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VOICES OF THE TRUE-HEARTED.

would give him food when hungry, shelter him
when cold, and always treat him as a brother.'
Would not this process attract such characters ?
How would you avoid being overrun by them?'
Such characters would either reform or not remain
with us.
We should never speak an angry word, or
refuse to minister to their necessities; but we should
invariably regard them with the deepest sadness, as
we would a guilty, but beloved son. This is harder
for the human soul to bear, than whips or prisons.
They could not stand it; I am sure they could not.
It would either melt them, or drive them away. In
nine cases out of ten, I believe it would melt
them.'

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erful and thrilling appeal to his countrymen, when they were on the eve of welcoming back the tyranny and misrule which at the expense of so much blood and treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it? How nobly does liberty speak through If," said he, "ye welcome back a monar. chy, it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter, over any people who shall resist oppression, and their song shall then be to others, How sped the rebellious English,' but to our posterity, How sped the rebels, your fathers.'" How solemnly awful is his closing paragraph : "What I have spoken, is the language of that which is not called amiss, The good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange I hope, than convincing, to backsliders. This much I should have said, though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and

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I felt rebuked for my want of faith, and conse. quent shallowness of insight. That hard-handed labourer brought greater riches to my soul than an Eastern merchant laden with pearls. Again I re-stones; and had none to cry to but with the prophet, peat, money is not wealth.-Letters from New York.

BLIND OLD MILTON.

BY WILLIAM E. AYTOUN.

O earth, earth, earth! to tell the very soil itself what its perverse inhabitants are deaf to; nay, though what I have spoken should prove (which The following beautiful poem is from the December Thou suffer not, who didst create mankind free! nor number of Blackwood's Magazine It is a noble pic-Thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants ture of that sublime old man, who, sick, poor, blind, of men !) to be the last words of our expiring liberand abandoned of friends, still held fast his heroic ty." It was the consciousness of having done all in his integrity, rebuking with his unbending republican-power to save his countrymen from the guilt and ism the treachery, and cowardice, and servility of his folly into which they had madly plunged, the answer old associates. He had outlived the hopes and bea- of a good conscience, which sustained him in his old tific visions of his youth; he had seen the loud-age and destitution.-Joshua Leavitt. mouthed advocates of liberty throwing down a nation's freedom at the feet of the shameless, debauched, and unprincipled Charles the Second, crouching to the harlot-thronged court of the tyrant, and forswearing at once their religion and their republicanism. The executioner's axe had been busy among his friends. Cromwell's ashes had been dragged from their resting place, for even in death the effeminate tyrant hated and feared the conqueror of Naseby and Marston Moor. Vane and Hamp. den slept in their bloody graves. He was left alone in age, and penury, and blindness; oppressed with the knowledge that all his pure heart and free soul abhorred, had returned upon his beloved country: Yet the spirit of the stern, old republican remained to the last unbroken, realizing the truth of the language of his own Samson Agonistes.

- Patience is the exercise

Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,
Making them each their own deliverer
And victor over all

That tyranny or fortune can inflict."
True, the overwhelming curse had gone over his
country. Harlotry and atheism sat in the high
places, and the caresses of wantons and the jest of
buffoons regulated the measures of the government,
which had just ability enough to deceive, just reli-
gion enough to persecute." But while Milton mourn-
ed over this disastrous change, no self-reproach
mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven
against the oppressor. Who, that has read his pow.

Place me, once more, my daughter, where the sun
May shine upon my old and time-worn head,
For the last time, perchance. My race is run;

And soon amidst the ever-silent dead

I must repose, it may be, half forgot.

Yes! I have broke the hard and bitter bread
For many a year, with those who trembled not
To buckle on their armor for the fight,
And set themselves against the tyrant's lot;
And I have never bowed me to his might,
Nor knelt before him—for I bear within

My heart the sternest consciousness of right,
And that perpetual hate of gilded sin
Which made me what I am; and though the stain
Of poverty be on me, yet I win

More honor by it than the blinded train
Who hug their willing servitude, and bow
Unto the weakest and the most profane.
Therefore, with unencumbered soul 1 go
Before the footstool of my Maker, where
I hope to stand as undebased as now !
Child is the sun abroad? I feel my hair
Borne up and wafted by the gentle wind;
I feel the odors that perfume the air,
And hear the rustling of the leaves behind.

