And he would fain

Have caught the wondrous bird,

But strove in vain;

For it flew away, away,

Far over hill and dell,

And instead of its sweet singing
He heard the convent bell
Suddenly in the silence ringing
For the service of noonday.

And he retraced

His pathway homeward sadly and in haste.

In the convent there was a change!
He looked for each well-known face,
But the faces were new and strange;
New figures sat in the oaken stalls,
New voices chaunted in the choir;
Yet the place was the same place,
The same dusky walls

Of cold, gray stone,

The same cloisters and belfry and spire.

A stranger and alone
Among that brotherhood

The Monk Felix stood.
"Forty years," said a Friar,
"Have I been Prior

Of this convent in the wood,

But for that space

Never have I beheld thy face!"

The heart of the Monk Felix fell:
And he answered, with submissive tone,
"This morning, after the hour of Prime,
I left my cell,

And wandered forth alone,
Listening all the time

To the melodious singing

Of a beautiful white bird,
Until I heard

The bells of the convent ringing
Noon from their noisy towers.
It was as if I dreamed;

For what to me had seemed
Moments only, had been hours!"

"Years!" said a voice close by.
It was an aged Monk who spoke,
From a bench of oak

Fastened against the wall;

He was the oldest Monk of all.

For a whole century

Had he been there,

Serving God in prayer,

The meekest and humblest of his creatures.

He remembered well the features

Of Felix, and he said,

Speaking distinct and slow:

"One hundred years ago,

When I was a novice in this place,

There was here a Monk, full of God's grace, Who bore the name

Of Felix, and this man must be the same."

And straightway

They brought forth to the light of day

A volume old and brown,

A huge tome, bound

In brass and wild-boar's hide,

Wherein were written down

The names of all who had died

In the convent, since it was edified.

And there they found,

Just as the old Monk said,

That on a certain day and date,

One hundred years before,

Had gone forth from the convent gate

The Monk Felix, and never more

Had entered that sacred door.

He had been counted among the dead!

And they knew, at last,

That, such had been the power

Of that celestial and immortal song,

A hundred years had passed,

And had not seemed so long

As a single hour!

THE TENDENCY OF NATIONS TO OVERESTIMATE THE PAST, AND DEPRECIATE THE PRESENT.

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

IN

N spite of evidence, many will still imagine to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present. we should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we should form a too favourable estimate of the past.

In truth, we are under a deception similar to that which misleads the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward, and find nothing but sand, where, an hour before, they had seen a lake.

They turn their eyes and see a lake, where, an hour before, they were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilization. But, if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts, the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves, the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana. We too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with fifteen shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little used to dine