Oh how my heart ran o'er with joy! And many a wood-mouse dwelleth there, The green shoots grow above their heads, And roots so fresh and fine Beneath their feet, nor is there strife 'Mong them for mine and thine. There is enough for every one, And they lovingly agree; We might learn a lesson, all of us, Beneath the green-wood tree! THE POOR VOTER'S SONG. They knew that I was poor, And they thought that I was base; They thought that I'd endure To be covered with disgrace; So they offered me a bribe Who would my conscience buy! My vote? It is not mine To do with as I will; To cast, like pearls, to swine, To these wallowers in ill. It is my country's due, And I'll give it, while I can, To the honest and the true, Like a man, like a man! No, no, I'll hold my vote As a treasure and a trust, My dishonor none shall quote When I'm mingled with the dust; And my children, when I'm gone, Shall be strengthened by the thought, That their father was not one To be bought, to be bought! O shame upon my betters, Who would my conscience buy! But I'll not wear their fetters, Not I indeed, not I! FASHIONABLE FOLLIES. There are in the United States one hundred thousand young ladies, as Sir Ralph Abercrombie said of those of Scotland, " the prettiest lassies in a' the world," who know neither to toil nor spin, who are clothed like the lilies of the valley,-who thrum the piano, and, a few of the more dainty, the harp,— who walk, as the Bible says, softly,-who have read romances, and some of them seen the interior of theatres,-who have been admired at the examination of their high school,-who have wrought algebraic solutions on the blackboard,-who are, in short, the very roses of the garden, the attar of life, who yet, horresco referens,—can never expect to be married, or, if married, to live without-shall I speak, or forbear?-putting their own lily hands to domestic drudgery. We go into the interior villages of our recent wooden country. The fair one sits down to clink the wires of the piano. We see the fingers displayed on the keys, which, we are sure, never prepared a dinner, nor made a garment for her robustious brothers. We traverse the streets of our own city, and the wires of the piano are thrummed in our ears from every considerable house. In cities and villages, from one extremity of the Union to the other, wherever there is a good house, and the doors and windows betoken the presence of the mild months, the ringing of the piano wires is almost as universal a sound, as the domestic hum of life within. We need not enter in person. Imagination sees the fair one, erect on her music stool, laced, and pinioned, and reduced to a questionable class of entomology, dinging at the wires, as though she could, in some way, hammer out of them music, amusement and a husband. Look at her taper and creamcolored fingers. Is she a utilitarian? Ask the fair one when she has beaten all the music out of the keys, Pretty fair one, canst talk to thy old and sick father, so as to beguile him out of the headache and rheumatism? Canst write a good and straightforward letter of business? Thou art a chemist, I remember, at the examination; canst compound, prepare, and afterwards boil, or bake, a good pudding? Canst make one of the hundred subordinate ornaments of thy fair person? In short, tell us thy use in existence, except to be contemplated as a pretty picture? And how long will any one be amused with the view of a picture, after having surveyed it a dozen times, unless it have a mind, a heart; and, we may emphatically add, the perennial value of utility?" It is a sad and lamentable truth, after all the incessant din we have heard of the march of mind, and the interminable theories, inculcations and eulogies of education, that the present is an age of unbounded desire of display and notoriety, of exhaustless and unquenchably burning ambition; and not an age of calm, contented, ripe and useful knowledge, for the sacred privacy of the parlour. Display, notoriety, surface and splendor-these are the first aims of the mothers; and can we expect that the daughters will drink into a better spirit? To play, sing, dress, glide down the dance, and get a husband, is the lesson; not to be qualified to render his home quiet, well-ordered and happy. he has sacrificed so much, finds that a servant must be hired for the young ladies. Here is not the end of the mischief. Every one knows that mothers and daughters give the tone, and laws-more unalterable than those of the Medes and Persians-to society Here is the root of the matter, the spring of bitter waters. Here is the origin It is notorious, that there will soon be no interme- of the complaint of hard times, bankruptcies, greedi diate class between those who toil and spin, and ness, avarice and the horse-leech cry Give! give!' those whose claim to