“The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the church-way path we saw him bome THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished), a friend. Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) Thomas Gray, 1751. 222.-THE NEWSPAPER. J. R. LOWELL. Wonderful, to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the newspaper. To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of a strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet-show, on whose stage, narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in little. Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown-paper wrapper! Hither, to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback or dromedary-back, in the pouch of the Indian runner or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk, and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in or der to make out anything distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on the coast of England. That other, in the gray surtout and cocked hat, is Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At that spot where you seem to see a speck of 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 sun. rise, 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. For 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 fin. ger 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. tunate 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-Fath I-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! Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, Ring out the old, ring in the new,- Ring out the grief that saps the mind, Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of paltry strife; Ring out the want, the care, the sin, Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, 225.-INTRA, MINTRA, CUTRA, CORN. ANONYMOUS. Ten small hands upon the spread, Yours are thirty, and twenty are mine; 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, Sentence falls on Curly-head; "Intra, mintra," the fiat goes, Is it more than a childish play? Why? What pain in the sight, I pray i |