Hearing thee, or else some other,
As merry as a brother,

I on the earth will go plodding on,
By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done.

COWPER'S GRAVE.-Mrs. Browning.

IT is a place where poets crown'd may feel the heart's decaying;

It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying:

Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence languish :

Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.

O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing!

O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging!

O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,

Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story,

How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory, And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed,

He wore no less a loving face because so brokenhearted,

He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration;

Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken, Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken.

With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him,

With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him,

Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to

blind him,

But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him;

And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic

senses

As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influ

ences:

The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number,

And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.

Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses,

Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses: The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing,

Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving.

And though, in blindness, he remained unconscious of that guiding,

And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing,

He testified this solemn truth, while phrenzy desolated, -Nor man nor nature satisfies whom only God created.

Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses,

And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses,

That turns his fevered eyes around 'My mother! where's my mother?'—

As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other!

The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him,

Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him!-

Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him,

Beneath those deep pathetic eyes which closed in death to save him.

Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth can image that awaking,

Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking,

Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted, But felt those eyes alone, and knew,— ' My Saviour! not deserted!'

Deserted! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested,

Upon the Victim's hidden face, no love was manifested? What frantic hands outstretched have e'er the atoning drops averted?

What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted?

Deserted! God could separate from His own essence rather;

And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father:

Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry His universe hath shaken

It went up single, echoless, 'My God, I am forsaken!'

It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation, That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation!

That earth's worst phrenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope's fruition,

And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a vision.

AUTHORITY.-Shakspeare.

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet;

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder ;

Nothing but thunder. Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,—
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,
His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY.-Lord Macaulay.

BY OBADIAH BIND-THEIR-KINGS-IN-CHAINS-AND-THEIRNOBLES-WITH-LINKS-OF-IRON, SERGEANT IN IRETON'S

REGIMENT.

OH! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,

With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?

And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?

Oh evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit,

And crimson was the juice or the vintage that we trod; For we trampled on the throng of the haughty and the strong,

Who sate in the high places, and slew the saints of
God.

It was about the noon of a glorious day of June,

That we saw their banners dance, and their cuirasses shine;

And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair,

And Ástley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the
Rhine.

Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword,
The General rode along us to form us to the fight,
When a murmuring sound broke out, and swell'd into a
shout,

Among the godless horsemen upon the tyrant's right.

I

And hark! like the roar of the billows on the shore,

The cry of battle rises along their charging line! For God! for the Cause! for the Church! for the Laws! For Charles King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!

The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums,

His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whiteball;

They are bursting on our flanks. Grasp your pikes :close your ranks :

For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall.

They are here:-they rush on.-We are broken-We are gone.

Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast. O Lord, put forth thy might! O Lord, defend the right! Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last.

Stout Skippon hath a wound :-the centre hath given ground:

Hark! hark!-What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear?

Whose banner do I see, boys? 'Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys.

Bear up another minute. Brave Oliver is here.

Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row, Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes,

Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the Accurst, And at a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes.

Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide Their coward heads, predestined to rot on TempleBar:

And he―he turns,—he flies,—shame to those cruel eyes That bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war.

Ho! comrades, scour the plain: and ere ye strip the slain,

First give another stab to make your guest secure;