THE DESPONDENT INVENTOR (XVI CENTURY).

(From the "Last of the Barons.")

AWFUL is the duel between Man and the Age in which

he lives! For the gain of posterity this inventor, Adam Warner, had martyrized existence-and the children had pelted him as he passed along the streets! . . . Again he paced restlessly to and fro the narrow floor of his room. At last he approached the Model-the model of a mighty and stupendous invention; the fruit of no chimerical and visionary science-a great Promethean Thing, that, once matured, would divide the Old World from the New, enter into all operations of Labor, animate all the future affairs, color all the practical doctrines, of active men. He paused before it, and addressed it as if it heard and understood him: "My hair was dark, and my tread was firm, when one night, a Thought passed into my soul-a thought to make Matter the gigantic slave of Mind. Out of this thought, thou, not yet born after fiveand-twenty years of travail, wert conceived. My coffers were then full, and my name honored; and the rich respected and the poor loved me. Art thou a devil, that has tempted me to ruin; or a god that has lifted me above the earth? I am old before my time—my hair is blanched, my frame is bowed, my wealth is gone, my name is sullied. And all, dumb Idol of Iron and the Element, all for thee! I had a wife whom I adored-she died ; I forgot her loss in the hope of thy life. I have a child still-God forgive me-she is less dear to me than thou hast been. And now-" the old man ceased abruptly, and folding his arms, looked at the deaf iron sternly, as on a human foe. By his side was a huge hammer, employed in the toils of his forge; suddenly he seized and swung it aloft. One blow, and the labor of years was shattered

into pieces! One blow!-But the heart failed him, and the hammer fell heavily to the ground.

"Ay!" he muttered, " true-true; if thou, who hast destroyed all else, wert destroyed too, what were left me? Is it a crime to murder Man?-a greater crime to murder Thought, which is the life of all men. Come-I forgive

thee !"

And all that day, and all that night, the Enthusiast labored in his chamber, and the next day the remembrance of the hootings, the pelting, the mob, was goneclean gone from his breast. The Model began to movelife hovered over its wheels, and the Martyr of Science had forgotten the very world for which he, groaning and rejoicing, toiled! E. BULWER LYTTON.

THE GOOD OF IT.

(A CYNIC'S SONG.)

OME men strut proudly, all purple and gold,

SOME

Hiding queer deeds 'neath a cloak of good fame;

I creep along braving hunger and cold

To keep my heart stainless as well as my name.
So, so, where is the good of it?

Some clothe bare Truth in fine garments of words,
Fetter her free limbs with cumbersome state.

With me, let me sit at the lordliest boards,

"I love" means, I love; and "I hate " means, I hate. But, but, where is the good of it?

Some have rich dainties and costly attire,

Guests fluttering round them and duns at the door.

I crouch alone at my plain board and fire,

Enjoy what I pay for and scorn to have more.
Yet, yet, what is the good of it?

Some gather round them a phalanx of friends,
Scattering affection like coin in a crowd.
I keep my heart for the few Heaven sends,

Where they'll find my name writ when I lie in my shroud.

Still, still, where is the good of it?

Some toy with love; lightly come, lightly go;

A blithe game at hearts, little worth, little cost. I staked my whole soul on one desperate throw,

A life 'gainst an hour's sport. We played and I lost. Ha, ha, such was the good of it!

MORAL, ADDED ON HIS DEATH-BED.

Turn the past's mirror backward; its shadows removed,
The dim, confused mass becomes softened, sublime;
I have worked, I have felt, I have lived, I have loved,
And each was a step towards the goal I now climb.
Thou, God, Thou sawest the good of it!

DINAH MULOCK CRAIK.

IN

THE FORSAKEN GARDEN.

́N a coign of the cliff, between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge, between windward and lea,

Wall'd round with rocks as an inland island,

The ghost of a garden fronts to the sea.

A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses

The steep, square slope of the blossomless bed,

Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its

roses,

Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,

To the low, last edge of the long lone land. If a step should sound, or a word be spoken,

Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? So long have the gray, bare walks lain guestless,

Through branches and briars if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless Night and day.

The dense, hard passage is blind and stifled,
That crawls by a track none turn to climb

To the strait, waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touch'd not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.

Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry:
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither

Rings but the note of the sea-bird's song:
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt, bleak blossom of scentless breath;
Only the wind here hovers and revels

In a sound where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,

Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping

*

Years ago.
*

All are as one now, roses and lovers,

Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been, hovers

In the air now soft of a summer to be.

Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter,
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now and weep,
When, as they that are free now of weeping and laughter,
We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again forever:

Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones and thorns of the wild-ground growing,
When the sun and the rain live, these shall be
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing
Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumbles,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high-tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

Here now in his triumph when all things falter;

Stretch'd out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

Death lies dead.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

THERE

THE GOOD SON.

THERE is no virtue without a characteristic beauty to make it particularly loved of the good, and to make the bad ashamed of their neglect of it. To do what is right, argues superior taste as well as morals; and those whose practice is evil feel an inferiority of intellectual power and enjoyment, even where they take no concern for a principle.