Work-and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work-thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow;
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow;
Work with a stout heart and resolute will!

Labor is health! Lo! the husbandman reaping,
How through his veins goes the life-current leaping,
How his strong arm, in its stalwart pride sweeping,
True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides!
Labor is wealth-in the sea the pearl groweth;
Rich the queen's robe from the frail cocoon floweth;
From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth ;
Temple and statue the marble block hides.

Droop not, though shame, sin and anguish are round thee'
Bravely fling off the gold chain that hath bound thee!
Look to yon pure heaven smiling beyond thee!
Rest not content in thy darkness-a clod!
Work-for some good, be it ever so slowly;
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly;
Labor!-all labor is noble and holy;

Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God!

40.-RIENZI'S ADDRESS.

M. R. MITFORD.

Friends: I come not here to talk. Ye know too well
The story of our thraldom;—we are slaves!
The bright sun rises to his course, and lights
A race of slaves! He sets, and his last beam
Falls on a slave!-not such as, swept along
By the full tide of power, the conqueror leads
To crimson glory and undying fame;

But base, ignoble slaves-slaves to a horde
Of petty tyrants, feudal despots, lords

Rich in some dozen paltry villages

Strong in some hundred spearmen-only great

In that strange spell-a name! Each hour, dark fraud, Or open rapine, or protected murder,

Cries out against them. But this very day,

An honest man, my neighbor-there he stands-
Was struck-struck like a dog, by one who wore

The badge of Ursini! because, forsooth,
He tossed not high his ready cap in air,
Nor lifted up his voice in servile shouts,
At sight of that great ruffian! Be we men,
And suffer such dishonor? Men, and wash not
The stain away in blood? Such shames are common.
I have known deeper wrongs. I, that speak to ye-

I had a brother once-a gracious boy,
Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope,
Of sweet and quiet joy; there was the look
Of heaven upon his face which limners give
To the beloved disciple. How I loved
That gracious boy! Younger by fifteen years,
Brother at once and son! He left my side,
A summer bloom on his fair cheeks, a smile
Parting his innocent lips. In one short hour
That pretty, harmless boy was slain! I saw
The corse, the mangled corse, and then I cried
For vengeance! Rouse, ye Romans! rouse, ye slaves!
Have ye brave sons? Look, in the next fierce brawl,
To see them die! Have ye fair daughters? Look
To see them live, torn from your arms, distained,
Dishonored! and if ye dare call for justice,
Be answered by the lash! Yet this is Rome,
That sat on her seven hills, and from her throne
Of beauty ruled the world! Yet we are Romans!
Why, in that elder day, to be a Roman
Was greater than a king!—and once again-
Hear me, ye walls, that echoed to the tread
Of either Brutus !-once again I swear,
The Eternal City shall be free!

41.-BEAUTY OF THE CLOUDS.
JOHN RUSKIN.

It is a strange thing how little, in general, people know about the sky. It is that part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works; and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if, once in three days or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with, perhaps, a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives when nature is not producing, scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect

beauty that it is quite certain that it is all done for us and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly.

The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but Dy few; it is not intended that man should always live in the midst of them: he injures them by his presence; he ceases to feel them if he be always with them. But the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright nor good for human nature's daily food;" it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart; for soothing it, and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful; never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal, is essential. And yet we never attend to it; we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accidents, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness or a glance of admiration.

If, in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. Who among the whole chattering crowd can tell me of the forms and precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that gilded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits, until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds, when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted or unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed.

God is not in the earthquake nor in the fire, but in the still

small voice. They are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature which can only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty; the deep and the calm, and the perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are to be found always, yet each found but once. It is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught and the blessing of beauty given. Stones of Venice.

42.—LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.

FELICIA HEMANS.

The breaking waves dashed high
On the stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed;

And the heavy night hung dark

The hills and waters o'er,

When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,

They, the true-hearted, came;

Not with the roll of the stirring drums,

And the trumpet that sings of fame:

Not as the flying come,

In silence and in fear;

They shook the depth of the desert's gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amid the storm they sang,

And the stars heard, and the sea;

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free.

The ocean eagle soared

From his nest by the white wave's foam,
And the rocking pines of the forest roared:
This was their welcome home.

There were men with hoary hair
Amid that pilgrim band,

Why have they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood's land?
There was woman's fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth;

There was manhood's brow, serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus, afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod!

They have left unstained what there they foundFreedom to worship God!

43. THE LONG AGO.

B. F. TAYLOR.

Oh! a wonderful stream is the River Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends in the ocean of years!

How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow,
And the summers like birds between,

And the years in the sheaf, how they come and they go
On the river's breast with its ebb and its flow,

As it glides in the shadow and sheen!

There's a magical isle up the River Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing.
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the Junes with the roses are straying.
And the name of this isle is the "Long Ago,"
And we bury our treasures there;

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow,
There are heaps of dust-but we loved them so !—
There are trinkets and tresses of hair.

There are fragments of songs that nobody sings,
There are parts of an infant's prayer,
There's a lute unswept and a harp without strings,
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,

And the garments our loved used to wear.