(194.) SONG OF THE STARS.

William Cullen Bryant, American poet, b. 1794, d. 1878, editor for thirty years of New York Evening Post.

66

When the radiant morn of creation broke,

And the world in the smile of God awoke,

And the empty realms of darkness and death

Were moved through their depth by his mighty breath,
And orbs of beauty, and spheres of flame,
From the void abyss by myriads came,
In the joy of youth, as they darted away,

Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rung,

And this was the song the bright ones sung :

Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,

The fair blue fields that before us lie;

Each sun with the worlds that round us roll,
Each planet poised on her turning pole,
With her isles of green and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like a fluid light.
"For the source of glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides,
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides;
Lo, yonder the living splendours play!
Away, on our joyous path, away!

Look, look through our glittering ranks afar,

In the infinite azure, star after star,

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass;

How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass!

And the path of the gentle wind is seen,

of hues,

Where the small leaves dance and the young woods lean. "And see where the brighter day-beams pour, How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower; And the morn and the eve, with their pomp Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews, And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground, With her shadowy cone, the night goes round. "Away, away!—In our blossoming bowers, In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours, (181)

L

In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, love is brooding, and life is born,
And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.”

Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres!
To weave the dance that measures the years.
Glide on in the glory and gladness sent
To the farthest wall of the firmament,
The boundless visible smile of him,

To the veil of whose brow our lamps are dim.

(195.) THE FOUR MISS WILLISES.

[The Sketches by Boz were written (says the author) "when I was a very young man, and were put by me on a dark night into a dark letter-box in a dark court in Fleet Street." Boz was the pet name of the author's younger brother Moses, which, being pronounced through the nose, became Boses, and so finally settled into Boz.]

When the four Miss Willises settled in our parish thirteen years ago they were far from juvenile; and we are bound to state that, thirteen years since, the authorities in matrimonial cases considered the youngest Miss Willis in a very precarious state, while the eldest sister was positively given over, as being far beyond all human hope. Well, the Miss Willises took a lease of the house; it was fresh painted and papered from top to bottom; four trees were planted in the back garden, several small baskets of gravel sprinkled over the front one; vans of elegant furniture arrived; the maid-servants told their "Missises," the Missises told their friends, and vague rumours were circulated throughout the parish that No. 25 in Gordon Place had been taken by four maiden ladies of immense property.

At last the Miss Willises moved in; and then the "calling" began. The house was the perfection of neatness—so were the four Miss Willises. Everything was formal, stiff, and cold— -so were the four Miss Willises. Not a single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of its place-not a single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of hers. There they always sat, in the same places, doing precisely the same things at the same hour. The eldest Miss Willis used to knit, the second to draw, the two others to play duets on the piano. They seemed to have no separate existence-the Siamese twins multiplied by two. The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious the four Miss Willises grew bilious immediately. The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and theological-the four Miss

Willises were ill-tempered and theological directly. Whatever the eldest did the others did, and whatever anybody else did they all disapproved of. Three years passed over in this way when an unlooked for and extraordinary phenomenon occurred. Was it possible? one of the four Miss Willises was going to be married!

Now, where on earth the husband came from, by what feelings the poor man could have been actuated, or by what process of reasoning the four Miss Willises succeeded in persuading themselves that it was possible for a man to marry one of them without marrying them all, are questions too profound for us to resolve: certain it is, however, that the visits of Mr. Robinson were received—that the four Miss Willises were courted in due form by the said Mr. Robinson-that the neighbours were perfectly frantic in their anxiety to discover which of the four Miss Willises was the fortunate fair one, and that the difficulty they experienced in solving the problem was not at all lessened by the announcement of the eldest Miss Willis"We are going to marry Mr. Robinson."

They were so completely identified the one with the other that the curiosity of the whole row was roused almost beyond endurance. The subject was discussed at every little card-table and tea-drinking. One old gentleman expressed his decided opinion that Mr. Robinson was of eastern descent, and contemplated marrying the whole family at once; and the row generally declared the business to be very mysterious. They hoped it might all end well; it certainly had a very singular appearance, but certainly the Miss Willises were quite old enough to judge for themselves, and to be sure people ought to know their own business best.

At last, one fine morning, at a quarter before eight o'clock A.M., two coaches drove up to the Miss Willises' door, at which Mr. Robinson had arrived in a cab ten minutes before, his manner denoting a considerable degree of nervous excitement. It was also hastily reported that the cook who opened the door wore a large white bow of unusual dimensions, in a much smarter head-dress than the regulation-cap to which the Miss Willises invariably restricted the somewhat excursive tastes of female servants in general.

