But there is a road from Winchester town,

A good broad highway leading down;

And there, through the flush of the morning light,

A steed as black as the steeds of night

Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need;
He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Still sprang from those swift hoofs, thundering south,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth,
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.

The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.

Under his spurning feet, the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind;

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,
Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire.

But, lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;

He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first that the general saw were the groups

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done? what to do? a glance told him both.

Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line, 'mid a storm of huzzas,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because

The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;

By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play

He seemed to the whole great army to say,

"I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down, to save the day."

All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued, The hills seemed farther and the streams sang low; As in a dream the distant woodman hewed

His winter log with many a muffled blow.

The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold,
Their banners bright with every martial hue,
Now stood, like some sad beaten host of old,
Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.

On slumbrous wings the vulture held his flight;
The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint;
And, like a star slow drowning in the light,

The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint.

The sentinel-cock upon the hill-side crew-
Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before,
Silent till some replying warder blew

His alien horn, and then was heard no more.

Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest,
Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young,
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest,
By every light wind like a censer swung;

Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves,
The busy swallows, circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,

An early harvest and a plenteous year;

Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast,
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,
To warn the reaper of the rosy east,-

All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.

Alone from out the stubble piped the quail,

And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom; Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,

Made echo to the distant cottage loom.

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;

The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;

The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,
Sailed slowly by, passed noiseless out of sight.

Amid all this, in this most cheerless air,
And where the woodbine shed upon the porch
Its crimson leaves, as if the Year stood there
Firing the floor with his inverted torch;

Amid all this, the centre of the scene,

The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread,
Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien,
Sat, like a Fate, and watched the flying thread.

She had known Sorrow,-he had walked with her,
Oft supped and broke the bitter ashen crust;
And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir
Of his black mantle trailing in the dust.

While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom,
Her country summoned and she gave her all;
And twice War bowed to her his sable plume-
Regave the swords to rust upon her wall.

Regave the swords,-but not the hand that drew
And struck for Liberty its dying blow,
Nor him who, to his sire and country true,
Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe.

Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on,
Like the low murmur of a hive at noon;
Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone

Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune.

At last the thread was snapped-her head was bowed;
Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene,-
And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud,
While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene.

FROM

Donald Grant Mitchell.

BORN in Norwich, Conn., 1822.

OF BOOKS AND BERRIES.

[My Farm of Edgewood. 1863.]

ROM the time when I read of Mistress Doctor Primrose's gooseberry wine, which the Doctor celebrates in his charming autobiography, I have entertained a kindly regard for that fruit. But my efforts to grow it successfully have been sadly baffled. The English climate alone, I think, will bring it to perfection. I know not how many ventures I have made with Roaring Lion, Brown Bob, Conquerors, and other stupendous varieties; but without infinite care, after the first crop, the mildew will catch and taint them. Our native varieties,-such

for instance, as the Houghton Seedling, make a better show, and, with ordinary care, can be fruited well for a succession of seasons. But it is not, after all, the stanch old English berry, which pants for the fat English gardens, for the scent of hawthorn, and for the lowering fogbanks of Lancashire.

Garden associations (with those who entertain them) inevitably have English coloring. Is it strange when so many old gardens are blooming through so many old books we know?

No fruit is so thoroughly English in its associations; and I never see a plump Roaring Lion but I think of a burly John Bull, with waistcoat strained over him like the bursting skin of his gooseberry, and muttering defiance to all the world. There is, too, another point of resemblance; the fruit is liable to take the mildew when removed from British soil, just as John gets the blues, and wraps himself in a veil of his own foggy humors, whenever he goes abroad. My experience suggests that this capricious fruit be planted under the shadow of a north wall, in soil compact and deep; it should be thoroughly enriched, pruned severely, watered abundantly, and mulched (if possible) with kelp fresh from the sea-shore. These conditions and appliances may give a clean cheek even to the Conquering Hero.

But it is not so much for any piquancy of flavor that I prize the fruit as because its English bloat is pleasantly suggestive of little tartlets (smothered in clotted cream) eaten long ago under the lee of Dartmoor hills of Lancashire gardens, where prize berries reposed on little scaffoldings, or swam in porcelain saucers—and of bristling thickets in Cowper's "Wilderness" by Olney.

Is it lonely in my garden of a summer's evening? Have the little pattering feet gone their ways-to bed? Then I people the gooseberry alley with old Doctor Primrose, and his daughters Sophia and Olivia ; Squire Burchell comes, and sits upon the bench with me under the arbor, as I smoke my pipe. How shall we measure our indebtedness to such pleasant books, that people our solitude so many years after they are written! Oliver Goldsmith, I thank you! Crown Bob, I thank you! Gooseberries, like the English, are rather indigestible.

Of strawberries I shall not speak as a committee-man, but as a simple lover of a luscious dish. I am not learned in kinds; and have even had the niaiserie in the presence of cultivators to confound Crimson Cone with Boston Pine, and have blushed to my eyelids when called upon to name the British Queen in a little collection of only four mammoth varieties. With strawberries, as with people, I believe in old friends. The early Scarlet, if a little piquant, is good for the first pickings; and the Hovey, with a neighbor bed of Pines, or McAvoy, and Black Prince, if you please, give good flavor, and a well-rounded dish. The spicy