something in motion, is an immense mass-meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position, amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce-discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo! there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton, that blows one breath between its grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the slippery stage into the dark Beyond.

Yes, the little show-box has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour-glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly-married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also.

Think of it for three dollars a year I buy a season-ticket to this great Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose scene-shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.

Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes, as I am tearing off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth, and as sudden poverty,-I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that upon

that mood of mind which seems to isolate me from mankind as a spectator of their puppet-pranks, another supervenes, ir which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them? Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage! And, strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me informed that he has received a fresh supply of certain original designs? But to none of us does the Present (even if for a moment discerned as such) continue miraculous. We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, in which a vision was let down to me from heaven, shall be the wrapper to a bar of soap or the platter for a beggar's broken victuals.

Biglow Papers.

223-UNCLE TOM'S TESTAMENT.

MRS. H. B. STOWE.

Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible as he lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger threading his slow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned late in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on was one which slow reading cannot injure-nay, one whose words, like ingots of gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind may take in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as, pointing to each word, and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads,

"Let-not-your-heart-be-troubled. er's-house-are-many-mansions.

a-place-for-you."

In-my-FathI-go-to-prepare—

Cicero, when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a heart as full of honest grief as poor Tom's,—perhaps no fuller, for both were only men; but Cicero could pause over no such sublime words of hope, and look to no such future reunion; and if he had seen them, ten to one he would not have believed, he must fill his head first with a thousand questions of authenticity of manuscript, and correctness of translation. But, to poor Tom, there it lay, just what he needed, so evidently true and divine that the possibility of a

question never entered his simple head. It must be true, for, if not true, how could he live?

As for Tom's Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in margin from learned commentators, still it had been embellished with certain way-marks and guide-boards of Tom's own invention, and which helped him more than the most learned expositions could have done. It had been his custom to get the Bible read to him by his master's children, in particular by young Master George; and as they read, he would designate, by bold, strong marks and dashes, with pen and ink, the passages which more particularly gratified his ear or affected his heart. His Bible was thus marked through, from one end to the other, with a variety of styles and designations; so he could in a moment seize upon his favorite passages, without the labor of spelling out what lay between them; and while it lay there before him, every passage breathing of some old home scene, and recalling some past enjoyment, his Bible seemed to him all of this life that remained, as well as the promise of a future one.

224.-RING OUT, WILD BELLS!
ALFRED TENNYSON.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying clouds, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,—
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of paltry strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out the shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold,
Ring out the thousand wars of old;
Ring in the thousand years of peace,
Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land;
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

225.—INTRA, MINTRA, CUTRA, CORN.

ANONYMOUS.

Ten small hands upon the spread,
Five forms kneeling beside the bed,
Blue-eyes, Black-eyes, Curly-head;
Blonde, Brunette-in a glee and glow,
Waiting the magic word. Such a row!
Seven years, six years, five, four, two!

Fifty fingers, all in a line,

Yours are thirty, and twenty are mine;
Ten sweet eyes that sparkle and shine.

Motherly Mary, age of ten,

Even the finger-tips again,

Glance along the line, and then

"Intra, mintra, cutra, corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn,

Wire, briar, limber lock,

Three geese in a flock,

Ruble, roble, rabble and rout,
Y, O, U, T,

Out!"

Sentence falls on Curly-head;

One wee digit is "

gone and dead,"

Nine-and-forty left on the spread.

"Intra, mintra," the fiat goes,

Who'll be taken nobody knows;
Only God may the lot dispose.

Is it more than a childish play?
Still you sigh and turn away.
Why? What pain in the sight, I pray?

Ah, too true, "As the fingers fall,
One by one at the magic call,
Till, at the last, chance reaches all,
"So in the fateful days to come,

The lot shall fall in many a home
That breaks a heart and fills a tomb;

"Shall fall, and fall, and fall again,

Like a law that counts our love but vain ;
Like a fate, unheeding our woe and pain.
"One by one-and who shall say
Whether the lot may fall this day,
That calleth of these dear babes away?

"True, too true. Yet hold, dear friend;
Evermore doth the lot depend

On Him who loved, and loved to the end:

"Blind to our eyes, the fiat goes,

Who'll be taken, no mortal knows,
But only Love will the lot dispose.

"Only Love, with his wiser sight;
Love alone, in his infinite might;
Love, who dwells in eternal light."

Now are the fifty fingers gone

To play some new play under the sun―
The childish fancy is past and gone.

So let our boding prophecies go
As childish, for do we not surely know
The dear God holdeth our lot below?

226.-BETTER THAN GOLD.

ALEXANDER SMART.

Better than grandeur, better than gold,
Than rank or titles a hundred fold,
Is a healthy body, a mind at ease,
And simple pleasures that always please;
A heart that can feel for a neighbor's woe,
And share in his joy with a friendly glow,
With sympathies large enough to enfold
All men as brothers, is better than gold.

Better than gold is the sweet repose
Of the sons of toil when their labors close;
Better than gold is the poor man's sleep,
And the balm that drops on his slumbers deep;