read an opening prayer, thanking God for his mercies, and praying the divine blessing upon the nations whose assembled products were before him. This was followed by Handel's sublime "Halleluiah Chorus," executed with strength and precision by the first voices of the metropolis. The effect was overwhelming, and commanded the adoration of all, as they repeated in exalted and swelling octaves, "King of kings and Lord of lords." Human effort had done its utmost to give grandeur and glory to these initiatory ceremonies-the royal children by the Queen's side, the ladies of her court in full dress, the old military and naval heroes, the foreign princes and embassadors, produced all the effect desired of enthusiasm and admiration. The representative of China was so overwhelmed that he started forward, producing great surprise by falling before the Queen and kissing her shoe, which she very gracefully acknowledged. This evidently was not in the expected ceremonies.

The royal procession was now formed, and passed the whole length of the nave up and "down amid the cheers and waving of handkerchiefs of thousands of ladies and gentlemen who lined the sides and filled the vast galleries. The Queen led the Prince of Wales, then ten years old, and Prince Albert followed with the Princess Royal, now the wife of the Prince of Prussia. Every body was thus enabled to see the royal family. The Queen's countenance beamed with joy, and the hearty greeting every-where received was responded to by the most gracious smiles. The next party of greatest attraction was the Duke of Wellington and Marquis of Anglesey, the latter halting slightly on his wooden leg. Tremendous cheering every-where greeted them. The distance traversed was nearly a mile, so the prolonged effect may well be conceived to have been very great. The view east and west during the time was surpassingly grand, never equaled on earth before-the waving banners, the immense multitude all elegantly dressed, the brilliant colors of fabrics, the gushing fountains by the side of tropical plants, the swelling, lofty music, the midday effulgence of an unclouded sun, all conspired to give the climax of the day.

When the circuit was at last made the Queen resumed her seat and directed the opening to be announced, which was repeated again and again by the artillery in the Park till all London reverberated with the joyful news.

As the soil, however rich it may be, can not be productive without culture, so the mind without cultivation can never produce good fruit.

FAREWELL.

BY ANNIE M. BEACH.

"FAREWELL, farewell!" 't is an echo flung
From the years that are passed away;
"T is the last sad note of a shattered harp
Which we never again may play;

Yet oft shall the thought of those vanished years
Come again o'er the heart like a spell,
And the parting thrill of that broken string
Ring out like a funeral knell.

"Farewell, farewell!" says the little child

As he parts with a cherished toy; "Farewell, farewell!" says the gray-haired man As he thinks of a vanished joy. 'Tis a lesson we early learn in life,

And the last faint word we say,

Ere the eye grows dim and the heart is still,
And we pass from the earth away.
"Farewell, farewell!" how the sound rings up
As the earth on the coffin falls;
Down, down to the weary heart it sinks,
And the dream of the past recalls.
Yet others shall come from the haunts of men;
They shall bid to the earth farewell,
And down in the silent dust with these
In their pride shall come to dwell.
Ah, me! how many a sad farewell

Hath told of the parting hour,
Since first from the lip of man it fell
As he passed from the Eden bower!
And when shall the farewell cease to sound,
And the heart be sad no more?

O, not till the spirit hath winged its way
To the beautiful heavenly shore!

Ah, yes! when we drink from the "river of life,"
Where the songs of the angels swell,

When we meet with the loved and the lost of earth, We shall murmur no more, "farewell."

COURAGE.

BY C. P. FLANDERS. WRESTLING with the ills of life, Art thou weary with the strife? Trembling is thy heart with fears? Do thy eyes grow dim with tears? Gather foes about thy way? Do the friends their trust betray? Still press on with firm endeavor, Sorrow can not last forever. Life's a conflict, 't is confessed, With unnumbered ills oppressed; And did God not grace bestow, E'en the stoutest heart must bow. But for him who 'll do and dare, Meekly suffer, calmly bear, It in truth has many a joy That no sorrow can destroy. And when we have reached that shore Where earth's children weep no more, We full recompense shall gain For our toil, and tears, and pain.

THE POET.

BY THRACE TALMON.

