What a notion! to figure at parish boards, and wrangle o'er cess and rate, I, who mean to sit for the county yet, and vote on an empire's fate; To take the chair at the farmers' feasts, and tickle their bumpkin ears, Who must shake a senate before I die, and waken a people's cheers! In the olden days was no choice, so sons to the roof of their fathers clave: But now! 'twere to perish before one's time, and to sleep in a living grave. I see that you do not understand. How should you? Your memory clings To the simple music of silenced days and the skirts of vanishing things. Your fancy wanders round ruined haunts, and dwells upon oft-told tales; Your eyes discern not the widening dawn, nor your ears catch the rising gales. But live on, Granny, till I come back, and then perhaps you will own The dear old past is an empty nest, and the present the brood that is flown. GRANDMOTHER'S TEACHING. AND so, my dear, you're come back at last? I always fancied you would. Well, you see the old home of your childhood's days is standing where it stood. The roses still clamber from porch to roof, the elder is white at the gate, And over the long smooth gravel path the pea cock still struts in state. On the gabled lodge, as of old, in the sun, the pigeons sit and coo, And our hearts, my dear, are no whit more changed, but have kept still warm for you. You'll find little altered, unless it be me, and that since my last attack; But so that you only give me time, I can walk to the church and back. You bade me not die till you returned, and so you see I lived on: I'm glad that I did now you've really come, but it's almost time I was gone. I suppose that there isn't room for us all, and the old should depart the first. That's but as it should be. What is sad, is to bury the dead you've nursed. Won't you take something at once, my dear? Not even a glass of whey? The dappled Alderney calved last week, and the baking is fresh to-day. Have you lost your appetite too in town, or is it you've grown over-nice? If you'd rather have biscuits and cowslip wine, they'll bring them up in a trice. But what am I saying? Your coming down has set me all in a maze : I forgot that you travelled down by train; I was thinking of coaching days. I heard them tell of your smart town house, but I always shook my head. One doesn't grow rich in a year and a day, in the time of my youth 'twas said. Men do not reap in the spring, my dear, nor are granaries filled in May, Save it be with the harvest of former years, stored up for a rainy day. The seasons will keep their own true time, you can hurry nor furrow nor sod: It's honest labor and steadfast thrift that alone are blest by God. You say you were honest. I trust you were, nor do I judge you, my dear: I have old-fashioned ways, and it's quite enough to keep one's own conscience clear. But still the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," though a simple and ancient rule, Was not made for complex cunning to baulk, nor for any new age to befool; And if my growing rich unto others brought but penury, chill, and grief, I should feel, though I never had filched with my hands, I was only a craftier thief. That isn't the way they look at it there? All worshipped the rising sun? Most of all the fine lady, in pride of purse you fancied your heart had won. I don't want to hear of her beauty or birth: I reckon her foul and low; Far better a steadfast cottage wench than grand loves that come and go. To cleave to their husbands through weal, through woe, is all women have to do: In growing as clever as men they seem to have matched them in fickleness too. But there's one in whose heart has your image still dwelt through many an absent day, As the scent of a flower will haunt a closed room, though the flower be taken away. Connie's not quite so young as she was, no doubt, but faithfulness never grows old; And were beauty the only fuel of love, the warmest heart soon would grow cold. Once you thought that she had not travelled, and knew neither the world nor life: Not to roam, but to deem her own hearth the whole world, that's what a man wants in a wife. I'm sure you'd be happy with Connie, at least if your own heart's in the right place. She will bring you nor power, nor station, nor wealth, but she never will bring you disgrace. They say that the moon, though she moves round the sun, never turns to him morning or night But one face of her sphere, and it must be because she's so true a satellite; And Connie, if into your orbit once drawn by the sacrament sanctioned above, Would revolve round you constantly, only to show the one-sided aspect of love. You will never grow rich by the land, I own; but if Connie and you should wed, It will feed your children and household too, as it you and your fathers fed. The seasons have been unkindly of late; there's a wonderful cut of hay, But the showers have washed all the goodness out, till it's scarcely worth carting away. There's a fairish promise of barley straw, but the ears look rusty and slim: I suppose God intends to remind us thus that something depends on him. | God neither progresses nor changes, dear, as I once heard you rashly say: Men's schools and philosophies come and go, but his word doth not pass away. We worship him here as we did of old, with simple and reverent rite : In the morning we pray him to bless our work, to forgive our transgressions at night. To keep his commandments, to fear his name, and what should be done, to do, That's the beginning of wisdom still; I suspect 'tis the end of it too. You must see the new-fangled machines at work, that harrow, and thresh, and reap; They're wonderful quick, there's no mistake, and they say in the end they're cheap. But they make such a clatter, and seem to bring the rule of the town to the fields: There's something more precious in country life than the balance of wealth it yields. But that seems going; I'm sure I hope that I shall be gone before : Better poor sweet silence of rural toil than the factory's opulent roar. They're a mighty saving of labor, though; so at least I hear them tell, Making fewer hands and fewer mouths, but fewer hearts as well: If They sweep up so close that there's nothing left for widows and bairns to glean; machines are growing like men, man seems to be growing a half machine. There's no friendliness left; the only tie is the wage upon Saturday nights: Right used to mean duty; you'll find that now there's no duty, but only rights. Still stick to your duty, my dear, and then things cannot go much amiss. What made folks happy in bygone times, will make