THE CONVICT SHIP. ORN on the water! and, purple and "THE DAYS OF INFANCY ARE ALL A DREAM.” HE of PH dayao, infancy are all a dread they Bursts on the billows the flushing of light; seem! 'Tis life's sweet opening spring! And that, and that, alas! goes by; MAN. (From "Night Thoughts."") O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun, The winds come around her, in murmur and And the surges rejoice as they bear her along, Night on the waves! and the moon is on high, [OW poor, how rich, how abject, how au- Treading its deaths in the power of her might, Hgust, How complicate, how wonderful is man! From different natures marvellously mixed, And wondering at her own. How reason Oh, what a miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread! What can preserve my life, or what destroy! Legions of angels can't confine me there. And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light. Look to the waters! asleep on their breast, Who, as she smiles in the silvery light, That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin. Who, as he watches her silently gliding, 'Tis thus with our life, while it passes along, All gladness and glory to wandering eyes, Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs; Fading and false is the aspect it wears, As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears; And the withering thoughts which the world cannot know, Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below; While the vessel drives on to that desolate shore Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o'er. WE THOMAS KIBBLE HERVEY. THE NABOB. HEN silent time, wi' lightly foot, Wha kens gin the dear friends I left Or gin I e'er again shall taste As I drew near my ancient pile My heart beat a' the way; Ilk place I passed seemed yet to speak Those happy days o' mine, A' naething to langsyne! The ivied tower now met my eye, Where minstrels used to blaw; Nae friend stepped forth wi' open hand, Till Donald tottered to the door, And grat to see the lad return I ran to ilka dear friend's room, I knew where ilk ane used to sit, I closed the door and sobbed aloud, Some penny chiels, a new-sprung race Wad next their welcome pay, Wha shuddered at my Gothic wa's, 66 And wished my groves away. 'Cut, cut," they cried, "those aged elms; Lay low yon mournfu' pine." Na! na! our fathers' names grow there, Memorials o' langsyne. To wean me frae these waefu' thoughts, But sair on ilka weel-kenned face In vain I sought in music's sound Has thrilled through a' my heart. I listened to langsyne. Ye sons to comrades o' my youth, mourns The days he ance has seen. When time has passed and seasons fled, Your hearts will feel like mine; And aye the sang will maist delight That minds ye o' langsyne! SUSANNA BLAMIRE. YOUTH. (A newly discovered poem by Robert Burns, hitherto unpublished. It was found in one of the poet's exercise books, and was given to the world by the London Dramatic Review, which has vouched for its genuineness.) YOUTH is a vision of a morn That flies the coming day; It is the blossom on the thorn It is the image of the sky But when the waves begin to roar 66 a TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD. (From "The Mill on the Floss.") H, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by-and-by," is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above onr socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves inrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but what an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another? What he felt when his school-fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere willfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that "half," although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely, if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children. MARIAN EVANS CROSS. (George Eliot.") 66. THE PLEASURES OF POVERTY. (From The Essays of Elia.'') WISH the good old days would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state," so she was pleased to ramble on, "in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that we have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and oh! how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times!) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. "Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare; and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination until it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, whe you set off for Islington, fearing you should be too late; and when the old book-seller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards lugged out the relic from his dusty treasures; and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome; and when you presented it to me; and when we were exploring the perfectness of it, collating it, you called it; and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left until day-break; was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and which you are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, gi you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn suit, your eli corbeau, for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your consciencez the mighty sum of fifteen-or sixteen shillings, was it?—a great affair we thought it therwhich you had lavished upon the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now. "When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings up on that print after Leonardo, which we christened the 'Lady Blanche;' when you looked a the purchase, and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture, was there no pleas ure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Leonardos. Yet do you? "Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, whet we had a holiday? Holidays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich. And the litte hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad; and hes you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in and proda our store, only paying for the ale which you must call for; and speculate upon the looks the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth; and wish for such another honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Le when he went a fishing; and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometime they would look grudgingly upon us; but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? "There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite common; in the first dish of peas while they were yet dear; to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now, that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves, beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat; when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now, what I mean by the word, we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty." MISUSED ART. CHARLES LAMB. HE names of great painters are like passing bells; in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleuess of the power is the guilt of its use |