Eddies of world-drift, Reason and passion Thought vainly places them. Where the conditionless? Who shall discover it? They, the conditioned, live,— They, and they only. When I shall strive no more, I shall be strongest, Thoughtless and will-less, Blown by the tempest, Beating out living's Futile resistance. Yonder the star dust Spirit what seekest, Granting thee separance, Not in the star-dust, That, oh, conditioned ones, Black in the blackness. Find I forever That which I am not- Death shall not conquer. By CECIL LOGSDAIL Pleasant as it is to revisit the memorable scenes of childhood after an absence of years passed in the most rapidly developing country in the world, a tinge of sadness is apt to color the traveller's thoughts and feelings because the old war horse, so to speak, seems unable to keep pace with the times and is fast falling out of the ranks in the battle of life. If the old customs and usages are still in vogue in many parts in England, and are yet full of interest to the poet and the man of letters, it cannot be denied that those who have become adopted sons of America find it almost impossible to reconcile themselves to old-country habits, and gladly return to their new homes, well satisfied that they have made a change for the better. Yet, in studying the rapid strides made by civilization in modern years, the perfection which this country has reached in the art of living, so far as material things are concerned, the enormous improvements effected in machinery and the infinite uses to which it is applied, the swift means of communication and transit on sea and land, and the wonderful possibilities of the future in process of realization, it is useful to be able to look at older cities and countries, to know that the old landmarks in the world's history are not yet obliterated, and to see what sort of persons our ancestors were from the living portraits of those who still cling to the ancient habits. with pathetic pride, and ridicule all modern innovations as new-fangled and even wicked. It is a wild December morning, gray with long banks of lowering clouds, threatening a fresh fall of snow to the ground already thickly covered; and as we cross a wooden bridge immediately on leaving the Coach and Horses, the half-way house between two market towns in the old countryshire, there is hardly a tree or a cottage in sight. The road on which we are travelling runs unbroken from the Humber to the city of Lincoln. It is as straight today as if a crow had mapped it out in its flight, and so regular in its undulations that it is evident the Romans, as they formed it, sank the ground at intervals for the purposes of protecting and hiding their encampments as they approached the capital, then the most flourishing city in England. On this same road Alfred Tennyson often travelled in boyhood's days on frequent visits to Lincoln minster, in whose aisles he loved to linger. About here he found the subjects for his "Northern Farmer," and from listening to the cathedral bells on New Year's eve the inspiration for "The Death of the Old Year." It is the day before Christmas; market day also, to make it doubly interesting, though most of the beasts have been sold long ago. As we speed along it seems as if not a single stone has been upturned; nay, the same sleepy little villages undisturbed, and even the same faces, appear to encounter us as of yore. It does not require a wide stretch of the imagination to depict the stage and mail coaches of olden times, the driver of each blowing the post horn as he pulled up at the wayside inns where the villagers gathered in groups to receive their letters waited anxiously for news of the latest battle, discussing the probability of a highway robbery having been perpetrated,-which was no uncommon occurrence. Oh, those good old days when letter writing was considered so great an accomplishment that our ancestors would spend weeks in the composition of their missives, or |