senses, -one of little Ada, and the little room at the mill-house, and the sundry little words and little actions that had passed between them; when suddenly, like an unbidden spirit from the vasty deep, that visionary head rose up again before him; scowling over Ada's shoulder, and wearing a look blacker than the contusions with which it was disfigured, a look which pierced his very soul.

"Oh! dear," cried Tom again,-and all his courage and his patriotism oozed out at his finger ends; and "like a sick girl," he wished he were dead, or that he had never been born, or that Lower Fleecington were cooling its hot turmoil in a cold bath under the Atlantic waves; or that Sniggers and Winnegar and the Cat and Trumpet and the band of high souled patriots and the Grouselands, et hoc genus omne, were all at the devil together and he himself was once more cozily sitting in a little parlour, with his lost gold watch in his pocket, listening to the musical clacking of a mill.

And where was little Ada on this memorable day? applying with her little hand cooling lotions to the inflammatory bruises on her father's face and shoulders-hurts which were not after all so painful as the feelings of Ada's own gentle heart.

L'ANGE GABRIELLE!

THE sunbeams fall o'er ruined wall,
O'er stream, and plain, and fell,-
O'er forests wide, and lakes beside
Of far-famed La Chapelle.

The breezes sweep o'er ancient keep,
Where few may climb but they;
And o'er the hill, where'er they will
With leaves and flowerets play.

A stranger wends the hills among
Where German fraüleins dwell,—
I hear him sigh, as passing by

He whispers, "Ange Gabrielle !"

"Oh, wanderers free, that from the sea-
Whose waves thou holds't in sway,

So far from home do wildly roam,

Oh! happy breezes, stay!

"Where Antwerp's tower, 'mid shine or shower,
The city graceth well;

Oh, tell me now, lone breezes how,

You circled round Gabrielle !

"That dear dark hair, whose clustering folds

By winds were sweetly riven;

Those wondrous eyes, where beauty lies,

Of innocence and Heaven.

“That graceful figure, face, and form,
Oh, more than I can tell ;

A thousand wishes kind and true
For thee, dear Gabrielle !

"Some cheering rays are spread around,
To light a life of care,—

'Mid each bright star, most brilliant far
Thy memory shineth there.

"Oh, for a high enchanter's power,
A mighty wizard's spellj
To set me free, or chain to thee
Enchantress Gabrielle!

"Parisian, Prussian, Belgic dames,
Their beauty may be rare;

But thou, dear simple English girl,

How far beyond compare !

"While o'er the Rhine there sounds the chime

Of each cathedral bell,—

Though faint and few, I pen for you

These lines, sweet Gabrielle !"

IOTA.

GO ON.

My friend, George Radford, when I first knew him, had just become an active member of a certain business-committee, or executive, with which I was at the time connected. He remained during his membership a most indefatigable worker, but during the time immediately following his introduction, he seemed to perform his duties with a conscious pleasure and earnestness, as though they completely answered to his abilities, and he had at last attained to a position long desired and long prepared for. Yet after a while, though, as I said, he remained most diligent, and apparently performed the same duties in the same manner, I I could see that he himself had not in relation to them exactly the same feelings.

He seemed to have suffered what I can best describe as an evaporation of spirit and interest, and to be looking forward to something else to fill up the vacancy so caused. Or it might have been that his powers were outgrowing the demand upon them, and that he really wanted some greater work to exercise their strength. We soon became intimately acquainted, and, watching him closely, I found that both these things were partly true-for it is seldom that we act in obedience to one direct and defined motive, so seldom, indeed, that the man who does so is noted often as a man

of one idea, and we find it truer to human nature generally to be moved by the converging influence of different impulses.

I soon found that Radford was looking towards the duties of the office of manager or actuary, which were indeed very complicated, as nobler and more worthy of exertion than what he began to consider the dull routine of his own position. I felt something of a similar feeling myself, though, indeed, my aspirations took quite a different direction, so I could thoroughly appreciate and understand his feeling. In course of time he was placed in the position which he so much desired, and the same process was repeatedat first a complete seeming adaptation of work to power and satisfaction therewith; afterwards, a looking above and beyond, a superiority of the power over the work.

Still there was nothing painful in this. I have before now seen, aye, and often, a complete reversion of this order; a superiority of the work over the power, and that, indeed, was very, very painful, whether in the man or the child. I have seen it in the child, both at school and at work, set down to understand or regulate what was to him a complete mystery, and which he could not in the slightest degree comprehend. I have seen him helplessly grasping the outward form of the difficulty-either the language which to him represented no idea, or the machine spindle, which, to him, was a mere isolated teetotum with no end or aim, without it was to wind his own poor life away. I have seen it again in the man, when by constant drudgery from early morn till dewy eve, from day to day and from year to year, he has but just been able to satisfy his lowest material necessities, with no time or means to devote a single thought to any law or power of his higher nature. Whether in child or man, I care not how seldom I see such things again. Let man, the viceroy of the world, at least feel his mastership, and there is some hope; but let the blind, insensate matter, the intended instrument of his sovereignty, let that beat and tread him down, and all indeed is over.

