Which is the beggar's ?-where the wealthy now?—

Is that a sage's,-this a miser's brow?

(These last sad relics of Life's mouldering bones

By Death's hireling driven, just like building stones.)— Go! ask yon worm,-if her dainty taste

Will condescend to tell you which is best!

Alas! between the madman and the sage,

How many grades must strut upon life's stage?

(Indeed! if we apply Mackenzie's rule,

There lives not one but sometimes played the fool,-
More ways than one, but hush! I wont revile them,-
He said the world was just a huge asylum),-
That skull perhaps,-so vilely split and smashed,
Was once a lady's, with lavender washed,-
Where now the amorous curls?—the inviting eye?—
Are these all, those clammy hairs, and sockets ?—fie!
Where now the eyes that spoke of truth and love?—
Those eyes that woo'd man from his God above?—
Go ask that worm, which fills the socket now,
And crawls, with slimy trail, upon the putrid brow;
Those grey hairs rotting on yon loathsome scalp,
Kicked by the sexton from his chann'lly walk,
Perhaps was once a mother's, and her son
May be amongst the crowd who thus gaze on,-
Little dreaming that the nauseous skull he sees
Was hers he would have given a world to please,—
Little thinking that the last sad rites he paid,
When, solemn in its grave, her corpse was laid,
And, sobbing, heard the mouldering dust, dull fall
Upon the coffined dust, last rite of all,-

Ah! little did he think that honoured dust
Would e'er become a knavish sexton's jest,
With curious eyes, upon the skull he gazed—

Not knowing what he asked-no, heaven be praised!
He, to the sexton, whispering, begged that head,
And gave him for the skull, a crown instead,-
With pleasure in his eyes-he left the place,
To scrape and clean the cranium for his case;
For he had sailed-and many a curious thing,
Of bird, and beast, and shell, he home did bring.
But, of all the curiosities he brought,-

His mother's skull, French polished, made them nought;

And there, upon its shelf, it grinned and lay-
And shall be white, perhaps, when his is clay.
Yet, no one, but the callous sexton knew-

And God, that once his mother's eyes beamed through
That skull, which grins beside yon monkey's there,
And forms the subject of each vulgar stare.

Would there were Shakespeare's curse1 o'er all men's clay,
To awe and scare the impious hand away-
Which, with the itchings of a fool or knave,
Would touch the mouldering ashes of the grave!
To God, it may be giving useless pains,

When judgment calls to life these same remains,
As if their mission for Eternity, was past,
And not, like Job to see their God at last.2-
At least, he said these very bones shall rise
To meet their Maker in the awful skies.
When yon last trump, by dead Creation hurled,
In thunder, peals destruction to a world!
May he who knocks about the soul's cast shell,
As if it were a lobster's, or town-crier's bell,-
Find, for his pains, the fragments down in hell!-
If all mankind in judgment yet must stand,
Trembling to hear their doom and last command,
Ah, then! too late such spoilers learn to pray,
And plead in agony for another day.
Pointing downward with a sad but dreadful air,—
Depart! 'tis painful justice sends you there!

THE WAR OF THE SLAVE.

"Let him who will not proffered peace receive,

Be sated with the plagues which war can give ;
And well thy hatred of the peace is known
If now thy soul reject the friendship shown."
Hoole's "Tasso."

1 Written by himself shortly before his death

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare.

Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."

2 We all know that Holy Writ makes Job say, "though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh will I see God."

And we also know the written doom of

the damned from the Scriptures, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." But, thank God, prepared only for the Devil and his angels, not Christ-saved man.

"It has heard the bay of the bloodhounds
On the track of the hunted slave,
The lash and the curse of the master
And the groan that the captive gave,
Hark to the voice of the wind!"
Legends and Lyrics," by A. A. Proctor,
from "The Voice of the Wind."

USH! hark! do you hear the thunder afar?
The signal for blood by the demon of War?
He hath broke the chains, and his dogs are free,
And thirsting for blood, over the sea!

They howl across the Atlantic's wave
Inviting the bold, to free the slave.

Our boasting cousins for many a day
Have goaded the Bull, till he stands at bay,
And hark! afar, on Canada's shore,
Is heard, in the distance, our Lion's roar,-
He growls across the Atlantic's wave,
Tempting the bold to free the slave.
Our cousins are strong, but by far too free,
For the bowie-knife reigns,- -over the sea,
And the rowdie mob, with its Hydra head,
First fastens the quarrel, then strikes you dead.-
And hark! a wail comes over the wave,

It is the wail of the tortured slave!

