life were so nearly run out; the hospitable care for the reception of the friends who came to Marslifield; that affectionate and solemn leave separately taken, name by name, of wife, and children, and kindred, and friends, and family, -down to the humblest members of the household; the designation of the coming day, then near at hand, when "all that was mortal of Daniel Webster should cease to exist;" the dimly-recollected strains of the funeral poetry of Gray; the last faint flash of the soaring intellect; the feebly murmured words of Holy Writ repeated from the lips of the good physician, who, when all the resources of human art had been exhausted, had a drop of spiritual balm for the parting soul; the clasped hands; the dying prayers; Oh! my fellow-citizens, this is a consummation over which tears of pious sympathy will be shed ages after the glories of the forum and the senate are forgotten.

"His sufferings ended with the day,
Yet lived he at its close,

And breathed the long, long night away,
In statue like repose.

"But ere the sun, in all his state

Illumed the eastern skies,

He passed through glory's morning gat●,
And walked in paradise."

THE HEATHEN CHINEE.-F. BRET HARTE
(Table Mountain, 1870.)

Which I wish to remark,

And my language is plain,—
That for ways that are dark,

And for tricks that are vain,

The heathen Chinee is peculiar,

Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;

And I shall not deny

In regard to the same

What that name might imply,

But his smile it was pensive and child-like,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third,

And quite soft was the skies; Which it might be inferred

That Ah Sin was likewise;

Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,

And Ah Sin took a hand: It was Euchre. The same

He did not understand;

But he smiled as he sat by the table,

With a smile that was child-like and bland.

Yet the cards they were stocked

In a way that I grieve.

And my feelings were shocked

At the state of Nye's sleeve,

Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,

And the same with intent to deceive.

But the hands that were played

By that heathen Chinee,

And the points that he made

Were quite frightful to see,

Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

Then I looked up at Nye,

And he gazed upon me;

And he rose with a sigh,

And said, "Can this be?

We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"
And he went for that heathen Chinee.

In the scene that ensued

I did not take a hand,

But the floor it was strewed

Like the leaves on the strand

With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding, In the game he "did not understand."

In his sleeves, which were long,

He had twenty-four packs,Which was coming it strong,

Yet I state but the facts;

And we found on his nails, which were taper, What is frequent in tapers,-that's wax.

Which is why I remark,

And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark,

And for tricks that are vain,

The heathen Chinee is peculiar,

Which the same I am free to maintain.

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY. JOHN G. WHITTIER.

The proudest now is but my peer,

The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.

To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne.

Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand.
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;

And sleekest broad-cloth counts no more
Than home-spun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretense
My stubborn right abide;

I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand.

While there's a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,-

Where weighs our living manhood less
Than mammon's vilest dust,-

While there's a right to need my vote,

A wrong to sweep away,

Up! clouted knee and ragged coat,
A man's a man to-day.

EXECUTION OF JOAN OF ARC.-THOMAS DEQUINCEY.

After Joan had been made prisoner, she was finally given up to the English. The object now was to vitiate the coronation of Charles VII. as the work of a witch, and for this end Joan was tried for sorcery. At her trial she resolutely defended herself from this absurd accusation.

Never, from the foundation of the earth, was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence, and all its malignity of attack. O child of France, shepherdess, peasant-girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honor thy flashing intellect,-quick as the lightning, and as true to its mark,-that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! "Would you examine me as a witness against myself?" was the question by which many times she defied their arts. The result of this trial was the condemnation of Joan to be burnt alive. Never did grim inquisitors doom to death a fairer victim by baser means.

Woman, sister! there are some things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Yet, sister, woman! cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best of men,—you can die grandly! On the twentieth of May, 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, Joan of Arc underwent her martrydom. She was conducted before midday, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets, supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction, for the creation of air currents.

With an undaunted soul, but a meek and saintly demeanor the maiden encountered her terrible fate. Upon her head was placed a mitre, bearing the inscription, "Relapsed heretic, apostate, idolatress." Her piety displayed itself in the most touching manner to the last, and her angelic forgetfulness of self was manifested in a remarkable degree. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowy volumes. A monk was then standing at Joan's side. Wrapt up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in

his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him-the one friend that would not forsake her-and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God. "Go down," she said; "lift up the cross before me, that I may see it in dying, and speak to me pious words to the end." Then protesting her innocence, and recommending her soul to Heaven, she continued to pray as the flames leaped up and walled her in. Her last audible word was the name of Jesus. Sustained by faith in him, in her last fight upon the scaffold, she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted death.

Few spectators of this martyrdom were so hardened as to contain their tears. All the English, with the exception of a few soldiers who made a jest of the affair, were deeply moved. The French murmured that the death was cruel and unjust. "She dies a martyr!" "Ah, we are lost, we have burned a saint!" "Would to God that my soul were with hers!" Such were the exclamations on every side. A fanatic English soldier, who had sworn to throw a fagot on the funeral-pile, hearing Joan's last prayer to her Saviour, suddenly turned away, a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove, rising upon white wings to heaven from the ashes where she stood.

ICARUS; OR, THE PERIL OF BORROWED PLUMES. JOHN G. SAXE.

There lived and flourished long ago, in famous Athenstown, One Dædalus, a carpenter of genius and renown;

('Twas he who with an auger taught mechanics how to bore,— An art which the philosophers monopolized before.)

His only son was Icarus, a most precocious lad,
The pride of Mrs. Dædalus, the image of his dad;
And while he yet was in his teens such progress he had made
He'd got above his father's size, and much above his trade.
Now Dadalus, the carpenter, had made a pair of wings,
Contrived of wood and feathers and a cunning set of springs,
By means of which the wearer could ascend to any height,
And sai! about among the clouds as easy as a kite.