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listen to its coming. It touches first the silver foliage of the birch, and the slightly hung leaves, at its merest breath, will lift and rustle like a thousand tiny wings, and then it creeps up to the tall fir, and the fine tassels send out a sound like a low whisper, and as the oak feels its influence, the thick leaves stir heavily, and a deep tone comes suddenly out like the echo of a far off bassoon. They are all wind-harps of different power, and as the breeze strengthens and sweeps equally over them all, their united harmony has a wonderful grandeur and beauty.

| your mind is not idle. It realizes my dream of another world, where music is intuitive like a thought, and comes only when it is remembered.

And the frost, too, has a melodious ministry." You will hear its crystals shoot in the dead of a clear night, as if the moonbeams were splintering like arrows on the ground; and you listen to it the more earnestly that it is the going on of one the most cunning and beautiful of nature's deep mysteries. I know nothing so wonderful as the shooting of a crystal. Heaven has hidden its principle as yet from the inquisitive eye of the philosopher, and we must be content to gaze on its exquisite beauty, and listen in mute wonder to the noise of its invisible workmanship. It is too fine a knowledge for us. We shall comprehend it when we know how the "morning stars sang together."

You would hardly look for music in the dreariness of the early winter. But before the keener frosts set in, and while the warm winds are yet stealing back occasionally, like regrets of the departed summer, there will come a soft rain or a heavy mist; and, when the north winds return, there will be drops suspended like ear-ring jewels between the

Then what is more soothing than the dropping of the rain? You should have slept in a garret to know how it can lull and bring dreams. How I have lain, when a boy, and listened to the fitful patter of the large drops upon the roof, and held my breath as it grew fainter and fainter, till it ceased utterly, and I heard nothing but the rushing of the strong gust and the rattling of the panes. I used to say over my prayers and think of the apples I had stolen then! But were you ever out fishing upon a lake, in a smart shower? It is like the playing of musical glasses. The drops ring out with a clear, bell-like tinkle, following each other sometimes so closely that it re-filaments of the cedar tassels and in the feathery sembles the winding of a distant horn; and then, in the momentary intervals, the bursting of the thousand tiny bubbles comes stealthily on your ear, more like the recollection of a sound than a distinct murmur. Not that I fish; I was ever a milky-hearted boy, and had a foolish notion that there was pain in the restless death of those panting and beautiful creatures; but I loved to go out with the old men when the day set in with rain, and lie dreamily over the gunwale listening to the changes of which I have spoken. It had a quieting effect on my temper, and stilled for awhile the uneasiness of that vague longing that is like a fever at a boy's heart.

edges of the dark green hemlocks, and, if the clearing up is not followed by a heavy wind, they will all be frozen in their places like well-set gems. The next morning the warm sun comes out, and by the middle of the calm, dazzling forenoon, they are all loosened from the close touch which sustains them, and will drop at the lightest motion. If you go along upon the south side of the wood at that hour, you will hear music. The dry foliage of the summer's shedding is scattered over the ground, and the hard round drops ring out clearly and distinctly as they are shaken down with the stirring of the breeze. It is something like the running of deep and rapid water, only more fitful and merrier; but to one who goes out in nature with his heart open, it is a pleasant music, and, in contrast with the stern character of the season, delightful.

Winter has many other sounds that give pleasure

There is a melancholy music in Autumn. The leaves float sadly about with a peculiar look of desolateness, wavering capriciously in the wind, and falling with a just andible sound that is a very sigh for its sadness. And then, when the breeze is fresher -though the early autumn months are mostly still-to the seeker for hidden sweetness; but they are they are swept on with a cheerless rustle over the naked harvest fields and about in the eddies of the blast; and though I have sometimes, in the glow of exercise, felt my life securer in the triumph of the brave contrast, yet in the chill of evening, or when any sickness of mind or body was upon me, the moaning of those withered leaves has pressed down my heart like a sorrow, and the cheerful fire and the voices of my many sisters might scarce remove it. Then, for the music of Winter. I love to listen to the falling of the snow. It is an unobstrusive and sweet music. You may temper your heart to the serenest mood by its low murmur. It is that kindliness win away the scenes that link up the affecof music that only intrudes upon your ear when your thoughts come languidly. You need not hear it if

too rare and accidental to be described distinctly. The brooks have a sullen and muffled murmur under their frozen surface; the ice in the distant river heaves up with the swell of the current and falls again to the bank with a prolonged echo, and the woodman's axe rings cheerfully out from the bosom of the unrobed forest. These are, at best, however, but melancholy sounds, and, like all that meets the eye in that cheerless season, they but drive in the heart upon itself. I believe it is so ordered in heaven's wisdom. We forget ourselves in the enticement of the sweet summer. Its music and its love

tions, and we need a hand to turn us back tenderly, and hide from us the outward idols in whose wor

ship we are forgetting the higher and more spiritual one ear listens, and that it is addressed without a witaltars.

