lady, all blazing with jewels, and whom everybody seemed to worship, would really sing his little song?

11. Breathless he waited the band, the whole band, struck up a little plaintive melody; he knew it, and clapped his hands for joy. And oh, how she sang it! It was so simple, so mournful, so soul-subduing. Many a bright eye dimmed with tears; and naught could be heard but the touching words of that little song—oh, so touching!

12. Pierre walked home as if he were moving on the air. What cared he for money now? The greatest singer in all Europe had sung his little song, and thousands had wept at his grief.

13. The next day he was frightened at a visit from Madame Malibran. She laid her hand on his yellow curls, and turning to the sick woman, said: "Your little boy, madam, has brought you a fortune. I was offered this morning, by the best publisher in London, three hundred pounds for his little song; and after he has realized a certain amount from the sale, little Pierre, here, is to share the profits. Madam, thank God that your son has a gift from Heaven.”

14. The noble-hearted singer and the poor woman wept together. As to Pierre, always mindful of Him who watches over the tried and tempted, he knelt down by his mother's bedside and uttered a simple but eloquent prayer, asking God's blessing on the kind lady who had deigned to notice their affliction.

15. The memory of that prayer made the singer even more tender-hearted; and she who was the idol of England's nobility went about doing good. And in her early, happy death, he who stood by her bed, and smoothed her pillow, and lightened her last moments by his undying affection, was the little Pierre of

former days-now rich, accomplished, and most talented composer of his day.

All honor to those great hearts who, from their high stations, send down bounty to the widow and to the fatherless child.

1. THE great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, and to furnish a refined pleasure. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and

power.

2. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations* of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years; of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a football; of starry hosts, suns like our own, numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through infinite spaces, with a velocity compared with which the cannon-ball is a wayworn, heavy-paced traveler.

3. Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories

*The movements of the heavenly bodies are very nearly but not quite uniform. There are slight variations, which must be taken into account to secure accurate results. Some of these variations stretch over very long periods, even whole centuries. Secular equations are the corrections required by variations of this kind. Secular is derived from seculum, a Latin word, meaning an age or century.

for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston, and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning.

4. Everything around was wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night; the sky was without a cloud; the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly discovered glories from the naked eye in the south; the steady Pointers far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign.

5. Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sisterbeams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn.

6. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle.

Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his course.

7. I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who in the morning of the world went up to the hilltops of central Asia, and, ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of his hand. But I am filled with amazement, when I am told that in this enlightened age, and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and yet say in their hearts, "There is no God."

EDWARD EVERETT.

VI. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. HENRY KING (1842) is an eminent journalist. He is a native of Ohio, but spent his early life in Hancock county, Illinois. He received an academic education only. He learned the printer's trade, at which he worked in Carthage and Quincy. Later he studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but he has never followed the profession. He moved to Topeka, Kansas, in 1869, where he edited various newspapers for a number of years. He was also while there editor of the Kansas Magazine, a scholarly and meritorious publication. In 1887 he began editorial work on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1897 he became its managing editor. He is regarded as one of the able and scholarly writers among American journalists, and his editorials are quoted by the press of the nation.

1. MR. JEFFERSON was only thirty-three years of age when he wrote the Declaration; and it bears all the marks of a mind in the May period of expression. It is what, if written in our day, would be called "gushing." And yet it no doubt accurately reflected, in style, the thought and feeling of the time. The popular head and heart were both "touched to fine issues" at that juncture. A new political faith was germinating; a new form of government was developing; a new nation was about to be born. These things could not find utterance in common speech, for they were not common things. The heroic, the progressive, is the florid, the poetic. To enunciate a great principle, to confront a great peril, is for the man to lift himself above himself; and the daily tongue, with its dull monotony, no longer answers his purpose. The Declaration was the soul of a people asserting its inherent right and its fixed resolve to be; and it naturally took a shape in keeping with the grandeur of the act and the occasion.

2. Mr. Jefferson wrote from the bottom of his theme upwards, and his words were intended for the whole world through all time. There is no bravado and no flippancy in his great work. It is earnest, but not extravagant; brilliant in parts, but frivolous in none. Franklin would have written it differently, no doubt; and so would Sherman; or Adams; or Livingston, possibly. But it may be reasonably questioned whether either of them was so well fitted, in view of all that was to happen, for drafting such a document as was the man to whom the task was by common consent assigned. Jefferson's was one of the very few minds which grasped the full significance of the separation from the mother country. It was to him not merely a local affair, involving the happiness and liberty of a few millions of colonists; but a movement in the