roses for the first time since the Creation. He carried the roses in his apron to the bishop, when, lo! he found that on his apron was stamped a figure of the Virgin in a cloak of velvet spangled with stars of gold! Her proof was irresistible, and the church was built. The original portrait is still displayed there, in a golden frame studded with precious stones, with the motto, Non fecit taliter omni nationi. (He hath not so done to every nation; or, more significantly, to any other nation.) Copies of the miraculous picture, of more or less costliness, are to be found in almost every house, and all have the full homage of saintship. The Church of the Virgin, though not so large as the Cathedral, is of a finer style, and nearly as rich; the balustrade is pure silver, and all the candelabra, &c., are of the precious metals.
The idleness and the low class of life from which the majority of the monks and friars are taken, make celibacy especially dangerous to the community. The higher orders of the priesthood are comparatively decorous; but many of them have these suspicious appendages to a priest's household, which are called "housekeepers," with a proportionate share of those equally suspicious appendages, which are popularly called "nephews and nieces," the whole system being one which furnishes a large portion of the gossip of Mexican society. But on those topics we have no wish to dwell.
Whether the American invasion will succeed in reaching Mexico, or in obtaining Upper California, or in breaking up the Federation, are matters still in the future. The disruption of the Federation seems to have been already, and spontaneously begun; Yucatan is said to have demanded independence; and the northern provinces bordering on the United States will, in all probability, soon make the same demand. It is obvious that the present Mexican territory is too large for the varying, distracted, and feeble government which Mexico has exhibited for the last quarter of a century-a territory seven times the size of France, or perhaps ten times that size, can be governed by a cen
tral capital only so long as the population continues scanty, powerless, and poor. But if Mexico had a population proportionate to France, and there is no reason for doubting its capacity of supporting such a population, the capital would govern a territory containing little less than three hundred millions of men; an obvious impossibility, where those men were active, opulent, intelligent, and engaged in traffic with the world. The example of the Chinese population is not a contrary case. There the empire was old, the throne almost sacred, the imperial power supported by a large military establishment, the character of the people timid, and the country in a state of mental stagnation. Yet, even for China, great changes may be at hand.
But the whole subject is to be looked on in a more comprehensive point of view. There is a general shaking of nations. The Turk, the Egyptian, the African, and the Chinese, have all experienced an impulse within late years, which has powerfully influenced their whole system. That impulse is now going westward. The immense regions beyond the Atlantic are now commencing the second stage of that existence, of which their discovery by Europe was the first. The language, the habits and history, the political feelings of England, are becoming familiar to them. They have begun their national education in the great school of self-government, with England for their teacher; and however tardy may be the pupilage, or however severe the events which turn the theory into example, we have strong faith in the conception, that all things will finally work together for good, and that a spirit of regeneration is already sent forth on its mighty mission to the New World as to the Old, to the "bond as to the free;" to those whom misgovernment has enfeebled, and superstition has debased, as to those who, possessing the original advantages of civilisation and religion, have struggled their difficult way to increasing knowledge, truth, and freedom, and whose progress has alike conferred on them the power, and laid upon them the duty, of being the moral leaders of Mankind.
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DEAR little Isle of ours! your very clouds,
Ranged in the east and battlemented black,
White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,
Tumbling tumultuous o'er the western hills,
Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,
Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,
Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing still
Through all the seasons, as they come and go,-
Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,
Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear-glinting Spring.
Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,
Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.
Desolate he who, with his means abridged,
And wants reduced, yet pride of property
Still unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank
Of his ancestral house, gloomily vast
Beyond his need,-dwells with the faded ghost
Of former greatness. There the bellied spider,
That works in cool and silent palaces,
Has halls his own. The labyrinthine rooms
Seem haunted all. Mysterious laden airs
Move the dim tapestries drearily. And shapes
Spectral at hollow midnight beckoning glide
Down the far corridors, and faint away.
Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,
And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;
There's natural health, there's moral healing in
The hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!
