and darkened in the mire of this world that shall one day shine very brightly in its heavenly setting. They also suggest the thought that men in the position of workhouse chap We care not what they "demand" in resolutions, nor what helpless trash they proclaim on the housetops. We do not believe in their power to attain so much as an armistice for two years to come. If an armistice,lains may do a world of good and be great indeed, were offered, and the invading troops were withdrawn, of course we should not object to it, and good use could be made of it. But, mark well, ye armistice mongers! During that suspension of hostilities all negotiations must be between government and government. Our lines should be more strictly guarded than ever. No negotiations or fraternization of parties by public meetings or private conferences; no bargaining with the calm voice of reason; no secret pocketing of Wall's "Common Christianity.” But armistice there will be none, and we are glad of it. Our sovereign independence is already won and paid for with treasures of brave blood. It shall not be sold by pedlers, to be built into a Yankee platform. From The Athenæum. Songs in the Night. A Collection of verses by the late Grace Dickinson. Wertheim & Co. THESE are songs in the night in sad verity! sung by a poor bed-ridden woman in a union workhouse. The description of the circumstances under which they were sung is touching indeed-one of those pathetic facts of life which beat the best fictions of literature. Grace Dickinson became an inmate of the Halifax workhouse in consequence of being in a decline; and it was there she wrote this collection of verse. At first she jotted her thoughts down on a slate-later she was unable to do this; but curiously enough she had learnt the deaf and dumb alphabet on purpose to converse with a poor deaf and dumb workhouse companion, and when she could not sit up in bed to hold her pencil, she dictated her verses to her mute amanuensis. Books have been composed under many singular conditions, but these we look upon as among the most singular and interesting. The chaplain of the Halifax union workhouse vouches for the verses being a genuine expression of the writer's religious feelings, and as such they give us one more proof that many and many a jewel of God gets trampled comforters to suffering souls who are let out "My lot on earth is poor and mean, "He comforts and he succors me; He makes the storm become a calm, "He turns my darkness into light, He makes this earth become a heaven; The piety is better than the poetry-such is often the case with hymns; and, apart from the literary estimate, the little book deserved publication for the facts which it contains. There must be many kind hearts that will be touched by the story to put forth a helping hand; for it appears that when poor Grace Dickinson fell worn out at the workhousedoor she had with her a burden of two children. These she had toiled hard for during eighteen months of widowhood, and failed at last. These are still living in the workhouse. The book is printed in their behalf; and the dying mother would undoubtedly have thought her verses had won ample fame if she had known that they would be of service to her little ones, as we trust they may be. SPRING AT THE CAPITAL. THE poplar drops beside the way Its tasselled plumes of silver-gray; "OUT IN THE COLD." BY LUCY LARCOM. WHAT is the threat! "Leave her out in the cold?'' The chestnut pouts its great brown buds, impa- Loyal New England, too loyally bold: tient for the laggard May. The honeysuckles lace the wall; Down-looking in this snow-white bud, How far remote the streaming wounds, the sick- For Nature does not recognize This strife that rends the earth and skies; No war-dreams vex the winter sleep of clover- She holds her even way the same, A snow-drop is a snow-drop still, despite the When blood her grassy altar wets, She sends the pitying violets Hater of treason!-ah, that is her crime; Out in the cold? oh, she chooses the place, Not more distinct on his tables of stone On her foundations the One Law of Right. She is a Christian; she smothers her ire, To heal the outrage with their bloom, and cover Thinking and working and waiting the day it with soft regrets. O crocuses with rain-wet eyes! What do ye know of agony and death and blood- No shudder breaks your sunshine trance, Yonder a white encampment hums; Whether it lessen or increase, Or whether trumpets shout or cease, O flowers! the soul that faints or grieves Help us to trust, still on and on, That this dark night will soon be gone, And that these battle-stains are but the blood-red trouble of the dawn Dawn of a broader, whiter day Than ever blessed us with its ray When her wild sisters shall leave their mad play. Out in the cold, where the free winds are blowing, ing, Guards she all growths that are living and great; Lifted and fixed on the granite of thought; Out in the cold! she is glad to be there, Freedom your breath is, O broad-shouldered North! A dawn beneath whose purer light all guilt and Out of the South land, from Slavery's fen, wrong shall fade away. Then shall our nation break its bands, Battening demons, but poisoning men. Still on your Rock, my New England, sit sure, SHORT ARTICLES.-The Sunday Question, 123. Phoebus Apollo's Complaint, 131. Mr. Buckle as a Talker, 134. The Great Stone Book of Nature, 142. Novel Mode of Lighting a Church, 142. