What hast thou learned by field and hill,
By greenwood path, and singing rill?

There will come an eve to a longer day,
That will find thee tired, but not of play;
And thou wilt lean, as thou leanest now,
With drooping limbs and aching brow,
And wish the shadows would faster creep.
And long to go to thy quiet sleep.
Well were it then if thine aching brow
Were as free from sin and shame as now!
Well for thee, if thy lip could tell

A tale like this of a day spent well!
If thine open hand hath relieved distress,
If thy pity hath sprung to wretchedness,
If thou hast forgiven the sore offense,
And humbled thy heart with penitence,
If Nature's voices have spoken to thee
With her holy meanings eloquently,
If every creature hath won thy love,
From the creeping worm to the brooding dove,
If never a sad, low-spoken word

Hath plead with thy human heart unheard?
Then, when the night steals on, as now,
It will bring relief to thine aching brow,
And with joy and peace at the thought of rest,
Thou wilt sink to sleep on thy mother's breast.
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

CATO'S SOLILOQUY ON THE IM

MORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

T must be so: Plato, thou reasonest well; Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,

This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread and inward hor-
ror

Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself and startles at destruction?
'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us,

'Tis Heaven itself that points out an here- This in a moment brings me to an end;

after,

And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must
we pass?

But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,

The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before Unhurt, amid the war of elements,

me;

But shadows, clouds and darkness rest upon

The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds.;

it.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

AMERICAN ENGLISH.

R. LOWELL, the greatest and finest realist who ever wrought in verse, showed us that Elizabeth was still Queen where he heard Yankee farmers talk; and without asking that our novelists of widely scattered centres shall each seek to write in his local dialect, we are glad, as we say, of every tint any of them gets from the parlance he hears; it is much better than the tint he will get from the parlance he reads. One need not invite slang into the company of its betters, though perhaps slang has been dropping its "s" and becoming language ever since the world began, and is certainly sometimes delightful and forcible beyond the reach of the dictionary. We would not have any one go about for new words, but if one of them came aptly not to reject its help. For our novelists to try to write Americanly, from any motive, would be a dismal error, but, being born Americans, we would have them use "Americanisms" whenever these serve their turn; and when their characters speak we should like to hear them speak true American, with all the varying Tennesseean, Philadelphian, Bostonian, and New York accents. If we bother ourselves to write what the critics imagine to be "English," we shall be priggish and artificial, and still more so if they make our Americans talk “English.” There is also this serious disadvantage about "English," that if we wrote the best "English" in the world, probably the English themselves would not know it, or, if they did, certainly would not own it. It has always been supposed by grammarians and purists that a language can be kept as they find it; but languages, while they live, are perpetually changing. God apparently meant them for the common people-whom Lincoln believed God liked hecause He had made so many of them and the common people will use them freely as they use other gifts of God. On their lips our Continental English will differ more and more from the insular English, and we believe that this is not deplorable, but desirable.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

APHORISMS AND COMPARISONS.

E have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run only on the bad ones.

When a true genius appeareth in the world, you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

I am apt to think that, in the day of judgment, there will be small allowance given to the wise for their want of morals, or to the ignorant for their want of faith, because both are without excuse. This renders the advantages equal of ignorance and knowledge. But some scruples in the wise, and some vices in the ignorant, will perhaps be forgiven upon the strength of temptation to each.

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side setteth up false lights, and maketh a great noise, that the enemy may believe them to be more numerous and strong than they really are.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbors and passengers, but not the owner within.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

The reason why so few marriages are happy, is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

Censure is the tax a man payeth to the public for being eminent.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

An idle reason lessons the weight of the good ones you gave before. Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion. The common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter and scarcity of words: for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.

Every man desireth to live long, but no man would be old.

If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I am in some concern for future ages, how any man will be learned, or any man a lawyer.

If a man maketh me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keepeth his at the same time. Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

(From

GOLD.

Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg.")
OLD! Gold! Gold! Gold!

Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled;
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
Price of many a crime untold;
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!

Good or bad, a thousand-fold!

How widely its agencies vary!

To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,

As even its minted coins express!

Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears,
If he hath been

Permitted, weak and sinful as he was,

Now stamped with the image of Good Queen To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause,

Bess,

And now of a Bloody Mary!

THOMAS HOOD.

THE REWARD.

"HO, looking backward from his man-
hood's prime,

Sees not the specter of his misspent time?
And, through the shade

of funeral cypress planted thick behind,
Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind
From his beloved dead?

Who bears no trace of passion's evil force?
Who shuns thy stings, O terrible Remorse?
Who does not cast

His fellow-men?

If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in
A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin;
If he hath lent

Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need,
Over the suffering, mindless of his creed

Or home, hath bent,

He has not lived in vain; and while he gives The praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives,

With thankful heart,

He gazes backward, and with hope before,
Knowing that from his works he nevermore
Can henceforth part.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

Spes Est Wate

a new creation,

I ver, as parcel y
The Bratific hour

Every

When conry but of lofty aspiration
Shall blossom into flower;

Alle au uct mocked; I was und in devision

spirits free,

God made our
The Prel's dreaues are but the dim ferevisia
Of blessings thus share be,

T is not at this moment true, what the majority of people tell us, that the world wants fire and strength more than sweetness and light, and that things are for the most part to be settled first and understood afterwards. How much of our present perplexities and confusion this untrue notion has caused already, and is tending still to perpetuate! Therefore the true business of the friends of culture now is, to dissipate this false notion, to spread

the belief in right reason and a firm intelligible law of things, and to get men to try, in preference to staunchly acting with imperfect knowledge, to obtain some sounder basis of knowledge on which to act. This is what the friends and lovers of culture have to do, however the believers in action may grow impatient with us for saying so, and may insist on our lending a hand to their practical operations and showing a commendable interest in them.