away an opinion which I shall abandon in twenty years? Why should I be able to abandon errors of twenty years' standing, and not of twenty hours?

When I awake from a dream which has painted an Otaheite for me on the dark ground of the night, and find the flowery land melted away, I scarcely sigh, thinking to myself, "It was only a dream." Why is it that if I had really possessed this island while awake, and it had been swallowed up by an earthquake, why is it that I do not then exclaim, "The island was only a dream"? Wherefore am I more inconsolable at the loss of a longer dream than at the loss of a shorter,- for that is the difference; and why does man find a great loss less probable, and less a matter of necessity when it occurs, than a small one?

The reason is, that every sentiment and every emotion is mad, and exacts and builds its own world. A man can vex himself that it is already, or only, twelve o'clock. What folly! The mood not only exacts its own world, its own individual consciousness, but its own time. I beg every one to let his passions, for once, speak out plainly within himself, and to probe and question them to the bottom, as to what they really desire. He will be terror-struck at the enormity of these hitherto only half-muttered wishes. Anger wishes that all mankind had only one neck; love, that it had only one heart; grief, two tear-glands; pride, two bent knees.

Translation by Edward Henry Noel.

THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF A MISERABLE MAN

N THE lone stillness of the New-Year's night

An old man at his window stood, and turned
His dim eyes to the firmament, where, bright
And pure, a million rolling planets burned,—
And then down on the earth all cold and white,
And felt that moment that of all who mourned
And groaned upon its bosom, none there were
With his deep wretchedness and great despair.
For near him lay his grave, - hidden from view
Not by the flowers of youth, but by the snows

Of age alone. In torturing thought he flew

Over the past, and on his memory rose

That picture of his life which conscience drew,
With all its fruits,-diseases, sins, and woes;
A ruined frame, a blighted soul, dark years
Of agony, remorse, and withering fears.

Like spectres now his bright youth-days came back,
And that cross-road of life where, when a boy,
His father placed him first: its right-hand track
Leads to a land of glory, peace, and joy,

Its left to wildernesses waste and black,

Where snakes and plagues and poison-winds destroy. Which had he trod? Alas! the serpents hung

Coiled round his heart, their venom on his tongue.

Sunk in unutterable grief, he cried,

"Restore my youth to me! O God, restore

My morn of life! O father! be my guide,

And let me, let me choose my path once more!"
But on the wide waste air his ravings died
Away, and all was silent as before.

His youth had glided by, fleet as the wave;
His father came not,- he was in his grave.

Strange lights flashed flickering by: a star was falling;

Down to the miry marsh he saw it rush

"Like me!" he thought, and oh! that thought was galling,
And hot and heart-wrung tears began to gush.
Sleep-walkers crossed his eyes in shapes appalling;
Gaunt windmills lifted up their arms to crush;
And skeleton monsters rose up from the dim
Pits of the charnel-house, and glared on him!

Amid these overboiling bursts of feeling,

Rich music, heralding the young year's birth,
Rolled from a distant steeple, like the pealing
Of some celestial organ o'er the earth:
Milder emotions over him came stealing;

He felt the soul's unpurchasable worth.
"Return!" again he cried, imploringly;
"O my lost youth! return, return to me!"

And youth returned, and age withdrew its terrors:

Still was he young,- for he had dreamed the whole:

But faithful is the image conscience mirrors

When whirlwind passions darken not the soul.

Alas! too real were his sins and errors;

Too truly had he made the earth his goal;
He wept, and thanked his God that with the will,
He had the power, to choose the right path still.

Here, youthful reader, ponder! and if thou,

Like him, art reeling over the abyss,
And shakest off sin's iron bondage now,

This ghastly dream may prove thy guide to bliss;
But should age once be written on thy brow,

Its wrinkles will not be a dream, like this.
Mayest vainly pour thy tears above the urn
Of thy departed youth,-it never will return!

Translation of James Clarence Mangan.

