thing on the track again! It's a fly-it's a frog-it's a child—it's a man-six feet high-a P. M.—an M. C. On we go. We have passed him. We have left him. Five feet high-four feet high-a child-a frog-a bug-a nothing! What pranks Distance can play with man and his dignities, as the cars drive rattling on. Your D. D. is dwindled down; your P. M. is past minding; your M. C. is microscopic curiosity.

Sometimes, a little village parts the foliage of an "Oak Opening,” and peeps out to see the train go by. Here another skulks like a quail; you catch a glimpse of it as you thunder past, and one cannot help thinking it will venture forth again when he is fairly out of sight. A third, a bold vixen, stands beside the track waiting for the cars. You whirl by a fourth-houses set down any where and very uneasy, as if just camped for the night, and glad to move "westward ho!" in the morning.

And so they work wonders-the wonderful Twoall along the way, slipping hamlets, towns, marts, on the iron string, as if they were so many beads, in a necklace for a Camanche's wearing. Why, one meets six-rail fences every day, "staked and ridered" at that, plunging along like quarter horses. Strips

of narrow yellow ribbon widen into broad acres of golden grain; scattered skeins of silk Floss are webbed into running rivers; paltry patches of green, are whole "sections sections" of red clover; little out-door Ovens, arched Depots of two hundred feet; the Railway itself, in the magic of Distance, seems the double scoring of the beautiful fields and lakes and towns along which those lines are drawn, that the Compositor may 'set them up' in CAPITALS, every one; and the Engine, a glossy black beetle creeping over the disc of the Prairies; "the transit" of iron, that Astronomers never foretold.

Lo! there, "the breathing thought,"

The poets sang of old,

And there "the burning word,"

No tongue had fully told,
Until the magic hand,

The bold conception wrought,

In iron and in fire it stands

The world's embodied THOUGHT.

Lo! in the panting thunders,
Hear the echo of the Age!

Lo! in the globe's broad breast, behold
The poet's noblest page!

For in the brace of iron bars,

That weld two worlds in one,

The couplet of a nobler lay

Than bards have e'er begun!

But there are points in sight of the dull port of Earth, whence your pendulums and plungings would be motionless as the pulse of the dead-swing as they might, through tremendous arcs, with a Radius that would curve around the wORLD, they would be motionless still, as the caldrons that bubble amid the Maples in March-points, whence the leaves in the book of Time seem strangely displaced, and June and December-blank leaf and Vignette-flutter side by side. June and December! A synonyme for an arc of one hundred and ninety millions of miles -an arc, that woven into a blue scarf for earth, could be flung over it from Ursa Major to the Southern Crosscould bind it in a true love-knot to the Flag-star of Even; could flutter a fringe in the blaze of the Sun, and leave signals, aye, and badges beside, for all the Engineers that ever carried a field-book," or sported a Theodolite.

Fourth of July.

There was a

came

DAY broke in thunder, this morning. crashing of spars and a roaring of great guns round the horizon; and blasts of music drifting with the downy clouds; a brood of summer showers off' and filled the sky; and triumphal arches were heaved up on the great leverage' of the Sun. It's the FOURTH OF JULY: the day they brought the iron cradle home, wherein to rock young LIBERTY; the day when the whisper breathed beneath the shadow of "King's Mountain" in the "old North State," went crashing in echoes round the entire world—

Oh! wild was that dawning! No welcome of words,
No star to foretell it-no warbling of birds-

No fading of shadows-no murmur of rills

No flashing of pinions-no flushing of hills;

But the day broke in thunder o'er land and o'er sea,

And from cloud and from shroud, rang the song of the Free. Oh! that song of wrought iron no bard could have made, With its surging of banner and gleaming of blade;

With its column of cloud, and its pillar of flame,

And the clods 'neath the dead, turned the color of fame!

Wonderfully rare were the trinkets strown about that cradle; the

Land of the vale, the viol, and the vine,

flung over the water a snowy lily from the gardens of FRANCE; old HOLLAND sent a plume, plucked from the bleeding breast of her own Stork; WOMAN Wove a banner “without spot or wrinkle;" the FOREST uprooted an evergreen Pine for token; the MOUNTAIN chained an Eagle, right from his rocky eyrie, for emblem; HEAVEN cast down a handful of stars-a dozen and one-for the Flag that lay there; and GOD gave unmuffled drums for hearts, and right for the strong arm.

It is the Fourth of July all over the Farm: Four Blue Birds shook off their allegiance this morning; two Robins declared themselves "free and independent," of the parent nest; two colonies of bees went out from the old Hives. A battalion of red-birds paraded in full uniform; a Jay in a jaunty cap pronounced an Oration from a rocking spray in the Orchard; the winds and the woods played a grand anthem; the roses made a prayer, and "Jemmy" sang a song. The Bobolinks rang little bells all day; Ceres marshaled her corn, rustling in silks, and gay with tassels; the bearded grain was out in its gold ; fireworks blazed at night over the meadow; and isn't it the Fourth of July all over the Farm?

It's the Fourth of July all over the World. The