50,000 men was divided into two bodies, ed to shake his whole frame. Potempand gave a mimic representation of the kin, the powerful, the magnificent Poconflict between Charles and Peter the tempkin, the founder of so many palaces Great. Catharine returned by way of and cities, the conqueror of a kingdom, Moscow to St. Petersburgh, having tra- expired on the roadside. Taken suddenly versed nearly the whole length of her ill on a journey, his cloak was spread empire. This journey and its attendant upon the ground, on which he died. scenes illustrate the energy and talents Catharine fainted three times when she of Catharine.

heard of his death, and she was thought When Prince Potemkin returned to to be dying. St. Petersburgh, after the capture of Is Like Elizabeth of England, Mary of mail by the Russian army, the Empress Scotland, Christina of Sweden, and all received him with transports of joy, and the empresses of Russia, Catharine had bestowed

upon him another palace which her favorites. There were twelve in all; had been fitted up for his reception at a but none of them lost their lives by the cost of 600,000 roubles, and also a coat headsman's axe, as in England. None laced with diamonds which cost 200,000 of them incurred her hatred or her venroubles. This extravagant minister and geance. No one was ever seen to be favorite expended in a few months at punished—no one to be persecuted. Those this period 1,200,000 roubles. He gave whom she discarded went into foreign the Empress a grand entertainment at countries. The personal vices of Cathahis palace, under a presentiment that it rine, which were very many, have not would be the last blaze of his grandeur. been able to obscure her glory as a ruler, A month was spent in preparation. The though they sullied her greatness. On Empress, the imperial family, the court, all public occasions the Empress dressed the foreign ministers, the nobility, were with great magnificence, and wore a proinvited. When Catharine entered her fusion of jewelry, especially diamonds, carriage, immense piles of garments, lofty of which she had a prodigious number. pyramids of eatables, and an enormous Towards the close of her life, Catharine supply of liquors were distributed to the had so increased in size, that going up populace. When the Empress entered and down stairs in the palace, and the the palace, she was greeted by the music business of dressing, had become a weariof an orchestra of six hundred perform- some task. Just previous to her death, ers. When she and the brilliant company an incident occurred that excited a deep had taken their seats, four and twenty interest. On the evening of her visit couples of the most beautiful persons of with the King of Sweden to the house of both sexes, and of noble birth, including Samaïlof, a bright star shot from the sky the Grand-dukes Alexander and Con- over her head and fell into the Neva near stantine, opened the dance with a quad- the citadel in St. Petersburgh, in which rille. The value of their dresses was all the tombs of the sovereigns are situestimated at 10,000,000 roubles. The ated, in the Church of St. Peter and St. rooms of the palace were illuminated Paul. It was whispered that it was the with a magnificence which struck the harbinger of the approaching dissolution spectators with amazement. The walls of the Empress. and columns seemed to glow with various On the 4th of November, 1796, Cathacolored fires, while large mirrors made to rine had a little party in the Hermitage, form pyramids and grottoes, multiplied and displayed an uncommon share of the effect. Six hundred persons then sat spirits. She retired earlier than usual. down at one table, where all the dishes The next morning she arose at her accuswere gold or silver. On the Empress' tomed hour, and gave a short audience entering the vestibule after supper, the with her secretaries on business; but dischoir of voices melodiously chanted a missed the last that came, bidding him hymn to her praise. Surprised and af. wait in the ante-chamber, and she would fected, she turned around to the Prince, presently call for him to finish what he who, overpowered with emotion, fell on was about. The valet waited for a while, his knees and, seizing her hand, bedewed but, uneasy at not being called, and hearit with tears. A gloomy foreboding seem- ing no noise in the apartment, opened

the door and saw, to his surprise and last she gave a lamentable shriek, and terror, the Empress prostrate upon the died, after having continued for thirtyfloor. She was without sense or motion. seven hours in a state of insensibility. Physicians were sent for, and consterna The body of the Emperor Peter I was tion prevailed. All the means possible brought from the convent and crowned, were resorted to, but without effect. She and the two coffins lay in state till they was still alive; her heart was found still were removed to the Citadel Church of to beat. Paul, her son and successor, tombs for the sovereigns of Russia, where arrived in the evening. His mother still they now lie with the sovereigns of Rusbreathed. About ten the next evening, sia, on the floor of the church, in sight the Empress appeared suddenly to re- of all who go there as spectators or as vive, and began to rattle in the throat. worshippers at that memorable historic The imperial family hastened to her. At spot.

