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Home from the war! All battle-stained,
With that gash upon his breast,
Dead-with the bravest that ever bled,
They have laid him down to rest.

Home from the war! My soldier passed Through the crimson fields of slain,And no brother's cry, nor bugle blast, Can summon him back again.

ing process, because Longfellow is not a man of talents but a man of genius. His Evangeline might have been written by Coleridge. It is equal in sweetness, and purity and tenderness, to the Genevieve of the Englishman, and Coleridge could not have sustained himself through a poem of such length as Evangeline. But there are some things in this volume,

Home from the war! When the brave heart that break away from the cramping of Boston failed,

Came God to my boy's release,

And led him safe to his Father's House, And took him in to its Peace.

IMITATION OF HERRICK.

TO JULIA.

No more I'll seek for coral red, Or pearls from out the deep; My Julia's lips are coral caves, And pearly treasures keep.

The dimple in my Julia's cheek

Is where she hides her smiles; When round her mouth they play go seek, And sport in wanton wiles.

And as the lake's unruffled breast Reflects the starry sky,

The thoughts of her unsullied soul, Are pictured in her eye.

C. LAURIE.

BOOK NOTICE.

The Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Graceful, kindly, genial, humorous, witty, these be the adjectives which express the impressions this little volume makes upon us. Holmes is a poet of the Boston school, a school as marked in its characteristics, as the cockney school of London of forty or fifty years since, when Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb were singing; and the local influences are discernible in all he writes. Yet despite their contracting effect, he now and then sweeps into a wider range, and indicates what he might have done had his associations been larger, and had the fountains of his inspiration sprung in the fields of a broader humanity. There is something in the literary air of Boston, which, if it nourishes, yet narrows poetic talent, so that in reading the rhymes of its literati, you feel as if they were less poured out from a free heart, for the enjoyment of all who choose to read them, than prepared, like a college prize poem, for the lecture room, with a straining after telling passages, and an eye all through to the "great applause here," of the audience, Longfellow escapes this shrink

fetters."The Last Leaf" is a city lyric, to be sure; but it is a picture, and a perfect one, that might be taken by a poet in any city, and one in which, like the Fool, in Lear, the comic humor only heightens the pity and the sympa thy we feel for the old man, who

"shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

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How perfect that "feeble " there.

Admirable, too, is the poem "On Lending a Punch Bowl"; the roll of the measure in such rich keeping with the theme; almost every stanza changing the scene, varying the interest, and replenishing the spirit to the brim. And then, the moral, thoroughly true, and boldly spoken in these namby-pamby days. All honor to the man, who, in this generation, can tell us the vigorous truth, that

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'Tis but the fool that loves excess; hast thou a drunken soul?

The bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl."

Agnes," the ballad which opens the second part of the volume, is so well done, is such a near approach to the life and spirit of the old English, though falling much short of the old Scottish ballads, that we cannot help wishing that the author had made both a study from which to copy, and that instead of College Odes, and Lyceum Poems, he had given himself to this, to us, the most delightful of all the forms in which poetry revels.

Agnes, a girl of Massachusetts while it was yet a colony, and the mistress of Sir Harry Frankland, goes with him to Lisbon, and rescues him from death by the great earthquake of 1755. In gratitude, he marries her, and years afterwards they revisit, in happiness and security, the scene of the catastrophe. "Again through Lisbon's orange bowers,

They watch the river's gleam,
And shudder as her shadowy towers

Shake in the trembling stream." That is a touch of nature. Would he throw himself abroad on a freer wing oftener than he does, as, for example, he does do, in his fine poem for the Burns' Centennial, he would be less perhaps a favorite of Boston, but certainly, more a favorite of Nature. And he can do it if he would but try.

THE

LADIES' REPOSITORY

DECEMBER, 1862.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD THE HOPE OF Christ, even while he believes in the om

THE WORLD.

BY REV. T. B. THAYER.

