t southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston
Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it.

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we
came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried
to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got
out the question,----Will you take the long path with me?--
Certainly,--said the schoolmistress,--with much pleasure.----Think,--I
said,--before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I
shall interpret it that we are to part no more!----The schoolmistress
stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her.
One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by,--the one you
may still see close by the Gingko-tree.----Pray, sit down,--I
said.----No, no,--she answered, softly,--I will walk the _long path_
with you!

----The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm,
about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,--"Good
morning, my dears!"

LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Life of John Fitch, the Inventor of the Steamboat_. By THOMPSON
WESTCOTT. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

What would not honest Sancho have given for a good biography of the
man who invented sleep? And will not the adventurous pleasure-tourist,
who has been jarred, jammed, roasted, coddled, and suffocated in a
railroad-car for a whole night, with two days to sandwich it, on being
deposited in an airy stateroom for the last two hundred miles of his
journey, think the man who invented the steamboat deserving of a
"first-rate" life? We well remember the time when nobody suspected
that person, whoever he might be,--and nobody much cared who he
was,--of any relationship to the individual whose memory Sancho
blessed, so great was the churning in the palaces that then floated.
But in our present boats this unpalace-like operation has been so
localized and mollified as to escape the notice of all but the
greenest and most inquisitive passengers. And now that we find the
luxury of travelling by water actually superior to that of staying at
home on land, we begin to feel a budding veneration for the man who
first found out that steam could be substituted, with such marvellous
advantage, for helpless dependence on the wind and miserable tugging
at oars and setting-poles. Who was he? What circumstances conspired to
shape his life and project it with so notable an aim? How did h