yet to be, and return with them to the advance guard of this mighty armament, and so it is, that in these days, 'other morns have risen upon mid-noons.'

• Close up!' 'Close up rings along the nations I seem to hear it now, as in all languages and lands, the word is speeding on. The sturdy Saxon utters it, and its echo rings like England's morning drum-beat' round the world. The Greek amid his fallen tem ples, catches and prolongs it; from tongue to tongue, till it swells like a sigh, from the empty, dusty cradle of old Egypt. On moves the column, through the web of years, like the shuttle in the hand of the

weaver.

It was not a trumpet that thus rallied the world, but the shrill whistle of that iron Boatswain, the Steam Engine.

And there it stands, at once the creation and the rival of the hand; that has passed on with its freight of humanity, beyond the uttermost station; that, with soulless sinew, makes Mechanic Man a supernumerary; even he, who laid hands' upon stubborn iron, polished steel and gleaming brass, till, as with touch ethereal,' the metal caught the cunning' of the fingers. The Steam Engine is a monster. He tortures

the wave into energy and strength; he breathes out

its shrieking spirit in a cloud, and man, the being with the hand, stands appalled in the presence of the genius he has conjured. Next comes the CALORIC ENGINE, a thing like the other, dug from the mine, and shaped by the altar-light of forges, but no monster-not it; for it presses hard towards humanity's self. It has lungs of iron, indeed, and no delicate leaves of red life; but then it is the calm, blue air we breathe, that fills its ponderous cylinders; it is nearer human than its panting predecessor, and who shall say, not a more formidable rival?

Winter Nights.

UGH! What a night last night was, to be surethe waltz of the wind and the drifts.

A huge snow-bank of a cloud lay along the west at sunset—an aerial Onalaska—and white, frosty puffs came out of a clear, blue cleft in the keen northeast.

That wind! Didn't it love snow, and hadn't it queer ways of its own? Now it came from beyond the wood, sighing and sobbing like a penitent. Then

it struck the poor, dumb, leafless trees, till they creaked and groaned like a forest of masts in a storm; but it was tuning up the mighty harp for an Anthem— nothing more. And there's the deep, pedal bass for you feathery pines, stubborn oaks, swaying elms and whispering hemlocks, all touched into a grand harmony, by the hand of a master.

Then it whistled through the orchard, like the whirl of a lash; then it moaned down in the valley; then it roared and rumbled over the chimney-tops, and the little, timid flames lay flat upon the halfburned wood, till it passed; then it tried the doors and rattled the windows, and shook the curtains, and shrieked round the corners like a fiend, and moaned over the threshold like a foundling, and piped through the key-hole like a boatswain; then it leaped up like a giant, and tossed the old butternut like a fury, and died down again like an infant.

Love the snow? Indeed it did! It bundled it in fence-corners, to see how it would look, and heaped it in the highway, and took it up, and carried it a little farther, and down it went in a lull. In an instant it. flew with it over the top of the house, and waltzed away with it over the corn-field, and whirled it up against the old barn, and sifted it through on to the

hay, and flung it over the wood-pile, and drifted it up on to the window-sills. And the hovels it crept into, and the secrets it found out, that the neighbors never knew! It rustled a bed, and discovered it was nothing but straw. It drifted down upon a hearth, and the ashes mocked it, so cold and white were they. There was no fire there! And it found an infant asleep upon its mother's breast, by the road-side, and the mother was dead; and it froze the tear upon the baby's cheek, that it should not fall to the earth, and it whirled a wreath of snow over the twain, and it went sighing on its way, like one who would not be comforted.

And what a time it had in the grave-yard, furrowing it all over with white billows, filling up the hollows, and tumbling this way and that, and rocking the willows, and swinging in the old maples. Then up it went, and waked the old church-bell from its slumbers, till there came out of the belfry a solemn tone, that blended with the blast as it swept by. Back to the house again, and how it shrieked through the garret, and rattled the loose boards upon the gables, and puffed out the smoke in the fire-place, and died meekly away, and sung softly through the crevices, and was still.

Then it swept out of the "Oak opening," on to the Prairie, and flung to a blind, where one lay languishing, and fanned an ember that had fallen into a crevice of the floor, and closed a door that had stood ajar, lest some body might see, and blew it up into a brave flame, and flared it this way and that, and went crashing on, 'into the heavy timber,' and was gone.

How they heaped up the fire, and drew out the glowing coals from beneath the fore-stick, and shook out the folds of the curtains before the windows, and snuffed the candles anew, and made it as cheerful as they could. Festoons of dried pumpkin adorned the ceiling; skeins of yarn decorated the window-frames; a bowl of red-cheeked apples, and a pitcher of cider, stood on the hearth in one corner; the hired man was asleep in the other; the wee ones were cracking butternuts, mother was knitting-she's always knitting and father was dozing over the state of the nation' as set forth in the 'Republican Times.' One of the boys was telling an incident of the day: the hunters had been out, and the music of the hounds had been ringing all day through the woods. They had started a hapless deer, and hard-pressed by the dogs, panting and wearied, it was rushing by, where the hired man had just felled a tree, when, quick as