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Now, Peter, who was not discouraged at all
By obstacles such as the timid appall,
Contrived to discover a hole in the wall,
Which wasn't so thick but removing a brick
Made a passage-though rather provokingly small.
Through this little chink the lover could greet her,
And secrecy made their courting the sweeter,
While Peter kissed Thisbe, and Thisbe kissed Peter-
For kisses, like folks with diminutive souls,
Will manage to creep through the smallest of holes!

'T was here that the lovers, intent upon love,
Laid a nice little plot to meet at a spot

Near a mulberry-tree in a neighboring grove;

For the plan was all laid by the youth and the maid,
Whose hearts, it would seem, were uncommonly bold ones,
To run off and get married in spite of the old ones.
In the shadows of evening, as still as a mouse,
The beautiful maiden slipped out of the house,
The mulberry-tree impatient to find;
While Peter, the vigilant matrons to blind,
Strolled leisurely out, some minutes behind.

While waiting alone by the trysting tree,
A terrible lion as e'er you set eye on,
Came roaring along quite horrid to see,
And caused the young maiden in terror to flee,
(A lion's a creature whose regular trade is
Blood-and "a terrible thing among ladies,")
And losing her veil as she ran from the wood,
The monster bedabbled it over with blood.

Now Peter arriving, and seeing the veil
All covered o'er and reeking with gore,
Turned, all of a sudden, exceedingly pale,
And sat himself down to weep and to wail,-
For, soon as he saw the garment, poor Peter,
Made up his mind in very short meter,
That Thisbe was dead, and the lion had eat her!
So breathing a prayer, he determined to share
The fate of his darling, "the loved and the lost,"
And fell on his dagger, and gave up the ghost!

Now Thisbe returning, and viewing her beau,

Lying dead by her vail, (which she happened to know,)

She guessed in a moment the cause of his erring ;

And seizing the knife that had taken his life,

In less than a jiffy was dead as a herring.

MORAL.

Young gentleman! -pray recollect if you please,
Not to make assignations near mulberry-trees.
Should your mistress be missing, it shows a weak head
To be stabbing yourself, till you know she is dead.
Young ladies!--you shouldn't go strolling about
When your anxious mammas don't know you are out;
And remember that accidents often befall

From kissing young fellows through holes in the wall!

XLV.

THE FIREMAN.

F. S. HILL.

a Hark! that alarm-bell, 'mid the wintry storm!
Hear the loud shout! the rattling engines swarm.
Hear that distracted mother's cry to save
Her darling infant from a threatened grave!
That babe who lies in sleep's light pinions bound,
And dreams of heaven, while hell is raging round!
c Forth springs the Fireman--stay! nor tempt thy fate!
He hears not heeds not,nay, it is too late!

d See how the timbers crash beneath his feet!
O, which way now is left for his retreat?
The roaring flames already bar his way,
Like ravenous demons raging for their prey!
He laughs at danger, -pauses not for rest,
Till the sweet charge is folded to his breast.

e Now, quick, brave youth, retrace your path; —but, lo!

A fiery gulf yawns fearfully below!

a Aspirate; long pauses. b Bold; high pitched; rapid. c Pure; moderate pitch; quick ' d High pitch; rapid; with much feeling. e High; bold; quick.

H

One desperate leap!-f lost! lost!

the flames arise,

And paint their triumph on the o'erarching skies!

Not lost! again his tottering form appears!

The applauding shouts of rapturous friends he hears!
The big drops from his manly forehead roll,

And deep emotions thrill his generous soul.
But struggling nature now reluctant yields;
Down drops the arm the infant's face that shields,
To bear the precious burthen all too weak;
When, hark!—the mother's agonizing shriek!
Once more he's roused, his eye no longer swims,
And tenfold strength rëanimates his limbs;

He nerves his faltering frame for one last bound,
g "Your child!" he cries, and sinks upon the ground!

h And his reward you ask; -reward he spurns;

For him the father's generous bosom burns,
For him on high the widow's prayer shall go,
For him the orphan's pearly tear-drop flow.
His boon, the richest e'er to mortals given,
Approving conscience, and the smile of Heaven!

