my fatal dream. I offer to that country, as a proof of the love I bear her, and the sincerity with which I thought and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart, and with that life all the hopes, the honors, the endearments, of a happy and an honored some. Pronounce, then, my Lords, the sentence which the laws direct, and I will be prepared to hear it. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution. I hope to be able, with a pure heart and perfect composure, to appear before a higher tribunal, a tribunal where a judge of infinite goodness as well as of justice will preside, and where, my Lords, many, many of the judgments of this world will be reversed. T. F. Meagher.

Ah! the world has many a Horner,
Who, seated in his corner,

Finds a Christmas pie provided for his thumb;
And cries out with exultation,

When successful exploration

Doth discover the predestinated plum.

Little Jack outgrows his sire,

And becometh John, Esquire,

And he finds a monstrous pastry ready-made,
Stuffed with notes, and bonds, and bales,
With invoices and sales,

And all the mixed ingredients of trade.

And again it is his luck,

To be just in time to pluck,

By a "clever operation," from the pie
An unexpected plum;

So he glorifies his thumb,

And says, proudly, "What a mighty man am I!"

Or, perchance, to science turning,
And, with weary labor, learning

All the formulas and phrases that oppress her,

For the fruit of others baking,

So a fresh diploma taking,

Comes he forth a full accredited professor.

Or, he's not too nice to mix
In the dish of politics;

And the dignity of office he puts on;

And feels as big again

As a dozen nobler men,

While he writes himself the "Honorable John."

Not to hint at female Horners,
Who, in their exclusive corners,

Think the world is only made of upper crust,

And in the funny pie

That we call society,

Their dainty fingers delicately thrust

Till it sometimes comes to pass,
In the spiced and sugared mass,

One may compass (don't they call it so?) a catch;
And the gratulation given,

Seems as if the very heaven

Had outdone itself in making such a match.

O, the world keeps Christmas day

In a queer perpetual way;

Shouting always, "What a great big boy am I !"
Yet how many of the crowd,

Thus vociferating loud,

And all its accidental honors lifting high,

Have really, more than Jack,

With all their lucky knack,

Had a finger in the making of the pie.

Mother Goose for Groun People.

THE FATE OF VIRGINIA.

In order to render the commencement less abrupt, six lines of introduc tion have been added to this extract from the fine ballad by Macaulay.

"Why is the Forum crowded?

Rome ?"

What means this stir in

"Claimed as a slave, a free-born maid is dragged here from

her home.

On fair Virginia, Claudius has cast his eye of blight;
The tyrant's creature, Marcus, asserts an owner's right,
O, shame on Roman manhood! Was ever plot more clear?
But look! the maiden's father comes! Behold Virginius here!"

Straightway Virginius led the maid a little space aside,
To where the reeking shambles stood, piled up with horn and
hide.

Hard by, a butcher on a block had laid his whittle down,-
Virginius caught the whittle up, and hid it in his gown.
And then his eyes grew very dim, and his throat began to
swell,

And in a hoarse, changed voice he spake, "Farewell, sweet child, farewell!

The house that was the happiest within the Roman walls,The house that envied not the wealth of Capua's marble halls, Now, for the brightness of thy smile, must have eternal gloom, And for the music of thy voice, the silence of the tomb.

"The time is come. The tyrant points his eager hand this way; See how his eyes gloat on thy grief, like a kite's upon the prey; With all his wit he little deems that, spurned, betrayed, bereft, Thy father hath, in his despair, one fearful refuge left; He little deems that, in this hand, I clutch what still can save Thy gentle youth from taunts and blows, the portion of the slave;

Yea, and from nameless evil, that passeth taunt and blow,— Foul outrage, which thou knowest not,-which thou shalt never know.

Then clasp me round the neck once more, and give me one more kiss;

And now, mine own dear little girl, there is no way but this !" With that, he lifted high the steel, and smote her in the side, And in her blood she sank to earth, and with one sob she died.

Then, for a little moment, all people held their breath;
And through the crowded Forum was stillness as of death;
And in another moment brake forth from one and all
A cry as if the Volscians were coming o'er the wall;

Till, with white lips and bloodshot eyes, Virginius tottered nigh,

And stood before the judgment seat, and held the knife on high:

"O, dwellers in the nether gloom, avengers of the slain,
By this dear blood I cry to you, do right between us twain;
And e'en as Appius Claudius hath dealt by me and mine,
Deal you by Appius Claudius and all the Claudian line !''
So spake the slayer of his child; then, where the body lay,
Pausing, he cast one haggard glance, and turned and went his

way.

Then up sprang Appius Claudius: "Stop him, alive or dead! Ten thousand pounds of copper to the man who brings his head!"

He looked upon his clients,-but none would work his will;
He looked upon his lictors,—but they trembled and stood still.
And as Virginius through the press his way in silence cleft,
Ever the mighty multitude fell back to right and left;
And he hath passed in safety unto his woful home,

And there ta'en horse to tell the camp what deeds are done in
Rome.
T. B. Macaulay.

THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE.

Have you heard the tale of the Aloe plant,
Away in the sunny clime?

By humble growth of a hundred years
It reaches its blooming time;

And then a wondrous bud at its crown
Breaks into a thousand flowers;
This floral queen, in its blooming seen,
Is the pride of the tropical bowers;
But the plant to the flower is a sacrifice,
For it blooms but once, and in blooming dies.

Have you further heard of this Aloe plant,
That grows in the sunny clime,
How every one of its thousand flowers,
As they drop in the blooming time,

Is an infant plant, that fastens its roots

In the place where it falls on the ground;

And, fast as they drop from the dying stem,
Grow lively and lovely around?

By dying it liveth a thousand fold

In the young that spring from the death of the old.

Have you heard the tale of the Pelican,—

The Arab's Gimel el Bahr,

That lives in the African solitudes,

Where the birds that live lonely are?

Have you heard how it loves its tender young,
And cares and toils for their good?

It brings them water from fountains afar,

And fishes the seas for their food.

In famine it feeds them,-what love can devise!—
The blood of its bosom, and feeding them dies.

Have you heard the tale they tell of the swan,
The snow-white bird of the lake?
It noiselessly floats on the silvery wave,
It silently sits in the brake;

For it saves its song till the end of life,
And then, in the soft, still even,
'Mid the golden light of the setting sun,
It sings as it soars into heaven.

And the blessed notes fall back from the skies;
'Tis its only song, for in singing it dies.

You have heard these tales; shall I tell you one,
A greater and better than all?

Have you heard of him whom the heavens adore;
Before whom the hosts of them fall?
How he left the choirs and anthems above,
For earth in its wailings and woes,
To suffer the shame and pain of the cross,
And die for the life of his foes?

O prince of the noble! O sufferer divine!
What sorrow and sacrifice equal to thine!

Have you heard this tale,-the best of them all,-
The tale of the Holy and True?

He dies, but his life, in untold souls,
Lives on in the world anew.

His seed prevails, and is filling the earth,
As the stars fill the sky above;

He taught us to yield up the love of life,
For the sake of the life of love.

His death is our life, his loss is our gain,
The joy for the tear, the peace for the pain.

Now hear these tales, ye weary and worn,
Who for others do give up your all;

Our Saviour hath told you the seed that would grow,
Into earth's dark bosom must fall,-

Must pass from the view, and die away,

And then will the fruit appear;

The grain, that seems lost in the earth below,
Will return many fold in the car.

By death comes life, by loss comes gain;

The joy for the tear, the peace for the pain.

Henry Harbaugh.