Yet his faithful memory time defied,

And dwelt in the days so distant and dear
When first he had found that love was sweet,
And recked not the speed of its hurrying feet.

Does he brood in the long night under the sod
On the joys and sorrows he used to know;
Or far in some wonderful world of God,

Where the shining seraphs stand, row on row,
Does he wake like a child at the daylight's gleam,
And know that the past was a night's short dream?

Is he dead, and a clod there down below;

Or dead and wiser than any alive;
Which? Ah, who of us all may know,

Or who can say how the dead folk thrive?
But the summer morning is cool and sweet,
And I hear the live folk laugh in the street.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

Note 121.

CÆSAR.

(Abridged.)

CESAR was thoroughly a realist and a man of sense; and whatever he undertook and achieved was pervaded and guided by the cool sobriety which constitutes the most marked peculiarity of his genius. To this he owed the power of living energetically in the present, undisturbed cither by recollection or expectation. To this he owed the capacity of acting at any moment with collected vigor, and applying his whole genius even to the smallest and most incidental enterprise. To this he owed the many-sided power with which he grasped and mastered whatever understanding can comprehend and will compel; and the self-possessed ease with which he arranged his periods and projected his campaigns.

Gifts such as these could not fail to produce a statesman: and from early youth Cæsar was a statesman in the deepest sense of that term. His aim was the highest which man is allowed to propose to himself-the political, military, intellectual, and moral regeneration of his own deeply-decayed nation, and of the still more deeply-decayed Hellenic nation intimately akin to his own. The hard school of thirty years' experience changed his views as to the means by which this aim was to be reached: but his aim itself remained the same in the times of his hopeless humiliation and of his unlimited plenitude of power: in times when, as demagogue and conspirator, he stole toward it by paths of darkness, and in those when, as joint possessor of the supreme power and then as monarch, he worked at his task in the full light of day before the eyes of the world.

We cannot, therefore, properly speak of isolated achievements of Cæsar. He did nothing isolated. With justice, men commend Cæsar the orator for his masculine eloquence, which, scorning all the arts of the advocate, like a clear flame at once enlightened and warmed. With justice, men admire in Cæsar the author, the inimitable simplicity of the composition, the unique purity and beauty of the language. With justice, the greatest masters of war of all subsequent times have praised Cæsar the general, who, in a singular degree, disregarding routine and tradition, knew always how to find out the mode of warfare by which in a given case the enemy was conquered: who, with the certainty of divination, found the proper means for every end: who, after defeat, stood ready for battle like William of Orange, and ended the campaign invariably with victory!

The politic 1 life of nations has, during thousands of years, again and again reverted to the lines which Cæsar drew; and the fact the peoples to whom the world belongs still designate the highest of their monarchs by his name, contains a warning deeply significant, and, unhappily, fraught with shame.

THEODORE MOMMSEN.

Note 122.

THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG.

A MILE away to the southeast of Gettysburg is a range of hills bent round like a capital U, the extremities pointing southward. On the centre is Cemetery Hill, where for years the villagers have laid their sacred dead. The left side as you look toward Gettysburg, terminates in two lofty bluffs. The right is flanked by a creek. The exhausted survivors of the First and Eleventh Corps retreated to Cemetery Hill. Anxiously they waited. If help did not come they were doomed, the battle lost, and the country ruined; a significant "if" in the world's history! But help did come. At midnight, Meade and the Corps of Slocum and Sickles; at dawn, the Corps of Hancock and Sykes.

The battle of Gettysburg proper occurred on the 2d and 3d of July. It was in many respects peculiar. It was not a long-continued struggle for a contested advantage. The position held by the armies necessarily made it a series of artillery duels and infantry charges. The battle was begun by an attack on the left wing. The Confederates, elated by the success of the preceding day, make the charge so spirited that the Union lines fairly melt away before it. Brigade after brigade feed the fight. The Union troops are about to fall back, when Sedgwick's Corps comes to turn the tide of battle. At last the Confederates are driven back across the valley and into the woods beyond.

On the afternoon of the 3d of July the final onslaught was made on the left centre at Cemetery Hill. It was the most terrible and sanguinary of the battle. Dark masses of the Southern troops, like the shadow of thunder-clouds, come creeping across the valley. Shrieking shells announce the coming storm. As they approach the ascent, Pickett, with the reckless daring of Murat, his long hair tossing wildly in the wind, springs to the head of the column and leads the desperate charge. They dash on yelling like demons. The Union lines stand firm as the bluffs on the

seashore. The Confederate lines like angry billows roll on, nearer and nearer. They leap into the very "jaws of death." The rifles spit fire in their faces. Inch by inch they retire. The Union troops sweep round to outflank them. The batteries pouring into them an enfilading fire, do their deadly work. The smoke rolls away: but where are they who made that wild, magnificent, awful charge? Retreating? Broken? No: swept away like autumn leaves. The cheers of the living, the groans of the dying mingle in strange confusion. Night draws the curtain: the battle is ended: death has offered its sacrifice to freedom: the cause of the Union has triumphed!

WILLIAM DELOSS LOVE.

Note 123.

IS IT COME?

Is it come? they said, on the banks of the Nile,
Who looked for the world's long-promised day,
And saw but the strife of Egypt's toil

With the desert's sand and the granite gray.
From the Pyramid, temple, and treasured dead,
We vainly ask for her Wisdom's plan;

They tell us of the tyrant's dread:

Yet there was hope when that day began.

The Chaldee came with his starry lore,

And built-up Babylon's crown and creed;
And bricks were stamped on the Tigris' shore
With signs that our sages scarce can read.
From Ninus' temple and Nimrod's tower,

The rule of the old East's empire spread
Unreasoning faith and unquestioning power;
But still, Is it come? the watcher said.

The light of the Persian's worshipped flame
O'er the ancient bondage its splendor threw;
And once on the West a sunrise came,

When Greece to her freedom's trust was true:
With dreams to the utmost ages dear,

With human gods, and with god-like men, No marvel the far-off day looked near

To eyes that looked through her laurels then.

The Romans conquered and revelled, too,
Till honor and faith and power were gone;
And deeper old Europe's darkness grew
As, wave after wave, the Goth came on.
The gown was learning, the sword was law;
The people served in the oxen's stead;
But ever some gleam the watcher saw,
And evermore, Is it come? they said.

Poet and seer that question caught,

Above the din of life's fears and frets; It marched with letters, it toiled with thought, Through schools and creeds which the earth forgets. And statesmen trifle, and priests deceive,

And traders barter our world away;

Yet hearts to that golden promise cleave,
And still at times, Is it come? they say.

The days of the nations bear no trace
Of all the sunshine so far foretold;
The cannon speaks in the teacher's place:
The age is weary with work and gold;
And high hopes wither, and memories wane,
On hearth and altars the fires are dead;
But that brave faith hath not lived in vain:
And this is all that our watcher said.

FRANCES BROWN.