And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith; You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun; Yes, we're boys,—always playing with tongue or with pen; Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; His truth is marching on. I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; I have read the fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, JULIA WARD HOWE, THE MARINER'S DREAM. [This favorite poem should be read in a simple unaffected manner until the sixth verse, when the voice should be more animated and impassioned, rising to a high pitch; toward the end it should sink into a low, mournful tone.] In slumbers of midnight the sailor-boy lay; His hammock swung loose at the sport of the wind; He dreamt of his home, of his dear native bowers, Then Fancy her magical pinions spread wide, The jessamine clambers in flowers o'er the thatch, A father bends o'er him with looks of delight; And the lips of the boy in a love-kiss unite With the lips of the maid whom his bosom holds dear. The heart of the sleeper beats high in his breast; Joy quickens his pulses,—his hardships seem o'er; And a murmur of happiness steals through his rest,— "O God! thou hast blest me,-I ask for no more." Ah! whence is that flame which now bursts on his eye? Ah! what is that sound which now 'larms on his ear? 'Tis the lightning's red gleam, painting hell on the sky! 'T is the crashing of thunders, the groan of the sphere! He springs from his hammock, he flies to the deck; Amazement confronts him with images dire; Like mountains the billows tremendously swell; In vain the lost wretch calls on mercy to save; Unseen hands of spirits are ringing his knell, And the death-angel flaps his broad wings o'er the wave! O sailor-boy, woe to thy dream of delight! In darkness dissolves the gay frost-work of bliss. Where now is the picture that fancy touched bright,-Thy parents' fond pressure, and love's honeyed kiss? O sailor-boy! sailor-boy! never again Shall home, love, or kindred thy wishes repay; Unblessed and unhonored, down deep in the main, Full many a fathom, thy frame shall decay. No tomb shall e'er plead to remembrance for thee, On a bed of green sea-flowers thy limbs shall be laid,— Of thy fair yellow locks threads of amber be made, Days, months, years. and ages shall circle away, O sailor-boy! sailor-boy! peace to thy soul! WILLIAM DIMOND. BEAUTY. The poets are quite right in decking their mistresses with the spoils of the landscape, flower gardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning and stars of night, since all beauty points at identity, and whatsoever thing does not express to me the sea and sky, day and night, is somewhat forbiddden and wrong. Into every beautiful object there enters somewhat immeasurable and divine, and just as much bounded by outlines, like mountains on the horizon, as into tones of music or depth of space. Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color, or form, or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things. The laws of this translation we do not know, or why one feature or gesture enchants, why one word or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manner, or a phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders; as if the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away mountains of obstruction, and designs to draw a truer line, which the mind knows and owns. This is that haughty force of beauty, vis superba formæ, which the poets praise— under calm and precise outline, the immeasurable and divine-beauty hiding all wisdom and power in its calm sky. All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus, and the beauty ever in proportion to the depth of thought. Gross and impure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot choose but obey, and the woman who has shared with us the moral sentiments—her locks must appear to us sublime. Thus, there is a climbing scale of culture, from the first agreeable sensation which a sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords the eye, up through fair outlines and details of the landscape, features of the human face and form, signs and tokens of thought and character in manners, up to the ineffable mysteries of the human intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our steps tend; an ascent from the joy of a horse in his trappings up to the perception of Newton, that the globe on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from a larger tree; up to the perception of Plato, that globe and universe are rude and early expression of an all-dissolving unity-the first stair on the scale to the temple of the mind. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. A few months ago a daughter of a Nassau man, who had grown comfortably well-off in a small grocery line, was sent away to a |