and it is no wonder that there is not a spot to which an Englishman turns his eyes with so much pride as to Westminster; nor a spot which the traveller so well loves to visit.

5. One cannot but feel both gratitude and indignation here; gratitude for every noble effort in behalf of humanity, civilization, liberty, and truth, made by these sleepers; indignation at every base deed, every effort to quench the light of science or destroy freedom of thought, every outrage inflicted upon man, and every blow aimed against liberty by the oppressors of the race.

6. There is not a great author here who did not write for us; not a man of science who did not investigate truth for us; we have received advantage from every hour of toil that ever made these good and great men weary. A wanderer from the most distant and barbarous nation on earth cannot come here without finding the graves of his benefactors.

7. Those who love science and truth, and long for the day when perfect freedom of thought and action shall be the common heritage of man, will feel grateful, as they stand under these arches, for all the struggles, and all the trials to enlighten and emancipate the world, which the great who here rest from their labors have so nobly endured.

8. And, above all, the scholar who has passed his best years in study, will here find the graves of his teachers. He has long worshiped their genius; he has gathered inspiration and truth from their writings; they have made his solitary hours, which to other men are a dreary waste, like the magical gardens of Armida, "whose enchantments arose amid solitude, and whose solitude was everywhere among those enchantments." The scholar may wish to shed his tears alone, but he cannot stand by the graves of his masters in Westminster Abbey without weeping; they are tears of love and gratitude.

• Ar-mi'da.

LESSON XXII.

THE SAME SUBJECT, CONCLUDED.

1. OLD structure!

LESTER.

Round thy solid form

Have heaved the crowd, and swept the storm,

And centuries rolled their tide;
Yet still thou standest firmly there,
Thy gray old turrets stern and bare,
The grave of human pride.

2. Erect, immovable, sublime,

As when thou soaredst' in thy prime,
On the bold Saxon's sight;

Thou holdest England's proudest dead,
From him who there first laid his head,
"The royal anchoret."

3. Mysterious form, thy old gray wall
Has seen successive kingdoms fall,
And felt the mighty beat

Of Time's deep flood, as thrones, and kings,
And crowns, and all earth's proudest things,
It scattered at thy feet.

4. 'Tis vanished! "like a morning cloud,”
The throne, the king, the shouting crowd,
And here I stand alone;

And like the ocean's solemn roar
Upon some distant, desert shore,
A low, perpetual moan.

5. I seem to hear the steady beat
Of century-waves around my feet,
As generations vast

Are borne unto the dim-seen strand

Of that untrodden, silent land,

That covers all the past.

a Turrets; small towers. b This word should be pronounced in two syllables on

account of the measure. c Anch'or-et; a hermit, a recluse.

Here too are slumbering, side by side,
Like brother warriors true and tried,
Two stern and haughty foes;

Their stormy hearts are still; the tongue
On which enraptured thousands hung,
Is hushed in long repose.

.

LESSON XXIII.

LIFE IN SWEDEN.

LONGFELLOW.

1. LIFE in Sweden is for the most part patriarchal. Almost primeval simplicity reigns over this northern land, almost primeval solitude and stillness. You pass out from the gate of the city, and, as if by magic, the scene changes to a wild, woodland landscape. Around you are forests of fir. Overhead hang the long, fan-like branches, trailing with moss, and heavy with red and blue cones.

ver stream.

2. Under foot is a carpet of yellow leaves; and the air is warm and balmy. On a wooden bridge you cross a little silAnon you come forth into a pleasant and sunny land of farms. Wooden fences divide the adjoining fields. Across the road are gates,which are opened for you by troops of children. The peasants take off their hats as you pass. You sneeze, and they cry, God bless you. The houses in the villages and smaller cities are all built of hewn timber, and for the most part painted red.

3. The floors of the taverns are strewn with the fragrant tips of fir boughs. In many villages there are no taverns, and the peasants take turns in receiving travelers. The thrifty housewife shows you into the best chamber, the walls of which are hung round with rude pictures from the Bible; and brings you her heavy silver spoons wherewith to dip the cur dled milk from the pan.

4. You have oaten cakes baked some months before; or bread with anise seed and coriander in it, and perhaps a little

pine bark. Meanwhile the sturdy husband has brought his horses from the plow, and harnessed them to your carriage Solitary travelers come and go in uncouth one horse chaises. Most of them have pipes in their mouths, and hanging around their necks in front, a leathern wallet, wherein they carry tobacco.

5. You meet, also, groups o' peasant women, traveling homeward, or city-ward, in pursuit of work. They walk barefoot, carrying in their hands their shoes, which have high heels under the hollow of the foot, and soles of birch bark. Frequent, too, are the village churches, standing by the roadside, each in its own little garden of Gethsemane.a

6. In the parish register great events are doubtless recorded. Some old king was christened or buried in that church; and a little sexton, with a great rusty key, shows you the baptismal font, or the coffin. In the church-yard are a few flowers, and much green grass; and daily the shadow of the church spire, with its long tapering finger, counts the tombs, thus representing an index of human life, on which the hours and minutes are the graves of men.

7. The stones are flat, and large, and low, and perhaps sunken, like the roofs of old houses. On some are armorial bearings; on others only the initials of the poor tenants, with a date, as on the roofs of Dutch cottages. They all sleep with their heads to the westward. Each held a lighted taper in his hand when he died; and in his coffin were placed his little heart-treasures, and a piece of money" for his last journey.

8. Near the church-yard gate stands a poor-box, fastened to a post by iron bands, and secured by a padlock, with a sloping wooden roof to keep off the rain. If it be Sunday, the peasants sit on the church steps and con their psalm-books Others are coming down the road with their beloved pastor who talks to them of holy things from beneath his broad brimmed hat.

a Geth-sem'a-ne; a Scriptural allusion to the retired garden of Gethsemane near Je rusalem, in which Christ prayed before he was betrayed by Judas. This superation was also common to the ancient Romans and American Indians. c Journey; pasange from this another world of existence.

9. He speaks of fields and harvests, and of the parable of the sower that went forth to sow. He leads them to the good Shepherd, and to the pleasant pastures of the spirit-land. He is their patriarch, and, like Melchisedek, both priest and king, though he has no other throne than the church pulpit. The women carry psalm-books in their hands, wrapped in silk handkerchiefs, and listen devoutly to the good man's words.

LESSON XXIV.

THE SAME SUBJECT, CONCLUDED.

LONGFELLOW.

1. I MUST not forget the suddenly changing seasons of the northern clime. There is no long and lingering spring unfold. ing leaf and blossom one by one; no long and lingering autumn, pompous with many-colored leaves and the glow of Indian summers. But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in the corn, when winter, from the folds of trailing clouds, sows broad-cast over the land, snow, icicles, and rattling hail.

2. The days wane apace. Ere long the sun hardly rises

above the horizon, or does not rise at all. The moon and the stars shine through the day; only, at noon, they are pale and wan, and in the southern sky a red, fiery glow, as of sunset, burns along the horizon, and then goes out. And pleasantly under the silver moon, and under the silent, soleinn stars, ring the steel shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices, and the sound of bells.

3. And now the N. rthern Lights begin to burn, faintly at first, like sunbeams playing in the waters of the blue sea. Then a soft crimson glow tinges the heavens. There is a

a Indian Summer; that very fine, pleasant season of warm weather that usually oc curs in this latitude, near the end of October or the first of November. b To the inhab itants north of the Arctic Circle the sun neither rises nor sets for a certain time Northern Lights; that brilliant light seen in the north in the colder season, supposed to be occasioned by electricity.