"I am God, and there is none else. I have

sworn by myself, The word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear, surely shali say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength."

"He shall not fail nor be discouraged, Till he have set judgment in the earth: And the

isles shall wait for his law."-ISAIAH.

These passages reveal to us the sovereignty of God both in the government, and in the salvation of the world. And they show us that Christ, sent of him on the work of redemption, will not fail nor be discouraged till justice is established in the earth, and all are made obedient to his law of love.

In view of this, I wish to call attention to the feeling, if not belief, which sometimes gets place in the heart of the laborer in the cause of Truth and Humanity, and which expresses itself in this form:

"The power and dominion of Error and Sin seem to be too much for Truth and Righteousness. Satan appropriates to himself more of the world than God and the Saviour. Mankind are given over to falsehood and wickedness; and the labor of Reform and Redemption is discouraged by want of success, and by the tremendous odds arrayed against them."

So feels and reasons, sometimes, the philanthropist, the patriot, the real lover and friend of his race. So also, not unoften thinks the Christian, the servant of

nipotence of God, and in the revelations of the gospel of hope and redemption he has given us. And surely it must be allowed that this sorrowful view is not altogether without excuse, when we consider the political, social and religious condition of the world.

Crowded cities full of sin and shame; splendid palaces, where thousands are lavished in luxury and dissipation, and enough wasted in a single evening's amusement to make some suffering family comfortable for a whole year; and within call of these princely dwellings, hovels, garrets and cellars where disease and hunger and squallid misery are clutching at the throats and slowly draining the lifeblood from the hearts of their helpless and friendless victims; thousands willing to work, but having no work to do; thousands of young children wandering through the streets, ignorant, vicious, homeless, half-clothed and half fed, ready for any desperate act, and maintaining a kind of perpetual guerilla warfare against society; crime stalking forth into the land unblushing, and often unrebuked; slavery lifting its huge, dark form, bellowing in its vehement, blind rage, like a great dragon, over its millions of victims; Rum with its millions of victims, its blasted minds and broken bodies, its crushed hearts, and comfortless homes. And then

this terrible war, desolating our land, with its fearful sacrifices of blood, its ruined towns and villages and fields, its blasted 16

homes, its widows and orphans, its shattered bodies and crushed hearts-all to gratify the ambition of a few vile and wicked men these make up some of the shades in the world-picture. And surely they witness to a terrible prevalence of the animal and devilish, for the present at least, in some departments of our life. They show that with all the talk of progress and education and civilization-confessedly very great in some directionswith all the benevolent enterprize and religious teaching and effort, there is still a large space in the vineyard, which brings forth a bountiful harvest of thorns and bri

ars.

If we review the Religious world as such, the result is not widely different in many points. Though, seen as a whole, there is something to hope and believe, yet in some of its parts, locally considered, the odds against the truth, and the slow and difficult step with which it makes its practical conquests, give to the question a mournful aspect. We see the beautiful religion of Jesus, which was given to bless the soul with faith, and freedom, and joy, made an engine for crushing it into the most abject servitude and misery. We see the most powerful branch of the Christian church, claiming to be the mother of all the rest, lording it over the minds and consciences, over the social life and domestic arrangements, of her millions of subjects, with a despotism as iron and as irresponsible as that of the old Cæsars; and her position such as to make her power, and almost her very existence, depend on the success with which she opposes the progress of political and religious liberty, untrammelled popular education, and the development of intellectual individualism. Looking at the favorite, though partially wayward daughter of this mother, we find little advance in what is essential to religious truth and freedom. The Church by law established, at once the petted child, and the pliant servant of the State, with its pampered prelates, revelling in the luxury and indolence of an $100.000 annual income, while the poor curates, who do the work these men are paid for, starve on $300―this church stupidly quarrelling over the dead forms and traditions of

the past, and deposing those who have gone beyond the creed, instead of doing the work of the living present, this daughter, is younger to be sure, but not much more beautiful to look upon than the mother.

