Where she had once given her confidence, she gave her hearty and steady support; and she was scrupulous to redeem any pledge she had made to those who ventured in her cause, however unpopular. She sustained Ximenes in all his obnoxious but salutary reforms. She seconded Columbus in the prosecution of his arduous enterprise, and shielded him from the calumny of his enemies.

11. She did the same good service to her favorite, Gonsalvo de Cordova; and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly felt, by both, as the last of their good fortune. Artifice and duplicity were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain, it is certainly not imputable to

She was incapable of harboring any petty distrust, or latent malice; and, although stern in the execution and exaction of public justice, she made the most generous allowance, and even sometimes advances, to those who had personally injured her.

12. But the principle which gave a peculiar coloring to every feature of Isabella's mind, was piety. It shone forth from the very depths of her soul with a heavenly radiance, which illuminated her whole character. Fortunately, her

earliest years had been passed in the rugged school of adversity, under the eye of a mother who implanted in her serious mind such strong principles of religion as nothing in after life had power to shake.

13. At an early age, in the flower of youth and beauty, she was introduced to her brother's court; but its blandishments, so dazzling to a young imagination, had no power over hers; for she was surrounded by a moral atmosphere of purity,

"Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt."

Such was the decorum of her manners, that, though encompassed by false friends and open enemies, not the slightest reproach was breathed on her fair name in this corrupt and

calumnious court.

14. She gave a liberal portion of her time to private devotions, as well as to the public exercises of religion. She expended large sums in useful charities, especially in the

erection of hospitals and churches, and the more doubtful endowments of monasteries. Her piety was strikingly exhibited in that unfeigned humility, which, although the very essence of our faith, is so rarely found, and most rarely in those whose great powers and exalted stations seem to raise them above the level of ordinary mortals.

CVIII. THE LATEST WAR-NEWS.

ANONYMOUS.

1. Oh pale, pale face! Oh helpless hands!
Sweet eyes by fruitless watching wronged,
Yet turning ever towards the lands

Where War's red hosts are thronged.

2. She shudders when they tell the tale
Of some great battle lost and won!
Her sweet child-face grows old and pale,
Her heart falls like a stone !

3. She sees no conquering flag unfurled,
She hears no victory's brazen roar,
But a dear face,-which was her world,---
Perchance she'll kiss no more!

4. Ever there comes between her sight
And the glory that they rave about,
A boyish brow, and eyes whose light
Of splendor hath gone out.

5. The midnight glory of his hair,

Where late her fingers, like a flood
Of moonlight, wandered, lingering there,
Is stiff and dark-with blood!

6. She must not shriek, she must not moan,

She must not wring her quivering hands;
But, sitting dumb and white alone,
Be bound with viewless bands.

7. Because her suffering life enfolds
Another dearer, feebler life,

In death-strong grasp her heart she holds,
And stills its torturing strife.

8. Last eve, they say, a field was won.
Her eyes ask tidings of the fight;
But tell her of the dead alone

Who lay out in the night.

9. In mercy tell her that his name
Was not upon that fatal list;
That not among the heaps of slain
Dumb are the lips she's kissed.

10. Oh poor, pale child! Oh woman's heart!
Its weakness triumphed o'er by strength!
Love teaching pain discipline's art
And conquering at length!

CIX.-LINT.

ANONYMOUS.

1. Fiber by fiber, shred by shred,
It falls from her delicate hand
In feathery films, as soft and slow
As fall the flakes of a vanishing snow
In the lap of a summer land.

2. There are jewels of price in her roseate ears,

And gold round her white wrist coils ;
There are costly trifles on every hand,
And gems of art from many a land

In the chamber where she toils.

3. A rare bird sings in a gilded cage
At the open casement near;

A sun ray glints through a swaying bough,
And lights with a diamond radiance now
The dew of a falling tear

4. A sob floats out to the summer air
With the song-bird's latest trill;
The gossamer folds of the drapery

Are waved by the swell of a long, low sigh,
And the delicate hands are still.

5. "Ah! beauty of earth is naught, is naught!
And a gilded youth is vain!

I have seen a sister's scarred face shine
With a youth and beauty all divine
By the soldier's couch of pain!

6. "I have read of another,* whose passing shade
On their pillows the mangled kissed

In the far Crimea!" There are no more tears,
But she plucks the gems from her delicate ears,
And the gold from her slender wrist.

7. The bird still sings in his gilded cage ;
But the Angel in her heart

Hath stung her soul with a noble pain;
And beauty is naught, and youth is vain,
While the Patriot's wounds still smart!

8. Fiber by fiber, shred by shred,

Still fall from her delicate hand
The feathery films, as soft and slow
As fall the flakes of a vanishing snow
In the lap of a summer land.

9. There are crimson stains on breasts and brows,
And fillets in ghastly coils;

The walls are lofty and white and bare,
And moaning echoes roll ever there

Through the chamber where she toils.

10. No glitter of gold on her slender wrist,

*Florence Nightingale, an English lady, who cared for her country's soldiers in the Crimean war, in 1854.

But a youth and a beauty all divine
In the face of the Christian maiden shine,
And her gems are the soldier's tears.

QUESTIONS.

First Stanza.

What is "lint," and for what is it used?

"fiber"? a "shred"? What are 66

What is a

feathery films"? Why

is the snow called the "vanishing snow"? What person is chiefly spoken of in this selection?

Second Stanza.

Why should the "jewels " be mentioned? What kind of jewels are they? What is meant by "roseate ears"? What are on her "wrists"? her "hands"? What are "gems of art"

Third Stanza.

Why is the "bird" mentioned? What is a "casement"? What is it to "glint"? What is the cause of the "tear"? What is a "diamond radiance "?

Fourth Stanza.

What is the song-bird's "latest trill"? Explain the third and fourth lines. What is "gossamer

66 ? drapery"? Why do the hands become "still"? What kind of hands are "delicate hands"?

Fifth Stanza.

What is meant by the statement that "beauty is naught”? Who says it? What is a "gilded youth"? Is anything said to prove that beauty of earth is naught? How can a scarred face" be beautiful?

Sixth Stanza.

66

What did the “mangled" kiss? Why are there "no more tears"? Why does she "pluck the gems from her delicate ears"? What do you think was done with the "gems and gold"?