be ladies is founded on their Here is the reason why every man lives up to his being incapable of any value of utility. At present, income, and so many beyond it. Here is the reason we know of none, except the little army of martyrs, why the young trader, starting on credit and calling yclept school-mistresses, and the still smaller corps himself a merchant, hires and furnishes such a house of editorial and active blue-stockings. If it should as if he really was one, fails, and gives to his credibe my lot to transmigrate back to earth, in the form tors a beggarly account of empty boxes and misapof a young man, my first homages in search of a wife plied sales. He has married a wife whose vanity and would be paid to the thoughtful and pale faced fair extravagance are fathomless, and his ruin is explainone, surrounded by her little, noisy refractory sub-ed. Hence, the general and prevalent evil of the jects, drilling her soul to patience, and learning to drink of the cup of earthly discipline, and more impressively than by a thousand sermons, tasting the bitterness of our probationary course, in teaching the young idea how to shoot. Except, as aforesaid, school-mistresses and blues, we believe that all other damsels, clearly within the purview of the term lady, estimate the clearness of their title precisely in the ratio of their uselessness. present times, extravagance-conscious shame of the thought of being industrious and useful. Hence the concealment by so many thousand young ladies, (who have not yet been touched by the extreme of modern degeneracy, and who still occasionally apply their hands to domestic employment,) of these, their good deeds, with as much care as if they were crimes. Every body is ashamed not to be expensive and fash· ionable; and every one seems equally ashamed of honest industry. Allow a young lady to have any hand in the adjustI cannot conceive, that mere idlers, male, or fement of all the components of her dress, each of male, can have respect enough for themselves to be which has a contour which only the fleeting fashion comfortable. I cannot imagine, that they should not of the moment can settle; allow her time to receive carry about them such a consciousness of being a morning visitants, and prepare for afternoon appoint-blank in existence, as would be written on their ments and evening parties, and what time has the dear one to spare, to be useful and do good? To labor! Heaven forfend the use of the horrid term! The simple state of the case is this. There is somewhere, in all this, an enormous miscalculation, an infinite mischief-an evil, as we shall attempt to show, not of transitory or minor importance, but fraught with misery and ruin, not only to the fair ones themselves, but to society and the age. forehead, in the shrinking humiliation of perceiving that the public eye had weighed them in the balance, and found them wanting. Novels and romances may say this or that about their etherial beauties, their fine ladies tricked out to slaughter my lord A., and play lis C. to his sonnets. I have no conception of a beau Cupid's archery upon dandy B. and despatch Amarytiful woman, or a fine man, in whose eye, in whose port, in whose whole expression, this sentiment We have not, we admit, the elements on which to does not stand imbodied :—I am called by my Crebase the calculation; but we may assume as we have ator to duties; I have employment on the earth; my that there are in the United States a hundred thou-sterner, but more enduring pleasures are in dischargsand young ladies brought up to do nothing excepting my duties." dress, and pursue amusement. Another hundred Compare the sedate expression of this sentiment thousand learn music, dancing, and what are called in the countenance of man or woman, when it is the fashionable accomplishments. It has been said known to stand, as the index of character and the "that revolutions never move backwards." It is fact, with the superficial gaudiness of a simple, goodequally true of emulation of the fashion. The few for-nothing belle, who disdains usefulness and emopulent who can afford to be good for nothing, pre-ployment, whose empire is a ball-room, and whose cede. Another class presses as closely as they can subjects dandies, as silly and as useless as herself. upon their steps; and the contagious mischief spreads Who, of the two, has most attractions for a man of downward, till the fond father, who lays every thing sense? The one a helpmate, a fortune in herself, who under contribution, to furnish the means for pur- can aid to procure one, if the husband has it not; chasing a piano, and hiring a music-master for his who can soothe him under the loss of it, and what daughters, instead of being served, when he comes is more, aid him to regain it? and the other a paint. in from