PO E TRY.
FRIAR IVES AT ACRE.

Tread in a narrow, silent street.

Here, in the hush, he starts to meet [See Joinville's “Memoirs of St. Louis,” Part II.,

A woman; tall, nor old, nor young, for, this anecdote, which is quoted by Bishop Taylor in his “ Great Exemplar,'' Part III., discourse 14th.]

For though Time's hand its snows had flung

Her locks of sable hair among,
The weary day is ended now,

The fire of youth gleam'd in her eye;
And cool night winds fan cheek and brow; Erect her form, her bearing high,
The restless crowd, no longer pent

Though scant and mean the robe she wore.
In heated chambers, wanders out,

One hand a vase of water bore, The air is filled with merriment,

And in the left beheld the Friar With lute, and harp, and song, and shout. A vessel fill'd with coals of fire. A noisy time, a festive night!

He gazed upon her, and would fain A thousand lamps are glitt'ring bright,

Have asked, “Wherefore these vessels twain ?" While in the blue vault overhead The lamps of Heaven their radiance shed.

To his unspoken thought replies Soldiers and seamen here are seen,

She, fixing on him her dark eyes; Steel helmets bright, and turbans green,

"6"Wherefore this water?'—mark me well! The Saracen's dark supple grace,

With it I'll quench the flames of hell! The Frank's blue eyes and fair-skinn'd face.

"* Wherefore this fire ?'-list thou and learn! Amid the tide of human lives,

The joys of Paradise to burn! Pass'd, shadow-like, from street to street,

That henceforth men may serve my Lord With rope-girt gown, and sandall’d feet,

Neither for hope of a reward, The Breton friar, Father Ives.

Nor fear of punishment abhorr'd: He goes, a message from the King

But freely yield their hearts—the whole Unto the Sultan's lords* to bring.

As He requires of every soul. Soon as the morrow's dawn shall break,

Is He not worthy? Brighter far Back to Damascus they must take

The Day-spring, than yon brightest star? Their way, and he with them depart,

Our Maker, Saviour, Helper, He, That wand'ring friar of steadfast heart.

The mystic undivided Three, Bright is his eye, and glad his mood;

From lifeless clay his creatures made, What if fierce bands of Bedouins rude

And when we sold ourselves, He paid Beset his path, his life-blood shed ?

Our ransom, died, and to the grave Shall not the Martyr's crown await

Went down, our guilty souls to save. His brow, at Heav'n's own golden gate !

Now wash'd from sin with heavenly dew, His weary feet, shall they not tread

Each day we fall, each day anew Above the stars that shine o'erhead ?

We soil ourselves, and yet He deigns What though they tear him limb from limb?

In us to dwell, and cleanse our stains. He hears e'en now the angels' hymn,

We love our friends, ay, well, and long, And fragrant breezes, soft as balm,

Enduring many a bitter wrong, Waft o'er his soul celestial calm.

Fickle or selfish they, yet still,

Spite all neglect, love them we will : Onward, engross'd with thoughts like these, Love, why? Because we hope their hands Through Acre's marble palaces

May shower rich gifts upon us?-no! And lighted halls, astir with song

Not human love insult we so! And noisy revelry, along

Love, for the sake of what we find He quickly pass'd, until his feet

Within them lovely, true, and kind.

He, the Desired among all lands, * The Sultan of Damascus had sent to King Louis, offer Has He no beauty ? He, our King, ing his alliance. Friar (vés le Breton was to return with Glorious in red appareling, the ambassadors, and declare the King's mind to the Sultan: he was chosen for the task on account of his knowl

Chief 'mong ten thousand ? fairer than edge of Saracenic.

The fairest of the sons of man?

From his sight From where I, on my couch, am laid, The nurse, a simple neighbor, bore the babe

No changing prospect greets mine eye, And left him with his sorrow and the night. And from my casement are displayed

Low in a corner lay his little lad, But housetops and the murky sky;

Whose seven blithe years had brought no bitterness I hear the city's echoing din

Like this bad day's: for never in his pain A contrast to the quiet within.

Had she been pitiless; nor, until now,

Unanswering to his cries. For he had cried, Amidst a crowd of hopes and fears,

" I'm hungry," and she had not stretched her hands; My mind will wander back again

“ I'm weary," and she drew him not to rest, To other scenes and other years,

With touch of tender kisses on his hair. Whose memories alone remain;

Now, wearied out with weeping wilderment, That only shadows on me cast

He slept. Of all the sunshine of the past.