However, as I said, with regard to Radford these things were in their true position. But what secured my attention to him most closely was, the admirable manner in which, while he felt and declared that the ordinary dnties of his position were to him growing ever more common-place and less ideal, he still regularly performed them; and this, so long as I knew him, was his characteristic. As servant, as master in low or high place, it was the

same.

I have known men who, seeming content with the work they

had to do, did it to the best of their power, and never looked beyond. Praiseworthy and useful men they were, yet I could never get up much admiration for them myself. They were like men set to run a race half round a course, who, when they had reached that distance, gave up running, and crawled along the remaining part of the way, their goal too short and too soon attained. On the other hand, I have met with some who were all aspiration and no performance, who seemed to think their powers too high to exercise upon the duties around them; and who, if the iron necessities of life did not bring them down, lapsed into empty dreamers, without even the gift of interpreting their dreams. How mighty and impassable, and yet seemingly narrow, a gulf, separates such men from the poet. The poet, too, dreams, but he has the divine power lent him of interpreting to the world his dreams in words of living beauty and of power.

But I saw in this character of Radford something of the true relation of the two habits of mind to each other and to life. I saw, also, in some degree manifested, the great idea of progress, which, while some vainly attempt to ridicule and some to deny, is yet one of the grand and central truths of man's nature, and so intimate is the relation of one part or power of that nature to another, that functions the most opposite unite to obtain a common end. How this restlessness and almost discontent with our present surroundings teaches us to look to higher and nobler ends, and raises us into a fitting spirit to attempt the accomplishment of greater things! At the same time, the faithful performance of the work which we have now to do, however humble it may appear, exercises, as it were, the duty-doing faculty of man, which, neglected, becomes incapable of action, but which, if duly fostered, daily grows in strength. So that, while distance lends a halo of beauty and allurement to the future, we are being prepared for a nearer connection with, and better performance of its duties—thus making progress, while beautiful in theory, is true and plain in practice; and points also to its grand culmination, the idea and belief in a future and higher stage of existence. For, while our ignorance of the form that life will take, partly obscures, and, at the same time, lends double interest to our conception of it, we need not fear but that there, also, we shall find a mission to fulfil and duties to perform, which a faithful life led here will strengthen and prepare us for.

ITALY.

"She wraps the purple round her outraged breast,
And e'en in fetters cannot be a slave."

THE very name of Italy is associated, in all cultivated minds, with everything that is beautiful and refining. Her vine-clad hills,

her bright, sunny skies, and the deep blue waves of the Mediterranean, as they ripple on her classic shores, link themselves with all that is poetical in our nature. Italy is not only the fatherland of the muse, but the perpetual abiding place, the natural home; transplanted to other lands poetry assumes the form of an exotic, that is in connection with the external material world of objects, which appeal most vividly to our senses. The poetic fancy is ever turning to this gifted land, as a plant does to the light, when partially deprived of this essential to its life and beauty.

Naturalists versed in the theoretic principles of vegetable life, affirm that certain types and species of plants have a primal local centre, from which they emanate, spreading in circles, diminishing in force as they are distant from this radiating centre. We may illustrate the poetic influence of Italy by a comparison with this scientific faet.

Poets appear to be born with an instinctive longing to visit this land, where rests the enshrined temple of ideal art; where the highest forms of intellectual beauty are manifested in the countless material productions of art. Surrounded by a natural atmosphere of life and liberty, Italian art, which has reached to a sublimity of comparative perfection, is robbed of its glories, when transported to the cold latitudes of the north. The examples we have of some of them, pent up like wild beasts, in collections, museums, &c., lose their native freedom and influence, and become toys and curiosities, except to the learned few who are able to appreciate them.

From the time of Milton to the present day, poets have paid their visits to Italy, with similar devotional feelings to those of the Arabian devotee, who visits the shrine of Mahomet at Mecca; and the practical influence it has had in ripening and developing the genius of a Milton, Byron, Shelly, or Rogers, or awakening a poetic fire in Goethe or Lamartine, is easily discoverable by a study of the productions of these authors. One of the most beautiful English poems of the present day, by Sydney Yendys, is based upon objects purely Italian. It seems as natural for a poet to visit Italy, as it does for an antiquarian to visit Stonehenge and Westminster Abbey,