It will be seen that this cento does not play fair. It alters, adds, and subtracts according to the exigencies of the moment. Even greater liberties are taken in the following, which was recently contributed to the Manchester Press, England, by one E. A. Marsh :

MY FAITH.

Tune.-"From Greenland's Icy Mountains."

I am a pilgrim stranger

And often far from home,

1 pass through toil and danger
Wherever I may roam.

I meet with opposition

And trials on each hand,
While publishing salvation,
As Jesus gave command.

And while I am proclaiming
Glad tidings from the Word,
Some understand its meaning

And start to serve the Lord,
While others will reject it

And turn their ears away,
Although God's Holy Spirit

Has plainly shown the way.

I teach that man is mortal,
But this some will deny,
And think such teachings sinful,
Although I tell them why;
I turn to revelation,

And there I find that man
Was dust at his creation,

And turns to dust again.

The serpent said in Eden,
"Ye shall not surely die;"
And men of every nation

Believe the same old lie.
Although God said to Adam
That" Thou shalt surely die,"
Yet few dare to believe Him
Or on His Word rely.

Man then is not immortal,
But patiently must strive

To gain a life eternal

Through Christ who makes alive.
In Him we have redemption
And may be saved to-day,
By seeking for salvation
Through Christ the living way.

It has been man's opinion
That when a good man dies
He enters into heaven,

Beyond the stars and skies;
Yet there's no promise given
That they shall thus receive
A home with Christ in heaven,
Though many thus believe.

The Saviour once ascended

To dwell at God's right hand,
When Gentile times have ended
Descends to take command:
He now is interceding

For vain and sinful man,
But soon He'll finish pleading
And come to earth again.

Heb. xi. 13.

Heb. xi. 9.
1. Pet. i. 17.

I. Pet. ii. II.
II. Cor. ii. 8, 9.

I. Pet. i. 7.
Rom. x. 10.
Mark xvi. 15.

Rom. x. 15.
Luke ii. 10.
Matt. xiii. 23.
Isa. Iv. 6, 7.
John xii. 48.

. II. Tim. iv. 4.
Eph. vi. 17.

Job iv. 17.
John iii. 19.
Luke x. 16.

1. Thess. v. 21.
1. Tim. iii. 16, 17.
Gen. ii. 7.
Gen. iii. 19.
Eccl. iii. 20.

Gen. iii. 1.
Gen. iii. 4.
1. Tim. iv. 2.
John viii. 44.
Gen. ii. 16.
Gen. ii. 17.
John v. 40.
Mark vii. 13.

I. Tim. vi. 16.
Rom. ii. 7.
John vi. 53.
John iii. 36.
1. Pet. i. 18.
Mark xvi. 15.

John v. 39.
John xiv. 6.

Mark vii. 8.
Job xiv. 10.
John iii. 13.
Acts ii. 24.
John xiii. 24.
John xiv. 1-3.
John vii. 33.
1. John v. 10-12.

Acts i. 11.
Heb. i. 3.
Luke xxi. 24.
Dan. vii. 13.
I. John ii. 1.
John ii. 2.
Rev. xxii. 12.
1. Thess. iv. 16.

The promise is recorded

That when He comes again
The saints will be rewarded
And in the Kingdom reign.
They then will be immortal
And roam the plains of light,
But sinners death eternal
Shall share in endless night.
The times of restitution

He then will usher in,
Amid great lamentation

His righteous reign begin,
He comes to take the Kingdom,
To rule on David's throne,
The Kingdom and dominion
He then will rule alone.

Though Israel has been scattered,
Yet from the Word we learn
They surely will be gathered
And to their land return.
'Tis then the restoration

Of Israel will take place,

They are a chosen nation
And of a royal race.

Rom. iv. 13.
Heb. ix. 28.
Matt. xvi. 27.
Dan. vii. 27.

I. Cor. xv. 53.
Rev. xxii. 5.
Rom. vi. 23.

Isa. i. 28.

Acts iii. 21.
Dan. ii. 44.
Rev. i. 17.
Isa. xxxii. 1.
Ezek. xxi. 25.

Luke i. 32.
Dan. vii. 14.
Ps. cx. 1, 2.

Ex. xxii. 15.
II. Tim. iv. 8.
Ezek. xxxiv. 11-28.
Ezek. xxxvii. 21-28.
Rom. xi. 26.
Acts i. 6.