HER ERE and there among the people is found "the poet;" consequently, in almost every variety of publication appears "the effusions" of this peculiar individual. Some readers inva riably discover these first, in preference to other articles, while others never or seldom read poetry. "Tastes differ" in this as in every thing else, and it would seem that they differ not less among poets in regard to their choice of themes and their execution. Why is it that a certain class of writers, inexperienced and with the shallowest of brains, if they string together a few puerile rhymes about "True Love," or "The Death of a Lovely Infant," or " A Scene by Moonlight," full of exclamation points and aspirations, smothered in the cotton batting of unsympathizing souls, conclude that such pet bantlings of their imaginations will be acceptable to the editors of periodicals? For the obvious reason that the man assigned, when after praising his dog, which by the way was the ugliest of all knurly curs, before several persons, none of whom inclined to say aught to strengthen him, "Well, I like my dog, if nobody else does n't." These poets like their poetry, if no one else does.

Such poets, on finding their lucubrations rejected, console themselves with the reflection that all great authors met with rebuffs and persecution generally in their beginning, and they must not expect to fare better.

True this is, and herein is the exact horizon of the heavens and the earth, or, in other words, the dividing, imperceptible line between those who have the "heavenly gift of poesy," as Dryden calls it, and those who are of the earth, and never can take any rise above it. If one is a real poet, "born, and not made," all these rejections will only operate as so many stimuli to accomplish something better. But observe, not stimuli to get off more of the same thing, as is the case with those "poets" who have more self-esteem than good judgment.

It is a great mistake to suppose that good poetry is the result of some wonderful inspiration, wholly independent of that labor which must be bestowed to produce excellence in other departments of literature or art. This it is which occasions such a flood of poor, thin verse over all the surface of the periodical world. Because short, exquisitely-beautiful poems by celebrated authors read easily, these tyros imagine they were thrown off like work from a printing-press. Virgil was eleven years in writing the Æneid, and then considered the work not completed. It is related that Isocrates was employed for ten

VOL. XX.-18

years on one work. Milton often reduced a certain number of his lines to one-half the quantity. Edgar Poe says of the composition of his Raven," that "the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem."

By even these few examples it will be seen what time, labor, and thought is required for the production of those works which heir immortality. If it be true that there never was a poem published but what touched some heart with responsive emotion, even these hurrying manufacturers of the article may be comforted that they have not lived in vain. Those poems which are the truest to real life, making the old, or homely, or common, beautiful and sweet, and hallowed by the tenderest associations, will always be preferred by the people to those on sublimer themes, however they may be stamped with immortality. The plain didactics, heart-ballads, epics of real life, and idyls of home scenes, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Cowper, and others have written, are often on the tongues of the multitudes that care little for Homer, Theocritus, Virgil, Milton, Young, and others, who wrote on less familiar subjects.

The poetry which illustrates grander scenes of imaginative and real life, or which is based upon a profound and subtile introspection of the soul, executed in a strong, splendid, and superlativelybeautiful style, is appreciated mostly by scholars whose tastes have been cultivated, so that their minds, in a degree, may be in communion with that of the author. For the majority, this is too much labor, and is beyond their grasp; while to the few it is but daily food, and the indispensable aid to intellectual progress. Hence we see the harmony of poetry for all, and for the varying moods of each.

Every one is more or less imbued with the spirit of the poet, however persistently some may think otherwise of themselves. There is a poetry which can wake the chords of every human heart to wordless melody. One is moved to a small or a high degree of poetic fervor, consciously or unconsciously, by one thing, to which another is insensible, but is equally influenced by something else. The poetic inspiration of one is a view of a distant landscape in the purpled silver haze of a summer's day; of the other, the wild and terrific storm which gathers the clouds together as a scroll, clashing with jarring thunder, and aiming at the earth with javelins of piercing fire. One listens to the gentle rain on the roof, till poetry wells silently up from the full heart; one is moved by the hoarse roar of the solitary king of the eastern forest, cleaving the still hour of the night with terror and gloom; another by the

