He has quarrelled with his neighbors, he has scourged his foes;
Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes,
Long-descended valiant lords whom the vulture knows,

On whose track the vulture swoops, when they ride in state
To break the strength of armies, and topple down the great:
Each of these my courteous servant, none of these my mate.

My father, counting up his strength, sets down with equal pen
So many head of cattle, head of horses, head of men;
These for slaughter, these for labor, with the how and when.

Some to work on roads, canals; some to man his ships;
Some to smart in mines beneath sharp overseers' whips;
Some to trap fur-beasts in lands where utmost winter nips.

Once it came into my heart and whelmed me like a flood,
That these, too, are men and women, human flesh and blood;
Men with hearts and men with souls, though trodden down
like mud.

Our feasting was not glad that night, our music was not gay;
On my mother's graceful head I marked a thread of gray;
My father frowning at the fare seemed every dish to weigh.

I sat beside them, sole princess in my exalted place;
My ladies and my gentlemen stood by me on the dais:
A mirror showed me I look old and haggard in the face;

It showed me that my ladies all are fair to gaze upon,
Plump, plenteous-haired, to every one love's secret lore is

known;

They laugh by day, they sleep by night; ah me, what is a throne ?

The singing men and women sang that night as usual,

The dancers danced in pairs and sets, but music had a fall,
A melancholy, windy fall as at a funeral.

Amid the toss of torches to my chamber back we swept;
My ladies loosed my golden chain; meantime I could have wept
To think of some in galling chains, whether they waked or slept

I took my bath of scented milk, delicately waited on
They burned sweet things for my delight, cedar and cinnamon,
They lit my shaded silver lamp, and left me there alone.

A day went by, a week went by. One day I heard it said :

Men are clamoring, women, children, clamoring to be fed ; Men like famished dogs are howling in the streets for bread."

So two whispered by my door, not thinking I could hear,
Vulgar, naked truth, ungarnished for a royal ear;
Fit for cooping in the background, not to stalk so near.

But I strained my utmost sense to catch this truth-
mark:

and

"There are families out grazing, like cattle in the park."
"A pair of peasants must be saved even if we build an ark."

A merry jest, a merry laugh, each strolled upon his way;
One was my page, a lad I reared and bore with day by day;
One was my youngest maid, as sweet and white as cream in
May.

Other footsteps followed softly with a weightier tramp;

Voices said: "Picked soldiers have been summoned from the

camp

To quell these base-born ruffians who make free to howl and stamp."

"Howl and stamp?" one answered: "they made free to hurl a stone

At the minister's state coach, well aimed and stoutly thrown." "There's work, then, for the soldiers, for this rank crop must

be mown."

"One I saw, a poor old fool, with ashes on his head,

Whimpering because a girl had snatched his crust of bread: Then he dropped; when some one raised him, it turned out he was dead."

"After us the deluge," was retorted with a laugh:

If bread's the staff of life, they must walk without a staff" "While I've a loaf they're welcome to my blessing and the chaff."

These passed. The king: stand up. Said my father, with a smile:

"Daughter mine, your mother comes to sit with you a while, She's sad to-day, and who but you her sadness can beguile?

He too left me. Shall I touch my harp now while I wait, (I hear them doubling guard below before our palace gate,) Òr shall I work the last gold stitch into my veil of state;

Or shall my woman stand and read some unimpassioned scene, There's music of a lulling sort in words that pause between; Or shall she merely fan me while I wait here for the queen?

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Again I caught my father's voice in sharp word of command: Charge!" a clash of steel: "charge again, the rebels stand. Smite and spare not, hand to hand; smite and spare not, hand to hand."

There swelled a tumult at the gate, high voices waxing higher ; A flash of red reflected light lit the cathedral spire;

I heard a cry for fagots, then I heard a yell for fire.

"Sit and roast there with your meat, sit and bake there with your bread,

You who sat to see us starve," one shrieking woman said: "Sit on your throne and roast with your crown upon your head."