But oft I wish a chamber in the black
Castle of Indolence, far in, where spark
Of prying light ne'er comes, nor sound of cock
Is heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,
Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing fly
That, by the snoring member undeterred,
Aye settles on your nose's tickled tip
Tormentingly. Deep in that charmed rest
Laid, I could sleep the weary world away,
Months at a time—so listless fancy thinks.
Oh! curse of sleeplessness! Haggard and pale,
The tyrant Nero, see him from his bed
Wandering about, haunting the long dim halls,
And silent stairs, at midnight, startled oft
At his own footsteps, like a guilty thing
Sharp turning round aghast. The palace sleeps,
And all the city sleeps, all save its lord.
Then looks he to the windows of the east,
Wearily watching for the morning light,
That comes not at his will. Down on his bed
He flings himself again. His eyeballs ache;
His temples throb; his pillow's hot and hard;
And through his dried brain thoughts and feelings drift,
Tumultuous, unrestrained, carrying his soul
On the high fever's surge. The imperial world
For one short dewy hour of healing sleep!
Worlds cannot buy the blessing. Up he reels,
And staggers forth. Slow-coming day at length
Has found him thus. Its living busy forms,
Its turms, its senators, its gorgeous guests,
Bowing in homage from barbaric isles,
Its scenes, its duties, are to him a strange
Phantasmagoria: Through its ghastly light
Wildered he lives. To feel and be assured
He yet has hold on being, with the drugs
Of monstrous pleasures, cruelty and lust,
He drugs his spirit; ever longing still
For the soft hour of eve, if sleep may come
After another day has worn him out.
But images of black, bed-fellows strange,
Lie down with him; drawing his curtain back,
Unearthly shapes, and unimagined faces,
Look in upon him, near down on his eyes,
Nearer and nearer still, till they are forced
To wink beneath the infliction, like a weight
Of actual pressure, solid, heavy, felt.
But winking hard, a thousand coloured motes
Begin to dance confused, and central stars,
And spots of light, welling and widening out
In rings concentric, peopling all the blind
Black vacancy before his burning balls.
But soon they change to leering antic shapes,
And dread-suggesting fiends. Dim, far away,
Long dripping corpses, swaying in the waves,
Slowly cast up, arise; gashed, gory throats,
And headless trunks of men, are nearer seen,
And every form of tragic butchery-
The myriad victims of his power abused
By sea and land. To give their hideousness
Due light, a ceiling of clear molten fire,
Figured with sprawling imps, begins to glow
Hot overhead, casting a brazen light
Down on the murdered crew. All bent on him,
Near, nearer still, they swarm, they crowd, they press;
And round and round, and through and through the rout,
The naked Pleasures, knit with demons, dance.
Wild whirls his brain anew. This night is as
The last, and far more terrible. Guilt thus,
And sleeplessness, more than perpetuate
Each other-dreadful lineage! Let us hope,
For human nature, that the man was mad.
Up from your blameless sleep, go forth and meet
The glistening morn, over the smoking lawn
Spangled, by briery balks, and brambled lanes,
Where blows the dog-rose, and the honey-suckle
Hangs o'er the heavy hedge its trailing sheaf
Of stems and leaves, tendrils and clasping rings,
Cold dews, and bugle blooms, and honey smells,
And wild bees swinging as they murmur there.
The speckled thrush, startled from off the thorn,
Shakes down the crystal drops. With spurring haste,
The rabbit scuds across the grassy path;
Pauses a moment-with its form and ears
Arrect to listen; then, with glimpse of white,
Springs through the hedge into the ferny brake.
Or taste the freshness of the pastoral hills
On such a morn: Light scarfs of thinning mist
In graceful lingerings round their shoulders hang;
New-washed and white, the sheep go nibbling up
The high green slopes; a hundred gurgling rills,
Sparkling with foam-bells, to your very heart
Send their delicious coolness; hark! again,
The cuckoo somewhere in the sunny skirts
Of yonder patch of the old natural woods;
With sudden iron croak, clear o'er the gray
Summit, o'erhanging you, with levell'd flight,
The raven shoots into the deep blue air.
