"No, I thank ye kindly; its not out I see," she replied, stirring it up with a bit of stick previous to commencing the smoking with which she solaced her laziness.

"That's a bad plan," observed our friend, who continued his labor as diligently as if the sun was rising instead of setting. "What is, Aigle dear?"

"Keeping the pipe a-light in yer pocket, ma'am; it might chance to burn ye, and its sure to waste the tobacco."

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Augh!" exclaimed the wife, "what long heads some people have! God grant we may never want the bit o' tobacco. Sure it would be hard if we did, we're bad off enough without that."

"But if ye did, ye know, ma'am, ye'd be sorry ye wasted it; wouldn't ye?"

"Och, Aigle, dear, the poverty is bad enough when it comes, not to be looking out for it."

"If you expected an inimy to come and burn your house," ("Lord defend us !" ejaculated the woman), "what would you do?"

"Is it, what would I do? that's a quare question. I'd prevint him to be sure."

"And that's what I want to do with the poverty," he answered, sticking his spade firmly into the earth; and, leaning on it with folded arms, he rested for a moment on his perfect limb, and looked earnestly in her face. "Ye see every one on the sod-green though it is, God bless it is some how or other born to some sort of poverty. Now, the thing is to go past it, or undermine it, or get rid of it, or prevent it."

"Ah, thin, how?" said Mrs. Radford.

"By forethought, prudence; never to let a farthing's worth go to waste, or spend a penny if we can do with a halfpenny. Time makes the most of us--we ought to make the most of him; so I'll go on with my work, ma'am, if you please; I can work and talk at the same time."

Mrs. Radford looked a little affronted; but she thought better of it, and repeated her favorite maxim, "Fair and aisy goes far in a day."

"So it does ma'am; nothing like it; its wonderful what a dale can be got on with by it keeping on, on, and on, always at something. When I'm tired at the baskets, I take a turn at the tubs; and when I am wearied with them, I tie up the heathand sweet it is, sure enough; it makes one envy the bees to smell the heather! And when I've had enough of that, I get

on with the garden, or knock bits of furniture out of the timber the sea drifts up after those terrible storms."

"We burn that," said Mrs. Radford.

"There's plenty of turf and furze to be had for the cutting; it's a sin, when there's so much furniture wanting, to burn any timber-barring chips," replied Eagle.

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'Bedad, I don't know what ill luck sea-timber might bring," said the woman.

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'Augh! augh! the worst luck that ever came into a house is idleness, except, may be extravagance."

"Well, thin, Aigle dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Radford, "what's come to ye to talk of extravagance? What in the world have poor crathurs like us to be extravagant with?"

"Yer time," replied Burnt Eagle with particular emphasis; yer time."

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Ah, thin, man, sure it's time enough' for us to be thinking of that when we can get anything for it."

"Make anything of it, ye mean, ma'am: the only work it will ever do of itself, if it's let alone, will be destruction."

THE BATTLE OF LIFE-ANNA C. LYNCH.

There are countless fields the green earth o'er,
Where the verdant turf has been dyed with gore;
Where hostile ranks in their grim array,
With the battle's smoke have obscured the day;
Where hate was stamped on each rigid face,
As foe met foe in the death embrace;

Where the groans of the wounded and dying rose
Till the heart of the listener with horror froze,
And the wide expanse of crimsoned plain
Was piled with heaps of uncounted slain;
But a fiercer combat, a deadlier strife,

Is that which is waged in the Battle of Life.
The hero that wars on the tented field,
With his shining sword and burnished shield,
Goes not alone with his faithful brand:
Friends and comrades around him stand;
The trumpets sound and the war steeds neigh,
To join in the shock of the coming fray;
And he flies to the onset, he charges the foe,
Where the bayonets gleam and the red tides flow;
And he bears his part in that conflict dire,
With an arm all nerve and a heart all fire-

What though he fall? At the battle's close,
In the flush of the victory won, he goes
With martial music and waving plume,
From a field of fame-to a laurelled tomb!
But the hero that wars in the Battle of Life,
Must stand alone in the fearful strife;
Alone in his weakness or strength must go,
Hero or coward to meet the foe:

He may not fly; on that fated field

He must win or lose, he must conquer or yield.
Warrior-who com'st to this battle now,
With a careless step and a thoughtless brow,
As if the day were already won-

Pause, and gird all thy armor on!

Dost thou bring with thee hither a dauntless will-
An ardent soul that no fear can chill-

Thy shield of faith hast thou tried and proved-
Canst thou say to the mountain, "Be thou removed?—
In thy hand does the sword of Truth flame bright-
Is thy banner inscribed-" For God and the Right?"-
In the might of prayer dost thou wrestle and plead?
Never had warrior greater need!-

Unseen foes in thy pathway hide,

Thou art encompassed on every side;

There Pleasure waits with her siren train,
Her poison flowers and her hidden chain;
Flattery courts with her hollow smiles;

Passion with silvery tone beguiles;

Love and Friendship their charmed spells weave:
Trust not too deeply-they may deceive!

