To ask his ailment. Would he soon be well?
What did the doctor think? but none could tell.
He knew not what to think, with all his skill
He only knew with them the king was ill,
The cause whereof, the cure, he could not reach,
Though in his day a very famous leech;
So to his books he went, what Galen thought
To see, and what great Avicenna taught,
Cardanus, Paracelsus learned by heart,
All mighty powers of the Healing Art,
Compounding drugs, pills, powders with long

names,

And sweltering like a smith above his chemic flames!

The third day's rumour was, "The king will die "
It passed from mouth to mouth with many a sigh;
Each had some tale to tell, some proof to bring,
How happy all had been since he was king.
"Do you remember now seven years go,
The famine-winter when we suffered so,
He melted up his plate to buy us bread,
And sold the golden crown from off his head
To keep life in us, who must else have died?"
"God bless him, yes!" his earnest listener cried ;
And, later, when the Pestilence was here,
(I never shall forget that fatal year,
My wife died then, God rest her soul above!)
There never was such courage, so much love
As his, for us his people, when we lay
Crowding with deaths each minute of the day!
Fear made all selfish, flying for their lives,
Wives from their husbands, husbands from their
wives,

The mother from her child, despite its moan;
The dying and the dead were left alone!
But he was ever such a king before?

He went from street to street, from door to door,
Physician, nurse, and friend; no wretched den
Passed by, nor shrank from the most desperate

men;

Moistened their lips with water; brought them wine;

And talked- the Bishop never talked so fine
In his long robe at Easter, when he stands
Blessing the world with much-bejewelled hands!
Don't tell me, sirs, he is the best of kings."
From this the gossip passed to other things;
One of the youth of Felix strove to tell,
Another babbled of his famous bell,
(All knew, alas! that folly of their king,)
How strange it was they never heard it ring,
Not even when the victory was won,

Nor on his marriage,- no, nor birthday of his son! And now their thoughts the prince and queen divide;

How fair and good she was, how young she died:
How valiant he, no knight could ride him down,
So handsome, too, his golden hair his crown.
"What better king than he can we desire?
May he be happy-happy as his sire!'

"Give over, sir," the sick man said at last; "The hour when drugs would do me good is past, You know not my disease, and yet 'tis rife." To which the leech: What is it, sire?"""Tis Life."

"There is no cure for that." "There is but one. "Dear Father! say not so," exclaimed his son, His sorrow fainting in a storm of sighs, The wild tears raining from his clouded eyes. There's nothing, boy, to weep for; if there be, 'Tis Life, not Death; weep for yourself, not me. That I must die, is but a little thing, Not so that you must live, and be a King!"

care,

Kissing with loving lips his silver hair!
And there he sat a piteous sight to see,
Propped up beneath his gilded canopy,
Whose purple shadow o'er his features fell,
And near him hung the cord to ring the happy
bell!

"Look up, my son," the dying king began :
Weep not, but take what's coming like a man.
I do and have: you do not hear me sigh,
I know too much of life -to fear to die;
Enough to say some bitter things all true;
But wherefore should I say them, and to you?
You could not look at life through my old eyes,
Nor would my early follies make you wise.
Youth will be youth, however age may prate;
"Twill learn like age, perchance, but learn too
late!

Besides, I love you so I can not bear

To darken your young days with future care.
No, keep the dew, the freshness of your heart,
As something precious, which must soon depart;
Behappy, if you are so, while you may:
For me, I have not seen one happy day!
Start not, nor ask the solemn reasons why -
Time flies too fast-you'll know them by and by.
This I will say, I must, for it is true,
Could I have happy been, it were with you,
Whom I have loved-you never guessed how
well! -

Almost enough to ring my silent bell!
You'll wear my crown to-morrow

Take it now,

O may it sit less heavy on your brow
Than mine! (See, feel how thin my hair is worn!)
Why every jewel in it is a thorn!

Remember what I've taught in my poor way
(Would I had strength, I have so much to say!)
The office of a king what must he be

unlike me!

