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VI.

Woman! young mother! tender wife!
Ye dearest forms of mortal birth;
Sweet soothers of poor human life!
Fair angels of the happy hearth;
O matron grave! O widow drear!
Whate'er thou art, cherished or lone,
The dead beloved await thee here-

The grave will have its own!

VII.

Thou too, bright blooming beauty! thou,
The load-star of a thousand eyes!

That liquid eye, that marble brow,

That cheek where smile Morn's loveliest dyes, Oh! veil those charms! they too must share, Alas! the universal doom;

The beauteous dead, where are they! where ?They wait thee in the tomb !

VIII.

Here rest the dead! here wait the hour

When the last sob of living breath

Shall pass away beneath the power

Of that grim phantom, mightiest Death:

They rest in hope, waiting till He

Who died, and lives for aye, shall come, To give them immortality,

And call them to his home!

STANZAS,

WRITTEN UNDER a drawing OF KING'S-COLLEGE CHAPEL,

CAMBRIDGE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LILLIAN."

EXTRACTED FROM AN ALBUM IN DEVONSHIRE.

I.

Most beautiful!-I gaze and gaze
In silence on the glorious pile;
And the glad thoughts of other days
Come thronging back the while.

To me, dim Memory makes more dear
The perfect grandeur of the shrine;
But if I stood a stranger here,

The ground were still divine.

II.

Some awe the good and wise have felt,
As reverently their feet have trod
On any spot where man hath knelt,
To commune with his God;

By haunted spring, or fairy well,
Beneath the ruined convent's gloom,

Beside the feeble hermit's cell,

Or the false prophet's tomb.

III.

But when was high devotion graced With lovelier dwelling, loftier throne, Than thus the limner's art hath traced

From the time-honoured stone?

The spirit here of worship seems

To hold the heart in wondrous thrall, And heavenward hopes, and holy dreams, Come at her voiceless call ;

IV.

At midnight, when the lonely moon
Looks from a vapour's silvery fold;
Or morning, when the sun of June

Crests the high towers with gold;—
For every change of hour and form

Makes that fair scene more deeply fair; And dusk and day-break, calm and storm, Are all religion there.

THE CURSE OF PROPERTY.

A SKETCH OF IRISH MISMANAGEMENT.

BY MRS. S. C. HALL.

"Give me neither poverty nor riches."

"Poor

"POOR Barry!" exclaimed Mr. Newton. Barry! it was melancholy to see that once fine property melted away, one could hardly tell how, until even the noble dwelling of his ancestors was sold in lots to a fellow who printed' Architect' on his card, and disposed of the materials for what they would bring."

"I was his uncle's friend," sighed old Sir Charles Stanley; "and the recollection of that family-it is strange, but it is nevertheless true—the recollection of the fate of the different members of that family affords me at once the most exquisite pain and pleaI mourn over the love of display, and the pauperising system, pursued by poor but proud relations, through which that fine estate was utterly ruined; and I mourn over it the more, because it

sure.

Q

is far from being a singular instance of destruction, effected by the same means. You, my dear friend, will readily believe that the pleasurable reminiscences I experience are owing to the noble conduct of that little black-eyed girl, Alice Lee, whom all the family, with the exception of Claudius, the heir at law, endeavoured to injure; and whom they even now grudge the fair name, and the fair fame she has acquired by her own industry and exertions."

"I should like to hear you tell the tale, Sir Charles," replied Mr. Newton. "I have often heard sketches of the history; but the loss of property, owing to mismanagement, is unfortunately so common in our poor country, that many similar events may have confused my memory with reference to this particular instance."

"My old friend Charles Barry," commenced the venerable baronet, "had the misfortune to inherit, with his estate, the charge of some five or six halfbrothers and sisters, who married, and had a greater number of 'blessings,' in the form of children, than usually falls to the lot even of Irish gentry. The being he at that time loved most in the world, was his own sister, a young woman nothing differing from other girls of her age and rank, and who, in due time, married two thousand a year (it was

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