Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung
An' in amongst 'em rusted

The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young
Fetched back f'om Concord busted.

The very room, coz she was in,

Seemed warm f'om floor to ceilin',

An' she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez the apples she was peelin'.

"Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,

A dogrose blushin' to a brook
Ain't modester nor sweeter.

*

But long o' her his veins 'ould run
All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o' sun
Ez a south slope in Ap'il.

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;

My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring,
She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin'-bunnet
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upun it.

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to've gut a new soul,
For she felt sartin-sure he'd come,
Down to her very shoe-sole.

"To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'."

20 THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS.

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes,

All kin' o'smily roun' the lips
An' teary roun' the lashes.

For she was jes' the quiet kind

Whose naturs never vary,

Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snowhid in Jenooary.

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin',

Tell mother see how metters stood,
And gin 'em both her blessin'.

Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,

An' all I know is they was cried
In meetin' come nex' Sunday.

THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S

HALLS.

Thomas Moore.

THE harp that once through Tara's halls

The soul of music shed,

Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls,

As if that soul were fled.

So sleeps the pride of former days,

So glory's thrill is o'er,

And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
Now feel that pulse no more.

No more to chiefs and ladies bright
The harp of Tara swells;

The chord alone, that breaks at night,
Its tale of ruin tells.

Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,

The only throb she gives.

Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives.

PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTE-BOOK OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

Saturday, August twelfth, 1837.

Walked with to see General Knox's old mansion,-a large, rusty-looking edifice of wood, with some grandeur in the architecture, standing on the banks of the river, close by the site of an old burial-ground, and near where an ancient fort had been erected for defence against the French and Indians. General Knox once owned a square of thirty miles in this part of the country, and he wished to settle it in with a tenantry, after the fashion of English gentlemen. He would permit no edifice to be erected within a certain distance of his mansion. His patent covered, of course, the whole present town of Waldoborough,1 and divers other flourishing commercial and country villages, and would have been of incalculable value could it have remained unbroken to the present time. But the General lived in grand style, and received throngs of visitors from foreign parts, and was

1 In Maine.

obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around it. His tomb stands near the house,a spacious receptacle, an iron door at the end of a turfcovered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H. There is a stone fence round the monument. On the outside of this are the gravestones, and large, flat tombstones of the ancient burial-ground, the tombstones being of red freestone, with vacant spaces, formerly inlaid with slate, on which were the inscriptions, and perhaps coats of arms. One of these spaces was in the shape of a heart. The people were very wrathful that the General should have laid out his grounds over this old burial-place; and he dared never throw down the gravestones, though his wife, a haughty English lady, often teased him to do so. But when the old General was dead, Lady Knox (as they called her) caused them to be prostrated, as they now lie. She was a woman of violent passions, and so proud an aristocrat, that, as long as she lived, she would never enter any house in the town except her own. When a married daughter was ill, she used to go in her carriage to the door and send up to inquire how she did. The General was personally very popular; but his wife ruled him. The house and its vicinity, and the whole tract covered by Knox's patent, may be taken as an illustration of what must be the result of American schemes of aristocracy. It is not forty years since this house was built, and Knox was in his glory; but now the house is all in decay, while within a stone's-throw of it there is a street of smart white edifices of one and two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been laid out where Knox meant to