THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER.

Oн, I know the world is a weary place
Of suffering, and care, and woe,
And every heart has the deadly trace
Of the sin that makes it so;

Yet I see the promise of heaven gleam

On this sorrowful earth of ours,

That God's sea will whiten life's darkened stream, God's sun will open life's flowers.

'Mid the western forest I sit me down,

Where the church bells never ring:

My hands they are rough, and my brow is brown,
And a woodman's song I sing;

But yet, when the work of my day is done,
And I rest on the mossy sod,

Then my heart grows soft with the thought of

one

Who has been ten years with God.

Just a little lass, who was fair to me,

-I may not be over-wise

But what can the beauty they talk of be
If not God's light in the eyes?
When I hear of maidens whom good men love
They are just like her, I know:
When I think how the angels sing above,
I think how she spoke below!

She lived in a quiet country place,
With womanly duties round:

Where even God's dumb things loved her face,
And came at her footsteps' sound.

No earthly pride save her mother's praise,
The blessing the farmer gave:
Then at last, a break in the happy days,
A name on the household grave!

And I dared not ask them—for what was I?
For sight of the holy dead:

I looked on her bier as they bore it by,
And I hid the tears I shed.

"Twas long since I'd joined in a godly work, Or gone where God's people meet,

But next Sabbath morning I went to kirk,

And gazed on her empty seat.

For I could not carry her in my heart
To haunts of ungodly men ;

But when in God's service I took my part,
Her soul seemed nearer me then.

And she's near me now, as I sit alone
In the western forest dim:

And she soothes my heart like a mother's tome
Singing the evening hymn.

So in many a quiet place, I trow,

God's servants may dwell unseen,
Like the little streamlets that hidden flow,
Except that their grass grows green:
For we see the evil, we hear the cry,

Of this sorrowful earth of ours,

But in loving patience God sits on high,
Because he can see its flowers.

Sunday Magazine.

CHILDREN ON THE SHORE. WE are building,little homes on the sands, We are making little rooms very gay, We are busy with our hearts and our hands, We are sorry that the time flits away. O why are the minutes in such haste?

O why won't they leave us to our play? Our lessons and our meals are such waste! We can dine very well another day. We do not mind the tide coming in

We can dig it a cunning little bed, Or leave our pretty house and begin

Another pretty house in its stead; We do not mind the sun in our eyes

When it makes such a dazzle of the world, That we cannot tell the sea from the skies, Nor look where the flying drops are hurled. The shells that we gather are so fair,

The birds and the clouds are so kind, And the winds are so merry with our hairIt is only the People that we mind! Papa, if you come so very near,

We can't build the library, to-day; We think you are tired of being here,

And perhaps you would like to go away. There are just one or two we won't refuse,

If they come by, to help us now and then, But we want only friends to be of use,

And not all those idle grown men; Perhaps, if we hurry very much.

And don't lose an instant of the day,
There'll be time for the last lovely touch
Before the sea sweeps it all away.

O children - thus working with the heart!
There's nothing so terrible as rest;
Plan only how all may take a part;
It's easy for each to do his best.
The sea, sweeping up at set of sun,

Can never make your toil be in vain ;
It covers the thing that you have done,
But the joy of the doing shall remain !
Aunt Judy's Magazine

TENNYSON AND LONGFELLOW. THE London Judy has this squib :

Mr. Longfellow goeth on a visit to the Poet Laureate. He is met at the station by his host. Mr. Tennyson (loq.):

"Should you ask me, H. W. L.,
If that I am glad to see you,
If that in my humble wigwam

We will smoke the fragrant peace-pipe ;
I should answer, I should tell you
From the great lakes of the North Land,
Where once dwelt the grim Ojibways
(Not to mention the Dacotahs),
Where the pumpkin, squash, and greenbacks,
Apple sass and wooden nutmegs,
Flourished in their wild profusion,
Lo! I bid thee hearty welcome,
O musician and sweet singer!"

The reply of Mr. Longfellow must inevitably be as follows:

"I hold it truth with those who say

(I don't exactly know their names)
That poets who have equal fames
Should meet thus in a friendly way.
Tho' ocean waves they raise and fall

(And I was ill when tempest tossed,)
'Tis better to've been ill and crossed
Than never to have crossed at all!"

Mr. Tennyson (loq.):

"This isn't the forest primeval; the murmur ing trees and the hemlocks

Bearded with moss are not here; nor, indis tinct in the twilight,

Do they like Druids of old stand; nor with wine of Catawba

Can we regale you here, as it grows by the Beautiful River;

But such as I have at your service I place port, sherry, and bitter Beer brewed by Bass shall be yours; and now let us go into dinner."

