"Do you remember the evening we all went to hear the prize orations of Columbian College?" "O, yes!" said Kitty, "that was when Henry Dalton and Sam. Farquhar won the medals." "What became of those two fine youths! No doubt they are both making their mark in the world.". A deprecating look from Nora, which Kitty did not see; and the latter ran on "I don't know about the mark. They are both in the army-in the opposite armies, I should say-one a Federal and the other a Confederate officer." Papa turned a severe look on Kitty, as he said: "I wonder how you can call a rebel horde an army! I should as soon think of calling the vile Confederacy a nation, and the traitor who is at the head of it a president." "I know it is wrong," said Kitty; "yet they do call it an army, and they call the rebellion a war." "Yes," observed Nora, without raising her eyes from her work, "and they call the rebels belligerents." (From the Clayonian Union.) THE TRINITY OF AGES. In the far past was a time when men lived in innocence and peace. Earth and Heaven always smiled. No cold winter's blast, no burning summer's sun, but everlasting mild spring. Flowers ever bloomed. Earth brought forth in abundance for the simple wants and tastes of her children; and all that she bore was good: there was nothing troublesome or hurtful. Animals lived in harmony. Men knew not what it was to suffer or to sin. They passed their lives contented, tilling the ground, and enjoying its fruits. They had no fierce appetites, no passions, to be gratified through taking the lives of their fellowWhen their appointed time was come, they sank, painlessly and peacefully, to sleep in the bosom of their mother. men. Quietness was the chief mark of this age; quietness in nature, animate and inanimate; quietness in man, physical, mental, moral. Imagine a day in Indian summer, when the sky, the air, all nature, the whole man, is full of a delicious languor. This little have we left, every year of the Golden Age. On such a day, what will be the feelings of one who gives himself up wholly to its influences? No inclination to action of body or mind, but the whole system drinking in a soft, quieting pleasure from the air. As to the animal nature, the highest enjoyment: far better than those pleasures which consist in excitement. Such as this was the state of men in the Golden Age, and their character may be inferred. Innocent because never tempted; amiable, because meeting with no crosses. Capable of the highest appreciation of the agreeable in nature which appeals to the senses; but lacking in power of emotion. Having no hate, because there was nothing to hate; and so, by the universal law, lacking in capacity of love. Having no fear, because there was nothing to harm; and as little power of hope. Living in the present. With memory undeveloped; because the days, alike happy to them, glided on with even movement, with no changes to impress the mind. Having no knowledge of the nature and workings of their own minds; because never feeling any dissatisfaction or sense of discord, every conscious want being met as soon as felt. Having little will-power; because there was nothing to call it forth: no evil to be avoided, no good but presented itself unsought. Being thus uniformly deficient in those qualities which chiefly distinguish men from each other, they differed little in mind, and as little in body. They were alike-all beautiful; but without that highest beauty-of the Soul. In this, the Age of Iron, action and commotion are the characteristics. There are the cold storm and hot sun, tornado and lightning, foes both in vegetable and animal kingdoms, which must be fought down. Among men, all evil passions, which we must struggle against; in others, to preserve our own rights and the rights of those dear to us: in ourselves, to keep the life of the Soul. This age of strife, of warfare between comfort and suffering, between life and death, between good and evil, is necessary to force men upon a career of progress, material, intellectual, moral; that they may, in the age to come, continue that progress forever: not, as now, from the necessity of constant struggling with hostile elements, in order to maintain position; but from the pure love of growing wiser and better, of rising higher, which will have been awakened within them. Thus, the object of this strife is to develop strength of will, of thought, of virtue, which the quiet of the Golden Age could never do. While these good fruits are of this age, we are not for a moment to be satisfied with it: for its results, at their very best, lack com pleteness-they are but beginnings. Our intellectual progress is merely getting ready to learn. We can only see the outside of things now; we know nothing of the real essence of any thing. We are not now reading the Book of Nature; we are only learning the alphabet, that in the age to come we may read. So it is in moral things. There is no man who can say, "I have no sin," who consecrates his whole life to the highest end. The most we do now is to start on this path; the perfect day is not yet. The real significance and only satisfaction in our lives now, is to be found in the fact that this age is a preparation; and every step we take, both in training of ourselves and in treating others, should be taken in full view of that which is to come. In this light we shall see, vaguely now, fully hereafter, meaning and beauty in much of our work and experience, which otherwise seems homely and worthless. So far as we have to do with ourselves, our work now is to root out from our hearts those elements which belong peculiarly to the two human ages: the indolence of the Golden and the selfishness of the Iron, that we may be ready for the Age of God. In the world there are three kinds of people. Men of the Golden Age, who seek only selfish gratification, whose one aim is to make life a scene of pleasure. Men of this age, who delight in strife for its own sake; who desire nothing better than contending with their fellow-men, and having rule over them. And those who, being in the world, are not of the world; whose aim is to resist all evil, to learn and to do all good; who have always, in the midst of the strife, that perfect calm and only true peace which is in the assurance that Right will prevail. The first two kinds of men have nothing in common with the age to come. They desire it not, and there is no place in it for them; therefore, when this age shall end, they must perish with it. To attain the object of this Age