"Our rustic's waggish-quite laconic,"
(The counsel cried, with grin sardonic,)
"I wish I'd known this prodigy,
This genius of the clods, when I

On circuit was at York residing.
Now, farmer, do for once speak true,
Mind, you're on oath, so tell me, you
Who doubtless think yourself so clever,
Are there as many fools as ever
In the West Riding ?"

"Why no, sir, no! we've got our share, But not so many as when you were there."

THERE'S BUT ONE PAIR OF STOCKINGS TO MEND TO-NIGHT.

AN old wife sat by her bright fireside,
Swaying thoughtfully to and fro

In an easy chair, whose creaky craw

Told a tale of long ago;

While down by her side, on the kitchen floor,

Stood a basket of worsted balls-a score.

The good man dozed o'er the latest news
Till the light in his pipe went out ;
And, unheeded, the kitten with cunning paws
Rolled and tangled the balls about;
Yet still sat the wife in the ancient chair,
Swaying to and fro in the fire-light glare.

But anon, a misty tear drop came
In her eyes of faded blue,

Then trickled down in a furrow deep

Like a single drop of dew;

So deep was the channel-so silent the stream

That the good man saw naught but the dimmed eye beam

Yet marvelled he much that the cheerful light

Of her eye had heavy grown,

And marvelled he more at the tangled balls,
So he said in a gentle tone-

"I have shared thy joys since our marriage vow,
Conceal not from me thy sorrows now."

Then she spoke of the time when the basket there Was filled to the very brim;

And now, there remained of the goodly pile

But a single pair—for him ;

"Then wonder not at the dimmed eye-light, There's but one pair of stockings to mend to-night.

"I cannot but think of the busy feet,
Whose wrappings were wont to lay
In the basket, awaiting the needle's time-
Now wandering so far away;

How the sprightly steps to a mother dear,
Unheeded fell on the careless ear.

"For each empty nook in the basket old
By the hearth there's a vacant seat;
And I miss the shadows from off the wall,
And the patter of many feet;

'Tis for this that a tear gathered over my sight,
At the one pair of stockings to mend to-night.

"Twas said that far through the forest wild,
And over the mountains bold,

Was a land whose rivers and darkening caves
Were gemmed with the rarest gold;

Then my first-born turned from the oaken doorAnd I knew the shadows were only four

"Another went forth on the foaming wave,
And diminished the basket's store;

But his feet grew cold-so weary and cold-
They'll never be warm any more-

And this nook, in its emptiness, seemeth to me
To give forth no voice but the moan of the sca.

"Two others have gone toward the setting sun,
And made them a home in its light,

And fairy fingers have taken their share
To mend by the fireside bright;

Some other basket their garments will fill-
But mine, mine is emptier still.

"Another-the dearest, the fairest, the best-
Was taken by angels away,

And clad in a garment that waxeth not old,
In a land of continual day;

Oh! wonder no more at the dimmed eye-light,
When I mend the one pair of stockings to-night."

THE CLOSING SCENE.--T. Buchanan Read.

The following is pronounced by the Westminster Review to be unquestionably the finest American poem ever writ en.

WITHIN this sober realm of leafless trees,
The russet year inhaled the dreamy air,
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.

The gray barns looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.

All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued,
The hills seemed further and the streams sang low;
As in a dream the distant woodman hewed
His winter log with many a muffled blow.

The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold,
Their banners bright with every martial hue,
Now stood, like some sad beated host of old,

Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.

On slumberous wings the vulture tried his flight
The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint,
And, like a star slow drowning in the light,

The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint.

The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew-
Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before-

Silent till some replying wanderer blew

His alien horn, and then was heard no more.

Where erst the jay within the elm's tall crest

Made garrulous trouble round the unfledged young: And where the oriole hung her swaying nest

By every light wind like a censer swung;

Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves,
The busy swallows circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,
An early harvest and a plenteous year;

Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,
To warn the reapers of the rosy east-

All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.

Alone, from out the stubble piped the quail,

And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom ; Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale, Made echo to the distant cottage loom.

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;

The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night; The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers, Sailed slowly by-passed noiseless out of sight.

Amid all this, in this most cheerless air,

And where the woodbine sheds upon the porch Its crimson leaves, as if the year stood there Firing the floor with his inverted torch

Amid all this, the centre of the scene,

The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread,
Plied her swift wheel, and with her joyless mien
Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread.

She had known sorrow. He had walked with her,
Oft supped, and broke with her the ashen crust ;
And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir

Of his black mantle trailing in the dust.

While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom,
Her country summoned, and she gave her all;
And twice war bowed to her his sable plume-
Re-gave the swords to rust upon her wall.

Re-gave the swords-but not the hand that drew,
And struck for liberty the dying blow;
Nor him who, to his sire and country true,
Fell, mid the ranks of the invading foe.

Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on,
Like the low murmur of a hive at noon;
Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone
Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune.

At last the thread was snapped-her head was bowed. Life drooped the distaff through his hands serene; And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroudWhile Death and Winter closed the autumn scene.

DEATH OF COPERNICUS.-E. Everett.

AT length he draws near his end. He is seventy-three years of age, and he yields his work on "The Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs" to his friends for publication. The day at last has come on which it is to be ushered into the world. It is the twenty-fourth of May, 1543.

On that day-the effect, no doubt, of the intense excitement of his mind, operating upon an exhausted frame—an effusion of blood brings him to the gates of the grave. His last hour has come; he lies stretched upon the couch from which he will never rise.

The beams of the setting sun glance through the Gothic windows of his chamber; near his bedside is the armillary sphere which he has contrived to represent his theory of the heavens; his picture painted by himself, the amusement of his earlier years, hangs before him; beneath it are his astrolabe and other imperfect astronomical instruments; and around him are gathered his sorrowing disciples.

The door of the apartment opens; the eye of the departing sage is turned to see who enters: it is a friend who brings him the first printed copy of his immortal treatise. He knows that in that book he contradicts all that had ever been distinctly taught by former philosophers; he knows that he has rebelled against the sway of Ptolemy, which the scientific world had acknowledged for a thousand years; he knows that the popular mind will be shocked by his innovations; he knows that the attempt will be made to press even religion into the service against him; but he knows that his book is true.

He is dying, but he leaves a glorious truth as his dying bequest to the world. He bids the friend who has brought it place himself between the window and his bedside, that the sun's rays may fall upon the precious volume, and he may behold it once more before his eye grows dim. He looks upon it, takes it in his hands, presses it to his breast, and expires.

But no, he is not wholly gone. A smile lights up his dying countenance; a beam of returning intelligence kindles in his eye; his lips move; and the friend who leans over him, can hear him faintly murmur the beautiful sentiments which the Christian lyrist of a later age has so finely expressed in verse:

Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, with all your feeble light;
Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, pale empress of the night;
And thou, effulgent orb of day, in brighter flames arrayed,

My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, no more demands thy aid.
Ye stars are but the shining dust of my divine abode,

The pavement of those heavenly courts where I shall reign with God." So died the great Columbus of the heavens.