The poets will then dine. At such moments meaner mortals, like Judy and her readers, must not intrude upon them - - at any rate until the cloth is withdrawn, when Mr. Longfellow will thus address his host:

"Comrade, I have dined extremely well; and as since early dawn

I have tasted naught save beer, and of that only one small horn,

You may guess that I enjoyed it; and this truth

the poet sings,

That, no matter how ethereal, poets suffer hunger's stings.

If perhaps that you'll excuse me, I should like to go to bed,

Arrived at the bedroom door, it is perfectly certain he will then say :

"If you're waking, call me early, call me early, Alfred dear,

I find it, after London, really very pleasant here;

And as a walk ere breakfast I admire, if fine the day,

Let us go to-morrow morning- yes, I only hope we may."

At this point the American bard retires to his couch, shutting his door. His host, however, gives a final vent to his Longfellownian feelings in these words:

"Stars of the summer night,
High in your azure deeps,
Not too much golden light-
He sleeps,

My William sleeps,
Sleeps.

"Dreams of the summer night;
Don't, please, with nightmare keep
Him broad awake to-night;
But sleep,
Yes, let him sleep,
Sleep."

The scene will here close.

dles, and escort his guest to his room.

Athenæum.

GARRICK has not been fortunate in his biographers. He has had three- Murphy, Davies, and Boaden. The two first wrote lives of him which have gone through several editions; the last wrote a Memoir, prefixed to two bulky quartos of Garrick's Correspondence, which were published in 1831. Murphy and Davies knew the great actor. They were members of his company at Drury Lane, Murphy, during a period which, though brief, was long enough to satisfy even his vanity that the stage was not the true sphere for his versatile and ambitious genius, and also to secure him an unenviable niche in Churchill's Rosciad; and Davies from 1752 to 1762, when he quitted the boards, partly through dread of Churchill, partly because he found he could not attend both to his shop - he was a bookseller-and to the business of the stage. 'Nobody,' said Johnson, 'can write the life of a man but those who have eat, and drank, and lived in social intercourse with him.' But a man may have done all these things, and yet write a life very badly. So it was with both Murphy and Davies; for there was bitterness in their hearts of an old standing. Murphy as a dramatic author, and Davies as an actor, had fancied wrongs to revenge, and the humiliation to resent of benefits received and injuries forgiven; and the leaven of their ancient grudges tainted both their works. But Murphy's, besides being venomous, is inaccurate, and, what is more surprising in a man whose dialogue in comedy was terse and sparkling, it is extremely prosy. That of Davies, while much less coloured by prejudice, and upon the whole sensibly and agreeably written, is often incorrect in its details, and far from complete in its treatment of the subject. We should have had very different books from both, could they have dreamed that their own letters to Garrick, with the drafts of his replies, had been preserved, and were one day to rise up in judgment against their ingratitude and injustice to one who had

shown them signal forbearance, and loaded them with repeated favours.

These letters, with the rest of Garrick's Correspondence, which he had carefully preserved and docquetted, probably with a view to an Autobiography at some future date, were in Boaden's hands. He had not known Garrick either on the stage or in private. But these documents, with such information as he might have obtained from Mrs. Garrick, whom he did know, were enough to have enabled him to produce a satisfactory life. Boaden, however, was not the man for the work. He had neither the sympathetic imagination, the discriminating judgment, nor the vivacity of style, which it demanded; and his 'Memoir' is meagre in details, and most colourless and jejune in treatment.

That he did not even make a judicious selection of the Correspondence which he edited is now certain. Most valuable as much of it is, not a little could well have been spared to make room for what he omitted. The whole Correspondence having come many years afterwards into the hands of Mr. John Forster, those who cared for such inquiries were taken by surprise by the announcement in a note to his Life of Goldsmith' (vol. i. p. 242), that the letters which Boaden had not published would 'form the most striking and valuable contribution that has yet been made to the great actor's history.' This statement was in some measure confirmed by the quotations given by Mr. Forster from a series of Garrick's early letters to his family; and curiosity was still further whetted by the appearance in the same gentleman's elaborate Essays on Churchill and Foote of other letters from the same source, scarcely less interesting from the light which they threw upon Garrick's character and his relations to these and others of his contemporaries.

It is to be regretted that a judicious and well-edited selection of these papers should not have been published, and left to speak for itself; or, at all events, that Mr. Forster, or some other writer of unquestionable skill, should not have worked them up into a Life, that might have taken a place in literature worthy of the great actor's reputation. Instead of this, they have been entrusted to the author of these volumes,