But answers it as He deems best,
Not always as we ask;
For deeply be this truth imprest,
E'en blessings wear a mask!
And we are often blinded still
Unto our REAL good or ill!

I, therefore, would not breathe for thee
A prayer scarce understood?
But rather that thy lot may be
What GOD sees best of good!
Good for thee, while a pilgrim here;
Good for thee, in a happier sphere.
Be thine the blessings which HIS WORD,
Replete with truths sublime,
Instructs us is to be preferr'd

To all the things of time;

That blessing which true riches brings,
And addeth none of sorrow's stings!
May this, my gentle friend, be thine,
And his, who shares thy lot;
Then-whether skies above you shine,
Or lower-'twill matter not;
For God can temper joy's bright day,
And smile grief's darkest night away.
May He remain your rich reward,
His presence ever near;

In prosperous hours your hearts to guard,
In adverse ones, to cheer;

So shall you own, in grateful mood,
He can make all things work for good!

BRUCE AND THE SPIDER.

For Scotland's and for freedom's right
The Bruce his part had play'd,

In five successive fields of fight
Been conquer'd and dismay'd:
Once more against the English host
His band he led, and once more lost
The meed for which he fought;
And now from battle, faint and worn,
The homeless fugitive forlorn

A hut's lone shelter sought.

And cheerless was that resting-place
For him who claim'd a throne;

His canopy, devoid of grace,

The rude, rough beams alone;
The heather couch his only bed-
Yet well, I ween, had slumber fled
From couch of eider down!

Through darksome night till dawn of day,
Absorb'd in wakeful thought he lay
Of Scotland and her crown.

The sun rose brightly, and its gleam
Fell on that hapless bed,

And tinged with light each shapeless beam
Which roof'd the lowly shed;

When, looking up with wistful eye,
The Bruce beheld a spider try

His filmy thread to fling

From beam to beam of that rude cot;
And well the insect's toilsome lot
Taught Scotland's future king.

Six times his gossamery thread
The wary spider threw;
In vain the filmy line was sped,
For powerless or untrue

Each aim appear'd, and back recoil'd
The patient insect, six times foil'd,
And yet unconquer'd still;

And soon the Bruce, with eager eye,
Saw him prepare once more to try
His courage, strength, and skill.

One effort more, his seventh and last!
The hero hail'd the sign!

And on the wish'd-for beam hung fast
That slender, silken line;
Slight as it was, his spirit caught
The more than omen, for his thought
The lesson well could trace,
Which even he who runs may read,"
That Perseverance gains its meed,
And Patience wins the race.

TO THE SKYLARK.

Bird of the free and fearless wing,
Up, up, and greet the sun's first ray,
Until the spacious welkin ring
With thy enlivening matin lay:
I love to track thy heavenward way
Till thou art lost to aching sight,
And hear thy numbers blithe and gay,
Which set to music morning's light.

Songster of sky and cloud! to thee

Hath Heaven a joyous lot assign'd;
And thou, to hear those notes of glee,
Wouldst seem therein thy bliss to find:
Thou art the first to leave behind
At day's return this lower earth,
And, soaring as on wings of wind,

To spring where light and life have birth.

Bird of the sweet and taintless hour,
When dew-drops spangle o'er the lea,

Ere yet upon the bending flower
Has lit the busy humming-bee—
Pure as all nature is to thee-

Thou, with an instinct half divine,
Wingest thy fearless flight so free

Up toward a yet more glorious shrine. Bird of the morn! from thee might man, Creation's lord, a lesson take:

If thou, whose instinct ill may scan

The glories that around thee break,
Thus bidd'st a sleeping world awake
To joy and praise-oh! how much more
Should mind immortal earth forsake,
And man look upward to adore!

Bird of the happy, heavenward song!
Could but the poet act thy part,

His soul, upborne on wings as strong

As thought can give, from earth might start, And with a far diviner art

Than ever genius can supply,

As thou the ear, might glad the heart,
And scatter music from the sky.

SONNET-TO HIS WIFE.

The butterfly, which sports on gaudy wing;
The brawling brooklet, lost in foam and spray,
As it goes dancing on its idle way;

The sunflower, in broad daylight glistening;
Are types of her who in the festive ring
Lives but to bask in fashion's vain display,

And glittering through her bright but useless day, "Flaunts, and goes down a disregarded thing!" Thy emblem, Lucy, is the busy bee,

Whose industry for future hours provides;
The gentle streamlet, gladding as it glides
Unseen along; the flower which gives the lea
Fragrance and loveliness, are types of thee,
And of the active worth thy modest merit hides.

TO A GRANDMOTHER.

"Old age is dark and unlovely."-OSSIAN.