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ness to one who cannot stand aside from herself and separate the enchanter from his music. It is an insidious and beguiling power; and I have seen men who, without any pretensions to dignity or imposing address, would arrest attention the moment their voices were heard, and who, if they leaned over to murmur in a woman's ear, were certain of pleasing, though the remark were the very idlest common-place of conversation.

Hitherto I have spoken only of the sounds of irrational and inanimate nature. A better than these, and the best music under heaven, is the music of the human voice. I doubt whether all voices are not capable of it, though there must be degrees in its beauty. The tones of affection in all children are sweet, and we know not how much their unpleasantness in after life may be the effect of sin, and coarseness, and the consequent habitual expresA sweet voice is indispensable to a woman. I do sion of discordant passions. But we do know that not think I can describe it. It can be, and sometimes the voice of any human being becomes touching by is, cultivated. It is not inconsistent with great vivacidistress, and that even on the coarse-minded and the ty, but it is oftener the gift of the quiet and unobtrulow, religion and the higher passions of the world sive. Loudness or rapidity of utterance is incompatihave sometimes so wrought, that their eloquence was ble with it. It is low, but not guttural; deliberate, like the strong passages of an organ. I have been but not slow. Every syllable is distinctly heard, but much about the world, and with a boy's unrest and they follow each other like drops of water from a founa peculiar thirst for novel sensations, have mingled tain. It is like the cooing of the dove-not shrill, nor for a time in every walk of life; yet never have I even clear, but uttered with the subdued and touching readiness which every voice assumes in moments of known man or woman, under any strong feeling that was not utterly degraded, whose voice did not deep feeling or tenderness. It is a glorious gift in woman. I should be won by it more than by beautydeepen to a chord of grandeur, or soften to cadences to which a harp might have been swept plea-rate them. But I never heard a deep, sweet voice from more even than by talent, were it possible to sepasantly. It is a perfect instrument as it comes from a weak woman. the hand of its Maker, and, though its strings may relax with the atmosphere, or be injured by misuse and neglect, it is always capable of being re-strung to its compass, until its frame is shattered.

of thoughts which have lain in the bosom till their saIt is the organ of strong feeling, and credness almost hushes utterance. I remember listening in the midst of a crowd, inany years ago, to the voice of a girl-a mere child of sixteen summers-till Men have seldom musical voices. Whether it is I was bewildered. She was a pure, high-hearted, imthat their passions are coarser, or that their life of passioned creature, without the least knowledge of the caution and reserve shuts up the kindliness from which world, or her peculiar gift; but her own thoughts it would spring, a pleasant masculine voice is one of had wrought upon her like the hush of a sanctuary, the rarest gifts of our sex. Whenever you do meet it, and she spoke low as if with an unconscious however, it is always accompanied either by noble awe. I could never trifle in her presence. My nonqualities, or by that peculiar capacity for under-sense seemed out of place, and my practical assustanding all characters, which Goethe calls a "pre.rance forsook me utterly. She is changed now. She sentiment of the universe," and which enables its possessor, without a spark of a generous nature himself, to know perfectly what it is in others, and to deceive the world by assuming all its accompany ments and all its outwardy evidence. I speak now, and throughout these remarks, only of the conversa tional tone. A man may sing never so well, and still speak execrably; and I rarely have known a person who conversed musically, to sing even a tolerable song.

A good tone is generally the gift of a gentleman, for it is always low and deep; and the vulgar never possess the serenity and composure from which it alone can spring; they are always busy and hurried, and a high, sharp tone becomes habitual.

There is nothing like a sweet voice to win upon the confidence. It is the secret of the otherwise unaccountable success of some men in society. They never talk for more than one to hear, and to that one, if a woman, and attractive, it is a most dangerous, because unsuspected spell; and every one knows how the voice softens instinctively with the knowledge that but

has been admired, and found out her beauty, and the music of her tone is gone. She will recover it by and by, when the delirium of the world is over, and she begins to rely upon her own thoughts for company; but her extravagant spirits have broken over the thrilling timidity of childhood, and the charm is unwound.