Within my heart I picture them, and then

VOICES OF THE TRUE-HEARTED.

7

I almost can forget that I am blind,

And old, and hated by my fellow men.
Yet would I fain once more behold the grace
Of nature ere I die, and gaze again
Upon her living and rejoicing face;

Fain would I see thy countenance, my child,
My comforter! I feel thy dear embrace,

I hear thy voice so musical and mild,
The patient, sole interpreter, by whom
So many years of sadness are beguiled;
For it hath made my small and scanty room
Peopled with glowing visions of the past.
But I will calmly bend me to my doom,

And wait the hour which is approaching fast,
When triple light shall stream upon mine eyes,
And Heaven itself be opened up at last,
To him who dared foretell its mysteries.

I have had visions in this drear eclipse
Of outward consciousness, and clomb the skies,
Striving to utter with my earthly lips
What the diviner soul had half divined,
Even as the saint in his Apocalypse
Who saw the inmost glory, where enshrined,

Sat He who fashioned glory. This hath driven
All outward strife and tumult from my mind,
And humbled me until I have forgiven
My bitter enemies, and only seek

To find the straight and narrow path to heaven. Yet I am weak-O, how entirely weak,

For one who may not love or suffer more!
Sometimes unbidden tears will wet my cheek,
And my heart bound as keenly as of yore,
Reponsive to a voice, now hushed to rest,

Which made the beautiful Italian shore
With all its pomp of summer vineyards dressed,
An Eden and a Paradise to me.

Do the sweet breezes from the balmy West
Still murmur through thy groves, Parthenope,
In search of odors from the orange bowers?
Still on thy slopes of verdure does the bee
Cull her rare honey from the virgin flowers?
And Philomel her plaintiff chant prolong,
'Neath skies more calm and more serene than ours,
Making the summer one perpetual song?
Art thou the same as when in manhood's pride
I walked in joy thy grassy meads among,
With that fair, youthful vision by my side,
In whose bright eyes I looked-and not in vain?
O, my adored angel! O, my bride!

Despite of years, and wo, and want, and pain,
My soul yearns back toward thee, and I seem
To wander with thee, hand in hand, again,
By the bright margin of that flowing stream.
I hear again thy voice, more silver sweet
Than fancied music floating in a dream,

Possess my being; from afar I greet
The waving of thy garments in the glade,
And the light rustling of thy fairy feet-
What time as one half eager, half afraid,

Love's burning secret faltered on my tongue, And tremulous looks and broken words betrayed The secret of the heart from whence they sprung. Ah me! the earth that rendered thee to heaven Gave up an angel beautiful and young; Spotless and pure as snow when freshly driven; A bright Aurora for the starry sphere Where all is love, and even life forgiven.

Bride of immortal beauty-ever dear! Dost thou await me in thy blest abode !

While I, Tithonus-like, must linger here, And count each step along the rugged road, A phantom, loitering to a long made grave, And eager to lay down my weary load!

I, that was fancy's lord, am fancy's slaveLike the low murmurs of the Indian shell Ta'en from its coral bed beneath the wave, Which, unforgetful of the ocean's swell,

Retains within its mystic urn the hum Heard in the sea-grots, where the Nereids dwellOld thoughts that haunt me, unawares they come Between me and my rest, nor can I make Those aged visitors of sorrow dumb.

O, yet awhile, my feeble soul awake!

Nor wander back with sullen steps again!For neither pleasant pastime canst thou take In such a journey, nor endure the pain. The phantoms of the past are dead for thee; So let them ever uninvoked remain, And be thou calm till Jeath shall set thee free. Thy flowers of hope expanded long ago, Long since their blossoms withered on the tree; No second spring can come to make them blow, But in the silent winter of the grave

They lie with blighted love and buried wo.

I did not waste the gifts which nature gave,
Nor slothful lay in the Circean bower;
Nor did I yield myself the willing slave
Of lust for pride, for riches, or for power.
No in my heart a nobler spirit dwelt;
For constant was my faith in manhood's dower;
Man-made in God's own image-and I felt

How of our own accord we courted shame,
Until to idols like ourselves we knelt,

And so renounced the great and glorious claim Of freedom, our immortal heritage.

