they pass into the chapel, so silent, like a tomb, on to their old familiar seat; a forgotten book lies open upon it, they catch the name of its owner, a common friend who had left to return no more

Tears will not be suppressed; they struggle up; and who would stay them? They turn away; they part, but not without renewed assurances of remembrance, of correspondence, and of hope that they shall meet; 'meet in happier times,' they say. Mistaken pair! there are no happier times this side of Heaven!

AND here is that monthly roll-call-the LETTER List.'

Some of those, no doubt, whose names swell that list, are dead. Some of them were watching from beds of pain, this morning's light, as it stole timidly through the half-curtained window of the invalid's melancholy room. Some of them have gone on their winding way' over the plains.

In that column are letters from mothers to children, wives to husbands, lovers to lovers. Some of them bear black seals, and they who unseal them, will unseal too, a fountain of tears. Some of them

have been waited for, and wept for, and asked for, till hearts grew sick with 'hope deferred,' and now they have come, at last, and the question is, where are the waiters and weepers ?

What episodes of human life do those letters contain! How much of love and hate, of wit and sentiment, joy and grief! How many spirits for many a day will take their color from a five minutes' reading! Stern Impatience, timid Love, and straightforward Business jostle and crowd around the Delivery ! There is poetry there, in those little square, triangular, oblong, blue, white, and yellow missives, and history and biography and philosophy. Sermons and songs are turned out from the same leathern receptacles.

The breaking of a heart-string costs five cents; the answer of love only half a dime. Joy and grief are inventoried alike in this strange schedule of human sorrowings and hopes.

• Last but not least,' the · LEADER.' Poor Editor! He has none. I can see him as he ponders and ponders. “Is the country safe?' Then there is nothing to be written on the state of the nation. Has any

great man fallen with the sound of a great tree in the forest ? No, and Heaven forbid! Has any great man been born? Alas! great men are not born, now-a-days, and if they were, what horoscope have Editors, wherewith to divine it?

Does the tempest of political conflict gather? The sky is as clear as the great bell of Moscow. True, Revolutions are ripening in Europe, but the harvestsong is not yet written. True, the West is a great country, Americans a great people, but these truths · have served their time as leaders, and must needs rest.

All legitimate themes are exhausted—the mails bring that dread of the fraternity, ‘nothing new,' and the ink dries upon the waiting pen.

Were it not the second day of January, he might talk of New Year, and express his wishes for the prosperity of his patrons and the rest of mankind;' but that will not do. Time, like daily papers, requires but twenty-four hours to be old, and every body is moving as steadily on to-day, as if there had not been a · New Year' in a half century.

Gloster offered a kingdom for a horse. He sympathizes with him, for he wants “a leader." He lays down the pen, looks listlessly out at the window,

6

a

and lo! a leader-one of the world's leaders, and in arms! A man, bearded like the pard,' is bearing along the street, a bit of a boy, be-plumed, be-curled, be-plaided, and black-eyed, the man's heart— the better part of it-personified-himself as he was himself as he ought to be.

That man! why a regiment could not drive him, but that boy can guide him. Ah! he's a leader indeed. He fills that man's heart to-day—that facsimile of his hope, is in all his present, and he has no future without him.

The world is filled with such leaders, 'set' in types of innocence and beauty, 'displayed in almost every home, and illustrated' by almost every hearth-light. Worthy are they of the 'small caps' they wear. For the nonce, they are his leader. God bless the leaders!

6

6

6

6

THE CRYSTAL PALACE. — Receipts wonders thousands'

'-50 runs the column Temples, a many have been built; wreathed Corinthian and solemn Gothic; simple as the altar of Eden's second son; ornate as the Pantheon of the Greek ; to Divinities supernal, infernal, and 'mixed ;'

but only two, and those of Crystal, to the minddirected HAND. True, the Hundred-handed' had altars and offerings, but then BRIAREUS was headless. True, HERCULES was a god of muscles, and had a hand of his own, but then there was always a club in it; it was a rude hand, with a Savage for an owner. True, VULCAN was a fellow of some sinew but his corded arm was always red with the thunderbolts he was shaping. True, APOLLO fingered the harp now and then, and twanged the silver bow, but then, the one he was heir to, and the other he found. Not a divinity of them all, could have made either of them, Mythology to the contrary notwithstanding. The fact is, that the Apotheosis of the Hand had not taken place in those days. Not a hand of them all could have knocked at the closed windows of the human soul, and those curtains be withdrawn at the signal; not an arm of them all could have been extended, and the fallen Daughters of Music' be lifted from the dumb dust, into a world trembling with harmony.

And this PALACE OF GLASS—what is it but a splendid Retina, whereon are stereotyped myriad passages from the eloquent utterances of the human hand ? Sweetest song could not wake the sleepers in

6