Between the sleeping and the dead Tis summer in the country fields

The strong man bowed himself and took his place In verdant beauty nature smiles,

To watch the night out.
Each varied scene new pleasure yields,
And from the world the heart beguiles,

Covered, still, and white,
Teaching us folly to despise,

It lay—that awful burden on the bed And, with contentment to be wise.

He should have shared. He did not lift the shroud

To look upon the lifeless face, or press Though here with patience nigh outworn, Its lips with unfelt kisses; did not stain I can admire in fancy still

Its whiteness with a tear. Beside him lay The beauty of the waving corn,

Her one ring—worn throughout those wedded years, The music of the purling rill;

From fingers stiffening in the clasp of death Through all the past my steps retrace,

Withdrawn; and as he gently lifted it And present times and scenes displace.

A sudden strangeness fell on all his life, To wander through the shady lane,

And made it blank through all its soulless days, To dream along the silent river

But left, like hill-tops lifted thro' a flood,
Shall I e'er know such days again,

The living hours of love.
Or have they fled away for ever?
Oh what is learning, friendship, wealth,

The boy awoke Deprived of Heaven's great blessing-health ? And saw him sit there; slept, and woke again ;

And there he sat and loomed out of the dark In my distress, for aught unfit,

Until he seemed a giant to the child. May I perceive a wise design;

The chequered moonlight fell across the floor, In patience to my lot submit,

Leaving the death-bed curtained by the dark My will to that of Heaven resign;

And awful mysteries of life and death, And while I wish all pain removed,

Confused, impenetrable, undefined, Let not the event pass unimproved.

Hovered about the boy, and he would fain

Have called upon his father in the night,
- Chambers's Journal.

But that he seemed a portion of the dread,
The unappeasable, appealless fate

That held him, and should hold him ever more.
THE WORKER.

Then he bethought him of his prayer, and said

“Our Father," and so slept until the dawn. " HARD is the lot of the worker,

And in the faint dawn he was sitting there,
His heart had need be brave,

Who never once had drowsed nor drooped his head
With death in life to wrestle

Nor groaned for any anguish of his soul-
From the cradle to the grave.

But when the morning sun looked in, he rose
Sternly the sorrows meet him

With sweat-drops on his forehead.
In the thick of the mortal fray;

-Miss Isa Craig.
But the night must serve for weeping-
Work must be done to-day.”

High rose the houses, a great human hive,

"THE RASH VOW."
Crowded from roof to base with busy life,
While in the stifling courts the children swarmed. A BED, four walls, and a swart crucifix-
A chill, gray day died blank and colorless

Nought else, save my own brain and four small

words ! Within the narrow walls that hedged a home, Amid those close-pent dwellings, as out-worn

Four scorpions! which instead of cloistered death,

Have stung me into life! How long may't be A twice-made mother, on the bed of birth, Trembled her life away.

Since silver censers flung their incense up,

And in full choir a sound of voices rose, The light was gone; Chanting their even-song, and praising GodAnd the poor chamber held the pomp of death— “In that our brother here was dead and lives?" More awful than the majesty of kings

Then came the organ's surging symphony, Before set free from labor, to his home

And I, a unit 'midst the tonsured crowd, The father came, and first there greeted him Passed on, a monk; while in my ear there rung Faint cries of new found life, and then he passed Those four short, burning words, “She was not Into that silent presence.

false!"

Oh! fiend incarnate, that could urge me on,

(I at her feet), we sate. Anon there came E'en to the very brink and see me plunge

Athwart the thick and leafy canopy Then, seeing, whisper what would else have saved Above us spread (now rich with vernal bloom, A life-long misery.

A golden sunbeam, whose bright quivering ray,

They brought me here Touching her brow with living amber glow, To pray and keep the vigil of St. Jolin;

And glancing on her deep, dark, liquid eyes,
To make thanksgiving—What was it he said, Well-springs of truth and maiden purity-
The reverend preacher who discoursed to-day? | Who calls? “Good brother you are new as yet;
“Many indeed are called, but chosen few." | Tis time for matins. All the brotherhood
Chosen! and this the Vigil of St. John,

Are now assembled, and the Prior waits:
When trembling maidens to the fountain come Will't please you come?"
To view their future husbands mirrored there :

Thos. HERBERT LEWIN.
She, too, perhaps, may be amidst the throng? — Macmillan's Magazine.
Ah! me, I shall go mad. How long is it
Since I have grovelled here? It seems to me
Well nigh a life-time since they came and brought
The dim oil-lamp, that flickers near my head.