How good and wise a man, how "Dear Father!" cried the prince, up-looking then With reverent eyes. you are the best of men. May I be half so good!" "Be better, sir. Follow but hark, what's that? I hear a stir, A sound like summer rain of many feet, And the low hum of voices in the street.' "It is your people, sire, who gather there, (Throw up the casemate, you, and give him air,) Knowing how ill you - were, (the news would fly,) To show their love they say, before you die." My people love me then?" "Ah Father! yes." "Well, that is something, if not happiness. He closed his eyes a moment, bowed his head, And moved his silent lips: at last he said: "Sit by my side - just there, and now your hand; When one is going to a distant land As I am now

he loves to have a friendA son, say, as he starts, to cheer him to the end Speak kindly of me after I am gone,

And see my name be graven on the stone,
'INFELIX,' mind, not FELIX,' that would be
A cruel, lying epitaph for me.

And yet I know not, for methinks I seem
Slowly awaking from the strangest dream;
The mystery of my life is growing clear;
Something-it may be Happiness is near.

The Angel came by night,

(Such angels still come down!) And like a winter cloud

Passed over London town; Along its lonesome streets,

Where Want had ceased to weep, Until it reached a house

Where a great man lay asleep; The man of all his time

Who knew the most of men,

The soundest head and heart,
The sharpest, kindest pen.

It paused beside his bed,

And whispered in his ear;
He never turned his head,
But answered, "I am here."

II.

Into the night they went.

At morning, side by side, They gained the sacred Place

Where the greatest Dead abide; Where grand old Homer sits

In godlike state benign; Where broods in endless thought The awful Florentine; Where sweet Cervantes walks, A smile on his grave face; Where gossips quaint Montaigne, The wisest of his race;

Where Goethe looks through all With that calm eye of his; Where-little seen but LightThe only Shakespeare is! When the new Spirit came,

They asked him, drawing near, "Art thou become like us?" He answered, "I am here."

THE COUNTRY LIFE.

Not what we would, but what we must,
Makes up the sum of living;

Heaven is both more and less than just

In taking and in giving.

Swords cleave to hands that sought the plough,
And laurels miss the soldier's brow.

Me, whom the city holds, whose feet
Have worn its stony highways,
Familiar with its loneliest street,

Its ways were never my ways.

My cradle was beside the sea,
And there, I hope, my grave will be.
Old homestead! in that old, gray town,
Thy vane is seaward blowing;

Thy slip of garden stretches down
To where the tide is flowing:
Below they lie, their sails all furled,
The ships that go about the world.
Dearer that little country house,
Inland, with pines beside it;

Some peach-trees, with unfruitful boughs,
A well, with weeds to hide it:
No flowers, or only such as rise
Self-sown,-poor things!—which all despise.

Dear country home! can I forget

The least of thy sweet trifles?
The window-vines that clamber yet,
Whose blooms the bee still rifles?
The roadside blackberries, growing ripe,
And in the woods the Indian Pipe?

Happy the man who tills his field,
Content with rustic labor!

Earth does to him her fulness yield,

Hap what may to his neighbor.
Well days, sound nights, oh! can there be
A life more rational and free?

Dear country life of child and man!
For both the best, the strongest,
That with the earliest race began,
And hast outlived the longest:
Their cities perished long ago;
Who the first farmers were we know.

Perhaps our Babels too will fall;
If so, no lamentations,

For Mother Earth will shelter all,
And feed the unborn nations!
Yes, and the swords that menace now
Will then be beaten to the plough.

WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER

Is the son of the eminent lawyer and politician Benjamin F. Butler, a member of the cabinet of Jackson and Van Buren, to whom, in 1824, in connexion with John Duer and the late John C. Spencer, was intrusted the important work of revising the statutes of the state of New York, and author of several addresses and a few poetical contributions to the Democratic Review, and other periodicals.

William Allen Butler was born in Albany in

1825. After completing his course at the University of the City of New York, and his law studies in the office of his father, he passed a year and a half abroad. Since his return he has been actively engaged in the practice of his profession.

Mr. Butler is the author of a number of poems, and is also a spirited prose writer. He has contributed to the Democratic Review several translations from Uhland; to the Art-Union Bulletin, The Cities of Art and the Early Artists, a series of biographical and critical sketches of the Old Masters; and to the Literary World a few pleasant sketches of travel, with the title Out-of-the-Way Places in Europe, and several humorous papers in prose and verse, entitled The Colonel's Club..

In 1850 he was the author of Barnum's Parnassus: being Confidential Disclosures of the Prize Committee on the Jenny Lind Song, with Specimens of leading American Poets in the happiest effulgence of their genius; a poetical squib, which passed rapidly through several editions.

