one changeless face, With woe, not love, shall glass me every where, And overcome me with mine own despair;" rise where there are no more clouds or shadows, where Luther, Dante, and the many multitudes, flinging off disguises, shall stand before me as they are, while I, with new, ethereal eyes, shall look upon them and my Lord not as in a vision, not as in a glass, darkly, but as if seeing face to face.

then, indeed, I thought, has he not proved it?
The gratification of lofty ambitions gives to
the countenance the expression of one of the
grandest of earthly joys, though it should hard-or
ly be called gratified ambition which raises the
face of the poet so far above the common level.
That enraptured look-half delight, half con-
sciousness of victory-comes when he is able to
tune to harmony the dreamy, floating music of
his brain, and to grasp the shadowy forms of
ideal images, moulding them with his delicate
touch to perfect symmetry. Even then it is
very pleasant to behold the multitudes lifting up
their heads and shouting pæans of praise to his
name-the multitudes, less fortunate, whose lips
will open to no melody, who can only echo back
his songs he standing far above, meanwhile,
looking with a kind of godlike scorn upon the
plain below.

At length we come to the joy of joys. It has outstripped freedom from care, love, ambition. Far, far up it stands; so far that it is only half earthly; so far that it partakes of the heavenly. Not by its own beauty does the face of the saint surpass us. It looketh down transfigured by the light of God's countenance, that light before whose radiance all falsehood and uncleanness hide away. It is not until the sun of life is very nearly set-until the billows of pride passion, and earthly hope have rolled away, and the face, looking over the ocean, sees only calm low tide-that it can wear this expression of habitual bliss and peace. Our faces, flushed and eager in the morning and noontide heat, changing with the surging billows, present a strange mixture of earth and heaven.

If I shrink abashed while I behold with rapture the expression that a finite face may wear, how would I dare, if near enough, to gaze upon the Infinite? But I forget that no face can be called finite, and that I,

RELICS.

ERE'S a withered leaf, a faded flow'r

Hring, and a lock of hair,

Laid in a casket of sandal-wood,

And carefully treasured there.

Is it not long since the lid was raised,
And why is it opened now?
Ah! turn to that frail, fair, lifeless form,

And look on that death-cold brow.

Though we never knew her history,

They tell of a human love
Which, to us, may remain a mystery;

But surely 'tis known above.

Just look at the relics treasured there,
And what is the tale they tell?
That a woman's love is tried and true

Until death shall break the spell!

The dark lock comes from a youthful brow,
Where the eyes beamed tender love.
"Tis fancy the portrait draws for me,

For the truth we can not prove.

Now shut them up from the light of day,
Turn gently the silver key,
The corpse and casket together laid
In one quiet grave shall be!

VIII.-A RAILROAD ADVENTURE. O General O. M. Mitchel was then marching The War in Tennessee.-General Mitchel's Plans. The across the State of Tennessee, having descendBold Enterprise.-Penetrating the Rebel Lines.-Adroited from the Ohio, and was aiming for ChatSeizure of the Locomotive.-The Flight.-The Pursuit. -Capture of the Adventurers.-Their Sufferings. Trial and Execution of Eight.-The Escape of a Party. -Final Exchange of Survivors.

tanooga, a strategic point of great importance. There was a very important railroad which ran from Memphis, on the Mississippi River, to Charleston, South Carolina, on the Atlantic

ONE of the most chivalric and daring deeds coast. This road passed through the important

performed during the civil war in America, was enacted by a band of twenty-four young men in Georgia in the month of April, 1862.

points of Corinth, Huntsville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, Georgia.

General Mitchel, with his division, was at