7. There's nothing dark, below, above, Thy touch shall turn all bright again! This selection, like the preceding, requires smooth, gentle tones, with median stress. It has, however, less of tenderness, and requires more fullness and roundness of voice. The preceding selection is the more pathetic, this is the more dignified and noble. The pitch should be lower in this than in the preceding. IX.-FLOWERS. HORACE SMITH. 1. Day-stars that ope your eyes with morn, to twinkle 2. Ye matin worshipers, who, bending lowly Before the uprisen sun, God's lidless eye, 3. Ye bright mosaics, that with storied beauty 4. In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly Artist, With which thou paintest nature's wide-spread hall, What a delightful lesson thou impartest Of love to all! 5. Not useless are ye, flowers, though made for pleasure, Blooming in field and wood by day and night; From every source your presence bids me treasure Harmless delight. 6. "Thou wert not, Solomon, in all thy glory, How vain your grandeur! ah, how transitory 7. 'Neath cloistered boughs each floral bell that swingeth 8. Not to the dome where crumbling arch and column 9. To the cathedral, boundless as our wonder, Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply, 10. There, as in solitude and shade I wander Through the green aisles, or, stretched along the sod, Awed by the silence, reverently ponder The ways of God, 11. Your voiceless lips, O flowers, are living preachers, For such a world of thought could furnish scope? Yet fount of hope. 13. Posthumous glories, angel-like collection, Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth, Ye are to me a type of resurrection And second birth. 14. Floral apostles, that in dewy splendor Weep without woe and blush without a crime, 15. Were I, O God! in churchless lands remaining, 66 Priests, sermons, shrines. QUESTIONS.-1. What is " a libation"? What are said to be "sprinkled," and by what? 2. What are "matin worshipers"? What are the "chalices" here mentioned? 3. Why are the flowers called "bright mosaics"? 7. What is the meaning of ever in the third line? 8. What are alluded to in the first two lines? In the last two? 9. What is meant by the expression "boundless as our wonder"? What is said to be boundless? Point out the passages that seem to you most beautiful. X.-REPULSIVE HOMES. CHARLES LAMB. 1. Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes; the home of the very poor man, and another which we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and the benches of ale-houses, if they could speak, might bear mournful testimony to the first. To them the very poor man resorts for an image of the home which he can not find at home. For a starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many shivering children with their mother, he finds in the depths of winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clamors of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle which he can afford to spend. 2. He has companions which his home denies him; for the very poor man has no visitors. He can look into the goings on of the world, and speak a little to politics. At home there are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all topics that should expand the mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy with general existence, are crushed in the absorbing consideration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. 3. At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty; and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese with an onion, in a corner, where no one reflects upon his poverty, he has a sight of the substantial joint providing for the landlord and his family. He takes an interest in the dressing of it, and while he assists in removing the trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing as beef and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at home. All this while he deserts his wife and children. But what wife, and what children? Prosperous men, who object to this desertion, image to themselves some clean, contented family like that which they go to. 4. But look at the countenance of the poor wives who follow and persecute their good man to the door of the public house, which he is about to enter, when something like shame would restrain him, if stronger misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament has been. long effaced by misery,-is that a face to stay at home with? is it more a woman, or a wild-cat? Alas! it is the face of the wife of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can smile no longer. What comforts can it share? what burdens can it lighten? 5. Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared together! But what if there be no bread in the cupboard? The innocent prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that condition, that there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their children they drag them up. The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature reflecting person. 6. No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humor it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. It has been prettily said, that "a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing; the return to its little babytricks, and efforts to engage attention, bitter, ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses; it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand contrivance to divert the child; the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the passions of young wonder. 7. It was never sung to,-no one ever told to it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. It had no young dreams.. It broke at once into the iron realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor as any object of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labor. It is the rival, till it can be the coöperator for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion, his solace ; it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times. It makes the very heart bleed to overhear the casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have been contemplating. 8. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that age); of the promised sight, or play; of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman-before it was a child. It has learned to go to market, it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it |