times, I have heard the dubious tones of a guitar, and the notes of a single voice rising from some solitary street, and have pictured to myself some youthful cavalier serenading his lady's window; a gallant custom of former days, but now sadly on the decline, except in the remote towns and villages of Spain.

6. Such are the scenes that have detained me for many an hour, loitering about the courts and balconies of the castle, enjoying that mixture of reverie and sensation which steal away existence in a southern climate, and it has been almost morning before I have retired to my bed and been lulled to sleep by the falling waters of the fountain of Lindaraxa.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

XXXII. I SHALL MISS THE CHILDREN.

1. WHEN the lessons and tasks are all ended,
And the school for the day is dismissed,
And the little ones gather around me
To bid me good-night and be kissed;
Oh, the little white arms that encircle
My neck in a tender embrace!
Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven,

Shedding sunshine of love on my face!

2. And when they are gone I sit dreaming
Of my childhood too lovely to last,
Of love that my heart will remember
When it wakes to the pulse of the past,
Ere the world and its wickedness made me
A partner of sorrow and sin,

When the glory of God was about me

And the glory of gladness within.

3. Oh, my heart grows weak as a woman's,
And the fountains of feeling will flow,
When I think of the paths steep and stony,

Where the feet of the dear ones must go;
Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them,
Of the tempest of Fate blowing wild:
Oh, there is nothing on earth half so holy
As the innocent heart of a child.

4. They are idols of hearts and of households,
They are angels of God in disguise;
His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses,
His glory still gleams in their eyes;

Oh! those truants from home and from heaven,
They have made me more manly and mild,
And I know how Jesus could liken

The kingdom of God to a child.

5. I ask not a life for the dear ones
All radiant, as others have done,

But that life may have just enough shadow
To temper the glare of the sun.

I would pray God to guard them from evil,
But my prayer would bound back to myself:
Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner,
But a sinner must pray for himself.

6. The twig is so easily bended,

I have banished the rule and the rod;
I have taught them the goodness of knowledge,
They have taught me the goodness of God.

My heart is a dungeon of darkness,
Where I shut them from breaking a rule;
My frown is sufficient correction,

My love is the law of the school.

7. I shall leave the old house in the autumn,
To traverse its threshold no more:
Ah! how shall I sigh for the dear ones
That meet me each morn at the door;
I shall miss the "good-nights" and the kisses,
And the gush of their innocent glee,
The group on the green, and the flowers

That are brought every morning to me.

8. I shall miss them at morn and at even,
Their song in the school and the street;
I shall miss the low hum of their voices,
And the tramp of their delicate feet.
When the lessons and tasks are all ended,
And Death says, "The school is dismissed!"
May the little ones gather around me,

To bid me good-night, and be kissed!

C. M. DICKINSON.

Women know

The way to rear up children (to be just);
They know a simple, merry, tender knack

Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,

And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words;
Which things are corals to cut life upon,
Although such trifles.

-Mrs. Browning.

XXXIII. NO EXCELlence WITHOUT LABOR.

WILLIAM WIRT (1772-1834) was born at Bladensburg, Maryland. His father was of Swiss nationality and his mother of German ancestry. He first practiced law in Virginia, and came in time to be United States district attorney for Virginia. He was for twelve years (18171829) Attorney-General of the United States. In 1832 he received the Anti-Masonic nomination for President of the United States. He gained much reputation at the bar in the famous trial of Aaron Burr. His best-known writings are his Letters of a British Spy, and the Life of Patrick Henry.

1. THE education, moral and intellectual, of every individual must be chiefly his own work. Rely upon it that the ancients were right; both in morals and intellect we give their final shape to our own characters, and thus become emphatically the architects of our own fortunes. How else could it happen that young men who have had precisely the same opportunities. should be continually presenting us with such different results, and rushing to such opposite destinies? Difference in talent will not solve it, because that difference very often is in favor of the disappointed candidate.

2. You shall see issuing from the walls of the same college, nay, sometimes from the bosom of the same family, two young men, of whom the one shall be admitted to be a genius of high order, the other scarcely above the point of mediocrity; yet you shall see the genius sinking and perishing in poverty, obscurity, and wretchedness; while, on the other hand, you shall observe the mediocre plodding his sure but slow way up the hill of life, gaining steadfast footing at every step, and mounting at length to eminence and distinction, an ornament to his family, a blessing to his country. Now, whose work is this?

Manifestly their own. They are the architects of their respective fortunes.

3. The best seminary of learning that can open its portals to you can do no more than afford you the opportunity of instruction; but it must depend at last on yourselves whether. you will be instructed or not, or to what point you will push your instruction. And of this, be assured, I speak from observation a certain truth: there is no excellence without great labor. It is the fiat of fate, from which no power of genius can absolve you.

4. Genius unexerted is like the poor moth that flutters around the candle till it scorches itself to death. If genius be desirable at all, it is only of that great and magnanimous kind which, like the condor of South America, pitches from the summit of Chimborazo above the clouds, and sustains itself at pleasure in that empyreal region with an energy rather invigorated than weakened by the effort.

5. It is this capacity for high and long-continued exertion, this vigorous power of profound and searching investigation, this careering and wide-spread comprehension of mind, and those long reaches of thought, that

"... pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon,

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,

And drag up drowned honor by the locks."

If little labor, little are our gains;

Man's fortunes are according to his pains.

WILLIAM WIRT.

--Herrick.