Deut. x. 5.
Ps. lxxii. 1.

But the two following are not open to criticism on the same score:

WHAT IS LIFE?

What strange infatuation rules mankind,
What different spheres to human bliss assigned;
To loftier things your finer pulses burn,
If man would but his finer nature learn;
What several ways men to their calling have,
And grasp at life though sinking to the grave.
Ask what is human life! the sage replies,
Wealth, pomp, and honor are but empty toys:
We trudge, we travel but from pain to pain,
Weak, timid landsmen on life's stormy main :
We only toil who are the first of things,

From labor health, from health contentment springs;
Fame runs before us as the morning star,
How little do we know that which we are;

Let none then here his certain knowledge boast
Of fleeting joys too certain to be lost;
For over all there hangs a cloud of fear,
All is but change and separation here.

To smooth life's passage o'er its stormy way,
Sum up at night what thou hast done by day;
Be rich in patience if thou in gudes be poor;
So many men do stoope to sight unsure;
Choose out the man to virtue most inclined,
Throw envy, folly, prejudice behind.
Defer not till to-morrow to be wise,

Wealth heaped on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys;
Remembrance worketh with her busy train,

Care draws on care, woe comforts woe again;

On high estates huge heaps of care attend,

No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hand applaud what honor shuns to hear,
Who casts off shame should likewise cast off fear.
Grief haunts us down the precipice of years,

Virtue alone no dissolution fears;
Time loosely spent will not again be won,
What shall I do to be forever known?

But now the wane of life comes darkly on,
After a thousand mazes overgone;
In this brief state of trouble and unrest,
Man never is, but always to be blest;

Thine is the present hour, the past is fled,
O thou Futurity, our hope and dread;
How fading are the joys we dote upon!
Lo! while I speak the present moment's gone.

O thou Eternal Arbiter of things,
How awful is the hour when conscience stings,
Conscience, stern arbiter in every breast,
The fluttering wish on wing that will not rest!
This above all-To thine own self be true,
Learn to live well, that thou may'st die so too.
To those that list the world's gay scenes I leave;
Some ills we wish for, when we wish to live.

Notes and Queries.

Marsden.

Eliot.

Blair.
Oldham.

Akenside.
Percival.
Hillhouse.
Mallett.

Shakespeare.
J. Denham.
Spencer.
Young.

THE FATE OF THE GLORIOUS DEVIL

A glorious devil, large in heart and brain,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
The world forsaking with a calm disdain,
Majestic rises on the astonished sight.
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam,-
Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race!
High is his perch, but humble is his home,
Fast anchored in the deep abyss of space.

And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,
Where Punch and Scaramouch aloft are seen,
Where Science mounts in radiant car sublime,
And twilight fairies tread the circled green.
And, borne aloft by the sustaining blast,

Whom no man fully sees, and none can see,
'Wildered and weary, sits him down at last,
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.

I will not stop to tell how far he fled,

To view the smile of evening on the sea; He tried to smile, and, half succeeding, said, "I smell a loller in the wind," said he.

Tennyson.
Shakespeare.
Thomson.

Taite.

Wordsworth.

Rogers.
Hemans.
Collins.

Longfellow.
Prior.

Beattie.

Burns.

Wordsworth.

Hemans.

Crabbe.

Chaucer.

Collins.

Beattie.

Gray.

Campbell.

Bloomfield.

Goldsmith.
Rogers.
Burns.

Bloomfield.
Byron.

Falconer.

Thomson.

Joanna Baillie.
Byron.

Shelley.
Euripides.

Beattie.
Hemans.

Shakespeare.
H. Smith.

People's Friend, May, 1871.

These are about the best of their sort. It will be seen, however, that even the best are poor enough. If you want to make sense out of them you have to make-believe a good deal. Wherefore Laman Blanchard did a good work in burlesquing the art in a series of mosaic pieces published in George

He

Cruikshank's "Omnibus," which made no pretence to be be anything save nonsense. Mr. Blanchard' feigned that he found these poems among the manuscripts of one of Sir Fretful Plagiary's numerous descendants. thinks that if any reader should be reminded of poets past and present it can only be because the profusely-gifted bard has clustered together more remarkable and memorable lines than any of his predecessors. "That poem," Mr. Blanchard goes on to say, can be of no inferior order of merit, in which Milton would have been proud to have written one line, Pope would have been equally vain of the authorship of a second, Byron have rejoiced in a third, Campbell gloried in a fourth, Gray in a fifth, Cowper in a sixth, and so on to the end of the Ode; which thus realizes the poetical wealth of that well-known line of Sir Fretful's,

66

⚫ Infinite riches in a little room.'"

