they gather round my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travelers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men: a solemn figure with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the waters; in a ship, again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children around; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!"

Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant Figure of my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof be the Star of all the Christian world! A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me yet, and let me look once more. I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled, from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the Raiser of the dead girl and the widow's son,—and God is good!

"Household Words."

217-TO A SKYLARK.

P. B. SHElley.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!-bird thou never wert,-
That from heaven, or near it, pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still, and higher, from the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire; the blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever, singest.

In the golden lightening of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening, thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even melts around thy flight:
Like a star of heaven, in the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows in the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air with thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare, from one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not: what is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden in the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden, till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

Like a high-born maiden in a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower.

Like a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view.

Like a rose embowered in its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered, till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers on the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers, all that ever was

Joyous and clear and fresh thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird, what sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymene ́al, or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine would be all but an empty vaunt

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains of thy happy strain?

What fields or waves or mountains? what shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear, keen joyance languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep, thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after, and pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever could come near.

Better than all measures of delight and sound,
Better than all treasures that in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness from my lips would flow,
The world should listen then as I am listening now.

218.-TWENTY YEARS AGO.

ANONYMOUS.

I've wandered to the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree,
Upon the school-house play-ground that sheltered you and me ;
But none were there to greet me, Tom, and few were left to know
That played with us upon the green, some twenty years ago.

The grass is just as green, Tom, bare-footed boys at play
Were sporting, just as we did then, with spirits just as gay.
But the "master" sleeps upon the hill, which, coated o'er with snow
Afforded us a sliding-place, just twenty years ago.

The old school-house is altered now; the benches are replaced
By new ones, very like the same our penknives once defaced;
But the same old bricks are in the wall, the bell swings to and fro
Its music just the same, dear Tom, as twenty years ago.

The boys were playing some old game, beneath the same old tree
I have forgot the name just now,-you've played the same with me
On that same spot; 'twas played with knives, by throwing so and so
The loser had a task to do there, twenty years ago.

The river's running just as still; the willows on its side
Are larger than they were, Tom; the stream appears less wide;
But the grape-vine swing is ruined now, where once we played the

beau,

And swung our sweethearts-pretty girls-just twenty years ago.
The spring that bubbled 'neath the hill, close by the spreading beech,
Is very low-'twas once so high that we could scarcely reach;
And kneeling down to get a drink, dear Tom, I started so,
To see how sadly I am changed since twenty years ago.
Near by the spring, upon an elm, you know I cut your name,
Your sweetheart's just beneath it, Tom, and you did mine the same,
Some heartless wretch has peeled the bark, 'tis dying sure but slow,
Just as the one whose name you cut died twenty years ago.

My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came in my eyes;
I thought of her I loved so well, those early-broken ties;
I visited the old churchyard, and took some flowers to strew
Upon the graves of those we loved, some twenty years ago
Some are in the churchyard laid, some sleep beneath the sea;
But few are left of our old class, excepting you and me:
And when our time shall come, Tom, and we are called to go,
I hope they'll lay us where we played, just twenty years ago.

219. THE ELEMENT OF JUSTICE.

GEORGE W. CURTIS.

The leaders of our Revolution were men of whom the simple truth is the highest praise. Of every condition in life, they were singularly sagacious, sober, and thoughtful. Lord Chatham spoke only the truth when he said to Franklin, of the men who composed the first Colonial Congress: "The Congress is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times." Given to grave reflection, they were neither dreamers nor visionaries, and they were much too earnest to be rhetoricians. It is a curious fact, that they were generally men of so calm a temper that they lived to extreme age. With the exception of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, they were most of them profound scholars, and studied the history of mankind that they might know men. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past that a classic aroma hangs about their writings and their speech; and they were profoundly convinced of what statesmen always know, and the adroitest of mere politicians never perceive, that ideas are the life of a people; that the conscience, not the pocket, is the real citadel of a nation, and that when you have debauched and demoralized that conscience by teaching that there are no natural rights, and that therefore there is no moral right or wrong in political action, you have poisoned the wells and rotted the crops in the ground.

The three greatest living statesmen of England knew this also. Edmund Burke knew it, and Charles James Fox, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. But they did not speak for the King, or Parliament, or the English nation. Lord Gower spoke for them when he said in Parliament: "Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights; their rights

as men and citizens; their rights from God and nature! I am for enforcing these measures." My lord was contemptuous, and the King hired the Hessians, but the truth remained true. The Fathers saw the scarlet soldiers swarming over the sea, but more steadily they saw that national progress had been secure only in the degree that the political system had conformed to natural justice. They knew the coming wreck of property and trade, but they knew more surely that Rome was never so rich as when she was dying, and, on the other hand, the Netherlands never so powerful as when they were poorest. Farther away, they read the names of Assyria, Greece, Egypt. They had art, opulence, splendor. Corn enough grew in the valley of the Nile. The Syrian sword was as sharp as any. They were merchant princes, and the clouds in the sky were rivalled by their sails upon the sea. They were soldiers, and their frown frightened the world.

"Soul, take thine ease," those empires said, languid with excess of luxury and life. Yes: but you remember the king who had built his grandest palace, and was to occupy it upon the morrow; but when the morrow came the palace was a pile of ruins. "Woe is me!" cried the King, "who is guilty of this crime ?" "There is no crime," replied the sage at his side; "but the mortar was made of sand and water only, and the builders forgot to put in the lime." So fell the old empires, because the governors forgot to put justice into their governments.

220.-SPARTACUS TO THE ROMAN ENVOYS.

EPES SARGENT.

Envoys of Rome, the poor camp of Spartacus is too much honored by your presence. And does Rome stoop to parley with the escaped gladiator, with the rebel ruffian, for whom heretofore no slight has been too scornful? You have come, with steel in your right hand, and with gold in your left. What heed we give the former, ask Cossinius; ask Claudius; ask Varinius; ask the bones of your legions that fertilize the Lucanian plains. And for your gold—would ye know what we do with that,―go ask the laborer, the trodden poor, the helpless and the hopeless, on our route; ask all whom Roman tyranny had crushed, or Roman avarice plundered. Ye have seen me before; but ye did not then shun my glance as now. Ye have seen me in the arena, when I was Rome's pet ruffian,