I saw how bigotry, with spiteful aim,
Smote at the searching eyesight of the sage,
How Error stole behind the steps of Truth,
And cast delusion on the sacred page.

So, as a champion, even in early youth

I waged my battle with a purpose keen ;
Nor feared the hand of Terror, nor the tooth
Of serpent Jealousy. And I have been
With starry Galileo in his cell,
That wise magician with the brow serene,
Who fathomed space; and I have seen him tell
The wonders of the planetary sphere,

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VOICES OF THE TRUE-HEARTED.

And trace the ramparts of Heaven's citadel On the cold flag-stones of his dungeon drear.

And I have walked with Hampden and with Vane, Names once so gracious to an English ear

In days that never may return again. My voice, though not the loudest, hath been heard Whenever freedom raised her cry of pain, And the faint effort of the humble bard

Hath roused up thousands from their lethargy, To speak in words of thunder. What reward Was mine or theirs? It matters not; for I Am but a leaf cast on the whirling tide,

Without a hope or wish, except to die. But truth, asserted once, must still abide, Unquenchable, as are those fiery springs Which day and night gush from the mountain side, Perpetual meteors, girt with lambent wings, Which the wild tempest tosses to and fro, But cannot conquer with the force it brings.

Yet I, who ever felt another's wo

More keenly than my own untold distress; I, who have battled with the common foe,

And broke for years the bread of bitterness; Who never yet abandoned or betrayed

The trust vouchsafed me, nor have ceased to bless, Am left alone to wither in the shade,

A weak old man, deserted by his kindWhom none will comfort in his age, nor aid!

O, let me not repine! A quiet mind,

Conscious and upright, needs no other stay; Nor can I grieve for what I leave behind,

In the rich promise of eternal day. Henceforth to me the world is dead and gone, Its thorns unfelt, its roses cast away, And the old pilgrim, weary and alone,

Bowed down with travel, at his Master's gate Now sits, his task of life-long labor done,

Thankful for rest, although it comes so late, After sore journey through this world of sin, In hope and prayer, and wistfulness to wait, Until the door shall ope and let him in.

FOOT-PRINTS OF ANGEL S.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELEOW.

It was Sunday morning; and the church bells bells were ringing together. From all the neighbouring villages came the solemn, joyful sounds, floating through the sunny air, mellow and faint and low,

all mingling into one harmonious chime, like the sound of some distant organ in heaven. Anon they ceased; and the woods, and the clouds, and the whole village, and the very air itself seemed to pray, so silent was it everywhere.

The venerable old men, --high priests and patriarchs were they in the land, went up the pulpit

stairs, as Moses and Aaron went up Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation, for the pulpit stairs were in front and very high.

Paul Femming will never forget the sermon he heard that day,—no, not even if he should live to be as old as he who preached it. The text was, I know that my Redeemer liveth.' It was meant to console the pious, poor widow, who sat right before him at the foot of the pulpit stairs, all in black, and her heart breaking. He said nothing of the terrors of death, nor of the gloom of the narrow house, but, looking beyond these things, as mere circumstances to which the imagination mainly gives importance, he told his hearers of the innocence of childhood upon earth, and the holiness of childhood in heaven, and how the beautiful Lord Jesus was once a little child, and now in heaven the spirits of little children walked with him, and gathered flowers in the fields of Paradise. Good old man! In behalf of humanity, I thank thee for these benignant words! And, still more than I, the bereaved mother thanked thee, and from that hour, though she wept in secret for her child, yet.

"She knew he was with Jesus,

And she asked him not again."

After the sermon, Paul Flemming walked forth alone into the churchyard. There was no one there, save a little boy, who was fishing with a pin hook in a grave half full of water. But a few moments afterward, through the arched gateway under the belfry, came a funeral procession. At its head walked a priest in white surplice, chanting. Peasants, old and young, followed him, with burning tapers in their hands. A young girl carried in her arms a dead child, wrapped in its little winding sheet. The grave was close under the wall, by the church door. A vase of holy water stood beside it. The sexton took the child from the girl's arms, and put it into a coffin; and, as he placed it in the grave, the girl held over it a cross, wreathed with roses, and the priest and peasants sang a funeral hymn. When this was over, the priest sprinkled the grave and the crowd with holy water; And then they all went into the church, each one stopping as he passed the grave to throw a handful of earth into it, and sprinkle it with holy water.