It was quite clear that the eventful morning had at length arrived; the whole row stationed themselves behind their first and secondfloor blinds, and waited the result in breathless expectation.

At last the Miss Willises' door opened; the door of the first coach did the same. Two gentlemen, and a pair of ladies to correspond-friends of the family, no doubt; up went the steps, bang went the door, off went the first coach, and up came the second.

The street door opened again; the excitement of the whole row increased-Mr. Robinson and the eldest Miss Willis. "I thought so," said the lady at No. 19; "I always said it was Miss Willis !” "Well, I never!" ejaculated the young lady at No. 18 to the young lady at No. 17-“Did you ever, dear!" responded the young lady at No. 17 to the young lady at No. 18. It's too ridiculous!" exclaimed a spinster of an uncertain age at No. 16, joining in the conversation. But who shall portray the astonishment of Gordon Place when Mr. Robinson handed in all the Miss Willises, one after the other, and then squeezed himself into an acute angle of the coach, which forthwith proceeded at a brisk pace after the other coach, which other coach had itself proceeded at a brisk pace in the direction of the parish church. Who shall depict the perplexity of the clergyman when all the Miss Willises knelt down, and repeated the responses incidental to the marriage service in an audible voice-or who shall describe the confusion which prevailed when—even after the difficulties thus occasioned had been adjusted-all the Miss Willises went into hysterics at the conclusion of the ceremony!

As the four sisters and Mr. Robinson continued to occupy the same house after this memorable occasion, and as the married sister, whoever she is, never appeared in public without the other three, we are not quite clear that the neighbours would ever have discovered the real Mrs. Robinson but for a circumstance of the most gratifying description which will happen occasionally in the best regulated families.

When we got up one morning we saw that the knocker was tied up in an old white kid glove; and we, in our innocence (we were in a state of bachelorship then), wondered what on earth it all meant, until we heard the eldest Miss Willis, in propriâ personâ, say, with great dignity, in answer to the next inquiry, "My compliments, and Mrs. Robinson's doing as well as can be expected, and the little girl thrives wonderfully." And then, in common with the rest of the row, our curiosity was satisfied, and we began to wonder it had never occurred to us what the matter was before.

(196.) THE SENATE OF ROME AND THE AMERICAN CONGRESS.

SIR, AS once Cineas, the Epirote, stood among the senators of Rome, who, with a word of self-conscious majesty, arrested kings in their ambitious march, thus, full of admiration and of reverence, I stand among you, legislators of the new capitol, that glorious hall of

your people's collective majesty.. The capitol of old yet stands, but the spirit has departed from it, and is come over to yours, purified by the air of liberty. The old stands, a mournful monument of the fragility of human things; yours, as a sanctuary of eternal right. The old beamed with the red lustre of conquest, now darkened by the gloom of oppression; yours is bright with freedom. The old absorbed the world into its own centralized glory; yours protects your own nation from being absorbed, even by itself. The old was awful with unrestricted power; yours is glorious by having restricted it. At the view of the old, nations trembled; at the view of yours, humanity hopes.

To the old, misfortune was introduced with fettered hands to kneel at triumphant conquerors' feet; to yours, the triumph of introduction is granted to unfortunate exiles, who are invited to the honour of a seat. And, where kings and Cæsars never will be hailed for their power and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a down-trodden nation is welcomed, as your great Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless, and poor. In the old, the terrible væ victis!1 was the rule; in yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppressors, and consolation to a vanquished just cause. And, while from the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common federative interests of a territory larger than that old conquered world. There sat men boasting that their will was sovereign of the earth; here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge "the laws of nature and nature's God, and to do what their sovereign, the people, wills."-Speech by Louis Kossuth.

(197.) GRAVES AND LADY FRANKLIN.

[Mr. Graves is a widower, in a chronic state of grief at the loss of his wife. Lady Franklin sees a genial heart and merry vein through the sombre looks of the widower, and resolves to restore him once more to the pleasures of society.]

Enter LADY FRANKLIN reading a letter.

Lady F.-Dear Sir John,-As since the death of my sainted Maria I have been living in chambers where I cannot so well invite ladies, you will allow me to read the will of the late Mr. Mordaunt at your house. I shall be with you at two precisely. (Signed) HENRY GRAVES.

So Mr. Graves is the executor-the same Mr. Graves who is always in black, his liveries are black, his carriage is black, he always

1 Woe to the conquered.