A couple of specimens will suffice. They are far more amusing than the genuine article; but, after all, that is no very great praise.

ON LIFE, ET CETERA.

Know, then, this truth, enough for man to know:
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow;

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow,
Retreating lightly with a lowly fear

From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

To err is human, to forgive divine,

And wretches hang that jurymen may dine

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
*
*

*

*

*

We ne'er shall look upon his like again,

For panting time toils after him in vain,

And drags, at each remove, a lengthening chain,
Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way

With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay!

WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.

Lives there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,

"Shoot folly as it flies"?
Oh, more than tears of blood can tell
Are in that word, farewell, farewell!
'Tis folly to be wise.

And what is friendship but a name,
That boils on Etna's breast of flame?
Thus runs the world away.
Sweet is the ship that's under sail
To where yon taper cheers the vale
With hospitable ray!

Drink to me only with thine eyes
Through cloudless climes and starry skies;
My native land, good-night!

Adieu, adieu, my native shore:

'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more--
Whatever is, is right!

Mossbacks, a sobriquet for the old-liners and fossils in the Democratic party, most common in Ohio, but also used in other parts of the country. They are supposed to be the remnants of the ante-bellum Democracy. The derivation is from an old snapping-turtle, in the popular vernacular called a "mossback," because of the covering of its shell by a growth of moss-like aquatic vegetation, induced by its sluggish habits and long living in stagnant

water.

Mote and the beam. One of the most impressive lessons of charity and forbearance is contained in the Sermon on the Mount: "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

This ancient saying finds its analogues in the proverbs of all nations. We say in English, "The pot calls the kettle black," or "The kiln calls the oven 'burnt house ;'" the Italians say, "The pan says to the pot, 'Keep off, or you'll smutch me ;'" the French, "The shovel makes game of the poker," or "Dirty-nosed folk always want to wipe other folks' noses;" the German, "One ass nicknames another Long-ears;" the Spanish, "The raven said to the crow, 'Avaunt, blackamoor!" the Scotch, "God help the fool!' said the idiot," or "Crooked carlin!' quoth the cripple to his wife." In America, as indeed elsewhere, negroes have no worse reproach for each other than "damn niggers." The Arabs have an apologue," A harlot repented for one night. Is there no police-officer,' she said, 'to take up harlots?" "If thou canst not make thyself such an one as thou wouldst," says the "Imitation of Christ," "how canst thou expect to have another in all things to thy liking? We would willingly have others perfect, and yet we amend not our own faults. We would have others severely corrected, and will not be corrected ourselves. The large liberty of others displeaseth us, and yet we will not have our own desires denied us. We will have others kept under by strict laws, but in no sort will ourselves be restrained. And thus it appeareth how seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves." An apologue from Phædrus is thus paraphrased by Bulwer :

From our necks, when life's journey begins,

Two sacks Jove the Father suspends,

The one holds our own proper sins,

The other the sins of our friends:

The first, man immediately throws

Out of sight, out of mind, at his back;

The last is so under his nose,

He sees every grain in the sack.

The same metaphor, though not with the same application, is used, in part at least, by Shakespeare:

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes;

These scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done.

Troilus and Cressida, Act iii., Sc. 3.

Mother of Presidents, a popular name for Virginia, from the great number among the earlier Presidents who were natives of that State. Since the civil war the term has lost much of its currency. The following Presidents were natives of Virginia: Washington, born in Westmoreland County, 1732; Jefferson, Albemarle County, 1743; Madison, King George County, 1751; Monroe, Westmoreland County, 1758; Harrison, Charles City County, 1773; Tyler, Charles City County, 1790; Taylor, Orange County, 1784.

Mother of States. Virginia was so called from the great number of States which were carved out of the territory originally included under the name Virginia, and also as being the first settled and oldest of the original thirteen States of the Union. The States created out of what was once Virginian territory are Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. During the civil war the northwestern portion of the seceded State, which portion