LITTLE NELL'S FUNERAL. In its mest pathetic and beautiful passages, the prose of Dickens runs eas. ily and naturally into rhyme and meter, and shows him to be a poet no less than a novelist, of high order. This tendency of his writing is very vividly illustrated by the account of the funeral of Little Nell, in the " Old Curiosity Shop," which is appended exactly as it stands in the book, with the exception of a few slight verbal alterations. And now the bell,-the bell She had so often heard by night and day, Rung its remorseless toll for her, Decrepit age, and vigorous life, And blooming youth, and helpless infancy, Poured forth,-on crutches, in the pride of strength Of promise, the mere dawn of life, To gather round her tomb. Old men were there, And senses failing, Grandames, who might have died ten years ago, The living dead in many shapes and forms, What was the death it would shut in, To that which still could crawl and keep above it! Along the crowded path they bore her now; That covered it; whose day on earth Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven They carried her to one old nook, Where she had many and many a time sat musing, The colored window,-a window where the boughs In the summer, and where the birds Sang sweetly all day long. Charles Dickens. ARTEMUS WARD AT THE TOMB OF SHAKSPEARE. I've been lingerin by the Tomb of the lamentid Shakspeare. It is a success. I do not hesitate to pronounce it as such. You may make any use of this opinion that you see fit. If you think its publication will subswerve the causo of litteratoor, you may publicate it. I told my wife Betsey, when I left home, that I should go to the birthplace of the orthur of Otheller and other Plays. She said that as long as I kept out of Newgate she didn't care where I went. "But," I said, “don't you know he was the greatest Poit that ever lived? Not one of these common poits, like that young idyit who writes verses to our daughter, about the Roses as growses, and the breezes as blowses- but a Boss poit-also a philosopher, also a man who knew a great deal about everything." Yes. I've been to Stratford onto the Avon, the Birthplace of Shakspeare. Mr. S. is now no more. He's been dead over three hundred (300) years. The peple of his native town are justly proud of him. They cherish his mem'ry, and them as sell picturs of his birthplace, &c, make it prof'tible cherisin it. Almost everybody buys a pictur to put into their Albiom. "And this," I said, as I stood in the old church-yard at Stratford, beside a Tombstone, "this marks the spot where lies William W. Shakspeare. Alars! and this is the spot where-" 66 'You've got the wrong grave," said a man,-a worthy villager; "Shakspeare is buried inside the church." "Oh," I said, "a boy told me this was it." The boy larfed and put the shillin I'd given him into his left eye in a inglorious manner, and commenced moving backwards towards the street. I pursood and captered him, and after talking to him a spell in a skarcastic stile, I let him went. William Shakspeare was born in Stratford in 1564. All the commentaters, Shaksperian scholars, etsetry, are T agreed on this, which is about the only thing they are agreed on in regard to him, except that his mantle hasn't fallen onto any poet or dramatist hard enough to hurt said poet or dramatist much. And there is no doubt if these commentaters and persons continner investigatin Shakspeare's career, we shall not, in doo time, know any thing about it at all. When a mere lad little William attended the Grammer School, because, as he said, the Grammer School wouldn't attend him. This remarkable remark, coming from one so young and inexperunced, set peple to thinkin there might be something in this lad. He subsequently wrote Hamlet and George Barnwell. When his kind teacher went to London to accept a posi tion in the offices of the Metropolitan Railway, little William was chosen by his fellow pupils to deliver a fare well address. "Go on, sir," he said, "in a glorus career. Be like a eagle, and soar, and the soarer you get the more we shall all be gratified! That's so." C. F. Brown. THE IRISHWOMAN'S LETTER. And shure, I was tould to come in till yer honor, And what 'ill ye tell him? shure it must be aisy The baby, yer honor,) is better again. For when he wint off, so sick was the crayther So he left her in danger, and me sorely gravin, Tell him to sind us a bit of his money, For the rint and the docther's bill, due in a wake, And-shure there's a tear on your eyelashes, honey, I' faith I've no right with such fradom to spake. I'm over much thrifling, I'll not give ye trouble, Dead! Patrick O'Conner! O God, it's some ither, Shot dead! shure 'tis a wake scarce gone by, And the kiss on the chake of his sorrowin mother, It hasn't had time yet, yer honor, to dry. Dead! dead! O God, am I crazy? Shure it's brakin my heart ye are, tellin me so, And what en the world will I do wid poor Daisy? O what can I do? where can I go? This room is so dark I'm not seein yer honor; NOT ON THE BATTLE-FIELD. O no, no,-let me lie Not on a field of battle, when I die. Let not the iron tread Of the mad war-horse crush my helmed head; That I have drawn against a brother's life, Thunders along, and tramples me beneath From such a dying bed, Though o'er it float the stripes of white and red, And the bald eagle brings The clustered stars upon his wide-spread wings, To sparkle in my sight, O, never let my spirit take her flight! I know that beauty's eye Is all the brighter where gay pennants fly, And sunshine flashes on the lifted lance; And people shouted till the welkin rung, Who on the battle-field have found a grave. I know that o'er their bones The "Battle Monument" at Baltimore, Ay, and abroad a few more famous still: That issue from the gulf of Salamis; Thy mound of earth, Patroclus, robed in green, Sheep climb and nibble over as they stroll, Such honors grace the bed, I know, whereon the warrior lays his head, The conquered flying, and the conqueror's shout What is a column or a mound to him? What, to the parting soul, The mellow note of bugles? What the roll Where the blue heaven bends o'er me lovingly, As it goes by me, stirs my thin, white hair, The death damp as it gathers, and the skies My soul to their clear depths. Or let me leave |