THE MAN.

BY WILLIAM H. CARPENTER.

THE weeds o'er ran the garden,
The weeds usurped the field,
For nothing but weeds and briars
The idle land would yield,
When a burly Man upstepping-
A Man! I say A Man!-
Cried aloud-"I will amend this,
If a son of Adam can!"
To say it was to do it,

When he had vowed his vow;

So, full of hearty action,

Himself he grasp'd the plough.

The neighbors flocked around him,
And gazed with purblind eyes,

Or lifted up their timid hands.

In marvelous surprise.

Many there were who mock'd him,
And a few there were, who, then,
Went home with hearts uplifted,

Wiser and better men.

But the Man wrought on, undaunted; Nor stint nor stay he knew,

"Till, where the wild weeds flourished,

Fair grains and grasses grew.

The stubborn glebe he tilleth,
With an iron, resolute will,
And the blossoms of the spring-time
The air with perfume fill.

The autumn brought the fruitage-
The corn, oil, and the wine—
And the Man he said, yet humbly,
"Lo! these good deeds are mine.
Though I have read but little,

Sure I have wrought the more,

And have made two blades of grass grow Where one blade grew before."

By brave words and stout labor,
His high success he taught;
And though his phrase was homely,

'T was Manhood spake and wrought; And when his work was ended,

He laid calmly down to rest,
Full of hope and reverent meekness,
With the sunshine on his breast;
And when flowers bloomed above him,
And time some years had won,
Men began to know and love him,

Through the good deeds he had done.

SKETCHES IN ITALY.

VENICE-THE FOSCARI.

BY J. MORRISON HARRIS.

SWIFTLY flew our iron steed from the fair city of Padua. Without a glance at the bending trees and thronging statues of the Prato della Vale, or a farewell look at the minarets and domes of the mosque-like Church of San Piustina; away we sped, through fields of golden grain and vineyards, on to the

wing'd Lion's marble piles

Where Venice sat in state throned on her hundred isles."

I was almost bewildered with excitement. To be in Venice was one of the yearnings of my life. Dim, mysterious and beautiful, she seemed to me the very embodiment of romance.

Her history, full of chivalrous daring, romantic incidents and great events. Her long line of venerable Doges, who, with the valor of the soldier and the wisdom of the sage, had builded her up from insignificance to supremacy. Her gallant Admirals, whose conquering galleys swept the Adriatic; who made her "Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite," and won her lofty name of Planter of the Lion!-Her situation-throned on the waters-her streets the wave-her steeds, the glancing Gondola. -All things connected with her were full of interest, and as we flew along, delighted memory told of all she had been; and busy fancy strove to paint her as she was.

Those who have never traveled in a strange land, can form no just conception of the tourist's feelings, as he approaches some spot endeared to him by his reading, or familiar to his imagina

tion. They cannot enter into his sensations as he watches, anxiously, for some land mark, whose image is clearly painted on the retina of fancy; some swelling dome, some pointing obelisk, or majestic ruin. Each city has some particular marvel of art or nature, and to the traveler, that single object represents the whole. As he rolls along amidst clouds of dust, and between the white walls of villas into the Eternal City, his eye seeks nothing, his heart is full of nothing but St. Peter's; and when he catches his first view of circling piazza and up-heaved dome, he realizes that he is indeed in Rome. As the steamer glides past the lovely shores of the Mediterranean, and buries her prow in the blue waters of the bay, his gaze is rivited upon Vesuvius, and the pillar of fire and cloud are to him Naples.

As he journies through the fairy land of Lombardy, his eye wanders from the sea of verdure which surrounds him, and seeks the thousand spires and flying buttresses of that mountain of marble, the Duomo of Milan, which from the bosom of the crowded city, rises to heaven, pure and glittering, like the Queen of the Alps, the snowy Yungfrau. But it is not so as he approaches Venice; no single dome-no particular spire-not the Campanile nor the Basilica, not the Lido nor the Lagune claim his attention and absorb his interest: but all is wonderful, all is absorbing in its novelty and beauty; and as he steps into the barge which waits to convey him across the encircling waters, and sees

from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of an enchanter's wand, A thousand years their cloudy wings expand." And the glories of the past, and the realities of the present, fire his fancy and excite his mind, and in a sort of dreamy extacy his straining gaze is fixed upon the city, which like some fairy island floats upon the wave; and he scarce feels sure it will not vanish like a vision of the night, until his foot presses the earth, and he feels his quick pulse throbbing with excitement in the "City of the Doges!"

It is not my intention to go into any detailed description of Venice. The theme would be a delightful one, and with my heart in my pen, I could fill sheets with the account of the various objects of beauty and interest which gave wings to the weeks I passed among them. The gorgeous Basilica of San Mark, with its wealth of silver and gold and mosaics—its eastern splendor and religious gloom-its inlaid aisle, upon whose stones an Emperor knelt and sued"—and its proud front where stand the steeds of brass, "their gilded collars glittering in the sun.”—The Palace of the Doges, with its vast halls and princely chambers, glowing with the master pieces of genius-radiant with the creation of Titian and Carlo Dolci, of Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese-where met of old the Senators of the Republic -the stern lawgivers of the state-whose despotism was once so fierce, whose power was so terrific-whose keen eyes pierced the inmost recesses of private life, and whose justice or revenge, fell like the stroke of fate; unseen, swift, inevitable. The Bridge of Sighs, through whose dark passages so many thousands of the learned and great, the wise and virtuous, have passed to trial, and returned to-Death.—The deep, dark, dungeon-cells, where the glad sunlight and the genial air, where ever strangers-where youth grew old in solitude and gloom-where the hardy frame and the strong spirit broke with the weight of agonies they only could conceive of where the rough walls bear fearful witness to the mad despair of those lone dwellers in a living grave.-The narrow prison chambers, high up in the air, all light and burning heat just beneath the leads, and in the blazing glare which poured reflected from the near domes of Saint Marck-which made the blood boil, and dried up the skin, and fried the bursting brain; so that the poor victim dwelt in a constant hell, to which the night and dampness of the cells below would have seemed paradise. The Pozzi and Piomba! How much of torture, anguish and despair dwell in those fearful words!

And beside them, not a stone's throw from these scenes of