Thank God! there's still a vanguard
Fighting for the right!

Error's legions know their standard,
Floating in the light;

When the league of sin rejoices,
Quick outring the rallying voices.
Thank God there's still a vanguard

- Fighting for the right!

Mrs. H. E. G. Arey

Through Death to Life.

Have you heard the tale of the Aloe plant,
Away in the sunny clime?

By humble growth of a hundred years
It reaches its blooming time;
And then a wondrous bud at its crown
Breaks into a thousand flowers;
This floral queen, in its blooming seen,
Is the pride of the tropical bowers.
But the plant to the flower is a sacrifice,
For it blooms but once, and in blooming dies.

Have you further heard of this Aloe plant
That grows in the sunny clime,

How every one of its thousand flowers,
As they drop in the blooming time,

Is an infant plant that fastens its roots

In the place where it falls on the ground; And, fast as they drop from the dying stem, Grow lively and lovely around?

By dying it liveth a thousand-fold

In the young that spring from the death of the old.

Have you heard the tale of the Pelican,

The Arab's Gimel el Bahr,

That lives in the African solitudes,

Where the birds that live lonely are?

Have you heard how it loves its tender young,
And cares and toils for their good?
It brings them water from fountains afar,
And fishes the seas for their food.

In famine it feeds them-what love can devise !—
The blood of its bosom, and feeding them dies.

Have you heard the tale they tell of the swan,
The snow-white bird of the lake?

It noiselessly floats on the silvery wave,
It silently sits in the brake;

For it saves its song till the end of life,
And then, in the soft, still even,

'Mid the golden light of the setting sun,

It sings as it soars into heaven!

And the blessed notes fall back from the skies;
'Tis its only song, for in singing it dies.

You have heard these tales; shall I tell you one
A greater and better than all ?

Have you heard of Him whom the heavens adore,
Before whom the hosts of them fall?

How He left the choirs and anthems above,
For earth in its wailings and woes,
To suffer the shame and pain of the cross,
And die for the life of His foes?

O prince of the noble! O sufferer divine!

What sorrow and sacrifice equal to Thine!

Harry Harbaugh.

Minnie an' Me.

The following little poem is full of genuine feeling as well as of poetic beauty. Yos can almost see the wee thing as she follows her grandfather over the fields, cheering his loneliness with the music of her childish prattle, or at night toying with his white locks and "keeking" through his spectacles.

The spring time had come; we were sowing the corn;
When Minnie-wee Minnie-my Minnie was born;

She came when the sweet blossoms burst for the bee,
An' a sweet bud of beauty was Minnie to me.

The harvest was ower, an' yellow the leaf,

When Mary, my daughter, was smitten wi' grief;
O, little thought I my dear Mary wad dee,
An' leave as a blessing wee Minnie to me.

Her hair's like the lang railing tresses o' night;
Her face is the dawn o' day, rosy and bright;
Sae bashfu', sae thoughtfu', yet cheery an' free;
She just is a wonder my Minnie to me.

Her smile is sae sweet, an' sae glancin' her een,

They bring back the face o' my ain bonny Jean,
Mair clear than the linties that sing on the tree
Is the voice o' my Minnie when singing to me.

For mony long years I'd been doiting alane,

When Minnie reveal'd the old feelings again; In the barn or the byre, on the hill or the lea, My bonnie wee Minnie is seldom frae me.

Wherever she moves she lets slip a wee crumb,

To beasties or birdies, the helpless and dumb; How she feeds them, and leads, it's bonny to see; Oh! a lesson o' loving is Minnie to me.

Whenever she hears my slow step on the floor,
She stands wi' her han' on the sneck o' the door,
An' welcomes me ben wi' a face fu' o' glee,

O nane are sae happy as Minnie an' me.

She trots to the corner, an' sets me a chair,

She plays wi' my haffets, and cames down my hair;
Or keeks through my speck, as she sits on my knee;
O were 't not for Minnie, I think I wad dee.

But I'll nae talk o' deeing while work 's to be done,
But potter about, or sit still in the sun;
Till Providence pleases my spirit to free,

Oh! nae power shall sever my Minnie frae me.

Francis Bennoch.

My Darling's Shoes.

God bless the little feet that can never go astray,

For the little shoes are empty in the closet laid away; Sometimes I take one in my hånd, forgetting till I see, It is a little half-worn shoe not large enough for me; And all at once I feel a sense of bitter loss and pain,

As sharp as when, two years ago, it cut my heart in twain.

O little feet, that wearied not, I wait for them no more,

For I am drifting on the tide, but they have reached the shore; And while the blinding tear-drops wet these little shoes so old, They walk unsandalled in the streets that pearly gates enfold And so I lay them down again, but always turn to say,

"God bless the little feet that now surely cannot stray."

And while I am thus standing, I almost seem to see

Two little forms beside me, just as they used to be,Two little faces lifted, with their sweet and tender eyes,

Ah, me! I might have known that look was born of Paradise. I reach my arms out fondly, but they clasp the empty air;

There's nothing of my darlings but the shoes they used to wear

Oh! the bitterness of parting can ne'er be done away

Till I see my darlings walking where their feet can never stray.
When I no more am drifting upon the surging tide,
But with them safely landed upon the river side;

Be patient, heart, while waiting to see their shining way,
For the little feet, in the golden street, can never go astray.

Unwritten Music.

There is unwritten music. The world is full of it. I hear it every hour that I wake; and my waking sense is surpassed sometimes by my sleeping, though that is a mystery. There is no sound of simple nature that is not music. It is all God's work, and so harmony. You may mingle, and divide, and strengthen the passages of its great anthem; and it is still melody,-melody.

The low winds of summer blow over the waterfalls and the brooks, and bring their voices to your ear, as if their sweetness were linked by an accurate finger; yet the wind is but a fitful

player; and you may go out when the tempest is up, and hear the strong trees moaning as they lean before it, and the long grass hissing as it sweeps through, and its own solemn monotony over all; and the dimple of that same brook, and the waterfall's unaltered bass shall still reach you, in the intervals of its power, as much in harmony as before, and as much a part of its perfect and perpetual hymn.

There is no accident of nature's causing which can bring in discord. The loosened rock may fall into the abyss, and the over. blown tree rush down through the branches of the wood, and the thunder peal awfully in the sky; and sudden and violent as these changes seem, their tumult goes up with the sound of wind and waters, and the exquisite ear of the musician can detect no jar.

I have read somewhere of a custom in the Highlands, which, in connection with the principle it involves, is exceedingly beautiful. It is believed that, to the ear of the dying (which, just before death becomes always exquisitely acute), the perfect harmony of the voices of nature is so ravishing, as to make him forget his suffering, and die gently, like one in a pleasant trance. And so, when the last moment approaches, they take him from the close shieling, and bear him out into the open sky, that he may hear the familiar rushing of the streams. I can believe that it is not superstition. I do not think we know how exquisitely nature's many voices are attuned to harmony, and to each other.

The old philosopher we read of might not have been dreaming when he discovered that the order of the sky was like a scroll of written music, and that two stars (which are said to have appeared centuries after his death, in the very places he mentioned) were wanting to complete the harmony. We know how wonderful are the phenomena of color; how strangely like consummate art the strongest dyes are blended in the plumage of birds, and in the cups of flowers; so that, to the practiced eye of the painter, the harmony is inimitably perfect. It is natural to suppose every part of the universe equally perfect; and it is a glorious and elevating thought, that the stars of heaven are moving on continually to music, and that the sounds we daily listen to are but part of a melody that reaches to the very center of God's illimitable spheres.

Willis