What seem to us but sad funereal tapers,

May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death! What seems so is transition;

This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian,

Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead, the child of our affection,

But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,

And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion

By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,

She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day, we think what she is doing

In those bright realms of air ;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,

Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken

The bond which nature gives, Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,

May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her,

For when, with raptures wild,
In our embraces we again enfold her,

She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion

Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion

Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion

And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,

That cannot be at rest;

We will be patient and assuage the feeling

We may not wholly stay;
But silence sanctifying, not concealing,

The grief that must have way.

I add one simile from the “ Address to a Child :"

By what astrology of fear or hope
Dare I to cast thy horoscope !
Like the new moon thy life appears
A little strip of silver-light,
And, widening outward into night,
The shadowy disk of future years!
And yet, upon its outer rim,
A luminous circle faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,
Rounds and completes the perfect sphere
A prophecy and intimation,
A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light that lies
Beyond all human destinies !

The concluding extract has a stronger recommen

dation than any that I can give; it is Mrs. Browning's favourite among the poems of Longfellow :

THE ARROW AND THE SONG.

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth I knew not where ;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song ?

Long, long afterwards, in an oak
I found the arrow still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again the heart of a friend.

I venture to add an anecdote new to the English public.

Professor Longfellow's residence at Cambridge, a picturesque old wooden house, has belonging to it the proudest historical associations of which America can boast : it was the head-quarters of Washington. One night the poet chanced to look out of his window, and saw by the vague starlight a figure riding slowly past the mansion. The face could not be distinguished; but the tall erect person, the cocked hat, the traditional costume, the often-described white horse, all were present. Slowly he paced before the house,

and then returned, and then again passed by, after which neither horse nor rider were seen or heard of.

Could it really be Washington ? or was it some frolic-masquerader assuming his honoured form ? For my part I hold firmly to the ghostly side of the story, so did my informant, also a poet and an American, and as worthy to behold the spectre of the illustrious warrior as Professor Longfellow himself. I can hardly say more.

VII.

AUTHORS SPRUNG FROM THE PEOPLE.

THOMAS HOLCROFT.

I REMEMBER saying one day to a woman of high genius that a mutual friend of hers and mine proposed to give a series of lectures on authors sprung from the people, from the masses as it is the fashion to say now-a-days, and her replying quickly :

Why all authors who are worth reading are sprung from the people ;—it is the well-born who are the exceptions.” And then she ran through a beadroll of great names from Chaucer to Burns : nevertheless this repartee was not quite right; not a whit more right than a repartee usually is; for the number of educated writers must always preponderate. But still the class of self-educated writers is large, increasingly large; and truthful biographies of such persons must always be amongst the most in