There was a lady whom I used to meet when a boy, as I loitered to school with my satchel in the summer mornings, and of whom, by and by, I came to dream, night and day, with a boy's impassioned and indefinite longing. She was a married women, perhaps twenty years older than I, but very-very beautiful. She was like one's idea of a Countess-large, but perfectly light and graceful, with an eye of inexpressible softness and languor. I was certain she had a low, delicious tone, and as she passed me in the street, I used to fancy how the words must linger and melt on that red lip, with its deep-colored and voluptuous fulness. Years after, when I had become a man, I was introduced to her. I made some passing remark, and with my boyish impression still floating in my mind, waited almost breathlessly for her answer. When she did speak

I was perfectly electrified. Such a wonderful rapidity of utterance, such a volume of language, I never heard from the lips of a woman. My dream was over.

The music of church bells has become a matter of poetry. Thomas Moore, whose mere sense of beauty is making him religious, and who knows better than any other man what is beautiful—has sung "those even

ations far more calculated to excite terror, but nothing ever overcome me like that solitary vigil. I had been up night after night with my friend, and was It was always a wonder to me, that the voice is so certainly much unnerved by fatigue and exhausneglected in a fashionable education. There is a pow-tion; but the circumstance furnishes matter of specoer in it over men, greater even than manner, for it is lation to the inquirer after the phenomena of human never suspected. Nothing repels like indifference, and nature. indifference is a loud talker, to whom any body may listen, and whom, therefore, nobody cares to hear. But a low tone is redolent of the great secret of a woman's power-reliance! Nothing wins like reliance. Be it in manner or tone, it is alike irresistible. I have seening bells" in some of the most melodious of his elaboa woman who would captivate most men by simply leaning on their arm. It was the only thing she knew, and she did that beautifully. It said more plainly than she could have spoken it, "I confide in you utterly;" and who, that had not been initiated, could resist such an appeal? There is something in words spoke softly, and meant for one's ear alone, which touches the heart like enchantment. I never linger by a lowvoiced woman if she is not young. It indicates either a childlike innocence and truth, or it is the practised witchery of a woman of the world, who knows too well for me the secret of her power.

rate stanzas. I remember, though somewhat imperfectly, a touching story connected with the church bells in a town of Italy, which had become famed all over Europe for their peculiar solemnity and sweetness. They were made by a young Italian artizan, and were his heart's pride. During the war, the place was sacked and the bells carried off, no one knew whither. After the tumult was over, the poor fellow returned to his work; but it had been the solace of his life to wander about at evening and listen to the chime of his bells, and he grew dispirited and sick, and pined for them till he could no longer bear it, and left his home, There are circumstances in which the simplest sound determined to wander over the world and hear them becomes awful. I once watched with a dying friend once again before he died. He went from land to in a solitary farm-house. It was a clear still night in land, stopping in every village, till the hope that alone December, and there was not a sound to be heard be- sustained him began to falter, and he knew at last that yond his just audible breathing. It wanted but a quar- he was dying. He lay one evening in a boat that was ter to one, and I began to anticipate the striking of the slowly floating down the Rhine, almost insensible, and large clock which stood in the farthest corner of the scarce expecting to see the sun rise again, that was room in which I sat. It was, at first, simply with now setting gloriously over the vine-covered hills of reference to my friend's comfort, for he was in a gen- Germany. Presently, the vesper bells of a distant tle doze, and I feared it might wake him from the only village began to ring, and as the chimes stole faintly sleep he had got that night. I sat looking at the clock. over the river with the evening breeze, he started from The minute hand crept slowly on. I began to feel an his lethargy. He was not mistaken; it was the deep, nervous interest in its progress, and, as it advanced solemn, heavenly music of his own bells; and the visibly, I leaned over and grasped more firmly the arm sounds that he had thirsted for years to hear, were of the huge chair. As it grew near, a strange fear be-melting over the water. He leaned from the boat, with gan to curdle my blood, and I could feel my hair stir, as if each individual filament were withering at the root. It crept on and on. There was but one minute left! I felt a smothering sensation at my heart, and it seemed to me as if my life must stop. But that one minute seemed to me an hour. Before it had expired, every event of my life had rushed through my memory, and the awful responsibility of time, and the aggregate of pain, and despair, and agony, that was felt by the hundreds that were dying at that moment, and the guilt that was festering in the darkness the hearts of those who may not sleep, and, over all, my own thoughtless and immeasurable prodigality of time, and health, and opportunity, crowded into my soul, as if its capacity were equal to the concentrated anguish of a demon. The machinery at last began to stir. It seemed to me that every vein in my body was an icy worm. My nerves stretched to an intenser pitch-large drops of sweat rolled from my forehead, and my heart stopped-almost. It struck! and I fell back in my chair, in a paroxysm of hysterical laughter! I have watched often since, and have been in situ