pulse-stirring strains of martial music; and another by the humble peasant-girl singing a sweet ballad as she gathers the fruits of the field, or plies her needle in the shadows of the brown cottáge. The heart of one flows forth in exalted emotion at the thought of the watching nightly host and guardian angels of dreams; another yields to wordless fervor in the contemplation of his faithful dog guarding at his feet; and the third to the lonely light-house of the sea which serves as a beacon guide to his returning caracs laden with the precious merchandise of distant climes. To one, the storied marble becomes an inspiration; to another, the delicate fabric which was stitched with the life-threads of a pale sufferer by the midnight lamp. One is thrilled in consonance with the noble sacrifice of human life for conscience' sake; another by the sacrifide in a Diogenes' tub; a third by the pride and pomp of the palatial abode; and a fourth by the barns filled with plenty, the fields of golden grain with their swart reapers, and the orchards laden with ripened fruit. One sings his stave at the orgies of the saturnalia of his boon bacchanals; another utters the melody of his heart around the family altar; and another sings with the angels, when the congregation unites, like the voice of many waters, to praise the name of the Lord.

Infinitely numerous shades of the phases of life have power to wake the soul, though but for a moment, so that it hears once again that olden music of the Creation when "the morning stars sang together." 'Tis only the few who can endow this emotion with the poetical expression. Some cherish it unconsciously, as it were latent in the soul; others may be equally unable to form the expressions of poetry, yet are sensible of ardent appreciation of the poetry of nature and of true poets. In some, this appears in crude and inadequate efforts; in another, it is displayed in the original, polished poem.

The professional or true poet who is gifted with a high degree of inspiration should be one who has a universal mind with universal culture. He should not be bound to the minds of others with petty prejudices and associations, so as to have no totality of thought and life-by which is not meant that he should be independent of any association with what is true, and pure, and good-but only of that which forges the links of error and narrowness. He should bring the heavens and the earth, angels and men, all forms of nature and art to contribute to his storehouse of knowledge. Like the god of the Scandinavian myth, he should have his inner senses in such relation to nature as to hear the grass and the flowers grow in the fields, and the wool on the lambs; and like the Greek philosopher, surnamed

the obscure, should see the pulsing of the stars. Every phase of surrounding nature should be as familiar to him as the faces of his friends. Το him the heavens should declare the glory of God in strains of the most exalted fervor. Its "golden lamps" should illume his spirit with celestial light, so that he may see that which is unseen to others' eyes; and from those sublime hights of contemplation he should cast poems upon the hearts of men, which will thrill them as reeds shaken with the wind, and lift their earthward eyes to Heaven with ascriptions of praise. On these revelations of wondrous beauty should he be careful not to stamp the worship due alone to God, even as the oriental tradition of the patriarch, as given by Milman. "As Abraham was walking by night from the grotto where he was born, to the city of Babylon, he gazed on the stars of heaven, and among them on the beautiful planet Venus. 'Behold,' said he within himself, 'the God and Lord of the universe!' but the star set and disappeared, and Abraham felt that the Lord of the universe could not thus be liable to change. Shortly after, he beheld the moon at the full: 'Lo,' he cried, 'the Divine Creator, the manifest Deity!' but the moon sank below the horizon, and Abraham made the same reflection as at the setting of the evening star. All the rest of the night he passed in profound rumination; at sunrise he stood before the gates of Babylon, and saw the whole people prostrate in adoration. Wondrous orb,' he exclaimed, thou surely art the Creator and Ruler of all nature! but thou, too, hastest like the rest to thy setting! neither, then, art thou my Creator, my Lord, or my God!'"

The sea should inspire him to sing strains of grandeur, and power, and pathos. The eye of his imagination should pierce its surface as though it were crystal, and perceive in its mysterious depths the pale brows of the still sleepers in the caves of coral, curtained with delicate weed and knelled by the roar of the mighty waves; the seamonsters winding their trackless path from zone to zone, and sporting with the foam of the furious storm; the wreaths of pearls; the Naiads with gems in their dripping, green hair; and the curious life, pulsing music in the beautiful shells of the sea-marge.