A few moments afterwards, the voice of the priest was heard saying mass in the church, and Flemming saw the toothless old sexton treading the fresh earth into the grave of the little child, with his clouted shoes. He approached him, and asked the age of the deceased. The sexton leaned a moment on his spade, and shrugging his shoulders replied; Only an hour or two. It was born in the night, and died early this morning?'

A brief existence,' said Flemming. C The child seems to have been born only to be buried, and have its name recorded on a wooden tombstone.'

VOICES OF THE TRUE-HEARTED.

9

The sexton went on with his work and made no reply. Flemming still lingered among the graves, gazing with wonder at the strange devices, by which man has rendered death horrible and the grave loath

some.

back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.'

It seemed to him, as if the unknown tenant of that grave had opened his lips of dust, and spoken to him the words of consolation, which his soul needed, and which no friend had yet spoken. In a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still. The stone was rolled away from the door of his heart; death was

In the Temple of Juno at Elis, Sleep and his twin-brother Death were represented as children reposing in the arms of Night. On various funeral monuments of the ancients the Genius of Death is sculptured as a beautiful youth, leaning on an invert-no longer there, but an angel clothed in white. He

ed torch, in the attitude of repose, his wings folded
and his feet crossed. In such peaceful and attrac-
tive forms, did the imagination of ancient poets
and sculptors represent death. And these were men
in whose souls the religion of Nature was like the
light of stars, beautiful, but faint and cold!
Strange, that in later days, this angel of God, which
leads us with a gentle hand into the Land of the
great departed, into the silent Land,' should have
been transformed into a monstrous and terrific thing!
Such is the spectral rider on the white horse-such
the ghastly skeleton with scythe and hour glass
the Reaper, whose name is Death!

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stood up, and his eyes were no more bleared with tears; and, looking into the bright, morning heaven, he said:

I will be strong!'

Men sometimes go down into tombs, with painful longings to behold once more the faces of their departed friends; and as they gaze upon them, lying there so peacefully with the semblance that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them, and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust. So did his soul then descend for the. last time into the great tomb of the Past, with pain. ful longings to behold once more the dear faces of One of the most popular themes of poetry and those he had loved; and the sweet breath of heaven painting in the Middle ages, and continuing down touched them, and they would not stay, but crumbled even into modern times, was the Dance of Death. away and perished as he gazed. They, too, were In almost all languages is it written,-the apparition dust. And thus, far-sounding, he heard the great of the grim spectre, putting a sudden stop to all bugate of the Past shut behind him as the Divine Poet siness, and leading men away into the remarkable did the gate of Paradise, when the angel pointed him retirement' of the grave. It is written in an ancient the way up the Holy Mountain; and to him likeSpanish Poem, and painted on a wooden bridge in wise was it forbidden to look back. Switzerland. The designs of Holbein are well known. The most striking among them is that, where, from a group of children sitting round a cottage hearth, Death has taken one by the hand, and is leading it out of the door. Quietly and unresisting goes the little child, and in its countenance no grief, but wonder only; while the other children are weeping and stretching forth their hands in vain towards their departing brother. A beautiful design it is, in all save the skeleton. An angel had been better, with folded wings, and torch in

verted!

The causes

In the life of every man, there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. At once as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. which produce these sudden changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause. It was so with Flemming; and from that hour forth he resolved, that he would no longer veer with every shifting wind of circumstance; no longer be a child's plaything in the hands of Fate, which we ourselves do make or mar. He resolved hence forward not to lean on others; but to walk self-con

years in vain regrets, nor wait the fulfillment of boundless hopes and indiscreet desires; but to live in the Present wisely, alike forgetful of the past, and careless of what the mysterious Future might bring. And from that moment he was calm, and strong; he was reconciled with himself! His thoughts turned to his distant home beyond the sea. An indescribable, sweet feeling rose within