XLVI.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

In his introduction to The Merchant of Venice, Mr. White, after showing "that the story of this comedy, even to its episodic part and its minutest incidents, had been told again and again long before Shakespeare was born," vindicates him from the charge of plagiarism in the following matchless paragraph:

What then remains to Shakespeare? and what is there to show that he is not a plagiarist? Every thing that makes The Merchant of Venice what it is. The people are puppets, and the incidents are all in these old stories. They are mere bundles of barren sticks that the poet's touch causes to bloom like Aaron's rod: they are heaps of dry bones till he clothes them with human flesh and breathes into

f High; aspirate; long pauses-Imagine the scene, and adopt such expression and gesture as will portray it to the listener. g With much feeling, and as a personation. h After a pause, give the closing in pure, narrative style, slow time.

them the breath of life. Antonio, grave, pensive, prudent, save in his devotion to his young kinsman, as a Christian hating the Jew, as a loyal merchant despising the usurer; Bassanio, lavish yet provident, a generous gentleman although a fortune seeker, wise although a gay gallant, and manly though dependent; Gratiano, who unites the not too common virtues of thorough good nature and unselfishness with the sometimes not unserviceable fault of talking for talk's sake; Shylock, crafty and cruel, whose revenge is as mean as it is fierce and furious, whose abuse never rises to invective, or his anger into wrath, and who has yet some dignity of port as the avenger of a nation's wrongs, some claim upon our sympathy as a father outraged by his only child; and Portia, matchless impersonation of that rare woman who is gifted even more in intellect than in loveliness, and yet who stops gracefully short of the offence of intellectuality;—these, not to notice minor characters no less perfectly arranged or completely developed after their kind,―these, and the poetry which is their atmosphere, and through which they beam upon us, all radiant in its golden light, are Shakespeare's only; and these it is, and not the incidents of old, and, but for these, forgotten tales, that make The Merchant of Venice a priceless and imperishable dower to the queenly city that sits enthroned upon the sea;—a dower of romance more bewitching than that of her moonlit waters and beauty-laden balconies, of adornment more splendid than that of her pictured palaces, of human interest more enduring than that of her blood-stained annals, more touching even than the sight of her faded grandeur.

XLVII.

IN MEMORIAM.

A. LINCOLN.

BY. MRS EMILY J. BUGBEE, APRIL 30, 1865.
There's a burden of grief on the breezes of spring,
And a song of regret from the bird on its wing;

There's a pall on the sunshine and over the flowers,
And a shadow of graves on these spirits of ours;
For a star hath gone out from the night of our sky,
On whose brightness we gazed as the war-cloud rolled by;
So tranquil and steady and clear were its beams,
That they fell like a vision of peace on our dreams.

A heart that we knew had been true to our weal,
And a hand that was steadily guiding the wheel;
A name never tarnished by falsehood or wrong,
That had dwelt in our hearts like a soul-stirring song;
Ah! that pure, noble spirit has gone to its rest,

And the true hand lies nerveless and cold on his breast;
But the name and the memory-these never will die,
But grow brighter and dearer as ages go by.

Yet the tears of a nation fall over the dead,
Such tears as a nation before never shed,
For our cherished one fell by a dastardly hand,
A martyr to truth and the cause of the land;
And a sorrow has surged, like the waves to the shore
When the breath of the tempest is sweeping them o'er;
And the heads of the lofty and lowly have bowed,
As the shaft of the lightning sped out from the cloud.

Not gathered, like Washington, home to his rest,
When the sun of his life was far down in the west;
But stricken from earth in the midst of his years,
With the Canaan in view, of his prayers and his tears.
And the people, whose hearts in the wilderness failed,
Sometimes, when the stars of their promise had paled,
Now, stand by his side on the mount of his fame,
And yield him their hearts in a grateful acclaim.

Yet there on the mountain, our Leader must die,
With the fair land of promise spread out to his eye;
His work is accomplished, and what he has done

Will stand as a monument under the sun;

And his name, reaching down through the ages of time, Will still through the years of eternity shine—

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