Ο

FROM FIRST FLOWER PIECE›

NCE on a summer evening I was lying in the sunshine on a mountain, and fell asleep. Then I dreamed that I awoke

sky hung in

shadow like

in a church-yard. The down-rolling wheels of the steepleclock, which was striking eleven, had awakened me. I looked for the sun in the empty night-heaven, for I thought an eclipse was veiling it with the moon. All the graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-house were moved to and fro by invisible hands. Shadows which no one cast, flitted on the walls; and other shadows walked erect in the thin air. In the open coffins none were sleeping now but children. In the large folds merely a gray sultry mist, which a giant a net was drawing down nearer, tighter, and hotter. Above me I heard the distant fall of avalanches; under me the first step of an illimitable earthquake. The church wavered up and down with two unceasing discords, which contended with each other and vainly endeavored to mingle in unison. At times a gray gleam skipped up along its windows, and under the gleam the lead and iron ran down molten. The net of the mist and the reeling earth thrust me into that fearful temple, at the door of which, in two poisonous thickets, two glittering basilisks were brooding. I passed through unknown shadows, on whom ancient centuries were impressed. All the shadows were standing round. the empty altar; and in all of them the breast, instead of the heart, quivered and beat. One dead man only, who had just been buried in the church, still lay on his pillow without a

quivering breast, and on his smiling countenance stood a happy dream. But as a living one entered, he awoke, and smiled no more; he lifted with difficulty his heavy eyelids, but within was no eye, and in his beating breast there was, instead of a heart, a wound. He lifted up his hands and folded them to pray; but the arms lengthened out and dissolved, and the hands, still folded, fell away. Above, on the vault of the church, stood the dial-plate of eternity, on which no number appeared, and which was its own index hand; but a black finger pointed thereon, and the dead sought to see the time by it..

An immense and immeasurably extended hammer was about to strike the last hour of time and shatter the universe, when I awoke.

My soul wept for joy that I could still pray to God; and the joy, and the weeping, and the faith in him, were my prayer. And as I arose, the sun was glowing deep behind the full purpled ears of corn, and casting meekly the gleam of its twilight red on the little moon, which was rising in the east without an aurora; and between the sky and the earth, a gay transient air people was stretching out its short wings, and living, as I did, before the Infinite Father; and from all nature around me flowed peaceful tones as from distant evening bells.

MAXIMS FROM RICHTER'S WORKS

E WHO remains modest, not when he is praised but when he is blamed, is truly modest.

HR

OF ALL human qualities, modesty is most easily stifled by fumes of incense, or of sulphur; and praise is often more hurtful than censure.

THE truest love is the most timid; the falsest is the boldest.

IF YOU wish to become acquainted with your betrothed, travel with him for a few days, especially if he is accompanied by his own folks,- and take your mother along.

IT is the misfortune of the bachelor that he has no one to tell him frankly his faults; but the husband has this happiness.

A MAN ought never to be more delicately attentive to his wife than after making her a present, in order to lighten the sense of obligation.

MARRIAGES are so unhappy, because men cannot make up their minds to substitute love for force and arguments, and because they wish to attain their purpose by might and right.

LOVE increases in strength with years, and diminishes in its outward manifestations.

THE wedlock is happiest when one discovers the greatest advantages in it and not before it. It is therefore perilous to marry a poet.

MEN of imagination more easily make up with a lady-love when she is absent than when she is present.

JEALOUSY Constitutes the sole difference between love and friendship. Friendship has therefore one pleasure, and love one pain, the more.

PAINS of sympathy are the sign of love: but if genuine, they are not imaginary, and cause more suffering than one's own pains; for we have at least the right to conquer the latter.

ONE should never hope to be compatible with a wife with whom one has quarreled as a bride.

IF YOU are unable to refute an argument, you find fault with the way in which it is put.

No Two persons are ever more confidential and cordial than when they are censuring a third.

INTERCOURSE with men of the world narrows the heart, communion with nature expands it.

SATAN is a scarecrow set up by the clergy in the spiritual vineyard.

SO EASILY are we impressed by numbers, that even a dozen wheelbarrows in succession seem quite imposing.

XXI-767