Ay! from that land so uncommonly free,
Comes the groan of the slave,-over the sea,
His galling chains are cutting the bone,-

The hand that clinks them's the hand of a stone.
The devil shall reign-over the wave,

So long as they lash the tortured slave!

The calmness we've shown's not the calmness of fear,
Though such it has seemed for many a year—
The Oregon line was a forge and a cheat,

The island of Juan 2 a base retreat,

1 After many insults and indignities to Britain, in 1862 (after the war broke out betwixt the Northern and Southern States of America), Admiral Wilkes boarded the British vessel, the "Trent," and forcibly took out Mason and Sliddel, the two Southern ambassadors. This was considered a violent breach of all law; the British Government immediately demanded their release, and sent out troops to Canada; the terms were release or war. The American Government deemed it their policy to comply, so that war with Britain was

averted.

2 Some of those causes of dispute betwixt Britain and the United States Government, in which, after much bluster, Britain invariably gave way to satisfy her offspring-the same as a parent does to appease a spoilt child.

To please our cousins-over the wave,-
But the more they get the more they crave.

In firmness for once in Mercy let's be,
To save further insult,—over the sea:
The God of the world who rules every star,
Rules for His glory the thunders of war,

Which booms across the Atlantic's wave,
To fire the bold and to free the slave.

A mildness, ill-timed, is often a curse,
Small ills are left to engender a worse;
If mighty we are, it should be then shown,
For those who will fight will fight with a stone.
Then strike for Freedom,- -over the wave,
And the blow may aid the tortured slave.
Forbearance is right, supineness is wrong,
Elisha's arrow was meant to be strong;
The arrow of God we never should spare,
Or, like Joash of old, His anger we'll share.

Then strike for Freedom !-strike for the slave,-
The Lord will aid us,—over the wave!

ODE TO FREEDOM.

"To obey God is Liberty." There is more truth in this brief quotation than one might think. It has always been my firm conviction that the man who practically leans on God, and who, after thinking seriously for himself, has been able to throw off the incubuses of Cant and Superstition, and allowed his spirit to wing its flight upward-or downward--or around-to that great Being who is Himself a Spirit, and though as yet unable to soar into the spiritual world altogether, yet he becomes, as it were, emancipated from all the petty and imaginary chains which bind to the earth the mere slave of the world,—of bigotry, or of vice. God alone is God! and His attributes are justice, charity, cheerfulness, Freedom and Truth, and unclouded faith in the remission of sins, while Cant, Hypocrisy, Servility, and Pride are his abominations. As Walter Scott makes one of his characters say in Quentin Durward:-"I can die, and death is the most perfect freedom of all." So it is to the man who, while secretly fearing God, hath feared nought else besides, and who, in spite of the

1 "And Elisha said to Joash (King of Israel), Take the arrows: and he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground: and he smote thrice, and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times, then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice." -2 Kings xiii.

world and its ways, has been-through life, clothing his future spirit with good motives and good actions here, with the express object of trying to make that spirit better for its next stage of existence.

H

AIL, Freedom! hail!-from whence thy mystic name,
Which neither time nor tyranny can tame.—
Art thou, alas! a name, and nothing more,

A sounding breaker on a barren shore?

Or art thou, essence, like the light of Heaven,
A mental spring with endless verdure given,
Which, like the budding blade bursts ever Free,
Defying fetters like the chainless sea?
What mortal power can check the opening bud,
Or stay the swelling of the ocean's flood?-
Shall Mind be less than grass, or tiny tree,
Which, left their lives, will struggle to be free,
And boldly creep beneath the sheet or stone
To rear their blades once more to Heaven alone,—
The stunted whin and gnarled thorn will twine,
And struggle upwards 'mid the lordly pine;
Drawn to a skeleton, their stems still dare
To fight on Nature's law to reach the air,
Unconquered still, while life remains, they try
To meet the sun and freedom of the sky;
The very worm will wriggle to be free,
And pent-up tiger howl for Liberty.

And shall the head, the chief, the lord of all,
Be doomed by tyrants and their tools to crawl?
Whose soul shall live when sun and skies are tost
Against the wreck of worlds, in chaos lost!-
The Alpine crags and dizzy Andes height,
Which seem to dare the very eagle's flight,-
These mountain masses, with their giant forms,
Though braving Time and countless ages' storms,-
They yet shall crumble,-shapeless as the wind,-
But Thou shalt live, imperishable Mind!

POSTSCRIPT TO THE ABOVE.

He who of baseness is entirely free,
Hath both the gold and stamp of Liberty,
But he,-whoe'er he be, who baseness owns,-
Is thrice a slave though owning many thrones!