of Strife, which is the development of virtue, in its broadest sense, many must be sacrificed. No great good can be attained without a sacrifice. How glorious a thing will be a man made perfect! What sacrifices must then be made, to accomplish such a work! That there may be some strong, some perfect ones, it is the will of God that many should fail in this struggle with evil and perish; yea, that some should even join themselves to the evil, and so suffer a more terrible condemnation. We may not ask, why this necessity. Our faith can only say, God is good, therefore it must be a necessity. Let us rather look at the fruit of all this evil and strife with evil. A man perfect physically, having a body which is an instrument finely adapted and without flaw, in the hands of a will, never shaken, which is in full harmony with the will of God and with the eternal Law of Right. Having an appreciation and a pleasure in the beautiful everywhere, in Universe and in Soul, higher than we can conceive.. Such, without spot or blemish, or any such thing, going on forever conquering the mysteries of creation, and searching after God, is the man of the age to come. Is he not far better than the man of the Golden Age? And is not this age, which is necessary for developing the one from the other, to be thankfully accepted? Yet is the age to come to be longed for, as the sum of whatever of good is in the two others: it is peace, which is not inaction; and action, which is not strife. The three are one. Of them, the Golden is childhood, thoughtless and happy; the Iron is youth, restless and unsettled, but aspiring; the age to come, is manhood, strong and calm. EDITOR'S SADDLE-BAGS. POLITICS and the weather-the twin problems-the most mysterious and evasive of problems-shall we ever come to solve them, and be as safe in our predictions as the savants are who keep the registry of eclipses and meteoric showers? Buckle once ciphered out a tolerable certainty in these matters. The farmer was to know years beforehand when to plant and what to plant; how many days the sun would shine; whether the wind would blow west or nor'west; what would be the price of turnips in the fall, and how much of the seed would rot which the husbandman sowed in the spring. It was to be just the same in the political world. Philosophers were to discount wars. Politicians could accurately determine what party would elect its presidential candidate, who would run for alderman, and what man was likely to be elected clerk of Tweedledum. Altogether the prospect was charming, when Buckle unfortunately died, and that was the end of it all. However, if a science of the future is not attainable, knowledge of the past still remains as positive quantity, and from that point it is not unreasonable to say that both in politics and the weather things have lately shaped themselves badly. As to the latter everybody is agreed. Rain, fog, muddy, sunshine, frost throughout the Western Reserve on the 3d of May, swollen rivers in all latitudes, corn rotting in Alabama, sugar-cane plantations flooded in Louisiana, peach-buds killed in Missouri, and east winds overwhelming New England with catarrh and consumption there is a pretty decided uniformity on this subject from Florida to Walrussia, and our new purchase of the Aurora Borealis ! And in political things is it not very much the same? Politics is a word that we wish taken in a very broad way. Let it include eight-hour movements, Albany legislation, the Luxemburg question, high prices-in fact, all that pertains to society in its collected actions. Who dare say that in this sense affairs have not been painfully awry? Storms, perturbations, earthquakes in Mytelene and Missouri; social Whether 'tis nobler in the human mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or,-Is this a dagger that I see before The handle towards my hand- earthquakes in the South and in Eng-| DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE IT? land; national disturbances in Mexico, HAMLET (Sol.)-To be or not to be? that South America, Europe, Asia; busi- is the question! ness everywhere dead; Chicago importing corn from the East, Boston importing it from Europe, New York from San Francisco; labor and capital eyeing each other with clenched hands and frowning brows; strikes, processions, closed workshops, angry mass meetings, and angry meetings in parlors, with shut doors, velvet carpets, champagne, and the terse indignation of employers who hate interference; universal suffrage looming up, and just at present the conservatives becoming radical and the radicals conservative!-from every side the atmosphere is palpably surcharged with the elements of disorder, discontent, evil apparently without purpose and without remedy. However, men and brethren! let us hope for the best. There was chaos before the creation, and there will yet be sunshiny days for us all. This half century, in which we have been blindly walking now seventeen years, will get to its majority sooner or later, and there is ample room to straighten what is crooked, and plenty of force, and faith, and fealty in humanity to do all that is demanded of it. THE name of the author of the able article on Major-General ALEXANDER SHALER, in this Magazine for May, was inadvertently omitted. In answer to various inquiries, therefore, we are pleased to announce Dr. J. B. WALKER, of New York, its author. F. ONE of the noticeable phases of now-a-days is the travesty mania. The Greek drama is parodized. A secondclass theatrical company of New York derives all its stage material from imitations of current city plays. Webb has been perpetrating some clever travesties of sensation novels. Where we cannot create we seem inclined to pull down. Less harmful than this is the laborious ingenuity which consists in compiling lines from various poets, and thus constructing an odd composite poem with the mere shred of an idea running through it. A friend sends us a neat specimen of this kind of work: But I do know a hawk from a Soft! I did but dream.- The devil dye thee black, thou cream. Where got'st thou that-fair round HAM.-No, my prophetic soul, my FAL.-As familiar in their mouths as household words Now the king-ay, every inch a kingdrinks to HAMLET [Flourish.] Thou invisible spirit of wine,-there's lime in this sack! HAM.-Thou canst not say I did it I am a man More sinned against than sinning. HAM.-Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore HAM.-I only speak right on, and tell More things in heaven and earth |