58. DON'T FORGET. LD LETTERS! Don't you love, sometimes, to look over OLD old letters? Some of them are dim with years, and some are dim with tears. Here is one now, the burden of which is, "Don't forget;" the device on the seal is "Don't forget;" and the writer thereof went, winters ago, to "the narrow beds of peace." But surely she needn't have written it, for we can't forget if we would. 2. "Don't forget!" They are common words; we hear them, perhaps use them every day; and yet how needless, we may almost say, how meaningless they are! What is it we forget? That which was forgotten and set down in the tablets of memory long ago; set down, we may not remember where, we may not remember when, but it is there still. Remove with the palm of Time the inscriptions upon marble-eat out with its "corroding tooth" the lettering upon brass, but that thing forgotten remains unobliterated. 3. Some breath may whirl back the leaves of memory to its page-in some hour an epitome of its contents may be unrolled before us. Every thought consigned to memory is immortal; its existence runs parallel with the mind that conceives and the heart that cradled it. "Don't forget!" We cannot forget. Earth is full of strains Lethean of man's invention, but the past is with him still. 4. New days, new hopes, new loves arise; but "pleasant, yet mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past.” Our eyes are dazzled with the clear of the present, but dimmed with the clouds of the past. Ride as we will on the swiftest billow of to-morrow, we are never out of sight of yesterday. There it stands still, with a tearful, gentle light, like some pale Pleiad through the rack of the storm. 5. "Don't forget!" Ah! the science that could teach men to forget would be more welcome than all the trickery of Mnemonics. When the heart beats sadder, and the tide of life runs slower, how the Yesterdays come drifting down to waiting Age-waiting for Him who enters hall and hovel, unbidden and unstayed. 6 "Don't forget!" Alas! who does not remember? Even Ocean itself, busy as it is in laving from its shores all records of the past, is the great memory of the natural world. Clar ence's dream was no fiction, and its treasures glitter, and whiten, and sway amid the groves of red coral. But even the Sea is not oblivious, for "the sea shall give up its dead." B. F. TAYLOR. 59. THE PENITENT'S PRAYER. ["There has seldom been any thing written more exquisitely tender or containing more of the true poetry of nature and religion than the simple prayer of Margaret by the great poet of Germany, Goëthe."-Dublin Review.] The sword is piercing thine own soul, and thou in pain dost pray That the pangs which torture Him, and are thy pangs, may pass away. And who my wound can heal, And who the pain can feel, That rends asunder brain and bone? How my poor heart, within me aching, Where can I go? where can I go? Nothing that does not my own grief betoken! And, when I am alone, I moan, and moan, and moan, The flowers upon my window-sill, Wet with my tears since dawn they be; Into my chamber brightly Came the early sun's good-morrow! On my mother's bed, unsightly, I sate up in my sorrow. Oh, in this hour of death, and the near grave, Look on me with that countenance benign. Never was grief like thine Look down, look down on mine! GOËTHE OF 60. THE CHURCH-BELL. F all musical instruments, it is by far the grandest, solemn or deep, or shrill and clear; or, still better, with both combined in a choral peal, it is the only instrument whose music can travel on the winds, can heave in noble swells upon the breeze, and can out-bellow the storm. It alone speaks to heaven as to earth, and scatters abroad its sounds, till in the distance they seem to come but by fragments and broken notes. 2. Every other instrument creeps on earth, or sends its sounds skimming over its surface; but this pours it out from above, like the shower, or the light, or whatever comes from the higher regions to benefit those below. Indeed, it seems to call out from the middle space which heavenly messengers would occupy, to make proclamation to man; condescending to an inferior sphere, but not wholly deigning to soil themselves with earth; high enough to command, low enough to be understood. 3. The Levite trumpet had something startling and military in it, that spoke of alarms and human passions; every other Vocal instrument belongs to the world (excepting, perhaps, the noble organ, too huge and too delicately constructed for out of doors), and associates itself with profane amusements; but the solemn old bell has refused to lend itself for any such purpose, and as it swings to and fro, receiving its impulscs from the temple of God below, talks of nothing but sacred things, and now reproves the laggard, and now cheers the sorrowful, and now chides the over-mirthful. CARDINAL WISEMAN, 61. THE BIER THAT CONQUERED. [The highly dramatic scene of The O'Donnell, when dying of the wounds he had received in battle, having heard that his great rival, O'Neill, demanded hostages, is admirably rendered in the following spirited stanzas.] L AND which the Norman would make his own! (Thus sang the bard 'mid a host overthrown, While their white cheeks some on the clench'd hand propp'd, And from some the life-blood scarce heeded dropp'd,) There are men in thee that refuse to die, And that scorn to live while a foe stands by 2. O'Donnell lay sick with a grievous wound; Their banners furl'd and their minstrels dumb. 3. Then spoke O'Donnell, the king: "Although 4 "I will languish no longer a sick man here: The heralds his challenge have brought and fled : My people shall fight my pain in sight, And I shall sleep well when their wrongs stand right." 5. Then the clan to the words of their Chief gave ear, 6. When the bier was ready, they laid him thereon |