the plough, by the ruined favourites for whomed butterfly, for ornament only during the vernal and sunny months of prosperity; and then not becoming a chrysalis, an inert moth in adversity, but a croaking repining, ill-tempered termagant, who can only recur to the days of her short-lived triumph, to imbitter the misery, and poverty, and hopelessness of a husband, who, like herself, knows not to dig, and is ashamed to beg. We are obliged to avail ourselves of severe language in application to a deep-rooted malady. We want words of power. We need energetic and stern applications. No country ever verged more rapidly towards extravagance and expense. In a young republic, like ours, it is ominous of any thing but good. Men of thought, and virtue, and example, are called upon to look to this evil. Ye patrician families, that croak, and complain, and forbode the downfall of the republic, here is the origin of your evils. Instead of training your son to waste his time, as an idle young gentleman at large,-instead of inculcating on your daughter, that the incessant tinkling of a harpsichord, or a scornful and lady-like toss of the head, or dexterity in waltzing, are the chief requisites to make her way in life,-if you can find no better employment for em, teach him the use of the grubbing hoe, and her to make up garments for your serTrain your son and daughter to an employment, to frugality, to hold the high front, and to walk the fearless step of independence, and sufficiency to themselves in any fortunes, any country, or any state of things. By arts like these, the early Romans thrived. When your children have these possessions, you may go down to the grave in peace, as regards their temporal fortunes.-Flint's Western Review. vants. HEART'S EASE. I knew her in her brightness, As the dancing waves that sparkle Yet deem not for a moment That her life was free from care; She shared the storms and sorrows That others sigh to bear; But she met earth's tempests meekly, But our paths might all be smoother FAITH. BY FRANCES ANN BUTLER. Better trust all, and be deceived, Oh, in this mocking world, too fast Than lose the blessed hope of truth. THE LAST WISH. This, some one has Wilson, the ornithologist, requested that he might be buried in some sunny spot. finely expressed as follows: In some wild forest shade, In this dim lonely grot, Not amid charnel stones, Or coffins dark, and thick with ancient mould, But let the dewy rose, The snow-drop and the violet, lend perfume Above the spot where, in my grassy tomb, I take repose. Year after year, Within the silver birch tree o'er me hung, And ever at the purple dawn of day The blackbird and the thrush, The golden oriole, shall flit around, Birds from the distant sea Shall sometimes hither flock on snowy wings, Singing a dirge to me. No. 6. TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE. SYMPATHY. Thou hast not left the rough-barked tree to grow I see them, crowd on crowd they walk the earth-But many a cup the glittering drops has drank ; The bird must sing to one who sings again, My heart grows sick before the wide spread death, TIME INSTANT. Is there no hope of better things for our world, and must that, which hath been, still be? Is our life really a lie, and can it, by no possibility, come true? 'Twere painful inexpressibly to think thus. 'Twere to make the universe a chaos and our life a riddle. When, stepping forth in one of these perfect June mornings, we find ourself so gloriously compassed-that magnificent vault above and this prodigal earth under us-yon ever-stirring sea kissing its shores, and the fresh early breeze wafting a blessing unto us--and then think, for a moment, on the falsities, the disorders, the everlasting clash and unrest, the disunion and disharmony of this our social condition-we cannot believe 'tis to endure as now. We must needs dream of man, the nobler being, harmonized with nature, the meaner creation. Sprung from the same original, one wisdom and love, brightest often, has found at last its destroying supervises both. It needs not many years to teach us how at odds is the unsophisticated spirit with the social order whereunto 'tis born. Where lives he, to whom the revelation of what the world truly is was not a shock and an anguish unspeakable? Evermore 'tis by a downhill path one reaches the platform, whereon the world's tasks are to be executed and worldly success achieved. Were the whole truth to burst at once upon us, we were overwhelmed. But one beauteous illusion after another fades away-one principle after another is surrendered as romantic and impracticable-compromise after compromise is struck with absolute verity-lash on lash of the torturing scourge of necessity drives us into the beaten ways and bows us to " things as they are"ray by ray goes out of our