them happy in this. There's little that's called amusement, here; but why should the old joys pall? Has the blackbird ceased to sing loud in spring? Has the cuckoo forgotten to call? Are bleating voices no longer heard when the cherry-blossoms swarm? And have home, and children, and fireside lost one gleam of their ancient charm? Come, let us go round; to the farmyard first, with its litter of fresh-strewn straw, Past the ash-tree dell, round whose branching tops the young rooks wheel and caw ; Through the ten-acre mead that was mown II. THE SEALED LETTER. In Four Chapters, . Temple Bar, Fortnightly Review, 131 Contemporary Review,. Con Pall Mall Gazette, Pall Mall Budget, 186 Spectator, 188 Pall Mall Gazette, 190 Pall Mall Gazette, 191 For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. EPITAPH FOR THE REV. DR. BUCKLAND, | Sorrow comes into our lives uninvited, WRITTEN BY DR. SHUTTLEWORTH, BISHOP OF urn Whose neck ye must grace no more; Gneiss, Granite, and Slate! he settled your date, And his ye must now deplore. Weep, Caverns, weep! with infiltering drip, Oh! his Wit shone like Crystal! his knowl- From Gravel to Granite descended; No Trap could deceive him, no Slip could confound, Nor specimen true or pretended. He knew the birth-rock of each pebble so round And how far its tour had extended. His eloquence roll'd like the Deluge retiring To a subject obscure he gave charms so in- Young and Old on Geology doated. He stood forth like an Outlier; his hearers admiring In pencil each anecdote noted. Where shall we our great Professor inter, He'll rise and break the stones, And examine each Stratum that lies around, If with Mattock and Spade his body we lay He'll start up and snatch those tools away In a Stratum so young the Professor disdains Robbing our hearts of their treasures of song; Lovers grow cold and friendships are slighted, Everyday toil is everyday blessing, Though poverty's cottage and crust we may share; Weak is the back on which burdens are pressing, But stout is the heart that is strengthened by prayer. Somehow or other the pathway grows brighter, Just when we mourn there are none to befriend; Hope in the heart makes the burden seem And, somehow or other, we get to the end. LITTLE LOVERS. WEE little lovers aged six and ten, Long be the lives of this little pair, That embedded should be his Organic Re-Or will this baby-love droop and die, mains. Ere many years have flown hurrying by? From The Fortnightly Review. I WAS struck the other day by reading in one of our chief periodicals the following statement: "Under a republic we may have self-government, but there is no loyalty." The writer went on to add two other antithetical sentences: "Under an absolute monarchy we may have loyalty, but there is no self-government. Under a democratic despotism there is neither." Any one of these three statements might serve as a text for a wide range of political reflections. To choose one line of thought out of many, nothing is more certain than that absolute. monarchy is consistent with a very large amount of self-government in local matters, and that some of the most absolute of monarchs have found it thoroughly fall in with their purposes to allow, and even to foster, self-government of this kind. We need not go further than the rule of the Turk for abundance of examples. But the line of thought which I wish now specially to work out is that which is suggested by the first of these statements, that which says that under a republic there is no loyalty. writer speaks is something which in his view is a good thing, something whose presence is one of the distinguishing virtues of the English Constitution, something whose presence is the redeeming feature of absolute monarchy, whose absence is the weak side of republicanism, to set against its redeeming feature. Of the "democratic despotic" we need not speak, as that seemingly has no redeeming feature at all. The position is that loyalty, loyalty in a good sense, at all events in what the writer deems a good sense, is impossible in a commonwealth. It is therefore something of which the old heroes of Athens and Rome, the later heroes alike of democratic Uri and of aristocratic Bern, were wholly incapable. This, as I said, is a rather startling position; and it is one which may set us thinking as to the meaning of the word with which we are dealing. As in all such cases, we may learn something by looking to the origin and the history of the word. It so happened in my own case that, just about the time when I stumbled on the passage which I have quoted from the modern writer, I stumbled on a passage in a mediæval writer which threw some light on the matter in two opposite ways. A prince is praising the faithfulness of an old and tried sub The statement is a little startling; and yet there is no doubt that it is one which would be very largely accepted. It is quite certain that what a great many peo-ject—it is Robert of Normandy speaking ple mean by loyalty can have no place in to the old Roger of Beaumont — and the a republic; whether it can have any place words he uses are, "Magnam legalitatem in a democratic despotism we may forbear tuam optime novi.” * Here we can have to inquire, till we know better what a no kind of doubt as to translating legalidemocratic despotism is. But some of tas by loyalty. And, what is more, we us may perhaps be inclined to think that translate it by loyalty in a sense which the thing which many people call loyalty, we suspect to be much the same as that and which certainly cannot exist in a of the modern writer; we understand it republic, is a thing which we might very as meaning loyalty in a sense for which well do without, whether in republics or there certainly is no great scope in a comin monarchies. But the writer whose monwealth. But we further see, if we do words I am quoting is clearly not of this not happen to have thought of the matter way of thinking. What he means by before, what is the real origin and earliest loyalty is something which is to be wished meaning of the word loyalty. And we for under any form of government, but see further how far it must have departed which under some forms of government from that earliest meaning, even in the is not to be had. "It is the great merit eleventh century. We see that loyalty of the English Constitution that it is is, in its origin, legalitas - conformity to capable of combining the sentiment of law. But we see also that it was not in loyalty with the principle of self-government." The loyalty then of which the * Orderic Vital, 686 C. ed. Duchêsne. |