H, to raise a mighty shout,
And bid the sleepers all come out!
No dreamer's fancy, fair and high,
Could image forth a grander sky.
And oh, for eyes of swifter power
To follow fast the starry shower!
Oh, for a sweep of vision clear
To grasp at once a hemisphere!

The solemn old chorale of Night,
With fullest chords of awful might,
Re-echoes still in stately march
Throughout the glowing heavenly arch:
But harmonies all new and rare
Are intermingling everywhere,
Fantastic, fitful, fresh, and free;
A sparkling wealth of melody,
A carol of sublimest glee,

Is bursting from the starry chorus,
In dazzling exultation o'er us.

O wondrous sight! so swift, so bright,
Like sudden thrills of strange delight;
As if the stars were all at play,
And kept ecstatic holiday;
As if it were a jubilee

Of glad millenniums fully told,
Or universal sympathy

With some new-dawning age of gold.

Flashing from the lordly Lion,
Flaming under bright Procyon,
From the farthest east up-ranging,
Past the blessed orb* unchanging;
Ursa's brilliance far out-gleaming,
From the very zenith streaming;
Rushing, as in joy delirious,
To the pure white ray of Sirius;
Past Orion's belted splendour,
Past Capella, clear and tender;
Lightening dusky Polar regions,
Brightening pale encircling legions;
Lines of fiery glitter tracing,
Parting, meeting, interlacing;

* "That admirable Polar Star, which is a blessing to astronomers.”—Prof. Airy's Popular Lectures on Astronomy.

Paling every constellation.
With their radiant revelation!
All we heard of meteor glory
Is a true and sober story:

Who will not for life remember
This night-grandeur of November!

'Tis over now, the once-seen, dream-like

sight!

With gradual hand, the clear and breezy

dawn

Hath o'er the marvels of the meteor night
A veil of light impenetrable drawn.
And earth is sweeping on through starloss
space,

Nor may we once look back, the shining field to trace.

Ere next the glittering stranger throng

we meet,

How many a star of life will seek the west!

Our century's dying pulse will faintly beat;
The toilers of to-day will be at rest;
And little ones who now but laugh and
play,

Will weary in the heat and burden of the day.

Oh, is there nothing beautiful and glad But bears a message of decay and change? So be it! Though we call it stern and sad, Viewed by the torch of Love, it is not strange.

'Tis mercy that in Nature's every strain Deep warning tones peal out, in solemn sweet refrain.

And have not all created things a voice
For those who listen farther-whispers low
To bid the children of the light rejoice
In burning hopes they yet but dimly
know?

What will it be, all earthly darkness o'er,
To shine as stars of God for ever-

evermore!

FANNY R. H.

EN do not always realize how much

M

a woman's affections are bound up in home; how much she needs the daily tendernesses of love to lighten her daily cares-how with love she can bear anything cheerfully, while without it she droops and becomes a disheartened, disappointed creature. They do not know-perhaps they would hardly believe-how women, prematurely old and careworn from this cause alone, would, by a few words of endearment, such as they never expected to hear again, be brought back almost to youth and beauty-at least, from bare existence to happiness and life. How can a man be willing to bind to himself a body of death— to walk through the dreary years with a heavyhearted, duty-bound, care-burdened, disappointed woman, to whom life has become a monotonous round of uninteresting necessities, when, by a timely thoughtfulness, a little attention, a little love lovingly expressed, he might secure the constant, healing, beautiful ministrations of

Oh, the phantoms of dead joys that flit through unhaunted houses! Oh, the hopes that lie buried under still lighted hearthstones! Oh, the murdered possibilities strewn thick along the ways, over the lowlands and the uplands of life!

It is sorrowful indeed to think of the decay of love that once defied both time and change -of the bitterness and strife which have succeeded to the deepest tenderness. It is sorrowful, and it is humiliating: for we involuntarily ask ourselves the question, If those who would once have scorned to think that the least shadow could ever rest upon their mutual love-whose protestations of affection were so ardent, and whose early married life so bright -if these can change, what security, what hope is there for others? Must we conclude that love is a delusion; or that, if real, it is

"Momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And, ere a man hath power to say, Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up."

And yet we cannot think of it so, nor is it right that we should; for the fault is not in love, but in our treatment of it, or else in our mistaking that for love which is only its coun. terfeit.

We are inclined to believe that not the least portion of unhappiness in married life is assignable to the latter cause. It cannot but be evident to all persons of the least reflection, that many of the attachments resulting in marriage do not deserve the sacred name of love. A young man sees a young woman, or vice versa, and is, in common phrase, bewitched; and verily the attraction does not deserve a better name. A fair face, agreeable manner, an indication of preferences-any sensuous charm-suffices for its cause.

