thing that is be better or be worse for all that the labor, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.

It is no reply to say that the substance of the moral law need suffer no change through any modification of our views of man's place in the Universe. This may be true, but it is irrelevant. We desire, and desire most passionately when we are most ourselves, to give our service to that which is universal, and to that which is abiding. Of what moment is it, then (from this point of view), to be assured of the fixity of the Moral Law, when it and the sentient world, where alone it has any significance, are alike destined to vanish utterly away within periods trifling beside those with which the Geologist and the Astronomer lightly deal in the course of their habitual speculations? No doubt to us ordinary men in our ordinary moments considerations like these may seem far off and of little meaning. In the hurry and bustle of everyday life death itself the death of the individual - seems shadowy and unreal: how much more shadowy, how much less real, that remoter but not less certain death which must some day overtake the race! Yet, after all, it is in moments of reflection that the worth of creeds may best be tested; it is through moments of reflection that they come into living and effectual contact with our active life. It cannot, therefore, be a matter to us of small moment that, as we learn to survey the material world with a wider vision, as we more clearly measure the true proportions which man and his performances bear to the ordered Whole, our practical ideal gets relatively dwarfed and beggared, till we may well feel inclined to ask whether so transitory and so unimportant an accident in the general scheme of things as the fortunes of the human race can any longer satisfy aspirations and emotions nourished upon beliefs in the Everlasting and the Divine.

SONGS OF SEVEN.

BY JEAN INGELOW.

[JEAN INGELOW, a popular English poet and novelist, was born in 1830 at Boston, Lincolnshire, where her father was a banker. Her first book, "A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings" (1850), was published anonymously,

and her second, "Poems" (1863), which included "The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," attained instant success. Later works are: "A Story of Doom," collected poems; "Poems of the Old Days and the New"; and the novels " Off the Skelligs," "Fated to be Free," "Don John," and "Sarah de Berenger." Miss Ingelow died at Kensington, July 19, 1897.]

THERE's no dew left on the daisies and clover,

I am old, so old, I can write a letter;
My birthday lessons are done;

The lambs play always, they know no better;
They are only one times one.

O moon! in the night I have seen you sailing

And shining so round and low;

You were bright! ah, bright! but your light is failing,—

You are nothing now but a bow.

You moon, have you done something wrong in heaven
That God has hidden your face?

I hope if you have you will soon be forgiven,
And shine again in your place.

O velvet bee, you're a dusty fellow,

You've powdered your legs with gold!
O brave marsh mary buds, rich and yellow,
Give me your money to hold!

O columbine, open your folded wrapper,
Where two twin turtledoves dwell!
O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell!

And show me your nest with the young ones in it;

I will not steal them away;

I am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet

I am seven times one to-day.

SEVEN TIMES Two. ROMANCE.

You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes, How many soever they be,

And let the brown meadow lark's note as he ranges Come over, come over to me.

Yet birds' clearest carol by fall or by swelling

No magical sense conveys,

And bells have forgotten their old art of telling
The fortune of future days.

"Turn again, turn again," once they rang cheerily, While a boy listened alone;

Made his heart yearn again, musing so wearily
All by himself on a stone.

Poor bells! I forgive you; your good days are over, And mine, they are yet to be;

No listening, no longing shall aught, aught discover You leave the story to me.

The foxglove shoots out of the green-matted heather Preparing her hoods of snow;

She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather: O children, take long to grow.

I wish and I wish that the spring would go faster,
Nor long summer bide so late;

And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster,
For some things are ill to wait.

I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover,
While dear hands are laid on my head;
"The child is a woman, the book may close over,
For all the lessons are said."

I wait for my story the birds cannot sing it,

Not one, as he sits on the tree;

The bells cannot ring it, but long years, O bring it! Such as I wish it to be.

SEVEN TIMES THREE. LOVE.

I leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover,
Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate;
"Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover
Hush, nightingale, hush! O sweet nightingale, wait
Till I listen and hear

If a step draweth near,
For my love he is late!

"The skies in the darkness stoop nearer and nearer,
A cluster of stars hangs like fruit in the tree,
The fall of the water comes sweeter, comes clearer :
To what art thou listening, and what dost thou see?
Let the star clusters grow,

Let the sweet waters flow,

And cross quickly to me.

"You night moths that hover where honey brims over
From sycamore blossoms, or settle or sleep;
You glowworms, shine out, and the pathway discover
To him that comes darkling along the rough steep.
Ah, my sailor, make haste,

"Too deep for swift telling; and yet, my one lover,
I've conned thee an answer, it waits thee to-night."
By the sycamore passed he, and through the white clover,
Then all the sweet speech I had fashioned took flight;
But I'll love him more, more
Than e'er wife loved before,
Be the days dark or bright.

SEVEN TIMES FOUR. MATERNITY.

Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups,

Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall!

When the wind wakes how they rock in the grasses,

And dance with the cuckoobuds slender and small! Here's two bonny boys, and here's mother's own lasses Eager to gather them all.

Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups!

Mother shall thread them a daisy chain;

Sing them a song of the pretty hedge sparrow,

That loved her brown little ones, loved them full fain: Sing, "Heart, thou art wide though the house be but

Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups,

Sweet wagging cowslips they bend and they bow;

A ship sails afar over warm ocean waters,

And haply one musing doth stand at her prow. O bonny brown sons, and O sweet little daughters, Maybe he thinks on you now!

Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups,

Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall!

A sunshiny world full of laughter and leisure,

And fresh hearts unconscious of sorrow and thrall! Send down on their pleasure smiles passing its measure, God that is over us all!