herself, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood I should have known perfect bliss. But it was not to be, and there was nothing for it but to look out the wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded. Oh, the wonderful Noah's Ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have their legs well shaken down before they could be got in even there; and then ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch; but what was that against it? Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant; the lady-bird, the butterfly,—all triumphs of art! consider the goose, whose feet were so small and whose balance was so indifferent that he usually tumbled forward and knocked down all the animal creation! consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string. Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree,—not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf,-I have passed him and all Mother Bunch's wonders without mention, -but an Eastern King with a glittering scymetar and turban. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights. Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me! All lamps are wonderful! all rings are talismans! Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beefsteaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky one with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genii's invisible son. All olives are of the same stock of that fresh fruit concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive-merchant. Yes, on every object that I recognize among those upper branches of my Christmas tree I see this fairy light! But hark! the Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas tree! Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travelers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men: a solemn figure with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the waters; in a ship, again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children around; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant Figure of my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof be the Star of all the Christian world! A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me yet, and let me look once more. I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled, from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the Raiser of the dead girl and the widow's son,—and God is good! "Household Words." 217-TO A SKYLARK. P. B. SHELLEY. Hail to thee, blithe spirit!-bird thou never wert,- Higher still, and higher, from the earth thou springest In the golden lightening of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, thou dost float and run, The pale purple even melts around thy flight: Keen as are the arrows of that silver sphere, All the earth and air with thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, from one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not: what is most like thee? Like a poet hidden in the light of thought, Like a high-born maiden in a palace tower, With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. Like a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. Like a rose embowered in its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves. Sound of vernal showers on the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, all that ever was Joyous and clear and fresh thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, what sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymene'al, or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all but an empty vaunt- What objects are the fountains of thy happy strain? What fields or waves or mountains? what shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear, keen joyance languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance never came near thee: Waking or asleep, thou of death must deem Yet if we could scorn hate, and pride, and fear; I know not how thy joy we ever could come near. Better than all measures of delight and sound, Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know, 218.-TWENTY YEARS AGO. ANONYMOUS. I've wandered to the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree, The old school-house is altered now; the benches are replaced The boys were playing some old game, beneath the same old tree The river's running just as still; the willows on its side And swung our sweethearts-pretty girls-just twenty years ago. My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came in my eyes, 219.-THE ELEMENT OF JUSTICE. GEORGE W. CURTIS. The leaders of our Revolution were men of whom the simple truth is the highest praise. Of every condition in life, they were singularly sagacious, sober, and thoughtful. Lord Chatham spoke only the truth when he said to Franklin, of the men who composed the first Colonial Congress: "The Congress is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times.' Given to grave reflection, they were neither dreamers nor visionaries, and they were much too earnest to be rhetoricians. It is a curious fact, that they were generally men of so calm a temper that they lived to extreme age. With the exception of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, they were most of them profound scholars, and studied the history of mankind that they might know men. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past that a classic aroma hangs about their writings and their speech; and they were profoundly convinced of what statesmen always know, and the adroitest of mere politicians never perceive,—that ideas are the life of a people; that the conscience, not the pocket, is the real citadel of a nation, and that when you have debauched and demoralized that conscience by teaching that there are no natural rights, and that therefore there is no moral right or wrong in political action, you have poisoned the wells and rotted the crops in the ground. The three greatest living statesmen of England knew this also. Edmund Burke knew it, and Charles James Fox, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. But they did not speak for the King, or Parliament, or the English nation. Lord Gower spoke for them when he said in Parliament: "Let the Amer icans talk about their natural and divine rights; their rights |