And now the sun was growing high and warm. A little chapel, whose door stood open, seemed to invite Flemming to enter and enjoy the grateful cool-fident and self-possessed; no longer to waste his ness. He went in. There was no one there. The walls were covered with paintings and sculpture of the rudest kind, and with a few funeral tablets. There was nothing there to move the heart to devotion but in that hour the heart of Flemming was weak,-weak as a child's. He bowed his stubborn knees, and wept. And oh how many disappointed hopes, how many bitter recollections, how much of wounded pride, and unrequited love, were in those him. tears, through which he read on a marble tablet in the chapel wall opposite, this singular inscrip

Thither I will turn my wandering foostetps,' said he; and be a man among men, and no longer a dreamer among shadows. Henceforth be mine a life 'Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not of action and reality! I will work in my own

tion:

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VOICES OF THE TRUE-HEARTED.

sphere, nor wish it other than it is. This alone is health and happiness. This alone is life;

'Life that shall send

A challenge to its end,

And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!' Why have I not made these sage reflections, this wise resolve, sooner? Can such a simple result spring only from the long and intricate process of experience? Alas! it is not till Time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life, to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that Man begins to see, that the leaves which remain are few in number, and to remember, faintly at first, and then more clearly, that, upon the earlier pages of that book was written a story of happy innocence, which he would fain read over again. Then come listless irresolution, and the inevitable inaction of despair; or else the firm resolve to record upon the leaves that still remain, a more noble history than the child's story, with which the book began.'-Hyperion.

MY SOUL IS FREE.

Disguise and coward fear! away!
My soul is free; and loves the day,
The day who veils her blushes bright,
And wails in tears the gloomy night;
So bleeds my breast by sorrow torn,
When'ere degenerate manhood's form
Bows slave-like to a tyrant's power,
Lost to himself, and heaven's high dower.
Away with chains! my soul is free,
And joyeth as the summer sea,
When love's low tones around it play,
Or friendship gilds the closing day.
And as the pitying sea doth moan,
So swells my heart at sorrow's tone;
So echoes back each murmur'd sigh,
Like ocean, when the storm is nigh.
And as the tossing waves loud roar
With deafening thunders on the shore;
So may my soul rise in her might,
And sternly battle for the right.
Oh! when the righteous flight is done,
And calmly sinks the weary sun,
Still shall my song triumphant be;
Rejoice! rejoice! my soul is free!

DEMOCRACY.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."-Matthew vii. 12.

Spirit of Truth, and Love, and Light!

The foe of Wrong, and Hate, and Fraud !

Of all which pains the holy sight,

Or wounds the generous ear of God!

Beautiful yet thy temples rise,

Though there profaning gifts are thrown; And fires unkindled of the skies

Are glaring round thy altar-stone. Still sacred-though thy name be breathed By those whose hearts thy truth deride; And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed Around the haughty brows of Pride.

O, ideal of my boyhood's time!

The faith in which my father stood, Even when the sons of Lust and Crime

Had stained thy peaceful courts with blood. Still to those courts my footsteps turn,

For through the mists which darken there I see the flame of Freedom burnThe Kebla of the patriot's prayer!

The generous feeling pure and warm,

Which owns the rights of all divineThe pitying heart-the helping arm

The prompt, self-sacrifice-are thine.
Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,

How fade the cords of caste and birth!
How equal in their suffering lie
The groaning multitudes of earth!
Still to a stricken brother true,

Whatever clime hath nurtured him;
As stooped to heal the wounded Jew
The worshipper on Gerizim.

By misery unrepelled, unawed

By pomp or power, thou see'st a MAN
In prince or peasant-slave or lord-
Pale priest or swarthy artisan.
Through all disguise, form, place, or name,

Beneath the flaunting robes of sin,
Through poverty and squallid shame,
Thou lookest on the man within.

On man, as man, retaining yet,
Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim,
The crown upon his forehead set-

The immortal gift of God to him.
And there is reverence in thy look;

For that frail form which mortals wear
The Spirit of the Holiest took,

And veiled his perfect brightness there.
Not from the cold and shallow fount
Of vain philosphy thou art;

He who of old on Syria's mount

Thrilled, warmed by turns the list'ner's heart.

In holy words which cannot die,

In thoughts which angels lean'd to know, Proclaimed thy message from on highThy mission to a world of wo.

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