Hope with her Dead Sea fruits is there;

Sin is spreading her gilded snare;

Disease with a ruthless hand would smite,

And Care spread o'er thee her withering blight;
Hate and Envy, with visage black,

And the serpent Slander, are on thy track;
Falsehood and Guilt, Remorse and Pride,
Doubt and Despair, in thy pathway glide;
Haggard Want, in her demon joy,

Waits to degrade thee, and then destroy;

And Death, the insatiate, is hovering near

To snatch from thy grasp all thou holdest dear!

In war with these phantoms that gird thee round, No limbs dissevered may strew the ground:

No blood may flow, and no mortal ear

The groans of the wounded heart may hear,
As it struggles and writhes in their dread control,

As the iron enters the riven soul.

But the youthful form grows wasted and weak,
And sunken and wan is the rounded cheek;
The brow is furrowed, but not with years;
The eye is dimmed with its secret tears;

And streak'd with white is the raven hair;
These are the tokens of conflict there.

The Battle is ended;-the hero goes
Worn and scarred, to his last repose.

He has won the day-he has conquered doom;
He has sunk, unknown, to his nameless tomb;
For the victor's glory, no voice may plead;
Fame has no echo, and earth no meed;-
But the guardian angels are hovering near;
They have watched unseen o'er the conflict here.
They bear him now on their wings away,

To a realm of peace, to a cloudless day.—
Ended now is earthly strife;

And his brow is crowned with the Crown of Life!

THE MONTH OF AUGUST.-WILLIAM HOWITT.

Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it; thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water; thou preparest them corn when thou hast so provided for it.

Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; thou settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the spring thereof.

Thou crownest the year with thy goodness, and thy paths drop fatness. The drop upon the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side.

The pastures are clothed with flocks, and the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy; they also sing.-Psalm xlv., 9–13.

How beautiful are the words of the inspired poet, read in this month of harvests, nearly three thousand years after they were written! For nearly three thousand years since the royal minstrel looked over the plains of Judea covered with the bounty of God, and broke forth into his magnificent hymn of praise, has the earth rolled on in her course, and the hand of God has blessed her and all her children with seed time and harvest, with joy and abundance. The very steadfastness of the Almighty's liberality, flowing like a mighty ocean through the infinite vast of the universe, makes his creatures forget to wonder at its wonderfulness, to feel true thanksgiving for its immeasurable goodness. The sun rises and sets so surely, the seasons run on amid all their changes with such inimitable truth, that we take as a matter of course that which is amazing beyond all stretch of the imagination, and good beyond the widest expansion of the noblest human heart.

The poor man, with his half dozen children, toils, and often dies, under the vain labor of winning bread for them. God feeds his family of countless myriads swarming over the surface of all his countless worlds, and none know need but through the follies or the cruelty of their fellows. God pours his light from innumerable suns on innumerable rejoicing planets; he waters them everywhere in the fitting moment; he ripens the food of globes and of nations, and gives them fair weather to garner it; and from age to age, amid his creatures of endless forms and powers, in the beauty, and the sunshine, and the magnificence of Nature, he seems to sing throughout creation the glorious song of his own divine joy in the immortality of his youth, in the omnipotence of his nature, in the eternity of his patience, and the abounding boundlessness of his love.

What a family hangs on his sustaining arm! The life and souls of infinite ages and of uncounted worlds! Let a moment's failure of his power, of his watchfulness, or of his will to do good, occur, and what a sweep of death and annihilation through the universe! How stars would reel, planets expire, and nations perish! But from age to age no such catastrophe occurs, even in the midst of national crimes, and of atheism that denies the hand that made and feeds it: life springs with a power ever new, food springs up as plentifully to sustain it, and sunshine and joy are poured over all from the invisible throne of God, as the poetry of the existence he has given. If there come seasons of dearth or of failure, they come but as warnings to proud and tyrannic man. The potato is smitten, that a nation may not be oppressed for ever; and the harvest is diminished, that the laws of man's unnatural avarice may be rent asunder. And then again the sun shines, the rain falls, and the earth rejoices in a renewed beauty, and in a redoubled plenty.

It is amid one of these crises that we at this moment stand, and hail the month of harvests with unmingled joy. Never did the finger of God demonstrate his beneficent will more perspicuously than at this moment. The nations have been warned and rebuked, and again the bounty of heaven overflows the earth in golden billows of the ocean of abundance. God wills that all the arts of man to check his bounty, to create scarcity, to establish dearness, to enfeeble the hand of the laborer, and curse the table of the poor, shall be put to shame. That his creatures shall eat and be glad, whether corn-dealers and speculators live or die.