Oh say not so! A bright old age is thine,
Calm as the gentle light of summer eves,
Ere twilight dim her dusky mantle weaves;
Because to thee is given, in thy decline,
A heart that does not thanklessly repine

At aught of which the hand of God bereaves,
Yet all He sends with gratitude receives;-

502

May such a quiet thankful close be mine!
And hence thy fireside chair appears to me
A peaceful throne-which thou wert form'd to fill;
Thy children, ministers who do thy will;

And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee,
Thy little subjects, looking up to thee

As one who claims their fond allegiance still.'

TO THE FRIENDS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAUSE IN
AMERICA.

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

Soul-stirring text! Proclaim it far and wide,
Throughout the length and breadth of all your land!
Till he who runs may read and understand
The glorious truth in these few words implied!
How-where that Spirit most is DEIFIED,

The fame of freedom, by its influence fann'd,
Bidding each heart with love to all expand,
Slavery, accurst, no longer can abide!

But oh what heavier or more hopeless doom
Can be a nation's or a people's lot,

Or fling upon their fame a fouler blot,

Withering their spirits by its chilling gloom,

Than one which leaves for doubt too fearful room,
That THERE the Spirit of the Lord 18 NOT!

EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 1781-1849.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT, the celebrated "Corn-Law Rhymer," was born on the 17th He is of March, 1781, at Masborough, near Rotherham, in Yorkshire, where his father was a commercial clerk in the iron-works, with a salary of £70 a year. said to have been very dull in his early years, and he was so oppressed with a sense of his own deficiencies compared with his bright brother, Giles, that he often wept bitterly. Yet who now knows Giles, except as being the brother of Ebenezer?-a lesson to parents, who may have a child that seems dull when young, not to despair of him. When he came dirty from the foundry, and saw Giles at the counting-house duties, or showing his drawings, or reading aloud to He an admiring circle, Ebenezer's only resource was solitude. Labor, however, and the honor paid to his brother, at length led him to make one effort more. chanced to see in the hand of a cousin "Sowerby's English Botany," and was delighted with its beautiful colored plates, which, his aunt showed him, might be copied by holding them before a pane of glass. Dunce though he seemed, he found he could draw, and that with great ease; and he soon became quite an en

thusiastic botanist. "The spark smouldering in his mental constitution had been kindled. Thomson's Seasons,' which he heard his wondrous brother Giles read, who was beautiful as an angel, while he was ugliness itself,' gave him the first hint of the eternal alliance between poetry and nature; and, in fine, the smitten rock opened, and the Rhymer rhymed!"

His next favorite author was Milton, who slowly gave way to Shakspeare. But, as he became a poet, he grew more and more ashamed of his deficiencies, and applied himself with great assiduity, every leisure moment he had, to remedy them. But how much leisure he had, and under what great disadvantages he labored, may be gathered from the following account which he gives of himself: "From my sixteenth to my twenty-third year, I worked for my father at Masbro' as laboriously as any servant he had, and without wages, except an occasional shilling or two for pocket-money, weighing every morning all the unfinished castings as they were made, and afterward in their finished state, besides opening and closing the shop in Rotherham, when my brother happened to be ill or absent."

Elliott entered into business at Rotherham, but was unsuccessful, and, in 1821, he removed to Sheffield, and made a second start in life as an iron-monger, on a capital of £100, which he borrowed. He applied the whole strength of his mind to his business, and was eminently successful, and, after years of hard labor, he had acquired quite a competency, and built himself a good house in the suburbs of Sheffield. When the great commercial revulsions took place in 1837 and 1838, he lost, as he says, full one-third of his savings; but, in his own words, "I got out of the fracas with about £6000, which I will try to keep."

His first publication was "The Vernal Walk," in his seventeenth year. This was followed by "Night," which was severely criticised by the "Monthly Review" and the "Monthly Magazine." But this had no effect to damp his spirits; on the contrary, it nerved his pen for higher flights, and soon another volume appeared, with a preface of defiance to the critics. It had no success, though Southey prophetically consoled the poet by writing: "There is power in the least of these tales, but the higher you pitch your tune the better you succeed. Thirty years ago they would have made your reputation; thirty years hence the world will wonder they did not do so."

But it was the commercial distresses of 1837 and 1838 that called out the strong native talent of our poet. The cry for "cheap bread" rung from one end to the other of the land. Elliott took his decided stand for the repeal of the corn-laws, and poured forth his "Corn-Law Rhymes," that did more than any other one thing to stir the heart and rouse the energies of the people against monopoly, and he had the satisfaction, in a few years, to see the great object of the "Corn-Law League" fully attained, and free trade in bread-stuffs completely established. In 1841, he retired from business and from active interference in politics, to spend his last years at Great Houghton, near Barnsley, where he built a house upon a small estate of his own. After this he wrote and published very little. He had been troubled for many years with a disease of an asthmatic character, which so increased upon him as to be considered dangerous, and he finally died on the 1st of December, 1819.