Nay, this thing will I do, while my mother tarrieth,

I will take my fine-spun gold, but not to sew therewith,

I will take my gold and gems, and rainbow-fan and wreath;

T

With a ransom in my lap, a king's ransom in my hand,

I will go down to this people, will stand face to face, will stand Where they curse king, queen, and princess of this cursed land.

They shall take all to buy them bread, take all I have to give; I, if I perish, perish; they to-day shall eat and live;

I, if I perish, perish; that's the goal I half conceive:

Once to speak before the world, rend bare my heart and show The lesson I have learned, which is death, is life, to know.

- I, if I perish, perish; in the name of God, I go.

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI

A REMINISCENCE.

A FEW weeks since I stood on the walls of Fort Moutie, in Charleston harbor. The other fortresses, on the north and south sides of the barbor, were all in sight; and one of them, an object of special historical interest, about a mile distant, and a heap of ruins, was the famous Fort Sumter, the object of the first hostile shot fired in the late Rebellion.

Vividly to my mind came up another scene I had witnessed in this same harbor some fifty years before. On one of the most lovely mornings in June, our ship sailed down this harbor, bound to New York. We had some fifty passengers, southern gentlemen and ladies, escaping from the heat of the Sunny South, and seeking the cooler watering-places of the North. A splendid breeze was filling all our sails, and we were making a delightful outset in our voyage, when suddenly a loud shout of the chief mate roused the attention of all on board. A slave, a fine-looking young man, had secreted himself among the cotton-bales, in the hope of escaping the miseries of slavery. But he was doomed to a most bitter disappointment. The mate of the ship, in putting things to rights under deck, for the voyage, had found him, and dragged him from his place of concealment. And now the poor slave stood before us, his little bag of provisions by his side, the saddest picture of misery and despair.

The southern passengers gathered about him without a sign of sympathy for the miserable man, On the other hand, they made him the helpless victim of every species of scoff and insult the language could afford. The poor man stood there, and bore it all, his face a picture of suffering never to be forgotten. As South Carolina law fixed the severest penalties on the abduction of a slave, the captain of the ship backed his topsails, and signalled for the pilot, who had just left us, to return. I saw the poor slave go down upon the deck of the pilot-boat, to he returned to his master.

Back to his master! No! He would take the terrible alternative of meeting another Master. He leaped into the sea, sank into its depths, and was seen no more!

No funeral knell was sounded over the death and burial of the poor slave. But in that very harbor, and over the very spot of that watery grave, was afterward sounded the funeral knell of that system of oppression which caused that sad suicide. The thunder of cannon did not wake him from his slumbers,

but did awake a mighty nation to the shame and wrong of slavery. Shot and shell flew fiercely over the very spot where I saw the last scene of a life that oppression extinguished. The roar of hostile armaments was a dirge, announcing the approaching end of a system of wrong and misery the greatest that man can afflict upon his fellows.

H. B. HOOKER, 1).D.

THE LAST HYMN.

THE Sabbath day was ending, in a village by the sea,
The uttered benediction touched the people tenderly,

And they rose to face the sunset in the glowing, lighted west, And then hastened to their dwellings for God's blessed boon of rest.

But they looked across the waters, and a storm was raging

there;

A fierce spirit moved above them, the wild spirit of the air, → And it lashed and shook and tore them, till they thundered, groaned, and boomed,

J

And alas for any vessel in their yawning gulfs entombed!

Very anxious were the people on that rocky coast of Wales, 'Lest the dawns of coming morrows should be telling awful tales, When the sea had spent its passion and should cast upon the

shore

Bits of wreck and swollen victims, as it had done heretofore.

With the rough winds blowing round her, a brave woman 'strained her eyes,

And she saw along the billows a large vessel fall and rise.
Oh! it did not need a prophet to tell what the end must be,
For no ship could ride in safety near that shore on such a sea.

4

Then the pitying people hurried from their homes and thronged the beach.

Oh! for power to cross the waters and the perishing to reach! Helpless hands were wrung for sorrow, tender hearts grew cold with dread,

And the ship, urged by the tempest, to the fatal rock-shore sped.