birth-star, till "At length the man perceives it die away, Yet no time, nor custom, nor debasement itself, can utterly destroy our inwrought impressions of the existence of a somewhat purer and nobler than actually greets the sense, the possession whereof 'tis man's prerogative to achieve. Manifold and unmistakable are the intimations thereof. Of the myriad things, that recall our youth, not one but remembers us of youth's high purposes and hopes. Music bears witness to us of a more exalted than our wonted sphere. And nature, with its undying harmonies and ever fresh beauty, hath perpetual rebuke for our disorder and deformity. But especially does poesy, the ever-living witness of the Divine to man, point unceasingly to an ideal, challenging our aspirations. From all which causes it is that reform is measurably a demand of every age. However self content and however absorbed by its own immediate schemes, it cannot evade the thought of a possible advance. Our own time is one altogether unwonted in this regard. The reform-call is universal. One malfeasance and defect after another has been assaulted, till no mountain-side but hath echoed back, and no remotest valley that hath not been startled, by the vehement demand for new and better lifeconditions. Governments, once keeping afar the inquiries of the mass by pompous awes and terrors, have at last felt the pressure of the common hand on their shoulders, and been fain to render, as they might, a justification of their existence. The Church, no longer the Ark, the touch whereof is death, has been, mayhap, even rudely handled, and anywise been moved to asssign men's largest good as the sole reason for its surviving. And throughout all departments of social life the same movement has gone. Intemperance itself-earth's coeval and universal curse-that foul, prodigious birth, to which the world, desperate of resistance, has been fain to yield an annual sacrifice, from its hopefulest and Theseus, and life looks greener in expectancy of this deliverance. Madness, that thing of horrid mys. tery, before which, as 'twere a fiend incarnate, other days have quailed in helpless awe, has by modern benevolence been looked steadily in the eye and tamed. Nor has the " prisoner" been forgot. No more, like the old time, leprous, are they shut out from sympathetic interchange with the sound, and branded irrecoverable, so left to die uncared of. "Twas remembered that a condemned one accepted the Christ of God while the people's "honorable ones" flouted and murdered him-that to one cut judicially off was Paradise opened," while over the self-complacent, who settled and witnessed his fate, a doom impended so appalling as to draw tears from the guiltless victim of their barbarity. That most illustrious of chivalrous banners, the ensign of Howard, the Godfrey of the crusade for the redemption of the outcast, has gathered about it a host of congenial spirits, and many a prison of ours, like that of Paul and Silas, has echoed with hymns of the "free"-of those born into the "glorious liberty of the sons of God." But grateful as these movements are to the philanthropic heart, 'tis impossible not to see, that, after all, they are neither central nor permanent. 'Tis but shearing off the poisonous growths, the roots whereof are left intact and vigorous. The hour has come, we think, for assaying that radical reform, wherein all reforms else are comprised. Our social order itself rests on principles unsound and pernicious, and why not strike at the root of the tree? It pains us to witness so much of honorable, real and faithful endeavour little better than flung away in tasks, which still must be renewed at the instant of completion. Might we but live to see even the corner-stone laid of a right Christian Society! What now be we but sons of Ishmael? Of a huge majority 'tis the anxious, everlasting cry, "how shall we exist ?" Not, "how shall we achieve the noblest good?" Not, "how shall we unfold most completely the godlike within us?" And can it be God's unrepealable ordinance that the great mass of them bearing His impress shall drudge through their life-term to supply their meanest wants, perpetually overtasked, shrouded thick in intellectual night, uncognisant of the marvels of wisdom and beauty testifying His presence in our world, unparticipant of a joy above that of the beasts that perish? Must war and pestilence and famine, must crime and vice and sickness and remorse still hound this poor life of man through the whole of its quick-finished circle? Must the gallows yet pollute, and the prison gloom, and the brothel curse, and madhouse and poorhouse shadow the green breast of earth? Wo for our wisdom, that to labor, the first great ordinance of Heaven, we have discovered no better instigation than the insufferable goad of starvation! |