Lo! in the confluence of the mountain glens,
The small gray ruin of an ancient kirk.
"Twas the first kirk, so faithful reverence tells,
Of Scotland's Reformation: And it drew,
Now as before, from all the hills around,
The worshippers; till, in a richer vale,
To suit the populous hamlet rising there,
A larger, nearer parish church was built.
Thus was the old one left. But there it stands,
And there will stand till the slow tooth of Time
Nibble it all away; for it is fenced
Completely round, not with just awe alone,
But superstitious fears, the abuse of awe
In simple minds: Strange judgments, so they say,
Have fallen on those who once or twice have dared
To lay their hands upon its holy stones
For secular uses, and remove its bell.
With such excess of love-we'll blame it not-
Does Scotland love her Church. Be it so still
And be its emblem still the Burning Bush!
Bush of the wilderness! See how the flames
Bicker and burn around it; but a low
Soft breath of the great Spirit of Salvation
Blows gracious by, and the dear little Bush,
The desert Bush, in every freshened leaf
Uncurled, unsinged in every flowery bud,
Fragrant with heavenly dews, and dropping balsams
.Good for the hurt soul's healing, waves and rustles,
Even in the very heart of the red burning,
In livelier green and fairer blossoming.
Earth sends her soft warm incense up to heaven;
The birds their matins sing. Joining the hymn,
The tremulous voice of psalms from human lips
Is heard in the free air. You wonder where,
And who the worshippers. Behold them now,
Down in the grassy hollow lowly seated,
Close by the mountain burn-an old gray man,
His head uncovered, and the Book of life
Spread on his knee, a female by his side,
His aged wife, both beggars by their garb,
With frail cracked voices, yet with hearts attuned
To the immortal harmonies of faith,
And hope, and love, in the green wilderness
Praising the Lord their God—a touching sight!
High in the Heavenly House not made with hands,
The archangels sing, angels, and saints in white,
Striking their golden harps before the Throne;
But, in the pauses of the symphony
A voice comes up from Earth, the simple psalm
Of those old beggars, heard by the Ear of God
With more acceptance than hosannahs sung
In blissful jubilee. 'Tis hard to think
The people of the Lord must beg their bread;
Yet happy they who, poor as this old twain
On earth, like them, have laid fast titled hold
Upon the treasures of Eternity!
Her nest is here: But ah! the cunning thing,
See where our White-throat, like the partridge, feigns
A broken wing, thick fluttering o'er the ground,
And tumbling oft, to draw you from her brood
Within the bush. Now that's a lie, my birdie!
Your wing's not broken; but we'll grant you this,-
The lie's a white one, white as your own throat.
Yet how should He who is the Truth itself,
And whose unquestioned prompting instinct is,
Implant deceit within your little breast,
And make you act it, even to save your young?
The whole creation groans for man, for sin,
And death its consequence: We're changed to you
In our relations, birdie; as a part
Of that primeval ill, we rob your nest.
To meet this change, and in God's own permission
Of moral wrong, was it, that guile was given
Even to the truest instinct of your love;
And your deceit is our reflected sin ?
Subtle philosopher, or sound divine,
'Tis a grave question; can you answer it?
The more we wonder at this curious warp
From truth, the more we see the o'erruling law
Of natural love in all things, which will be
A fraud in instinct, rather than a flaw
In care parental. Oh! how gracious good,
That all the generations, as they rise,
Of living things, are not sustained by one
Great abstract fiat of Benevolence;
But by a thousand separate forms of love,
All tremblingly alive: The human heart,
With all its conduits and its channel-pipes,
Warm, flowing, full, quiveringly keen and strong
In all its tendrils and its bloody threads,
Laying hold of its children with the fast
Bands of a man; fish, bird, beast, reptile, insect,
The wallowing, belching monsters of the deep,
Down to the filmiest people of the leaf,
Are all God's nurses, and draw out the breast,
Or brood for Him. Oh! what a system thus
Of active love, of every shape and kind,
Has been created, from the Heart of Heaven
Extended, multiplied, personified
In living forms throughout the Universe!
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