To him the voice of the ocean should be ever an inspiration of Him who sitteth upon the flood, thundering in his glory; of the anthems of the ages, speaking of the loved who are lost till the sea shall give up its dead; of the prayers of the friends of the mariners, and of all the mighty drama which has been acted on the great deep. All its aspects should grave themselves upon his mind's memory. The grandest of all, the sunset

the others to Him; but my very life's bound up in that boy, and if any thing should happen to him, God knows it would break his poor old mother's heart." And Mrs. Palmer broke down here, and she sat down on the old oaken chest and wiped her eyes on the corner of her check

apron.

Light warblings of some old psalm-tune fluttered down the staircase, and then the door opened, and a pleasant-looking girl burst suddenly into the room, and her presence was like a quick rain of sunlight.

Rebecca Palmer was twenty-two, and the sight of her bright young face was like a picture rejoicing the eyes. She was not beautiful, but her cheeks were full of the glow of youth, and the richness of perfect health. Her eyes were full of laughter, and the brown of hazel-nuts, and so was her hair, parted away from it in deep, natural waves. Her head sat on her dainty shoulders with a wavering motion, like a bird's on a bough which the wind plays on.

She had an easy grace of movement and manner well suited to her face, and she wore to-night a calico dress with large bunches of ripe strawberries on a buff ground, such as you, reader, may find faded and worn among the squares of some old quilt which belonged to your greatgrandmother.

A few red berries and dark fern leaves were twisted in her hair, in fine contrast with its glossy folds. Her mother looked at her a moment with a glance full of pride and tender

ness.

back yard, and removed some towels which had been hung to dry on the clothes line.

"They are all bone dry," she remarked to the mother, as she laid them on the table when she returned.

"O well, child, never mind that," taking her kettle from the crane. "You jest bustle round spry, and get up supper, and I'll sprinkle them towels while you're off this evenin'. Your father and the men will come home clear tuckered out, for they've been fellin' trees all day, and we must get a hearty meal for 'em. You slice up some ham, too, and fry a dozen eggs, while I fix up some short cake."

Mother, did you hear the stage horn?" asked Rebecca, as she laid the cloth she had spun with her own hands for the supper.

"Yes; and I was kind of impressed there was news from Reuben."

"That's jest how. I felt. Night afore last I saw the new moon over my right shoulder, and that you know's a good sign."

"I know it, Becky. Parson Cutter says it is n't well to put faith in sich things; but my grandmother Barker used to say she never knew that sign fail. Do light me a candle, child, so I can see to dip out this apple sarse. Dear me how short the days are a growin'!"

"I wonder what keeps father so!" remarked Rebecca, as she handed her mother the tin candlestick.

"Likely as not he's gone round to the tavern, to learn if there's any tidings from the army." Another half hour throbbed itself away in the

"I ought to be a little, cos I'm goin' to the stone meetin'-house to singin' school, and then we 're to take supper at the old turnpike tavern." Mrs. Palmer shook her head. "There's no tellin' what gals is a comin' to nowadays," she said, lugubriously. "In my time it would have been thought a great piece of extravagance for a gal to wear a caliker to any thing but a meetin' or a weddin'; and somethin' like homespun was reckoned good enough for singin' schools and quiltin's."

"O well, mother," wound in a little patronizingly the clear, bright voice of Rebecca Palmer, "you know them was old-fashioned days. Times has changed since you was a gal."

"Yes, and not for the better I reckon, when young women think they can't run in to see a neighbor without prinkin' and puttin' on their Sunday go-to-meetin' clothes: however, young folks will be young folks;" consigning with a sigh of resignation her last ladle of nuts to the boiling fat. And Rebecca went out into the

corner, and both the women had begun to grow alarmed at the deacon's prolonged absence, when they caught the click of the gate-latch, and his heavy tread along the footpath.

They saw him stop as usual at the wooden trough at the well, and wash his hands there, and then he came into the kitchen.

"Why, father," began Mrs. Palmer, with a little wifely admonition, "what has kept you so long? I ra'ly began to get scared about you."

"And the supper's about burnt to cinders," added Rebecca, who was in something of a hurry to get the table cleared in time for singing school.

The deacon was a square-built, sun-browned man, with shaggy eyebrows and weather-beaten face. He came toward the table with a slow, groping movement, which neither of the preoccupied women noticed, and he cleared his throat twice before he spoke.

