days, apparently as permanent, their very existence be come now the subject of speculation-I had almost said of scepticism. I appeal to history! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of a universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, or all the establishments of this world's wisdom, secure to empire the permanency of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought so once; yet the land of Priam lives only in song! Thebes thought so once; yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate! So thought Palmyra—where is she! So thought Persepolis, and now

"Yon waste, where roaming lions howl,
Yon aisle, where moans the grey-eyed owl,
Shows the proud Persian's great abode,
Where sceptred once, an earthly god,

His power-clad arm controlled each happier clime,
Where sports the warbling muse, and fancy soars sublime.”

So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman! In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps! The days of their glory are as if they had never been; and the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected, in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their bards! Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be what Athens was! Who shall say, when the European column shall have mouldered, and the night of barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant.

Such, sir, is the natural progress of human operations and such the unsubstantial mockery of human pride.

PADDY'S EXCELSIOR.

'Twas growing dark so terrible fashıt,

Whin through a town up the mountain there pashed
A broth of a boy, to his neck in the shnow;
As he walked, his shillalah he swung to and fro,
Saying "It's up to the top I'm bound for to go,
Be jabbers!"

He looked mortal sad, and his eye was as bright
As a fire of turf on a cowld winther night;
And niver a word that he said could ye tell
As he opened his mouth and let out a yell,
"It's up till the top of the mountain I'll go,
Onless covered up wid this bodthersome shnow,
Be jabbers!"

Through the windows he saw, as he thraveled along,
The light of the candles, and fires so warm,

But a big chunk of ice hung over his head;

Wid a shnivel and groan, "By St. Patrick !" he said, "It's up to the very tip-top I will rush,

And then if it falls, it's not meself it'll crush,

Be jabbers!"

"Whisht a bit," said an owld man, whose head was as white As the shnow that fell down on that miserable night;

"Shure, ye'll fall in the wather, me bit of a lad,
Fur the night is so dark and the walkin' is bad."
Bedad! he'd not lisht to a word that was said,
But he'd go till the top, if he went on his head,
Be jabbers!

A bright, buxom young girl, such as likes to be kissed,
Axed him wouldn't he stop, and how could he resist?
So, shnapping his fingers and winking his eye,
While shmiling upon her. he made this reply-
"Faith, 1 meant to kape on till I got to the top,

But, as yer shwate self has axed me, I may as well shtop,
Be jabbers!"

He shtopped all night and he sthopped all day,—
And ye musn't be axing whin he did go away;
Fur wouldn't he be a bastely gossoon

To be laving his darlint in the swate honey-moon?
Whin the owld man has peraties enough, and to spare,
Shure he moight as well shtay if he's comfortable there,
Harper's Magazine.

Be jabbers!

HYMN TO THE FLOWERS.-HORACE SMITH,

DAY-STARS! that ope your eyes at morn to twinkle
From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation;
And dew-drops on her lovely altars sprinkle
As a libation.

Ye matin worshippers! who bending lowly
Before the uprisen sun, God's lidless eye,
Pour from your chalices a sweet and holy
Incense on high.

Ye bright mosaics! that with storied beauty
The floor of nature's temple tesselate-
What numerous lessons of instructive duty
Your forms create !

'Neath cloister'd bough each floral bell that swingeth, And tolls its perfume on the passing air, Makes Sabbathi in the fields, and ever ringeth

A call to prayer.

Not to those domes where crumbling arch and column Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,

But to that fane most catholic and solemn,

Which God hath plann'd;

To that cathedral boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply; Its choir, the wind and waves; its organ, thunder; Its dome, the sky.

There, as in solitude and shade, I wander

Through the lone aisles, or stretch'd upon the sod, Awed by the silence, reverently ponder

The ways of God.

Not useless are ye, flowers, though made for pleasure,
Blooming o'er hill and dale, by day and night;
On every side your sanction bids me treasure

Harmless delight!

Your voiceless lips, O flowers! are living preachers; Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book; Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers,

In loneliest nook.

Floral apostles, that with dewy splendor

Blush without sin, and weep without a crime; Oh! nay I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender Your lore divine!

"Thou wert not, Solomon, in all thy glory,
Array'd," the lilies cry, "in robes like ours;
How vain your glory-Oh! how transitory
Are human flowers !"

In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly artist,
With which thou paintest nature's wide-spread hall,
What a delightful lesson thou impartest
Of love to all!

Posthumous glories-angel-like collection,
Upraised from seed and bulb interr'd in earth;
Ye are to me a type of resurrection

And second birth !

Ephemeral sages-what instructors hoary

To such a world of thought could furnish scope? Each fading calyx a memento mori,

Yet fount of hope.

Were I, O God! in churchless lands remaining,
Far from the voice of teachers and divines,
My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining
Priests, sermons, shrines!

ONE GLASS MORE.

STAY, mortal, stay; nor heedless thus
Thy sure destruction seal;

Within that cup there lurks a curse,

Which all who drink shall feel:

Disease and death, forever nigh,

Stand ready at the door,

And eager wait to hear the cry
Of give me " One glass more."

Go, view that prison's gloomy cells,
Their pallid tenants scan;
Gaze, gaze upon these earthly hella,
And ask whence they began;

Had these a tongue: O man! thy cheek
The answer'd crimson o'er;

Had these a tongue they'd to thee speak,
Aud cry the "One glass more."

Behold that wretched female form,
An outcast from her home,
Bleached in affliction's blighting storm,
And doomed in want to roam;
Behold her--ask that prattler near,
Why mother is so poor;

He'll whisper, in thy startled ear,
'Twas father's "One glass more."

Stay, mortal, stay; repent, return,
Reflect upon thy fate;

The poisonous draught indignant spurn,—
Spurn, spurn it ere too late!

Oh, fly the alehouse's horrid din,

Nor linger at the door,

Lest thou, perchance, should sip again

The treacherous "One Glass More."

JAFFAR.-LEIGH HUNT.

JAFFAR, the Barmecide, the good vizier,
The poor man's hope. the friend without a peor,
Jaffar was dead, slain by a doom unjust;
And guilty Haroun, sullen with mistrust
Of what the good, and e'en the bad, might say,
Ordained that no man living, from that day,
Should dare to speak his name on pain of death.
All Araby and Persia held their breath;

All but the brave Mondeer; he, proud to show
How far for love a grateful soul could go,
And facing death for very scorn and grief
(For his great heart wanted a great relief),
Stood forth in Bagdad, daily, in the square
Where once had stood a happy house, and there
Harangued the tremblers at the scymitar
On all they owed to the divine Jaffar.