If the impression has been mutual, the fascinated pair surrender themselves at once to the sweet delusion, fancying that it will last for ever, abandoning all doubts, listening alone to the voice of passion, or, as they fondly term it, "the language of the heart." They dream through a six months' engagement, and a blissful honeymoon, and wake at length to the realities of life, and, alas! too often to a sober consciousness of their unfitness to meet them together.

It might yet be well, if recognizing this, they should set themselves courageously to work to remedy, as far as possible, their mis. take; to become assimilated by introducing some common principle of thought and action -to draw near each other in drawing near to God. But few comparatively have the courage and strength to do this. Most commonly, the gulf between the married pair widens with the lapse of time, each casting the blame of the separation upon the other, and brooding over uncongeniality and the want of appreciation, through a lonely life. Or it may be worse than this. A man or woman in this condition is in a dangerous state. Either may meet with a person truly congenial, fitted to call forth a genuine love, and in the light of this experience the chain of bondage shall seem even heavier than before, the separation wider. Poor, tempted, aching hearts! Great, very great, is the strength required for the struggle. Let us mingle large measures of pity with our censure of those who fall in it.

Impulse is not affection; mere passion is not

love; nor is that marriage "honourable” in the sight of God which is entered into only to legitimize the indulgence of passion. "Can anything manly," says Coleridge, "proceed from those who for law and light would substitute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impulses, which, as far as they differ from the vital workings in the brute animals, owe the dif ference to their former connection with the proper virtues of humanity ?" Friendship and love must unite in every married union where happiness can be reasonably expected or truly deserved; and by friendship we mean an affection arising from pure sympathy of spirit, independent of aught else. Let none look for happiness in marriage, who are unable deliberately and firmly to declare that it would be a happiness to live together for life, though they were of the same sex. We state this with some breadth, and do so with consideration; we point to a hidden rock round which the ocean seems to smile in sunny calm, but on which many a noble bark has perished.

There remains yet one more reason for the decay of love in married life which we would speak of it is the want of a common and adequate object of interest, and the steady, persevering, mutually assisted pursuit of it. We will explain our meaning by a quotation from the journal of John Foster; and it may not be impertinent to remark, in passing, that Foster's own married life furnishes a most beautiful comment on his theory: "I have often contended that attachments between friends and lovers cannot be secured strong and perpetually augmenting, except by the intervention of some interest which is not

personal, but which is common to them both, and towards which their attention and passions are directed with still more animation than towards each other. If the whole attention is to be directed, and the whole sentimentalism of the heart concentrated to each other; and it is to be an unvaried 'I towards you, and you towards me,' as if each were to the other, not an ally or companion joined to pursue happiness, but the very end and object, happiness itself; if it is the circumstance of reciprocation, and not what is reciprocated, that is to supply perennial interest to affection; if it is to be mind still reflecting back the gaze of mind, and reflecting it again, cherub toward cherub, as on the ark, and no luminary or glory between them to supply beams and warmth to both, I foresee that the hope will disappoint, the plan will fail. Human society is a vast circle of beings on a plain, in the midst of which stands the shrine of goodness and happiness, inviting all to approach. Now the attached pairs in this circle should not be continually looking at eaeh other, but should turn their faces towards this great central object, and, as they advance, they will, like radii from the circumference to the centre, continually become closer to each other, as they approximate to their mutual and ultimate object." To conclude, in the words of Saint Augustine, "If souls please thee, be they loved in God, for they, too, are mutable, but in Him are they firmly established, else would they pass away. In Him, then, be they loved; and carry unto Him along with thee what souls thou canst, and say to them, 'Him let us love! Him let us love!'" J. C.

OME months ago, on one of my weekly runs down the river to Wapping Church, three passengers embarked with me in the steamer from Hungerford Pier. A rather dirty-faced, draggle tailed, rumpled-looking young woman of thirty, officiated as travelling foil to a neatly dressed, pale-faced, comely widow, apparently of the same age. The latter was carrying an infant. Between the two, with a

hand clasped in each of the females, sat a slim and singularly handsome lad of about ten years old, "all a-taut" in sailor-boy trim, whose close resemblance to the widow bespoke the pair as mother and son.

I took a fancy to the young salt from an act of agile civility which he showed me. As we stopped alongside London Bridge, I wished to buy an Evening Standard, but the boat was not near enough to the landing to exchange paper

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