So all round it will be found there is vastly more church than Christianity in the world. The all-embracing and all-enduring Love of the gospel which took in the whole human race, has been narrowed down into love of sect and party. Its liberal and generous spirit, its God-given benediction on all honest search after truth, have been displaced and denounced as the soul's great peril, by the intolerance of earth-born creeds and churches. Its sublime doctrines of Faith and the Resurrection, and the great Restoration of all souls, have been put aside for the dogmas of the Pharisee and the fictions of the poet.

It is not wonderful that this exhibition of the triumphs of error and sin and crime should damp the spirits, and sometimes, for a space, shake the courage of the philanthropist, the patriot, and the Christian even, when he forgets that now we see through a glass darkly, and know in part only.

And this disheartening influence is the greater, beyond estimate, when those who have been delivered intellectually from the bondage of error, remain practically in the bondage of sin; when those who acknowl edge the truth, and profess to have right doctrinal views of the gospel of Christ, yet remain unaffected by its divine and holy spirit, indifferent, cold and hard, and ut terly indisposed to labor or make the least sacrifice of personal interest in its behalf. When it comes to this, as alas, it too often does, then surely it is discouraging enough, and the shadows will gather on the heart, however faith and reason may fling them off by the power of a severe logic. Then, indeed, they who have entered the work, and feel that they have spent their strength in vain, are ready to turn back.

I have stated the question now, as I think, in its strength; and it is precisely at this point, when in this condition of mind and heart, when discouraged with

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battling against such odds in the hosts of error and sin, and dismayed with the desolations they have wrought, and ready to abandon the contest, and let the world, and falsehood and Satan have it all in their own way it is precisely at this point that the gospel presents itself, and reveals the fulness of its blessing, and the glory of its promise, and the eternal fact that after all the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, and cannot be dethroned or defeated!

This is the rock, planted by the gospel, on which the philanthropist and reformer, and the Christian must stand, if securely, amid the discouragements of their work. Here they may stand, and the heaving sea of folly and shame, of error and sin, may beat against it, but they cannot be moved. Nor winds, nor rains, nor the roaring flood can shake their strong hold, or put in peril or in doubt the final issue. The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! He is Maker, and Ruler, and Master of the universe; he doeth his will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand. He is mightier than all falsehood and evil and sin. He has purposed through Christ, the utter destruction of these, and the deliverance of all his intelligent off spring from the bondage of them into the glorious freedom of Truth and Holiness. The great work may not go on as we should direct, not as speedily as we should advise; but God has the matter in his hands, and will see that the interests of all are provided for in the wisest manner. He did not make the world in one day, but in six. He sent ten plagues on Pharaoh and his people; though one, had he willed it, might have been terrible enough to have subdued them. He might have sent Christ to his work 2000 years before he did; and he might, by the exercise of his almighty energies, have converted the whole world, through Christ, in eighteen years, instead of only a part in 1800 years. But it is quite likely that the plan he is acting on now, was not chosen without a clear understanding that it would prove the best plan,-that the gradual education and discipline of the race, and the steady growth that should come of its own

struggles and toils, would be far better than a sudden miracle which should lift them all into knowledge and freedom at once.

Error and sin may appear to have the wind of Truth and Righteousness; but the great revelation of the gospel comes to bless us in our time of weariness and doubt. God is at the helm! He is still the Almighty and All-wise Ruler.

He bade the struggling beams of infant light

night

Shoot through the massy gloom of ancient
His spirit hushed the elemental strife,
And fed the kindling flame of Nature's life.
And still He rules with absolute command,
O'er the wild ocean and the steadfast land
He reigns supreme, almighty and alone,
And all creation hangs beneath his throne
Let heaven's high arches echo with his name,
And all the peopled earth his praise proclaim-
Wide, and more wide his purposed grace ex-
tending,
Through boundless space, and ages never-end-
ing.

No unbelief, then, that God's Truth can not overcome, no darkness he cannot enlighten, no sin too strong for him to conquer.