"I was detained a spell on some matter of my own;" and Mrs. Palmer and Rebecca at once concluded that he alluded to some bargain with a neighbor.

"Don't you see the chair there, father?" asked Rebecca; for the old man stood still as a statue before the table, though his daughter had just placed his seat at his elbow, and now he sat down without speaking a word.

“Why, husband, I do believe you 're deaf tonight! You have n't taken your hat off," exclaimed Mrs. Palmer.

"Don't, wife, do n't;" and the old man laid his straw hat on the floor beside him.

The two women bent their heads reverently over the board, waiting for the deacon to invoke his customary blessing upon the meal, but no sound broke the stillness.

Mrs. Palmer glanced up at her husband; his head, too, was bent over his plate; and a stream of candle-light falling on his face revealed it fully to her gaze.

"John, something has happened to you tonight," she said, leaning forward and breathlessly searching his face.

A deep, convulsive sort of groan heaved out of the old man's lips, and both the women grew white as they heard it.

face struck white with wonder and fear, and her brown eyes fastened on her parents; but now she sprang up, and dropped down on her knees at the deacon's feet: "O, father, do say it is n't Reuben!" and her voice was like her mother's. The deacon opened his lips, but he could not speak. He took the hands of his wife and his child and covered them with his own trembling ones. "O, Lord, have mercy upon us!" groaned the stricken man, and then they knew.

Mrs. Palmer crept up to her husband, and whispered in a faint, broken voice, "Jest say my boy is n't dead, father. I can bear to hear any thing else."

And the deacon made no answer; but the great tears fell down his furrowed cheeks, and it was enough.

The tidings of the disastrous battle at Long Island, which closed the summer of seventeen hundred and seventy-six, had filled the land with mourning, for thousands of widows and orphans had been made in that terrible hour when so many brave Americans lay dead on the battle

Mrs. Palmer rose up and went to her husband, and laid her shaking fingers on his hard hand.

"John," said the little woman-and if her voice shook through the first words, her heart made it clear and strong as she proceeded-" did you ever have a trouble in all the years we've walked together that you did n't tell to me, and that I have n't helped you to bear it, and been a comfort to you when I could n't take it off your shoulders? John, I've stuck to you a true and lovin' wife, through good and through evil, ever since you took me, a young, untried thing of eighteen, from my father's house; and now I ask you, if in all this risin' of thirty years I ever shrunk from my share of trouble, that when our heads is growin' gray, and our faces is turnin' to the path which those we loved better than life has trod before us, you should refuse to tell me the blow that's come on you?"

Masy, it an't that!" said the deacon, looking with a yearning dread and fondness on the faded face which flushed through its tears with a look of its girlhood. "You've been the best, and truest, and lovin'est wife that a man ever had, but I can't tell you this-0, massy, it'll break your heart!"

The wife and mother instinct would not allow her to remain long in the dark.

"O, John, it an't any thing about Reuben?" she cried out the words as one might if a sword had struck suddenly into his heart.

Rebecca had sat still at the table, her sweet

which took place the following month near King's Bridge in New York, was every-where hailed with gladness and gratitude, and the little village of Woodstock bore its part in the general rejoicing on that autumn night, when the stage first brought in the tidings.

The deacon's family was the only one in Wood stock to whom the news brought any sorrow, for it was in this engagement that Reuben had fallen. He was a great favorite throughout the village, and every heart was filled with sadness when it thought on that bright, handsome face lying stark and rigid on the battle-field.

It was late that evening when Parson Hunter entered the stricken house, for friends and neighbors feared to intrude on its awful grief. But the tender-hearted old minister could not rest till he had carried the sweet balms of his love and faith into their broken hearts.

Parson Hunter was a tall, white-haired old man, a fine representative of the stanch old Puritan minister, but beneath some stateliness and austerity of manner beat a heart where were all fair and fragrant blossoms, and golden fruits of charity and love; a heart in whose pleasant and goodly paths the angels loved to walk with their shining faces, and of whom they wrote, "Of such are the kingdom of heaven."

The minister found the family in the kitchen, where we left it, utterly crushed down by a grief which expressed itself neither by moans nor tears.

Mrs. Palmer sat in the large arm-chair before the fire, where her husband had placed her, the