and she heard and saw no more of what was going on around her, till the
interest of the conversation was again able to take hold of her.

There was frequently reading aloud. Alette had a real talent for this,
and it was a genuine enjoyment to hear from her lips, poems of Velhaven
and Vergeland; which two young men, although personal enemies, in this
respect have extended to each other a brotherly hand, because they
sincerely love their native land, and have exhibited much that is
beautiful and ennobling in its literature.

In the mean time, Susanna became continually less at ease in her mind;
Harald no longer, as before, sought her company, and seemed almost to
have forgotten her in Alette. In the conversations, at which she was now
often present, there was much which touched her feelings, and awoke in
her questions and imaginations; but when she attempted to express any of
these, when she would take part and would show that she too could think
and speak, then fell the words so ill, and her thoughts came forth so
obscurely, that she herself was compelled to blush for them; especially
when on this, Alette would turn her eyes upon her with some
astonishment, and Harald cast down his; and she vowed to herself never
again to open her mouth on subjects which she did not understand.

But all this sunk deep into her bosom; and in her self-humiliation she
lamented bitterly the want of a more careful education, and sighed from
the depths of her heart, "Ah! that I did but know a little more! That I
did but possess some beautiful talent!"

AN EVENING IN THE SITTING-ROOM.

And is it once morning, then is it noon-day,
For the light must eternally conquer.

FOSS.

It was a lovely summer evening. Through the open windows of the
sitting-room streamed in the delicious summer air with the fragrance of
the hay, which now lay in swath in the dale. At one table, Susanna
prepared the steaming tea, which the Norwegians like almost as much as
the English; at another sate Mrs. Astrid with Harald and Alette,
occupied with the newly-published beautiful work, "Snorre Sturleson's
Sagas of the Norwegian Kings, translated from the Icelandic of J. Aal."
The fourth number of this work lay before Harald, open at the section
"The Discovery of Vineland." He had just read aloud Mr. Aal's
interesting introduction to the Sagas of Erik Roede and Karlefne, and now
proceeded to read these two Sagas themselves, which contained the
narrati