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON & CO., & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. LITTLE CHARLEY. O SUNSHINE, making golden spots The shadows of the coming flowers; Are folded at our door! We can but yearn through length of days, Thy life was slips of golden sun, Within the shrouded room below Ah, well this little lock of hair Is all of him that we can keep, And leads him through a fall of tears, Angel of Death! We question not Who asks of Heaven," Why doth it rain?" No, "Wherefore?" or "To what good end?" THE SUNKEN CITY. By day it lies hidden and lurks beneath Many a castle I built in the air; Lie under the waters that mournfully Many fine houses, but never a home; Doors set wide where no beating hearts come; It sleeps in the arms of Eternity- There the face of my dead love lies, Embalmed in the bitterest tears; No breath on the lips! no smile in the eyes, Two of the bonniest Birds of God That ever warmed human heart For a nest, till they fluttered their wings abroad, Lie there in their chambers apart, Dead! yet pleading most piteously In the lonesome City that's sunk in the Sea. When all-sail for a glorious coast. Then I look from my City that's sunk in the Sea, To that Star-Chamber overhead; And torturingly they question me "What of this world of the dead That lies out of sight, and how will it be With the City and thee, when there's no more sea?" -All the Year Round. MAY. THE wet leaves flap, the sad boughs sway; May, who gave us skies of blue— From The New Monthly Magazine. AMAZONS.* THE boundless forest district which, in the torrid zone of South America, connects the Iodiles and the boas are masters of the river; river basins of the Orinoco and the Amazon is, undoubtedly, one of the wonders of the world. This region deserves, according to De Humboldt, to be called a Primeval, or Virgin Forest, in the strictest sense of the word. If every wild forest, densely covered with trees, on which man has never laid his destroying hand, is to be regarded as a primitive forest, then, argues that great naturalist, the phenomenon is common to many parts both of the temperate and the frigid zones; if, however, this character consists in its im"This aspect of animated nature, in which penetrability, primitive forests belong exclu- man is nothing," Humboldt goes on to resively to tropical regions. ("Views of Na-mark," has something in it strange and sad. ture," Bohn's ed., p. 193.) To this we reconcile ourselves with difficulty This is the view entertained of a primeval on the ocean, and amid the sands of Africa; forest by one of the great authorities on the though in these scenes, where nothing recalls subject—one who, of all old investigators, to mind our fields, our woods, and our streams, Bonpland, Martius, Poppig, and the Schom- we are less astonished at the vast solitude burgs, and before the time of Wallace and through which we pass. Here, in a fertile Bates, had spent the longest period of time country adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; in primeval forests in the interior of a great continent. Although we prefer to use the we seem to be transported into a world difterm in its simplest and accepted sense, of a ferent from that which gave us birth. These forest with which man's toil has had noth- impressions are so much the more powerful, ing to do, we may add, that in Humboldt's in proportion as they are of longer duration. somewhat arbitrary definition as to its "im-A soldier, who had spent his whole life in penetrability," that this is by no means, the missions of the Upper Oroonoko [as De as is often erroneously supposed in Europe, always Humboldt spells the name of the river], slept with us on the bank of the river. He was an occasioned by the interlaced climbing lianas, or creeping plants, for these often constitute but a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacles are the shrub-like plants, which fill up every space between the trees in a zone where all vegetable forms have a tendency to become arborescent. intelligent man, who, during a calm and serene night, pressed me with questions on the magnitude of the stars, on the inhabitants of the moon, on a thousand subjects of which I was as ignorant as himself. Being unable by my answers to satisfy his curiosity, he said to me, in a firm tone: With respect to men, In these great primeval forests man is not. "In the interior of part of the new conti-I believe there are no more above than you nent," Humboldt says, in another work," we almost accustom ourselves to regard men as not being essential to the order of nature. The earth is loaded with plants, and nothing impedes their development. An immense layer of free mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic powers. The croc- regions." would have found if you had gone by land from Javita to Cassiquaire. I think I see in the stars, as here, a plain covered with grass, and a forest traversed by a river.' In citing these words, I paint the impression produced by the monotonous aspect of those solitary There is more in it, though, than appeared *The Naturalist on the River Amazons: a Rec-at the moment even to the philosophic Humord of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of boldt. It is the deeply humiliating sense in Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel. man that the primeval forest is not yet preBy Henry Walter Bates. Two Vols. John Murray. pared to be his abode, that, except in the |