THE APOTHEOSIS OF PAN.

A FABLE.

BUT half a man and half a brute
A listless Satyr wandered,
And all the golden hours of June
In idle rambles squandered.

While roaming thus, 'twas ages since,
He found, one morning early,

A spot where man, new comer then
On earth, was reaping barley.

The Satyr paused, and lounging sat

To view the operation,

And, as he sat, played with the straws,

For want of occupation.

But, blowing in the square cut ends,
His listlessness soon vanished,

And busy plans of cunning work

All thoughts of reaping banished.

Before the

reapers left the field

The Satyr had completed

His pipes, and with new melodies
Their wondering ears had greeted.

They left their sickles in the field
And gathered round to hear him;
His wondrous music forces them
To reverence and fear him.

He seemed at will to swell their hearts
With sorrow or with pleasure;
Their every passion rose and fell
Responsive to his measure.

No idle rambler then was he,

No lounging useless Satyr; They deified him, called him Pan, A demi-god creator.

Thus has it proved a thousand times

In all succeeding ages,

And seeming trifles still convert
The seeming fools to sages.

For highest deeds of usefulness,

When Providence so pleases,
The chance is still to each man sent,

Which-happy he who seizes!

A VISIT TO THE BATTLE-FIELD OF GETTYSBURG.

THE FOUR RELICS.

[THE following fragment, though strictly and literally true as to all its facts and details, was originally composed in the form of an episode, intended to be inserted in a little work of imagination, in which, spirits and supernatural beings form the principal agents. This will at once account to the reader for some allusions near the beginning and end, which might otherwise appear incomprehensible, as also for much of the general tone and coloring of the whole sketch.]

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The world of spirits, of angels, and of visions is, perhaps, nearer to the actual working and fighting world in which we live and breathe, than most of us are apt to imagine. The last words of the Spirit with the Sky-blue pinions had brought so vividly to my recollection some little incidents which had impressed themselves on my mind some months ago, and which, by subtle ties of thought are so closely united with the subject under consideration, that I willingly suspend my narrative for a few moments to relate them. The two things, I think, mutually reflect light on each other, even as the

illumination of a fire at night has been known to extend its glow over large tracts of the heaven above it.

Of all awful and at the same time sublimely horrible sights to be witnessed on this globe, it is said that the spectacle of a battle-field and its environs some days after the slaughter has taken place, is the most soul-harrowing. Such scenes have again and again been described of late, by pens far more graphic than mine, or by eye-witnesses who either wrote on the spot, or immediately after leaving it, with all its images of terror and of agony fresh upon their recollection. Particularly the scenes which occur at such times in military hospitals, in which are huddled together the dying, the mortally wounded, and the agonized subjects for surgical operation, are spoken of as terrific beyond all conception or belief. It has never been my lot to witness any of these, and I fervently pray to heaven, that it never may. What I did see was altogether of a softer, and some might say, of a tamer character. Such as it was, I shall narrate it in words as few and as simple as possible.

I think it must have been about three weeks after the great battle was fought—a battle, which, after three days of desperate attack and defence, ended in a glorious victory, consummated on the Fourth of July by the flight of the enemy—a battle, too, which as well for the numbers engaged in it, the valor and generalship displayed on both

sides, as for its inappreciably important results, throws in the shade almost every other engagement of which we have any mention in history-about three times, I say, the moon, since the event, had changed her varying phases, when the present writer, in company with a clergyman and a few ladies, visited the scene of conflict.

Although within that space of time; many horrors must naturally have been abated, many sorrowful sights removed or mellowed down, we felt as after a long hot day of summer's travel we approached the painfully attractive spot, as though we were entering the rueful abodes of the dead. Fields trodden down and trampled into desolation; fences and enclosures torn away or consumed by fire; hundreds of stakes still sticking in the ground where tents had been erected or horses tethered;-such were the objects which for miles around environed the great central gloominess. To right and left of the main road, some nearer, some more distant, could be seen beside a clump of trees or on the open fields, small tented encampments, where, beneath the national banner, wounded or dying men were being nursed and waited on by surgeons, by charitable women who had volunteered their services and many of whom had left their comfortable homes to remain night and day with the sick, and by their own companions who had escaped the dangers of the battle-field. From some of these tents came delicious strains of military music, the