"Trus' dis ere nig, massa! Yah! yah! There's a beauty that thrills in the seeming 'Tis not of the morn, in Orient born, Where fiery tints unfold, Nor of sunset dies, in western skies, All liquid with purple and gold; 'Tis not of these, where Splendor weaves And starting forth to the gaze of earth, All hail to their beauties earth may not belie! There's a beauty that flutters from flower to flower On the humming-bird's light wings; Through my beauty-haunted brain, I think on harmony's rapturous swell; When, roused to the battle by tyrant or traitor, There's a beauty that glows in the blended dyes Of the beautiful world in our arching sky. Of the garden offerings; In the silver light of the moon, at night, In the varying sheen of the mountain stream, As the young hart pants for the water-brooks, As the pilgrim sighs for the prophet's tomb, There's a beauty that glances from peak to So waiting, O my God, I pine peak, Where mountains lift their heads; There's a beauty that awes the soul within, There's a beauty that's winning, passing fair, But the mountain towers, the iceberg chills, Oh, no! there's no beauty on earth that can vie With the radiant depths of our summer sky. For that beautiful world on high. Oh, no! there's no beauty on earth that can vie With the beauty that dwells in the sapphire No religious ship or sect would like to be responsible for all the barnacles and seaweed on its hull. To myself, this touchingly beautiful title has a significance which every one may not appreciate. Years ago, when life was in its dawning, and I was the petted child of idolizing parents, as often as I would come home from school of a Friday night, sick with the headache, worn out with intense application, or suffering from the lassitude consequent upon a naturally delicate constitution, my father would take me on his knees, and as he folded me to his heart and stroked my hair in his own gentle, caressing way, say, sometimes soothingly, oftener cheerily, "Never mind, Carrie, we'll go over the riter Sunday afternoon." And when Sunday came,-when the morning service was over, and the frugal dinner eaten, he would take me by the hand, and together we would go down to the South Ferry, and unmooring one of the little boats that ever lay anchored there, he would lift me in, push it from shore, and row across the Hudson to the quiet little village of Greenbush, — a name whose quaintness had a meaning then, ing lost now to the careless traveller who whirls through it in the hot and dusty car. As I write, I seem to feel again that delicious trepidation of nerve, half-fear, half-exhilaration, which always accompanies the first tremulous motion of a canoe. As I sit awhile, with my pen resting idly upon the sheet, the quiver subsides into a calm, secure sense of pleasurable emotion, and I feel myself gliding over the blue waters, watching the play of the sunbeams, the shadows of the clouds, the ripple in the wake, the flight of wild birds, and the sport of the fish, as for a moment they floated on the crest of a wave, like the segment of a rainbow, and then dipped again deep into the water amid a semicircle of snowy foam. a mean Over the river, and we would walk, hand in hand, through the one always quiet, but then seemingly deserted, street, ed the banks. Once there, we would on and on, till, past the village, we reachwander for a mile or two, now stopping to write our names and the morning text in the white sand, now gathering pearly pebbles and tiny shells, and now sitting down, or standing still, in mute sympathy with the beauty of the day, the majesty of the river, and the grandeur of the mountains that loomed up in the distance more like huge shadows than anything as tangible as rock and forest. — a After awhile, we would turn away from the bank and ramble through narrow paths in grain-fields, across green meadows and singing streams, till we came to our favorite resting-place, "side hill" with a stream of icy coldness running at its foot, a grove of solemn pines lining its ascent, and a plateau of emerald moss close to its summit. There we would sit the whole long spring, summer, or autumn afternoon, seldom speaking a word, but listening in rapt intensity to the hum of insects, the song of birds, the tinkle of the waters, and the moaning of the wind, as it floated to and fro in the boughs of the tall old pines, -a weird music which we have ever since wished might be murmuring over that spot of earth in the depths of which my friends shall one day pillow my head. As we recrossed the river, crimson then with reflections from the setting sun, our soul would be full of beautiful things. The sound of the wind, the talk of the leaves, the voice of the wild birds and the laugh of the wild flowers, the rippling of streams and the color of pebbles, the shape of the clouds and the hue of the sunbeam, all these would have woven their spell over our girlish thoughts, and we would return home a poet in feeling, if not in expression; and more, with renewed physical strength, and a heart so chastened that the words of the evening service would sink into its holiest depths, bury themselves there, to be lifted up in after years of trial as ministering spirits. The father who used to take us over the river, the mother who used to await "Over the river!" Do you wonder that the "beautiful metaphor " has to me a holy significance ? Do you wonder than I think first of the broad, deep, and calmly-flowing Rhine of my American heart and the fields and woods and hills on the opposite side from the city of my birth, and of pleasant wanderings there, hand in hand with one who loved me, and afterward, by a natural transition from the temporal to the spiritual, of that "narrow sea" which divides "the heavenly land from ours," and that I behold "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, All dressed in living green"? "A land upon whose blissful shore There rests no shadow, falls no stain; Where those who meet shall part no more, And those long-parted meet again.' "Over the river!" Welcome at any time as a pillow-book for sad and suffering hours, of which, alas! earth has so many now-a-days, this last offering of friendship has come to me with peculiar meaning now. Yesterday I sat and watched the clock with strange intensity of feeling. As the hands pointed to eight, I saw, oh, with what vividness, a boy's form on a narrow, hospital cot, and two white hands upraised in supplicating agony, as without one warning pang, there gushed over the pallid lips a scarlet stream hot from the lungs. As the hands pointed to ten, I saw again the scarlet stream gush over the quivering lips and throat and breast, deluge the pillow and sheets, and ebb and flow till the last drop was spent; and I saw the surgeon bend his ear and weep, as he heard the half-uttered word, -"my mother!" and then, -O God, have mercy on my heart! I knew "How large a place his presence filled; How vacant it appears!" "Oh, was he loved too well the while, Ere he was called above?" "Give me the hope to meet him there, When life's full task is done!" "Over the river!" I turn the