were wrong in complaining. The thinker ought to accept with. simplicity and calmness the centre in which Providence has placed him.

Whatever may be the shames of the present instant, whatever may be the blows by which the shifting gear of events may strike us, whatever may be the apparent desertion or the momentary lethargy of minds, none of us democrats will disown this magnificent epoch in which we live, the masculine age of humanity. Let us proclaim this aloud, let us proclaim it in our fall and in our overthrow, this century is the grandest of centuries; and do you know why? because it is the sweetest. This century, the immediate and the first issue of the French Revolution, freed the slave in America, elevated the pariahs in Asia, extinguished the funeral-pile in India, and crushed the last firebrands at the martyr's stake in Europe; is civilizing Turkey, is causing the gospel to penetrate even to the refutation of the Koran; elevates woman, subordinates the right of might to the might of right; suppresses piracies, softens suffering, makes the galleys wholesome, throws the red branding-iron into the sewer, condemns the death penalty, takes the ball from the foot of the galley-slave, abolishes corporal punishment, degrades and dishonors war, takes the edge away from the Dukes of Alva and the Charles the Ninths, tears out the claws of tyrants.

This century proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people and consecrates man. In art it has all varieties of genius: writers, orators, poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, painters, statuaries, musicians, majesty, grace, power, strength, brilliancy, depth, color, form, style.

It reinvigorates itself at once in the real and in the ideal, and carries in its hand those two thunderboltsthe true and the beautiful.

In science it performs every miracle. It makes saltpetre out of cotton, of steam a horse, of the voltaic pile a workman, of the electric fluid a messenger, of the sun a painter; it waters itself with subterranean waters till it warms itself with central fire; it opens on the two infinities those two windows-the telescope on the infinitely great, the microscope on the infinitely littleand it finds in the first abyss stars, and in the second insects, which prove God to it. It suppresses duration, it suppresses space, it suppresses suffering; it writes a letter from Paris to London, and it has the answer in ten minutes; it amputates a man's thigh while the man is singing and smiling. It has only to realize and it is close upon ita progress which is nothing at the side of the other miracles which it has already done; it has only to find the means to propel in a mass of air a bubble of air still lighter; it has already secured the air-bubble, and it holds it imprisoned; it has only to find the impelling force, only to make the vacuum before the balloon, for example, only to burn the air before it, as the rocket would; it has only to resolve in some such way this problem, and it will resolve it. And do you know what will happen then? At that very azure, men are mingled in the heavens. Until this last progress, see the point to which this century has brought civilization.-Victor Hugo.

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs!

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane

It pours and pours;

And swift and wide,

With a muddy tide,

Like a river down the gutter roars

The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks

At the twisted brooks;

He can feel the cool

Breath of each little pool;

His fevered brain

Grows calm again,

And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

From the neighboring school

Come the boys,

With more than their wonted noise

And commotion;

And down the wet streets

Sail their mimic fleets,

Till the treacherous pool

Engulfs them in its whirling

And turbulent ocean.

In the country on every side,

Where, far and wide,

Like a leopard's spotted and tawny hide,
Stretches the plain,

To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land

The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale

The clover-scented gale

And the vapors that arise

From the well-watered and smoking soil.

For this rest in the furrow after toil,

Their large and lustrous eyes

Seem to thank the Lord,

More than man's spoken word.

Near at hand,

From under the sheltering trees,

The farmer sees

His pastures and his fields of grain,

As they bend their tops

To the numberless beating drops

Of the incessant rain.

He counts it as no sin

That he sees therein

Only his own thrift and gain.

These, and far more than these,
The Poet sees!

He can behold

Aquarius old

Walking the fenceless fields of air,
And from each ample fold

Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere

The showery rain.

As the farmer scatters his grain,
He can behold

Things manifold

That have not yet been wholly told,

Have not been wholly sung nor said.
For his thought, that never stops,

Follows the water-drops

Down to the graves of the dead,

Down through chasms and gulfs profound,

To the dreary fountain-head

Of lakes and rivers underground;

And sees them, when the rain is done,

On the bridge of colors seven

Climbing up once more to heaven,

Opposite the setting sun.

Thus the Seer,

With visions clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear

In the perpetual round of strange,

Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth,

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;