THE CHILDREN.-CHARLES M. DICKINSON.

When the lessons and tasks are all ended,
And the school for the day is dismissed,
The little ones gather around me,

To bid me good-night and be kissed;
Oh, the little white arms that encircle
My neck in a tender embrace!
Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven,
Shedding sunshine of love on my face!
And when they are gone, I sit dreaming
Of my childhood, too lovely to last;
Of joy that my heart will remember
While it wakes to the pulse of the past,
Ere the world and its wickedness made me
A partner of sorrow and sin,

When the glory of God was about me,
And the glory of gladness within.

All my heart grows as weak as a woman's,
And the fountain of feeling will flow,
When I think of the paths steep and stony,
Where the feet of the dear ones must go,-
Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them,
Of the tempest of fate blowing wild;
Oh, there's nothing on earth half so holy
As the innocent heart of a child!

They are idols of hearts and of households;
They are angels of God in disguise;
His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses,
His glory still gleams in their eyes;
Those truants from home and from heaven,
They have made me more manly and mild;
And I know now how Jesus could liken

The kingdom of God to a child.

I ask not a life for the dear ones,

All radiant, as others have done,

But that life may have just enough shadow
To temper the glare of the sun;

I would pray God to guard them from evil,
But my prayer would bound back to myself;

Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner,

But a sinner must pray for himself.

NUMBER FOUR.

The twig is so easily bended,

I have banished the rule and the rod;
I have taught them the goodness of knowledge,
They have taught me the goodness of God.
My heart is a dungeon of darkness,

Where I shut them for breaking a rule;
My frown is sufficient correction,

My love is the law of the school.

I shall leave the old house in the autumn,
To traverse its threshold no more;
Ah! how I shall sigh for the dear ones

That meet me each morn at the door!
I shall miss the "good-nights" and the kisses
And the gush of their innocent glee,
The groups on the green, and the flowers

That are brought every morning to me.

I shall miss them at morn and at even,

Their song in the school and the street;
I shall miss the low hum of their voices,
And the tramp of their delicate feet.
When the lessons of life are all ended,
And death says, "The school is dismissed!"
May the little ones gather around me,
To bid me good-night and be kissed!

CLARENCE'S DREAM.-SHAKSPEARE.

Brakenbury. Why looks your grace so heavily to-day?
Clarence. Oh, I have passed a miserable night,
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days;
So full of dismal terror was the time!

Methought that I had broken from the tower,
And was embarked to cross to Burgundy,

And in my company my brother Gloster,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches. Thence we looked toward England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times,

During the wars of York and Lancaster,

That had befallen us. As we paced along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling,

Struck me, that sought to stay him, overboard,

Into the tumbling billows of the main.

Oh, Heaven! Methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in my ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems
That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
Brak. Had you such leisure, in the time of death,
To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

Clar. Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost; but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smothered it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony?
Clar. No, no! my dream was lengthened after life;

Oh, then began the tempest to my soul!

I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who cried aloud," What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?”
And so he vanished. Then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked out aloud,
"Clarence is come-false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury;
Seize on him, furies! take him to your torments!"
With that, methought a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I trembling waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell,-
Such terrible impression made my dream.

THE DEATH OF HAMILTON.-Dr. NOTT.

A short time since, and he, who is the occasion of our sorrows, was the ornament of his country. He stood on an eminence, and glory covered him. From that eminence he has fallen suddenly, forever fallen. His intercourse with the living world is now ended; and those who would hereafter find him, must seek him in the grave. There, cold and lifeless, is the heart which just now was the seat of friendship; there, dim and sightless, is the eye, whose radiant and enlivening orb beamed with intelligence; and there, closed forever, are those lips, on whose persuasive accents we have so often, and so lately hung with transport.

From the darkness which rests upon his tomb there proceeds, methinks, a light, in which it is clearly seen that those gaudy objects which men pursue are only phantoms. In this light how dimly shines the splendor of victory,---how humble appears the majesty of grandeur! The bubble, which seemed to have so much solidity, has burst; and we again see that all below the sun is vanity.

True, the funeral eulogy has been pronounced, the sad and solemn procession has moved, the badge of mourning has already been decreed, and presently the sculptured marble will lift up its front, proud to perpetuate the name of Hamilton, and rehearse to the passing traveler his virtues, just tributes of respect, and to the living useful; but to him, moldering in his narrow and humble habitation, what are they? How vain! how unavailing!

Approach and behold, while I lift from his sepulchre its covering! Ye admirers of his greatness, ye emulous of his talents and his fame, approach, and behold him now. How pale! how silent! No martial bands admire the adroitness of his movements; no fascinating throng weep, and melt, and tremble at his eloquence! Amazing change! A shroud, a coffin, a narrow, subterraneous cabin--this is all that now remains of Hamilton! And is this all that remains of him? During a life so transi

tory, what lasting monument, then, can our fondest hopes erect!

My brethren, we stand on the borders of an awful gulf, which is swallowing up all things human. And is there, amidst this universal wreck, nothing stable, nothing abiding, nothing immortal, on which poor, frail, dying man can fasten? Ask the hero, ask the statesman, whose wisdom you have been accustomed to revere, and he will tell you. He will tell you, did I say? He has already told you, from his death-bed; and his illumined spirit, still whispers from the heavens, with well-known eloquence, the solemn admonition: "Mortals hastening to the tomb, and once the companions of my pilgrimage, take warning and avoid my errors; cultivate the virtues I have recommended; choose the Saviour I have chosen ; live disinterestedly; live for immortality; and would you rescue anything from final dissolution, lay it up in God."

A SWELL'S SOLILOQUY ON THE WAR.
I don't appwove this hawid waw;
Those dweadful bannahs hawt my eyes;
And guns and dwums are such a baw,—
Why don't the pawties compwamise?

Of cawce, the twoilet has its chawms;
But why must all the vulgah crowd
Pawsist in spawting unifawms
In cullaws so extwemely loud?

And then the ladies,-pwecious deahs!
I mawk the change on ev'wy bwow;
Bai Jove! I weally have my feahs
They wathah like the hawid wow!
To heaw the chawming cweatures talk,
Like patwons of the bloody wing,
Of waw and all its dawty wawk,—
It doesn't seem a pwappah thing!

I called at Mrs. Gween's last night,

To see her niece, Miss Mary Hertz,
And found her making-ewushing sight!—
The weddest kind of flannel shirts!