leaves tenderly, tearfully. I cannot but weep, as I read it; and yet, as often as I close it, I feel that I am the stronger and betthrough many days and weeks of pain, ter for its perusal. Written by one who, learned the lessons which sickness teaches, and who, in his ministry, has been much with the dying and bereaved, I feel that every sentence is significant of some great truth learned from experience. The title of every chapter in the first part is an inspiration wrought out of pain, and to those who languish in sickness, each one must come directly home and tend to quicken the diviner sensibilities of the heart. In the second part, "The Revelations for the Dying," I have been especially moved by the chapter, "Falling Asleep." Of the many figures used to symbolize death, this, to me, is the most beautiful; and now, when the burden of life lies so heavily on my shoulders that I have at times scarcely patience to bear it another rod,-when I am oppressed with a weariness that no bed can ease, with a pang that no medicine can alleviate, I think, with a yearning almost irrepressible, of that sleep which has no waking for the aching muscles and tortured nerves. The grave does not look to me like a deep and narrow and dark cleft in the earth, but as one of our loved ones said, "a cool, flowerwreathed chamber," in which it would be be blissful to lie down and go to sleep. The sick, the dying, the bereaved, we have always with us, even as it is said we have the poor; and a work like this is consequently never out of place. But just now, in this hour of our country's peril, it seems a peculiarly appropriate time to issue a volume of this consolatory character. Stretchers and ambulances and hospitals and coffins and graves make up a panorama that is not only symbolic of a patriotism that is divine and a heroism that is sublime, but also of agony sore and crimson, of sorrow deep and lasting. Our soldiers, as they pass "over the river," or gird themselves for the battle that may leave them on its banks, need a book like this to lie beside them on their cot and to roll up in their knapsack; while the waiting ones at home those who linger in the anguish of suspense, or the bitterness of reality - need it as much, if indeed not more; for after all, it is those who are left behind that suffer most. Oh, the darkened homes of our land! Oh, the spoils of our battlefields! Thank God, In the third part, the "Consolations for the Bereaved," my eyes linger longest on the chapter entitled "The Death of Children." It may not be the most touching, the best; but at this time, as the anniversary of my own child's death comes to me with so many sad and holy memories, every word of the author on this theme has a tender meaning. I recognize my own departed one in these words,-"A pleasant, manly, robust boy, full of life, full of generous impulses, genial, affectionate, ambitious, always hopeful and happy, making the house merry with his songs and jests;" and my own experience in these words, - "The child that Death has taken in his arms and borne away from you, oh, what a difference it has made in your home and heart! How it has changed the tone and color of your thoughts, and taken the warmth and beauty out of your life, and darkened all the hopes and ambitions that were linked in the future of the beloved child! How tasteless and unsatisfying is all pleasure! How dull and uninteresting the book you are reading! How little you sympathize in the idle talk of your visitors! How everything in the world has lost its point and meaning for you! And these, quoted from the discourse of a ministering friend, "I supposed that Heaven was dear to me, that my Fa-" ther was there, and my friends were there, and that I had a great interest in heaven; but I had no child there! Now I have; and I never think, and never shall think, of heaven, but with the memory of that dear boy, who is to be among its inhabitants forever! دو "The Dead never grow Old" is also a chapter of touching interest. Truly does the author say, "This is one of God's kindly compensations for the loss which death inflicts. The bereaved, only, have friends who never change." The boys spared to me will grow to manhood, and their faces will turn brown with toil and be furrowed with age; but Henry will be ever the same golden-haired boy who went from me in the flower of his youth; he will have ever the same white forehead and smooth cheeks, he will never be older than seventeen! " "Over the river, the peaceful river,' "Each agonized cry, cach desolate wail, "friend," And "feleral" and "freedman," "foe" and How little do we appreciate a mother's tenderness while living! How heedless are we, in childhood, of all her anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone, when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we learn how hard it is to find true sympathy, how few love us for ourselves, how few will befriend us in our misfortunes, then it is we think of the mother we have lost. MODERATION. Fuller beautifully says of moderation, that "It is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues." Among the touching events of the day, connected with the war, is the death of MajorGeneral Birney, who died of fever occasioned by over-exertion at the battle of Chapin's Farm, fought within the last two or three weeks. He was a kind and noble gentleman, a gallant soldier, and a brave and successful leader, beloved by the soldiers who fought under him as few generals are, and mourned by them with an almost filial sorrow. When the news of his death reached the army in which he has so faithfully served, and the Tenth Corps, which he so ably commanded, universal grief was the prevailing sentiment. A correspondent of one of the New York papers thus speaks of its effect: 66 A profound gloom settled upon the corps, and indeed upon the whole army of the James, at the announcement of the sad tidings. By the commanding general of this army, the loss of this able and fearless soldier will be deeply felt. Throughout all the movements of this command, since its advance to the north of the James, General Birney has been a moving spirit. As a corps commander, he was especially invaluable. In all respects, he was a great soldier, and clearly caught and understood the spirit of this most exciting and active campaign against Richmond, in whose complete success his greatest hopes were wholly wrapped." Another writes, "The news of General Birney's death fell like a pall over the whole army. But few suspected his danger, and many were anxiously awaiting his return. "Few officers have left a better reputation behind them than he, and perhaps none have risen so rapidly in public opinion within the last three months. Loved by his corps, and respected and trusted by all who knew him, his death is a public calamity." That "Death loves a shining mark" has been more than once demonstrated during this war for the suppression of the rebellion; for he has stricken down some of our bravest and brightest. While the country can illy afford to lose such leaders as General Birney, let us be grate |