JUDICIAL TRIBUNALS.

Let me here say that I hold judges, and especially the Supreme Court of the country, in much respect; but I am too familiar with the history of judicial proceedings to regard them with any superstitious reverence. Judges are but men, and in all ages have shown a full share of frailty. Alas! alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction. The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment.

It was a judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Saviour barefoot over the pavements of Jerusalem, bending beneath his cross. It was a judicial tribunal which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judea to Rome; which, in the name of the old reigion, adjudged the saints and fathers of the Christian Church to death, in all its most dreadful forms; and which afterwards, in the name of the new religion, enforced the tortures of the Inquisition, amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it compelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun.

It was a judicial tribunal which, in France, during the long reign of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instru ment of every tyranny, as during the brief reign of ter ror it did not hesitate to stand forth the unpitying acces sory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the Eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen to the beheading of Sir Thomas More; which lighted the fires of persecution, that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rogers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of ship money against the patriotic resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, sent Sydney

and Russell to the block; which persistently enforced the laws of conformity that our Puritan Fathers persistently refused to obey; and which afterwards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the pages of English history with massacre and murder,-even with the blood of innocent

woman.

Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our country, surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem, which affirmed the constitutionality of the . Stamp Act, while it admonished "jurors and the people" to obey; and which now, in our day, has lent its sanc tion to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Bill. Charles Sumner.

BETTY AND THE BEAR.

In a pioneer's cabin out West, so they say,
A great big black grizzly trotted one day,
And seated himself on the hearth, and began
To lap the contents of a two-gallon pan

Of milk and potatoes,

-an excellent meal,-
And then looked about to see what he could steal.

The lord of the mansion awoke from his sleep,
And, hearing a racket, he ventured to peep
Just out in the kitchen, to see what was there,
And was scared to behold a great grizzly bear.
So he screamed in alarm to his slumbering frow,
"Thar's a bar in the kitching as big's a cow!"
"A what ?" 66
Why a bar!" "Well, murder him, then!"
"Yes, Betty, I will, if you'll first venture in."
So Betty leaped up, and the poker she seized,
While her man shut the door, and against it he squeezed.

As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows,-
Now on his forehead, and now on his nose,-
Her man through the keyhole kept shouting within,
"Well done, my brave Betty, now hit him agin,
Now a rap on the ribs, now a knock on the snout,
Now poke with the poker and poke his eyes out.”
So, with rapping and poking, poor Betty, alone,
At last laid Sir Bruin as dead as a stone.

Now when the old man saw the bear was no more,
He ventured to poke his nose out of the door,
And there was the grizzly, stretched on the floor.
Then off to the neighbors he hastened, to tell
All the wonderful things that that morning befell;
And he published the marvelous story afar,
How me and my Betty jist slaughtered a bar!
O yes, come and see, all the neighbors hev sid it,
Come see what we did, ME and Betty, we did it.'

THE DRAW-BRIDGE KEEPER.

History and poetry celebrate no sublimer act of devotion than that of Albert G. Drecker, the watchman of the Passaic River draw-bridge, on the New York and Newark Railroad. The train was due, and he was closing the draw when his little child fell into the deep water. It would have been easy enough to rescue him, if the father could have taken the time, but already the thundering train was at hand. It was a cruel agony. His child could be saved only at the cost of other lives committed to his care. The brave man did his duty, but the child was drowned. The pass at Thermopylae was not more heroic ally kept. Sir Philip Sydney, giving the cup of cold water to the dying soldier, is not a nobler figure than that of Albert G. Drecker, keeping the Passal bridge.

Drecker, the draw-bridge keeper, opened wide
The dangerous gate, to let the vessel through;
His little son was standing by his side,

Above Passaic river, deep and blue;

While in the distance, like a moan of pain,
Was heard the whistle of the coming train.

At once brave Drecker worked to swing it back,—
The gate-like bridge, that seems a gate of death;
Nearer and nearer, on the slender track,

Came the swift engine, puffing its white breath.
Then, with a shriek, the loving father saw
His darling boy fall headlong from the draw.

Either at once down in the stream to spring
And save his son, and let the living freight
Rush on to death, or to his work to cling,

And leave his boy unhelped to meet his fate;
Which should he do? Were you, as he was, tried,
Would not your love outweigh all else beside?

And yet the child to him was full as dear

As yours may be to you,-the light of eyes,

A presence like a brighter atmosphere,

The household star that shone in love's mild skies,Yet side by side with duty, stern and grim, Even his child became as nought to him.

For Drecker, being great of soul, and true,
Held to his work, and did not aid his boy,
Who in the deep, dark water sank from view.
Then from the father's life went forth all joy;
But, as he fell back, pallid with his pain,
Across the bridge, in safety, passed the train.

And yet the man was poor, and in his breast
Flowed no ancestral blood of king or lord;
True greatness needs no title and no crest

To win from men just honor and reward;
Nobility is not of rauk, but mind,—
And is inborn, and common in our kind.

He is most noble whose humanity

Is least corrupted. To be just and good The birthright of the lowest born may be; Say what we can, we are one brotherhood, And, rich or poor, or famous or unknown, True hearts are noble, and true hearts alone.

Henry Abbey.

THE GRAVE OF CHARLES DICKENS.

He sleeps as he should sleep,-among the great
In the old Abbey; sleeps amidst the few
Of England's famous thousands whose high state
Is to lie with her monarchis,-monarchs too.

Monarchs, who men's minds 'neath their sway could bring
By might of wit and humor, wisdom, lore;
Music of spoken line or sounded string,-
Of Art that lives when artists are no more.

His grave is in this heart of England's heart,
This shrine within her shrine; and all around
Is no name but, in Letters or in Art,

Sounds as the names of the immortal sound.

Of some, the ashes lie beside his dust;

Of some, but marble forms and names are here;
But grave or cenotaph,-remains or bust,-

They will find place for thee, their latest peer.

Make room, oh tuneful Handel, at thy feet;

Make room, oh witty Sheridan, at thy head;
Shift, Johnson, till thou leave him grave space meet;
Garrick, whose art he loved, press to him dead.

Macaulay, many-sided mind, receive

By thine the frame that housed a mind as keen
To take an impress, or an impress leave,

From things, or on things, read, or heard, or seen.

Welcome, oh Addison, with calm, wise face,
His coming, who has peopled English air
With types of humor, tenderness, and grace,
Than which thine own are less rich and more rare.

Thou, too, his brother of our time, last lost,—
Thackeray,-bend thy brow with kindly cheer
On him, thy comrade, wave-worn, tempest-tossed,
Who, from life's voyage, comes to harbor here.

All the more welcome that he seeks his rest
Without the pomps that follow great ones' ends;
No mourners, save the natural ones that pressed
About the father's coflin, or the friend's;

No sable train, with plume, and plate, and pall;
No long parade of undertaker's woe,

Scarfed mutes, and feathered hearse, and coursers tall,-
All that bemocks the grave with hollow show.

Humbly they brought him in the summer morn,
Humbly and hopefully they laid him down,

And on the plate that tells when dead, when born,
His children's love, like England's lays a crown.*
London Punch.

Upon the coffin was a crown of green leaves and white roses. Many of those who came to look into the grave during the day it remained open, threw flowers into it.