Far different these from every former scene; Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin Even now the devastation is begun, That called them from their native walks I see the rural virtues leave the land; away; When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, And took a long farewell, and wished in vain The good old sire the first prepared to go And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose, Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the That idly waiting flaps with every gale, Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly Whether where equinoctial fervors glow; dear, Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief How do thy potions, with insidious joy, And winter wraps the polar world in snow,— Though very poor-may still be very blessed; cay, At every draught more large and large they As ocean sweeps the labored mole away; grow, A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe; บ sound, While self-dependent power can time defy, AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS. (From "The Land of Lorne.") AY after day, as the autumn advances, the tint of the hills is getting deeper and richer; and by October, when the beech leaf yellows, and the oak leaf reddens, the dim purples and deep greens of the heather are perfect. Of all seasons in Lorne the late autumn is perhaps the most beautiful. The sea has a deeper hue, the sky a mellower light. There are long days of northerly wind, when every crag looks perfect, wrought in gray and gold, and silvered with moss, when the high clouds turn luminous at the edges, when a thin film of hoar-frost gleams over the grass and heather, when the light burns rosy and faint over all the hills, from Morven to Cruachan, for hours before the sun goes down. Out of the ditch at the woodside flaps the mallard, as you pass in the gloaming, and standing by the side of the small mountain loch, you see the flock of teal rise, wheel thrice, and settle. The hills are desolate, for the sheep are being sheared. There is a feeling of frost in the air, and Ben Cruachan has a crown of snow. When dead of winter comes, how wondrous look the hills in their white robes! The rouud red ball of the sun looks through the frosty steam. The far-off firth gleams strange and ghostly, with a sense of mysterious distance. The mountain loch is a sheet of blue, on which you may disport in perfect solitude from morn to night, with the hills white on all sides, save where the broken snow shows the rusted leaves of the withered bracken. A deathly stillness and a deathlike beauty reign everywhere, and few living things are discernible, save the hare plunging heavily out of her form in the snow, or the rabbit scuttling off in a snowy spray, or the small birds piping disconsolate on the trees and dykes. ROBERT BUCHANAN. A SWEDISH COUNTRY CHURCH. (From the Introduction to "The Children of The Lord's Supper.") "REQUENT, too, are the village churches, standing by the roadsides, each in its own little garden of Gethsemane. In the parish register great events are doubtless recorded. Some old king was christened or buried in that church; and a little sexton, with a rusty key, shows you the baptismal font, or the coffin. In the churchyard are a few flowers, and much green grass; and daily the shadow of the church spire, with its long tapering finger, counts the tombs, representing a dial-plate of human life, on which the hours and minutes are the graves of men. The stones are flat, and large, and low, and perhaps sunken, like the roofs of old houses. On some are armorial bearings; on others, only the initials of the poor tenants, with a date, as on the roofs of Dutch cottages. They all sleep with their heads to the westward. Each held a lighted taper in his hand when he died, and in his coffin were placed his little heart-treasures, and a piece of money for his last journey. Babes that came lifeless into the world were carried in the arms of gray-haired old men to the only cradle they ever slept in; and in the shroud of the dead mother were laid the little garments of the child that lived and died in her bosom. And over this scene the village pastor looks from his window in the stillness of midnight, and says in his heart: "How quietly they rest, all the departed!" Near the churchyard gate stands a poor-box, fastened to a post by iron bands, and secured by a padlock, with a sloping wooden roof to keep off the rain. If it be Sunday, the peasants sit on the church steps and con their psalm books. Others are coming down the road with their beloved pastor, who talks to them of holy things from beneath his broad-brimmed hat. He speaks of fields and harvests, and of the parable of the sower that went forth to sow. He leads them to the Good Shepherd, and to the pleasant pastures of the spirit-land. He is their patriarch, and, like Melchizedek, both priest and king, though he has no other throne than the church pulpit. The women carry psalm books in their hands, wrapped in silk handkerchiefs, and listen devoutly to the good man's words; but the young men, like Gallio, care for none of these things. They are busy counting the plaits in the kirtles of the peasant girls, their number being an indication of the wearer's wealth. It may end in a wedding. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Sweet forest-odors have their birth Long tufts of grass, and stars of fern, A thick, elastic carpet spread; There, wrenched but lately from its throne By some fierce whirlwind circling past, Its huge roots massed with earth and stone, One of the woodland kings is cast. Above, the forest tops are bright The screening branches, and a glow Down the dark stems and breaks below; Chirps as the quick ray strikes her breast; A narrow vista, carpeted With rich green grass, invites my tread; Whirs to the sheltering branches near; The glittering humming-bird I see; Floats the bright butterfly along; Here stretched, the pleasant turf I press, Sun-streaks, and glancing wings, and sky ALFRED B. STREET. OLD ENGLAND. AND of the rare old chronicle, The legend and the lay, Where deeds of fancy's dream or truths That wreathe his rugged isle; Land of old story, like thine oak, Old isle and glorious, I have heard And know my fathers' homes are thine, Of burly Johnson, loved. Chameleon-like, my soul has ta'en Its every hue from thine, From Eastcheap's epidemic laugh To Avon's gloom divine. All thanks to pencil and to page That round my spirit's eye hath built Thine old cathedral piles, And flung the checkered window-light Adown their trophied aisles. I know thine abbey, Westminster, Where princes and old bishops sleep, I feel the sacramental hue Of choir and chapel there, And pictured panes that chasten down And dear it is, on cold gray stone, In long-drawn lines of colored light seems a day, NUTTING. IT sepak done from many singled out) One of those heavenly days which cannot die; Which for that service had been husbanded, |