BRIEF LITERARY NOTICES. How heavily their flabby, naked fect Came whilom flapping through the corridor ! Dalziel's Illustrated Arabian Nights Entertain“Our brother prays, " quoth one; the other said ments. The text revised and emendated through(Poking the lamp's wick with his finger-tip) out, by H. W. DULCKEN, Ph. D. One hundred "In truth I marvel not that he is moved ; illustrations, by J. E. MILLAIS, R. A., A. B. An angel's self might have been stirred to hear Houghton, Thomas Dalziel, J. D. Watson, John My Lord the Bishop as he preached to-day.' Tenniel, G. J. Pinwell. Engraved by the BrothPoor souls! if they could have but read my heart, ers Dalziel. London: Ward and Lock. It would have seared even their inert gross flesh The Arabian Nights is one of the few books Into a flame of fear. I recollect,

which supply a boundless field of collateral yet On my young sister Isa's wedding day,

wholly independent study by the side of the mere Our mother smiled, and said it brought to her amusement they afford. ' Read as a string of idle Again the freshness of her buried youth.

fictions, they still remain a perennial kaleidoscope Great God! sce! here is my own youth, unspent, and literary wonder of elementary human emotion. Living a death. Alas! no more for me

As in the kaleidoscope we see elementary colors The silvery laughter of fair mirthful girls,

thrown, as it were, at random together, not satisLike distant bells across the breezy downs; fying art, but producing astonishment, so in the No more the soft hands' thrilling touch, that sends Arabian Nights all the eleinentary emotions and The young hot life-blood rushing through the veins; colors of human nature follow one another in an Never again that interchange of looks.

apparently childlike cycle of innocence, credulity, The key-note of two souls in unison.

and bewonderment, yet so as to battle old and “Out puling mourner,” cries the moralist :

practised eyes in any attempt to unravel the secret “Is it a 'crumpled rose-leaf in thy path'

of the juxtaposition and obtain the key to their O'er which thou wailest?—what is youth and sequence. As the wheel revolves, and fiction follove?

lows fiction, color color, we see dove-like gentleHast thou not in thee something more than these, ness and astounding cruelty, romantic courage Thy soul, immortal, indestructible?"

and brazen craft, apparently unconscious folly and The words are but too true; though 'tis no “leaf;", apparently unconscious wisdom, follow one anTis the whole flower I mourn, and mourn alone. other with the same arbitrary ease, the same roA young rose, dewy, budding in the morn

tatory gravity, the same absence of the slightest I weep its fragrance lost, its beauty gone.

clue to the moving hand guiding the colors in Life without love is nought, — 'tis even as

their course, and but for the entertainment invarThe body without soul-a fleshy case

iably afforded to the spectator, we had almost To carry aches and pains in. Soon will come said, the same monotony of wonderful effect. The first white hair the harbinger of change,

If we endeavor to overcome the dazing influTo say, Time is, Time was, and Time is past. ence of the tales themselves, to look with a critiAy, past! for, love extinct, our life remains cal eye upon the sequence of the ideas, if we try to (As 'twere a hearth where fire had blazed anon) reäscend by analysis and imagination to the In ashes, and my youth is left to me

springs of authorship, and to reconstruct the soLike a pressed violet in a folded book;

ciety out of which the stories grew, we pass abA remnant of its fragrance breathing still,

ruptly into another world of thoughts, and tunble To tell of spring-time past, ne'er to return. at the entrance into a sea of speculation. It

Last May I roved with her into the woods : seems no solution of the problem to suppose that The winter season o'er, the tender buds

the stories were in the origin designedly composed Were shooting on the ash; the scent of Spring to amuse children. If the Boy's Own Book unWas round us, over us, and in our hearts;

der the same name were the only relic of our civThe firmament & tender turquoise blue;

ilization three thousand years hence, the doubt The cushat-dove was cooing in the grove;

whether it was written for children or not would All nature seemed as wooing, where we strayed only complicate, not simplify the problem of the Along the sylvan glade. We passed the cairn, reconstruction out of that book of the civilization The old gray lichen-covered, mossy stones, which gave birth to it. Any floating knowledge Where conies sport and graze, and at the foot English men have of contemporary Asiatic life Of a tall chestnut-tree, upon a couch

does not seem to throw much light upon the reBedecked with primroses and branching ferns construction of the society out of which the