his ear close to the calm surface of the river, and listened. They rang out their hymn and ceased-and he still lay motionless in his painful posture. His companions spoke to him, but he gave no answer-his spirit had followed the last sound of the vesper chime.

There is something exceedingly impressive in the breaking in of church bells on the stillness of the Sabbath. I doubt whether it is not more so in the heart of a populous city than anywhere else. The presence of any single, strong feeling, in the minds of a great people, has something of awfulness in it which exceeds even the impressiveness of Nature's breathless Sabbath. I know few things more imposing than to walk the street of a city when the peal of the early bells is just beginning. The deserted pavements, the closed windows of the places of business, the decent gravity of the solitary passenger, and, over all, the feeling in your own bosom that the fear of God is brooding like a great shadow over the thousand human beings who are sitting still in their dwellings around you, were enough, if there were no other circumstance, to hush the heart into a religious fear. But when the bells peal

out suddenly with a summons to the temple of God, and their echoes roll on through the desolate streets, and are unanswered by the sound of any human voice, or the din of any human occupation, the effect has sometimes seemed to me more solemn than the near thunder.

A more beautiful, and perhaps quite as salutary as a religious influence, is the sound of a distant Sabbath bell in the country. It comes floating over the hills like the going abroad of a spirit, and as the leaves stir with its vibrations, and the drops of the dew tremble in the cups of the flowers, you could almost believe that there was a Sabbath in Nature, and that the dumb works of God rendered visible worship for his goodness. The effect of Nature alone is purifying, and its thousand evidences of wisdom are too eloquent of their Maker not to act as a continual lesson; but combined with the instilled piety of childhood, and the knowledge of the inviolable holiness of the time, the mellow cadences of a church bell give to the hush of a country Sabbath, a holiness to which only a desperate heart could be insensible.

Yet, after all, whose ear was ever "filled with hearing," or whose "eye with seeing?" Full as the world is of music-crowded as life is with beauty which surpasses, in its mysterious workmanship, our wildest dream of faculty and skill-gorgeous as is the overhung and ample sky, and deep and universal as the harmonies are which are wandering perpetually in the atmosphere of this spacious and beautiful world— who has ever heard music and not felt a capacity for better? or seen beauty, or grandeur, or delicate cunning, without a feeling in the inmost soul of unreached and unsatisfied conceptions? I have gazed on the dazzling loveliness of Woman till the value of my whole existence seemed pressed into that one moment of sight; and I have listened to music till my tears came, and my brain swam dizzily—yet, when I had turned away, I wished that the woman had been perfecter and my lips parted at the intensest ravishment of that dying music, with an impatient feeling that its spell was unfinished, I used to wonder, when I was a boy, how Socrates knew that this world was not enough for his capacities, and that his soul, therefore, was immortal. It is no marvel to me now.

TO COLUMBUS DYING.

From the German of Ochlenschlæger.

BY W. H. FURNESS.

Soon with thee will all be over,

Soon the voyage will be begun, That shall bear thee to discover

Far away a land unknown— Land, that each alone must visit, But no tidings bring to men, For no sailor, once departed, Ever hath returned again.

No carved wood, no broken branches,
Ever drift from that far wild;

He who on that ocean launches
Meets no corse of angel-child.

All is mystery before thee;

But in peace, and love, and faith, And with hope attended, sail'st thou Off upon the ship of Death. Undismayed, my noble sailor,

Spread then, spread thy canvass out;
Spirit! on a sea of ether

Soon shalt thou serenely float!
Where the deeps no plummet soundeth,
Fear no hidden breakers there,
And the fanning wings of angels,
Shall thy bark right onward bear.

Quit now, full of heart and comfort,

These Azores-they are of earth; Where the rosy clouds are parting,

There the Blessed Isles loom forth. Seest thou now thy San Salvador?