UHLAND.

It is the Poet Uhland from whose wreathings
Of rarest harmony, I here have drawn,
To lower tones and less melodious breathings,
Some simple strains of truth and passion born.

His is the poetry of sweet expression,

Of clear unfaltering tune, serene and strong; Where gentlest thoughts and words in soft procession,

Move to the even measures of his song. Delighting ever in his own calm fancies, He sees much beauty where most men see naught, Looking at Nature with familiar glances,

And weaving garlands in the groves of Thought. He sings of Youth, and Hope, and high Endeavor, He sings of Love, (oh, crown of Poesie!) Of Fate, and Sorrow, and the Grave, forever The end of strife, the goal of Destiny. He sings of Fatherland, the minstrel's glory, High theme of memory and hope divine, Twining its fame with gems of antique story, In Suabian songs and legends of the Rhine; In Ballads breathing many a dim tradition,

Nourished in long belief or Minstrel rhymes, Fruit of the old Romance, whose gentle mission

Passed from the earth before our wiser times. Well do they know his name amongst the mountains,

And plains and valleys of his native Land;
Part of their nature are the sparkling fountains
Of his clear thought, with rainbow fancies
spanned.

His simple lays oft sings the mother cheerful
Beside the cradle in the dim twilight;

His plaintive notes low breathes the maiden tearful
With tender murmurs in the ear of Night.
The hill-side swain, the reaper in the meadows,
Carol his ditties through the toilsome day;
And the lone hunter in the Alpine shadows,
Recalls his ballads by some ruin gray.

Oh precious gift! oh wondrous inspiration!
Of all high deeds, of all harmonious things,
To be the Oracle, while a whole Nation
Catches the echo from the sounding strings.
Out of the depths of feeling and emotion
Rises the orb of Song, serenely bright,

As who beholds across the tracts of ocean,
The golden sunrise bursting into light.
Wide is its magic World-divided neither
By continent, nor sea, nor narrow zone;
Who would not wish sometimes to travel thither,
In fancied fortunes to forget his own?

Since 1855, Mr. Butler has been actively engaged in the practice of his profession of the law, in New York, especially in connection with the more important mercantile interests of the city. Though almost wholly engrossed by these duties, he has yet found time, however, occasionally to contribute to the literature of the day, and always with marked success. The poem by which he is most widely known as an author, Nothing to Wear, originally published, anonymously, in Harper's Weekly, in February, 1857, achieved a remarkable popularity. It passed through the usual ordeal of successful anonymous works. Like Mackenzie's "Man of Feeling,' the production of a lawyer in active practice, whose literary efforts were aside from his ordinary pursuits, it was made the subject of a claim which compelled the poet to the course adopted by the English novelist, the avowal of his authorship in self-defence, to prevent the appropriation by others of the productions of his pen. It was followed by numerous kindred efforts, imitating, if not adopting, its new. style of versification and poetical treatment of current topics and popular ideas. The editions of the poem were more numerous in England thran in the United States. Besides the handsomely printed edition of Sampson & Co., a cheap issue had an immense circulation there, and a broad sheet, with colored cuts exhibiting the salient points of the satire, was first issued in London, and afterward reproduced in Philadelphia. It was translated into French prose by one of the Paris feuilletonists, and into German verse, somewhat paraphrased, and with adaptations to the meridian of the translator. was followed by a poem Nothing to Wear of similar character, entitled Two Millions. As the former had exhibited the fashionable extravagance of the day, and its moral had been accepted by the public with the interest with which it listened to Hood's plea in "The Song of the Shirt," so the latter was directed against the social immoralities attendant upon the accumulation of wealth in the prevalent rapid development of material interests. "Two Millions was written at the request of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, and delivered before them, July 28, 1858. In 1859, Mr. Butler delivered an address before the New York Bible Society, The Bible by Itself, which was published at the request of the society (New York, Carter & Brothers, 1860, 18mo, pp. 32). In 1860, and subsequently, he published a series of papers, Real Life in New York, and other sketches, in the New York Independent. One of his articles, printed in this journal, written on the decease of President Van Buren, with whom he had been intimately acquainted, was publish

* In London, "Nothing to Wear" was published with a statement of fashionable extravagance, taken from the proceedings of a Bankruptcy Court, and advertised with humanitarian tracts on the "Evils of the Dress-Making System."

ed separately, with the title, Martin Van Buren : Lawyer, Statesman, and Man (New York, Appleton & Co., 18mo, pp. 47).

