men may see them shine from far away; come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the silk and purple; come, dance before me, that I may be gay; and sing to me that I may slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honor." And better than such an honorable death it were, that the day had perished wherein we were born.

12. I trust that in a little while there will be few of our rich men who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the glorious office which is intended for their hands. I said, just now, that wealth ill used was as the net of the spider, entangling and destroying; but wealth well used is as the net of the sacred Fisher who gathers souls of men out of the deep. A time will come I do not think it is far from - when this golden net of the world's wealth will be spread abroad as the flaming meshes of morning cloud over the sky; bearing with them the joy of light and the dew of the morning, as well as the summons to honorable and peaceful toil.

us

XXI. AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE.-ALICE CARY.

O GOOD painter, tell me true,

Has your hand the cunning to draw
Shapes of things that you never saw?
Ay? Well, here is an order for you.

Woods and cornfields, a little brown,

The picture must not be over-bright,
Yet all in the golden and gracious light
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.
Alway and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn

Lying between them, not quite sere,

And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,

When the wind can hardly find breathing room

Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumach and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around, -
(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!)
These, and the house where I was born,
Low and little, and black and old,
With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows, open wide,
Heads and shoulders clear outside,
And fair young faces all ablush:
Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding the self-same way,
Out of a wilding, wayside bush.

Listen closer. When you have done

With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun

Looked down upon, you must paint for me;
Oh, if I only could make you see

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The woman's soul, and the angel's face,
That are beaming on me all the while,
I need not speak these foolish words :
Yet one word tells you all I would say, -
She is my mother: you will agree

That all the rest may be thrown away.

Two little urchins at her knee

You must paint, sir; one like me,

The other with a clearer brow,
And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise:

At ten years old he went to sea,

God knoweth if he be living now;

He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"
Nobody ever crossed her track

To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, 't is twenty long years and more

Since that old ship went out of the bay
With my great-hearted brother on her deck:
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.
Bright his hair was, a golden brown,

The time we stood at our mother's knee:
That beauteous head, if it did go down,
Carried sunshine into the sea!

Out in the fields one summer night
We were together, half afraid

Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade

Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,
Loitering till after the low little light

Of the candle shone through the open door.
Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs;
The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat:

The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.

The eyes of my mother (take good heed) -
Looking not on the nestful of eggs,

Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs,
But straight through our faces down to our lies,
And oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise!

I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though A sharp blade struck through it.

You, sir, know

That you on the canvas are to repeat

Things that are fairest, things most sweet,

Woods and cornfields and mulberry-tree,

The mother, the lads, with their bird, at her knee : But, oh, that look of reproachful woe!

High as the heavens your name I'll shout,

If you paint me the picture, and leave that out.

XXII. THE HIGHLAND GATHERING.-W. SCOTT.

I.

2.

SPEED, Malise, speed!- the dun deer's hide
On fleeter foot was never tied; -
Speed, Malise, speed! such cause of haste
Thine active sinews never braced;
Bend 'gainst the steepy hill thy breast;
Rush down like torrent from its crest.
With short and springing footstep pass
The trembling bog and false morass.

Across the brook like roebuck bound,
And thread the break like questing hound;
The crag is high, the scaur is deep,
Yet shrink not from the desperate leap;
Parched are thy burning lips and brow,
Yet by the fountain pause not now.
Herald of battle, fate, and fear,
Stretch onward in thy fleet career!

3. Fast as the fatal symbol flies,

In arms the huts and hamlets rise;
From winding glen, from upland brown,
They poured each hardy tenant down;
Nor slacked the messenger his pace;
He showed the sign, he named the place,
And, pressing forward like the wind,

Left clamor and surprise behind.

4. Speed, Malise, speed! the lake is passed;
Duncraggan's huts appear at last,

And peep, like moss-grown rocks, half
Half hidden in the copse so green;
There mayst thou rest, thy labor done;
Others shall speed the signal on.

seen,

XXIII. PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.-H. W. LONGFELLOW.

I.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in seventy-five:
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

II.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower, as a signal light,—
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be
Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

III.

Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,

Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay
The "Somerset," British man-of-war :

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison bar,
And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.