IF FLOWERS COULD SING.

If flowers could sing, the poet's lays
Would not be needed for their praise;
They, of which men have sung so long,
Would sing their own enchanting song.
What fragrant accents oft would float
From out the rose's velvet throat;
What soulful solace would they bring—
If flowers could sing?

If flowers could sing, how would they bless
The love that lips dare not confess;
How would they voice the secret throe
Of passionate and utter woe;

How would they thrill the maiden fair
Who wore them in her breast and hair;
What tender tidings would they bring—
If flowers could sing?

If flowers could sing, the birds would die-
What use were it for them to try

By any means e'er to disclose

The charms that render sweet the rose?

They lovely colors have, 'tis true,

But have they lovely fragrance, too?
The bird would die from envy's sting—
If flowers could sing.

Indeed, the world would be too sweet,
If carols sang the marguerite,
In that fond hour when Twilight's ear
Is waiting woodland hymns to hear.
The violet her scent, ere long
Would squander in the breath of song,
And song would be too sweet a thing
If flowers could sing.

—B. D. GAW, Charlottesville, Va.

THE MYSTERY OF CREATION.

A universe self-made, and without a God, is at least as great a mystery as a universe with a God; in fact, the very attempt to conceive it in the mind produces a mental vertigo which is a bad omen for the practical success of Cosmic Emotion.

GOLDWIN SMITH.

ATHEISM.

Atheism may be regarded as the desperate shift of an ill-regulated mind, determined to rid itself of responsibility at the expense of all reason and argument. It is a negative proposition which no finite mind can enunciate without being guilty of the most astounding presumption.

*

He is a fool who hazards the assertion, because it involves an amount of intelligence which no creature can possess, and the very attribute of omniscience, while He, in whom that attribute alone resides, is denied.

* **

* *

*

The luminaries of Heaven and the flowers of earth, the perpetual hills, and the wide sea where go the ships, the various animal tribes, the intelligent man, the noblest of all, proclaim the presence of the living God. -REV. THOMAS PEARSON.

MARTIAL MAGNIFICENCE OF ANCIENT ROME.

The tribunes were on horseback in front of the cohorts, putting them through that boundless variety of admirable movements, in which no soldiery were so dexterous as those of Rome. *

*

**

No sound was heard but the measured tramp of the manoeuvre, and the voice of the tribunes. * * * * Before me was the great machine, the resistless living energy that had leveled the strength of the most renowned nations. * * * * * Before me was at once the perfection of power and the perfection of discipline. All was calm, regular and grand. The equipment of the officers was superb. The helmets, cuirasses, and swords, were frequently inlaid with precious stones, and the superior officers rode richly caparisoned chargers purchased at an enormous price from the finest studs of Europe and Asia. * * * The most showy pageant of

*

*

* *

** * *

**

*

modern life was dull and colorless to the crowded magnificence of the Roman line. The Romans always sought to fight pitched battles. They left the minor services to their allies; and haughtily reserved themselves for the master-strokes by which empires were lost or won. -GEORGE CROLY, in "Salathiel."

A DAY IN SPRING.

The day was beautiful, one of those spring days when May suddenly pours forth all its beauty, and when nature seems to have no thought but to rejoice and be happy. Amidst the many murmurs from forest and village, from the sea and the air, a sound of cooing birds could be distinguished. The first butterflies of the season were resting on the early roses. Everything in nature seemed new-the grass, the mosses, the leaves, the perfumes, the rays of light. The pebbles seemed bathed in coolness. * * The ear seemed to catch

*

**

the sound of kisses sent from invisible lips. * * ** * * Glittering things glittered more than ever. There was a hymn in the flowers, and a radiance in the sounds of the air.

-VICTOR HUGO.

THE WORLD'S OPINION.

For its opinion I do not care a cup of water; a bubble of this foam would weigh as heavy with me as the rambling, giddy, vulgar judgment of a world in which the first of talents is scoundrelism. I never knew a man fail, who brought to market prostitution of mind enough to make him a tool; vice enough to despise everything but gain; and cunning enough to keep himself out of the hands of the magistrate, till opulence enabled him to corrupt the law or authority to defy it. -GEORGE CROLY in "Salathiel."

THE ICE ISLAND.

At midnight on this day we sighted a large ice-island, pale as alabaster under the moon, and shortened canvas to approach it. We hove to till the grey of dawn, when the rising sun gave us a magnificent picture of a floating island of ice stretching for miles over our starboard bow. Its lofty mountains bristled with pinnacles, a very principality of turrets and castellated eminences, majestic in solitude. A closer approach led us past gigantic table-topped icebergs, giant fragments detached from the main body, veritable floating mountains against whose gaunt sides the awful billows broke with deafening clangour, flinging their hissing fragments hundreds of feet into the sky. The direction of the wind which had now risen to half a gale enabled us to sail in a proximity that under other circumstances would have invited almost certain disaster. The seas-blue ridges with a mile-long head of foam-had grown into living coils as high and menacing as the combers which the westerly gales of the Pacific heave in thunder on the shores of that mighty deep. The fabric raged past with a kind of shrieking music, filling the air as though some giant harp were edging the blast with the resonance of fifty wind-strung wires. The frosty brilliancy of the brine seemed to emphasize the bitter cold of the wind. As the bark would sweep to the summit of some prodigious sea, thus widening the prospect, there,-stretching for miles and miles,were icebergs, which to the farther sight looked to lie so close that the picture was that of a compacted coast of alabaster, broken with pinnacles and acclivities of a thousand shapes, curving in places as though in bays, the whole on either hand dying out in films of white, whilst over the bows, over the stern, too, was ice, plentiful as the breasts of the canvas of a vast fleet, and through the Southern sky, low down, ran a long, glinting line or gleam as though a continent of ice was reflected in its face. A magnificent but a terrible sight.

-Adapted from W. CLARK RUSSELL and FRANK BULLEN.

THE COMMON MAN.

There is much to discourage in numan history, in the facts of human life. The common man, after all the ages, is still very common. He is ignorant, reckless, unjust, selfish, easily misled. All public affairs bear the stamp of his weakness.

-DAVID STARR JORDAN.

THE BIBLE.

What a Book! Vast and wide as the world, rooted in the abysses of creation, and towering up beyond the blue secrets of Heaven. Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfillment, birth and death, the whole drama of humanity, are all in this Book.

-COULSON KERNAHAN.

THE OPIUM DREAM.

The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams-a music of preparation and of awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where, somehow, I knew not how,-by some beings, I knew not whom,-a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting,—was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives. I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed-and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then-everlasting farewells! and with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberatedeverlasting farewells! and again, and yet again, reverberated-everlasting farewells!

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud-"I will sleep no more!"
-De QUINCEY.

THE COURTESAN.

Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren, invitations that seduce the sense, a subtile suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. -WILKIE COLLINS.