Even the wrath of man shall praise him, and the remainder he will restrain; and the very confusion and uproar which seem to us to mar his plans, and to make chaos of the political, social and religious world these are not successful antagonists to the Infinite One. They shall yield to the almighty will, acting through the Saviour. In the fulness of times all enemies shall be subdued unto him and be destroyed, even to the last, which is Death.

If the Bible be true, if the gospel revelations are not beautiful fictions, if the mission of Christ be not a pitiful and dismal failure, if the doctrine of an almighty and all-perfect God be not a dream of the night-then certainly, beyond all doubt or contingency, this must be the conclusion of the whole matter.

And this is the truth to which we must cling, in every season of gloom and heartsickness, in every time when we feel ready to desert the post God has assigned us, and let the winds and waves do their wild

work, and the good ship go ashore. And I think we are all in this temper sometimes. There are moments when the strongest get disheartened by the forbidding aspects which the world puts on, by the apparent failure of the sacrifices in behalf of Liberty and civilization, by the seeming utter uselessness of all the labor performed in the cause of reform and religion; the perfect barrenness, so far as we can see, of the fields which, in the beat and burthen of the day, our fathers and we have toiled so hard to cultivate into fruitfulness. I think few who have been in this labor any number of years, have escaped these seasons of doubt and almost entire, hopeless discouragement.

Now what we want, at these times, to hold us up, and refresh our weary hearts, and renew our strength for the great battle against falsehood and sin, against treason and barbarism, is the very witness we have given the great gospel Truth that God is in the midst of us, ruling in his own way, if not in ours, restraining, subduing, defeating, training and perfecting; that nothing can thwart him, no evil hinder him. With what force and beauty Paul concludes his statement of this glorious consummation: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." Your labor cannot be unfruitful. Defeat, finally, is not possible. Victory is certain. The chariot of God moves steadily to the goal, whether in the calm of the sunshine, or through the tempest. and the whirlwind. Darkness and Light, Evil and Good, Truth and Error, worlds spiritual and material, are alike in his power, and are made the instruments of his will. And when the end cometh, his great plan shall be justified, his wisdom glorified, and his Infinite Goodness exalted with adoration and praise of men and angels, forever and forevermore !

Humanity is so constituted that the basest criminal represents you and me, as well as the most glorious saint that walks on high. We are reflected in all other men, and all other men are embodied in us.-Chapin's Living Words.

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They tell me she was young and fair,
With dark eyes soft and dreaming;
With shining braids of auburn hair,

And smiles with gladness beaming;
And that a sweet, unconscious grace,
Pervaded every feature,

That gloom and sadness had no place,
Within her joyous nature.

They say her voice was sweet and clear,
And when its tones were ringing,
The very birds might pause to hear,
The music of her singing;
Or when in cadence sad and low,

It touched the chord of feeling,
Unbidden tears would softly flow,
Its hidden power revealing.

They say she had a poet's soul,

Of deep and warm emotion, And read in all things beautiful, Sweet lessons of devotion; She had a Christian's heart of love, A Christian's self-denial, And trusted in her God above,

For strength in every trial.

My mother! ere that blessed word
My childish lips had spoken,
Death's angel loosed the silver cord,
The golden bowl was broken;
She perished with the dying year,

And when the new was given,
Her eyes had closed upon us here,
Her soul had flown to heaven.

God sent the messenger of death,
To take the life he lent her,
And she was gently laid beneath

The drifting snows of winter; And in the spring she loved so well,

They decked her grave with roses, And raised a plain white stone to tell

Where mother's dust reposes.

But with the gift of each New Year, That brings its mirth and gladness, There ever steals upon my ear,

A mingled note of sadness; For when the bells, with merry tone, Salute its joyous dawning, They tell me I was left alone,

On such a New Year's morning.

'Tis well, and I will not complain,

Our Father holds the measure, And metes his children joy or pain, According to his pleasure:

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