Him, thy Saviour, thou shalt hail, Where no storms of earth shall reach thee, Where thy hope shall no more fail.

THE FATHERLAND.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Where is the true man's fatherland?
Is it where he by chance is born?
Doth not the yearning spirit scorn
In such scant borders to be spanned?
Oh, yes! his fatherland must be
As the blue heaven wide and free!

Is it alone where freedom is,

Where God is God and man is man?
Doth he not claim a broader span
For the soul's love of home than this?
Oh, yes! his fatherland must be
As the blue heaven wide and free!

Where'er a human heart doth wear
Joy's myrtle-wreath, or sorrow's gyves,
Where'er a human spirit strives
After a life more pure and fair,
There is the true man's birth-place grand,
His is a world-wide fatherland!

Where'er a single slave doth pine,

Where'er one man may help another,-
Thank God for such a birthright, brother,-

That spot of earth is thine and mine!
There is the true man's birth-place grand,
His is a world-wide fatherland!

THE TWO PATHS.

Aye, they in plodding on so steadily
Did gain a heap of gold,
While I, who hurried on so merrily,
Gained brighter wealth ten-fold.

A wealth of thought and cheerfulness,
The coinage of the soul,

And more than all, a hope to bless,
With promise fill'd my bowl.

They ride in princely chariots proud,

By blooded coursers drawn,They feast in stately halls the crowd

Of friends in lace and lawn.

My carriage is the wide-winged thought,

By fancy wheeled above,My home the world-wide space unbought, My feast the feast of love.

They labored on till life was waning To live above all strife,—

I lived the whole, the present gaining, And with me cherish'd life.

I've seen the bells of tulips turn

To drink the drops that fell From summer clouds; then why should not The two lips of a belle?

The two lips of a belle, my friends,

The two lips of a belle;

What sweetens more than water pure
The two lips of a belle ?

The sturdy oak full many a cup

Doth hold up to the sky,

To catch the rain; then drinks it up,
And thus the oak gets high;

"Tis thus the oak gets high, my friends,
"Tis thus the oak gets high,

By having water in its cups,-
Then why not you and I?
Then let cold water armies give

Their banners to the air;

So shall the boys like oaks be strong,
The girls like tulips fair;

The girls like tulips fair, my friends,
The girls like tulips fair;

The boys shall grow like sturdy oaks,
The girls like tulips fair.

COLD WATER.

BY JOHN PIERPONT.

Shall e'er cold water be forgot
When we sit down to dine?
O no, my friends, for is it not

Pour'd out by hands divine?
Pour'd out by hands divine, my friends,
Pour'd out by hands divine;
From springs and wells it gushes forth,
Pour'd out by hands divine.

To Beauty's cheek, tho' strange it seems,
'Tis no more strange than true,
Cold water, though itself so pale,
Imparts the rosiest hue;

Imparts the rosiest hue, my friends,
Imparts the rosiest hue;

Yes, Beauty, in a water-pail,
Doth find her rosiest hue.

Cold water, too, (tho' wonderful,
'Tis not less true, again)
The weakest of all earthly drinks,

Doth make the strongest men;

Doth make the strongest men, my friends,
Doth make the strongest men;

Then let us take the weakest drink,
And grow the strongest men.

A GENTLE STORY.

Once a little band of angels descended to this earth, and wandered over its beautiful places in search of something so purely beautiful, that it should be an acceptable offering before the throne of the Eternal. And many things fair and exquisite arose in their path;-sweet delicate flowers and little glistening dew-drops; diamonds in the earth; pearls in the sea; stars in the sky; bright things gleaming and flashing everywhere; joyous faces and graceful forms moving to and fro, more frequent than all, and almost more beautiful. But the angels passed on; for nothing which can fade or be destroyed is wor. thy of Heaven. On, on they wandered—on through the great forests, amid the deep valleys, over the bright seas, searching everywhere for that lovely thing that was to add fresh beauty, even unto Heaven.

At length they stood in consultation on the seashore, and beheld a fisherman's child so strangely, so enchantingly beautiful, that those glorious angels were amazed, and bent over him in silent admiration. At length their leader spake

"Shall we bring a mortal and perishing gift to the throne of our Immortal Father."

"Our High Father is all powerful. He could give him immortality," replied another.

"Innocence and love are heavenly beauties; but they can live only in Heaven. Shall we not snatch him from this bad world's temptations?" said a

third.

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