AMERICA'S DEBT TO FRANCE.

It may perhaps be suggested that the fact that France lavished her favors on the American people in the past does not explain her present action. Logically-the objector may say-America should send bronze statues to France, not France to America. We never sent armed men to her aid when all Europe was banded against her. While her land was overrun, and German, Russian, English armies swept over her fields and towns, leaving a track of ruin behind them, only French blood was shed in her behalf. Our ships did not go down with French ships at Trafalgar, our treasure did not melt away in the fiery furnace of French tribulation and German triumph. If we are paying taxes to support our credit and diminish our debt, no part of that debt was incurred to save French interests or French territory. True-but he knows little of the hidden. springs that control human action who does not know that there is no gratitude like that which is felt by the benefactor. It is far easier to forget the favors that we have received than those that we have conferred. That pattern of shrewd worldly wisdom, Benjamin Franklin, ingenuously tells us that when he wanted to secure the goodwill of influential men he always sought to place himself under some slight obligation; he borrowed (and returned) a book, or asked some small service. The obligation incurred was never heavy enough to trouble him, but it always en

couraged the other party to renewed bounty. The habit of generosity is apt to grow with exercise, and it is precisely because France was the friend and loyal ally of America upward of a century ago, that she is now ready, and always has been, to testify the warmth and fidelity of her attachment. And if there ever has been at any time, on the face of our friendship, coldness or estrangement, or the appearance of it, such a change has never been exhibited by France.

If I were called upon to pick out from the mass of concurring testimony proof of the priceless value of French aid to the American colonies, I should go to that dark and dreary winter at Valley Forge, when even the stoutest hearts were despondent. All that makes victory possible was absent, except courage and faith, and they were fast failing before the cruel blows of adverse fortune. What must other men have thought of the future and its promises when Washington from the midst of his shivering, halfclad, and half-fed followers, wrote this: "Unless some great and capital change takes place the army must be inevitably reduced to one or other of three things-starve, dissolve, or disperse.'

Only a miracle could save the cause! Who would help the struggling band of enthusiasts that had nothing to offer as a reward for the aid which they prayed for? Was it not against all history and experience that the vanquished cause should so commend itself to the world that troops, and money, and friends, and sympathy

Picture it,-think of it,
Dissolute man!

Lave in it, drink of it
Then, if you can!

Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
Ere her limbs frigidly
Stiffen so rigidly,

Decently, kindly,Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, close them, Staring so blindly!

Dreadfully staring

Through muddy impurity, As when with the daring Last look of despairing Fixed on futurity.

Perishing gloomily,

Spurred by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,

Burning insanity,

Into her rest,-
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,

Over her breast!

Owning her weakness,
Her evil behavior,

And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!

Hood.

DE PROFUNDIS.

THE face, which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With hourly love, is dimmed away,—
And yet my days go on, go on.

The tongue, which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone,
And every morning with "Good-day"
Made each day good, is hushed away,-
And yet my days go on, go on.

The heart, which, like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon,
The strongest on the longest day
With steadfast love, is caught away,-
And yet my days go on, go on.

And cold before my summer's done,
And deaf in Nature's general tune,
And fallen too low for special fear,
And here, with hope no longer here,―
While the tears drop, my days go on.

The world goes whispering to its own,
"This anguish pierces to the bone;"

And tender friends go sighing round,

"What love can ever cure this wound ?” My days go on, my days go on.

The past rolls forward on the sun,
And makes all night. O dreams begun,
Not to be ended! Ended bliss,

And life that will not end in this!-
My days go on, my days go on.

Breath freezes on my lips to moan:
As one alone, once not alone,
I sit and knock at Nature's door,
Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
Whose desolated days go on.

I knock and cry, Undone, undone !
Is there no help, no comfort,-none?
No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
Where others drive their loaded wains?—
My vacant days go on, go on.

This Nature, though the snows be down,
Thinks kindly of the bird of June :
The little red hip on the tree

Is ripe for such. What is for me
Whose days so winterly go on?

No bird am I to sing in June,
And dare not ask an equal boon.
Good nests and berries red are Nature's

To give away to better creatures,

And yet my days go on, go on.