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tears of the sorrowing bystanders. Being asked who was to succeed him, he mentioned no person by name, but said merely, "Whoever was most worthy." ""* He never would wear the ensign of royalty, saying, "It was too great arrogance for him to be crowned for glory, in that city in which God had been crowned in mockery." He died on the fifteenth before the kalends of August.

Death and Sleep.

EDWIN ARNOLD.

THIS promising young poet, whose Newdegate prize-poem, entitled "Belshazzar's Feast," has been amongst the most successful in latter years, has subsequently published a small volume of graceful miscellaneous poems, from which we select the following:

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The last good-night of the vesper-bell
Shook the still leaf with a longer swell;
The small bird slept in his woven bed,
With brown wing shrouding his weary head.
You looked-and the stars were all away;
You looked-and they spangled the silent grey,
Blossoming out as sudden and soon

As the last new buds in a night of June;

And over the hills was a silver bar

Where the moon kept watch for the evening-star;

*Probably having in mind the similar answer of Alexander the Great on his death-bed.

B

For never unloved, and never alone,

The star-queen comes to her cloudy throne.
"Twas even then when the sky was still
I saw two shapes on a western hill;
One was sadly and sweetly fair,

Stoled in the gloss of his sable hair,

His fingers were filled with a sheaf of spears,
But the blades were dull with his falling tears.
One was a fair and a blooming boy,

His forehead alight with a quiet joy;

But his lids were low, and his lips locked tight,
And he spake the speech of a dream at night.
One had wings of the raven's plume,
The other was winged with silver bloom;

I knew them then, and I know them now-
The gods of the dark and the drooping brow;
Dreams beyond counting, and nights without number,
I had seen the smile of the god of slumber,
The other not yet-but I know his name,
Before from his brother its accent came.

SLEEP.

Brother of me! I have waved my wing!
The world and its sorrows are slumbering;
I have driven the morning and noon away,
And man is free to forget to-day;

They sleep by the river and on the hill,
Never, before, were their hearts as still;

For I fastened the fingers of sorrow and pain

With a bond, till the sunlight shall break it again.
And Silence, our beautiful sister, keeps

The door of their dreams till the morning peeps.
Thou, who dost love them better than they
Have the wit to know, or the strength to say,
Wilt thou not sit thee and sharpen to-night
The sting of thy spears, that they strike aright,
And tell me thy tales of the sorrow of life,
And the soul's sweet joy at the ended strife:
How Anguish doth strive for its angel-prey,
Till the glad life springs from the sinking clay;
And the groan of pain is a cry of bliss
When the spirit hath sight of its happiness?
Why dost thou sorrow, strong brother, now
With a drooping plume, and a darkened brow?

DEATH.

Silver-winged Sleep! when the dawnings break
Do they sing thee hymns for thy service-sake?
Cometh there ever a blessing or prayer
For thy gentle love and thy tender care?

SLEEP.

Dost thou not know that the poets keep
Their rarest rhymes for the soother, sleep?
Hast thou not heard as thou flittest along
A mother sing to me her cradle-song?
At the sick girl's pillow they know me well,
And woo me with many a magical spell!

But most thou mayst hear them at break of day,
Chorussing sleep, when the gloom is away;
The lover that leaps from the promise of dreams
To a bride and a kiss, that no longer seems;
The worker that wakes from his healthful rest
With a steadier hand and stronger breast;

The love-stricken lady and sorrowing man,
And the captive that slept while the watches ran;
All sing me praise at the step of morn,

For the pleasant sleep that is over and gone.

DEATH.

Have I not loved them as well as thou,
Though I come with a sterner and sadder brow?
The spears that I bear in my strong right-hand,
Are they not keys to the Better-Land?
Alas! if they strike to the sinking heart,
So must the soul and the body part;

But they open the prison and shatter the chain,
And loosen from life and its lingering pain;
Yet never to me do the mortals sing

A carol of thanks for my comforting.

When shall the blindness of man have end? When shall they know me their lover and friend?

SLEEP.

Comfort thee, brother! they do but sleep,
And the darkness of life doth their senses keep.
Spake I not now, that my praise is said
Most when the midnight is vanished and fled?
Kind-hearted brother! the time shall be,
When anthems and hymns shall be all to thee;
For the morning shall come to the long life-night,
Then shall they know thee and love thee aright.

And I saw them fade into the stars above,
With hands fast locked, as in spirit love.
And I wandered again to the city by.
With a hope to live and a heart to die.

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Character of Benjamin Franklin.

BANCROFT.

MR. BANCROFT's name, happily, still exists among the living ones of America. From his gracefully written history (so free from the too frequent turgidity of our Transatlantic brethren), we select the following sketch of one of the greatest teachers, and yet self-taught men, of modern times.

Benjamin Franklin, when but seventeen years old, sailed clandestinely for New York, and finding there no employment, went to Amboy; went on foot to the Delaware; for want of a wind rowed in a boat from Burlington to Philadelphia; and, bearing marks of his labour at the oar, weary, hungry, having for his whole stock of cash a single dollar, the runaway apprenticegreatest of the sons of New England of that generation, the humble pupil of the free schools of Boston, rich in the boundless hope of youth, and the unconscious power of genius which modesty adorned-stepped on shore to seek food, occupation, shelter, and

fortune.

On the deep foundations of sobriety, frugality, and industry, the young journeyman built his fortunes and fame; and he soon came to have a printing-office of his own. Toiling early and late, with his own hands he set types and worked at press; with his own hands would trundle to the office in a wheelbarrow the reams of paper which he was to use. His ingenuity was such, he could form letters, make types and woodcuts, and engrave vignettes in copper. The Assembly of Pennsylvania respected his merit, and chose him its printer. He planned a newspaper, and when he became its proprietor and editor, he fearlessly defended absolute freedom of thought and speech, and the inalienable power of the people. Desirous of advancing education, he proposed improvements in the schools of subscription libraries, and laid the foundation of one that was long the most considerable library in America; he suggested the establishment of an academy, which has ripened into a university; he saw the benefit of concert in the pursuit of science, and gathered a philosophical society for its advancement. The intelligent and highly-cultivated Logan bore testimony to his merits before they had burst upon the world:-"Our most ingenious printer has the clearest understanding, with extreme modesty. He is certainly an extraordinary man-excellent, yet humble. Do not imagine," he adds, "that I overdo in my character of Benjamin Franklin, for I am rather short in it."

When the scientific world began to investigate the wonders of electricity, Franklin excelled all observers in the marvellous simplicity and lucid exposition of his experiments, and in the admirable sagacity with which he elicited from them the laws which they illustrated. It was he who first suggested the expla

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