What troubles she met with on the way,
How she longed to pass to the other side,
Nor feared to cross over the swelling tide,
A voice arose from the brethren then:
"Let no one speak but the 'holy men ;'
For have ye not heard the words of Paul,
'O let the women keep silence all?'”

I watched them long in my curious dream,
Till they stood by the borders of the stream,
Then, just as I thought, the two ways met,
But all the brethren were talking yet,
And would talk on, till the heaving tide
Carried them over side by side;
Side by side, for the way was one,
The toilsome journey of life was done,
And all who in Christ the Saviour died
Come out alike on the other side;
No forms, or crosses, or books had they,
No gowns of silk, or suits of gray,

No creeds to guide them, or MSS.,

For all had put on Christ's righteousness.

Mrs. Cleveland.

Poetry.

I consider Poetry in a twofold view, as a spirit and a manifestation. Perhaps the poetic spirit has never been more justly defined, than by Byron in his Prophecy of Dante, -a creation

"From overfeeling good or ill, an aim

At an external life beyond our fate."

This spirit may be manifested by language, metrical or prose, by declamation, by musical sounds, by expression, by gesture, by motion, and by imitating forms, colors and shades; so that literature, oratory, music, physiognomy, acting, and the arts of painting and sculpture may all have their poetry; but that peculiar spirit, which alone gives the great life and charm to all the efforts of genius, is as distinct from the measure and rhyme of poetical composition, as from the scientific principles of drawing and perspective.

Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,

And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veiled,

And mantled with its beauty; and the walls

That close the universe with crystal in,

Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim
The unseen glories of immensity,
In harmonies, too perfect, and too high,
For aught but beings of celestial mould,
And speak to man in one eternal hymn,
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.

The year leads round the seasons, in a choir For ever charming, and for ever new, Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay, The mournful, and the tender, in one strain, Which steals into the heart, like sounds that rise Far off, in moonlight evenings, on the shore Of the wide ocean resting after storms; Or tones that wind around the vaulted roof, And pointed arches, and retiring aisles Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand, Skillful, and moved with passionate love of art, Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft The peals of bursting thunder, and then calls, By mellow touches, from the softer tubes, Voices of melting tenderness, that blend With pure and gentle musings, till the soul, Commingling with the melody, is borne, Rapt, and dissolved in ecstasy, to Heaven.

"T is not the chime and flow of words, that move In measured file, and metrical array; T is not the union of returning sounds, Nor all the pleasing artifice of rhyme, And quantity, and accent, that can give This all-pervading spirit to the ear, Or blend it with the movings of the soul. 'T is a mysterious feeling, which combines Man with the world around him, in a chain Woven of flowers, and dipped in sweetness, till He taste the high communion of his thoughts, With all existences, in earth and Heaven, That meet him in the charm of grace and power.

"T is not the noisy babbler, who displays,
In studied phrase, and ornate epithet,

And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts,
Which peep from out the cumbrous ornaments
That overload their littleness. Its words
Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break
Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full
Of all that passion, which, on Carmel, fired
The holy prophet, when his lips were coals,
His language winged with terror, as when bolts
Leap from the brooding tempest, armed with wrath,
Commissioned to affright us and destroy.

Well I remember, in my boyish days,

How deep the feeling when my eye looked forth
On Nature, in her loveliness, and storms.

How my heart gladdened, as the light of spring
Came from the sun, with zephyrs, and with showers,
Waking the earth to beauty, and the woods
To music, and the atmosphere to blow,
Sweetly and calmly, with its breath of balm.
O, how I gazed upon the dazzling blue
Of summer's Heaven of glory, and the waves,
That rolled, in bending gold, o'er hill and plain;
And on the tempest, when it issued forth,
In folds of blackness, from the northern sky,
And stood above the mountains, silent, dark,
Frowning, and terrible; then sent abroad
The lightning, as its herald, and the peal,
That rolled in deep, deep volleys, round the hills,
The warning of its coming, and the sound
That ushered in its elemental war!

And, oh! I stood, in breathless longing fixed,
Trembling, and yet not fearful, as the clouds
Heaved their dark billows on the roaring winds,
That sent, from mountain top, and bending wood,
A long hoarse murmer, like the rush of waves,
That burst, in foam and fury, on the shore.

Nor less the swelling of my heart, when high
Rose the blue arch of autumn, cloudless, pure
As Nature, at her dawning, when she sprang
Fresh from the hand that wrought her; where the eye
Caught not a speck upon the soft serene,
To stain its deep cerulean, but the cloud,
That floated, like a lonely spirit, there,
White as the snow of Zemla, or the foam
That on the mid-sea tosses, cinctured round,
In easy undulations, with a belt,

Woven of bright Apollo's golden hair.

Nor, when that arch, in winter's clearest night,
Mantled in ebon darkness, strewed with stars
Its canopy, that seemed to swell, and swell
The higher, as I gazed upon it, till,
Sphere after sphere, evolving, on the height
Of heaven, the everlasting throne shone through,
In glory's full effulgence, and a wave,
Intensely bright, rolled, like a fountain, forth
Beneath its sapphire pedestal, and streamed

Down the long galaxy, a flood of snow,

Bathing the heavens in light, the spring that gushed,

In overflowing richness, from the breast

Of all-maternal nature. These I saw,

And felt to madness; but my full heart gave

No utterance to the ineffable within.

Words were too weak; they were unknown, but still
The feeling was most poignant: it has gone,

And all the deepest flow of sounds, that e'er
Poured, in a torrent fullness, from the tongue
Rich with the wealth of ancient bards, and stored
With all the patriarchs of British song

Hallowed and rendered glorious, cannot tell

Those feelings, which have died, to live no more.

Percival

Wool Gathering and Mouse Hunting.

Here we stop for the night. You are shown into a room that has not been opened since its occupant left it, and is unsavory and untidy to the last degree. An appeal to the gentlemanly clerk secures a change for the better; but there is a hole by the fireplace in Number Two that looks suspicious. You cross-examine the porter, who assures you that it has no significance whatever. A mouse in that room is an event of which history gives no record. Nevertheless, you take the precaution to stuff the hole with an old New York Herald, and are awakened at midnight by the dreadful rustling of paper. A dreadful gnawing succeeds the dreadful rustling, and away goes a boot in the direction of the sound. There is a pause broken only by heart throbs! Then another gnawing, followed by a boot till the supply is exhausted. Then you begin on the pillows. A longer pause gives rise to the hope that order is about to reign in Warsaw, and you are just falling asleep again, when a smart scratching close to your ear, shoots you to the other side of the room with the conviction that the mouse is running up the folds of the curtain at the head of your bed. In a frenzy you ring violently, and ask through the door for a chambermaid.

"Can't have no chambermaid this time o' night," drawls the porter sleepily.

"Then send up a mouse-trap."

"Aint no mouse-trap in the house."

"Then bring a cat!"

"Dunno nothin' about it," and he scuffs his slippered feet down the long gallery, growling audibly, poor fellow, half suspecting evidently that he is the victim of a joke; but alas! it is no joke.

You mount sentry on the foot of the bed, facing the enemy. He emerges from the curtain, runs up and down the slats of the blind in innocent glee, flaunts across the window-seat, flashing every now and then into obscurity; and this is the worst of all. When you see him he is in one place, but when you do not see him he is everywhere. You hold fast your umbrella, and from time to time make vigorous raps on the floor to keep him out of your immediate vicinity, and so the night wears wearily away. Your refreshing sleep turns into a campaign against a mouse, for which agreeable entertainment you pay in the morning three dollars and a half; and