**Mr. Butler published in 1871 Lawyer and Client: Their Relation, Rights, and Duties. Substance of a Lecture delivered February 3, 1871, before the Law School of the University of the City of New York,-- a wise and practical exposition of a much-entangled ethical subject. In the same year appeared a volume of Poems, having his autograph on its cover. As its dedicatory preface first brings this gifted author face to face with the great public, and is withal a merited tribute to a pure-minded and modest scholar, one kindly helpful to the youngest of the literary craft, the original Editor of this work, it is appended:

"TO EVERT A. DUYCKINCK. I inscribe to you, in token of my sincere personal regard, this volume of poems. Many of them were written, or their material gathered, in scenes visited long since in company with your lamented brother, my cherished friend, George L. Duyckinck. His name, honorably linked with your own in our American literature, I desire affectionately to associate with yours on this introductory page. Others of them were first produced in connection with the editorial labors in which you were both united. The story of The Sexton and the Thermometer' you told me in 1819, as you had gathered it in that circle of refined good-humor of which the late Dr. John W. Francis was the genial centre, and I versified it at your request. 'Nothing to Wear,' before its appearance in print, was submitted to your friendly criticism, with an honest doubt on my part whether, in attempting to shoot folly as it flies,' the shaft I was aiming might not prove wanting in weight, polish, or momentum; and your kindly suggestions in aid of my intervention on behalf of our earliest American heroine, in 'Virginia's Virgin,' encourage my perhaps forlorn hope that her almost thread-bare school-day story, simply told, may yet find listeners. Knowing, as you do, that, so far from cultivating poetry as an art, or authorship as a pursuit, I have diverted my pen from the strict routine of professional labor only at rare intervals or by way of mental recreation, you will take my volume as it is, a collection of verses, prompted mainly by occasional impulses to exhibit, as faithfully as I could, objects or ideas for whose most effective representation poetry seemed to be the fittest vehicle, whether the motive was narrative, sentiment, or satire."

Besides the introductory ballad of Virginia's Virgin,

"So dear to boyhood's honest trust,
To girlhood's tender heart!"

New

and the closing poem of The Two Cities York and Chicago this volume consists of four collections: Poems of Travel, dated 1846–7; Miscellaneous Poems, containing among others At Richmond (in 1858), and The Busts of Goethe and Schiller; Uhland (1846), with Translations; and Poems of the City. In the latter are Nothing to Wear, Two Millions, and a companion piece, recently published in Harper's Magazine, and entitled General Average: A South Street Eclogue." It is a tale of mercantile life, wherein the unscrupulous wits of a Yankee merchant and a Jew trader come in collision, to the discom

Miss Flora M⭑Flimsey, of Madison Square,
Has made three separate journeys to Paris,
And her father assures me, each time she was there,
That she and her friend Mrs. Harris
(Not the lady whose name is so famous in history,
But plain Mrs. H., without romance or mystery)
Spent six consecutive weeks, without stopping,
In one continuous round of shopping, -
Shopping alone, and shopping together,
At all hours of the day, aud in all sorts of weather,
For all manner of things that a woman can put
On the crown of her head, or the sole of her foot,
Or wrap round her shoulders, or fit round her
waist,

Or that can be sewed on, or pinned on, or laced,
Or tied on with a string, or stitched on with a bow,
In front or behind, above or below;

For bonnets, mantillas, capes, collars, and shawls;
Dresses for breakfasts, and dinners, and balls;
Dresses to sit in, and stand in, and walk in;
Dresses to dance in, and flirt in, and talk in;
Dresses in which to do nothing at all;
Dresses for Winter, Spring. Summer, and Fall;
All of them different in color and shape,
Silk, muslin, and lace, velvet, satin, and crape,
Brocade and broadcloth, and other material,
Quite as expensive and much more ethereal;
In short, for all things that could ever be thought
of,

Or milliner, modiste, or tradesman be bought of, From ten-thousand-franc robes to twenty-sous frills;

In all quarters of Paris, and to every store,
While M'Flimsey in vain stormed, scolded, and