Its calm delight his bosom fills; He slumbers in its fragrant vale, Or, waking, wanders 'neath the shade Shake perfumes through the odorous glade Through tinted aisles of air his gaze Is fixed, where mountains rise And oft, its mystic threshold crost, ZLOBANE. As swayeth in the summer wind the close and stalwart grain, So moved the serried Zulu shields that day on wild Zlo bane: The white shield of the husband, who hath twice need of life; The black shield of the young chief, who hath not yet a wife. Unrecking harm, the British lay, secure as if they slept, While close in front and either flank the live black cres cent crept ; Then burst their wild and fearful cry upon the British ears, With whir of bullets, glare of shields, and flash of Zulu spears. They gathered as a cloud, swift rolled, 'twixt sun and summer scene; They thickened down as the locusts that leave no living green. Uprose the British; in the shock reeled but an instant; then, Shoulder to shoulder, faced the foe, and met their doom like men. But one was there whose heart was torn in a more awful strife; He had the soldier's steady nerve, and calm disdain of life; Yet now, half turning from the fray-knee smiting against knee He scanned the hills, if yet were left an open way to flee. Not for himself. His little son, scarce thirteen sum mers born, With hair that shone upon his brows like tassels on the corn, And lips that smiled in that sweet pout shaped by the mother's breast, Stood by his side, and silently to his brave father pressed. The horse stood nigh; the father kissed and tossed the boy astride: "Farewell!" he cried, "and for thy life, that way, my darling, ride!" Scarce touched the saddle ere the boy leaped lightly to the ground, And smote the horse upon its flank, that, with a quivering bound, It sprang and galloped for the hills, with one sonorous neigh; The fire flashed where its spurning feet clanged o'er the stony way; So, shod with fear, fled like the wind, from where in an cient lay, Rome grappled Tusculam-the slain Mamilius's charger gray. 66 Father, I'll die with you!" The sire, as this he saw and heard, Turned, and stood breathless in the joy and pang that knows no word. Once each-as do long-knitted friends-upon the other smiled; And then-he had but time to give a weapon to the child, Ere, leaping o'er the British dead, the supple Zulus drew The cruel assegais, and first the younger hero slew. Still grew the father's heart, his eye bright with unflickering flame : Five Zulus bit the dust in death by his unblenching aim. Then, covered with uncounted wounds, he sank beside his child; And they who found them say, in death each on the other smiled. GUTHRIE, THOMAS, a Scottish clergyman, orator, and philanthropist, born at Brechin, July 12, 1803; died at St. Leonard's, near Hastings, England, February 24, 1873. He was the son of a banker; studied at Edinburgh, and was licensed to preach in 1825. Afterward he studied medicine at Paris, and was subsequently for some time employed in his father's bank. In 1830 he was presented to the small parish of Arbirlot, from which in 1837 he was transferred to the Old Grayfriars' parish in Edinburgh, where he achieved a distinguished reputation as a preacher and philanthropist. He left the Established Church of Scotland at the disruption in 1843, and became one of the ministers of the Free Church. In 1854 he was obliged to give up public speaking, and became editor of the Sunday Magazine. He was one of the founders of the "Ragged," or Industrial, School of Edinburgh. Mr. Guthrie's works are contained in some twenty volumes, and consist mainly of sermons and republications from Good Words and the Sunday Magazine. Among these are The Gospel in Ezekiel, The Way to Life, On the Parables, Out of Harness, Studies of Character, Man and the Gospel, Our Father's Business, and the City and Ragged Schools. An edition of his Works, with an Autobiography, and a Memoir by his sons, was issued in 1874. SUBSIDENCE OF LAND AND HOME. There is a remarkable phenomenon to be seen on certain parts of our coast. Strange to say, it proves, notwithstanding such expressions as "the stable and solid land," that it is not the land but the sea which is the stable element. On some summer day, when there is not a wave to rock her, nor breath of wind to fill her sail or fan a cheek, you launch your boat upon the waters, and, pulling out beyond lowest tide-mark, you idly lie upon her bows to catch the silvery glance of a passing fish, or watch the movements of the many curious creatures that travel the sea's sandy bed, or creeping out of their rocky homes, wander amid its tangled mazes. If the traveller is surprised to find a deep-sea shell imbedded in the marbles of a mountain peak, how great is your surprise to see beneath you a vegetation foreign to the deep! Below your boat, submerged many feet beneath the surface of the lowest tide, away down in these green crystal depths, you see no rusting anchor, no mouldering remains of some shipwrecked one, but in the standing stumps of trees, the mouldering vestiges of a forest, where once the wild cat prowled, and the birds of heaven, singing their loves, had nestled and nursed their young. In counterpart to those portions of our coast where sea-hollowed caves, with sides which the waves have polished, and floors still strewed with shells and sand, now stand high above the level of strongest stream-tides, there stand these dead, decaying trees-entombed in the deep. A strange phenomenon, which admits of no other explanation than this, that there the coast-line has sunk beneath its ancient level. Many of our cities present a phenomenon as melancholy to the eye of a philanthropist, as the other is interesting to a philosopher or geologist. In their economical, educational, moral, and religious aspects, certain parts of this city bear palpable evidence of a corresponding subsidence. Not a single house, nor a block of houses, but whole streets, once from end to end the homes of decency, and industry, and wealth, and rank, and piety, have been engulfed. A flood of |