quantities, and I wished that some skilful, powerful hand would extract the root of this fearful war, without such an endless evolution of the great compound quantities of private and public calamities! Everything had seemed dark and gloomy; the sky had lost its radiant blue, the earth its sunniest green, the June air its rosiest balm, since first the war-cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, rose in the Southern sky. I had felt the chill, the shadow, the weight, and the gloom; but until now the cloud had not burst over my head, shadowing me in darkness, like an overwhelming, all-enfolding, deathly pall. I felt that of all my bright, perfect, pleasant dreams, I had nothing left but Ernest Heart's poor broken slate.

'Tis an

"What a soul Ernest Heart has!" I said, pacing my room back and forth, hurriedly, excitedly, despairingly. athletic soul, hale, noble, skilful, brave; it can climb the highest hills of thought, breast the deepest waves of emotion, travel long pilgrimages of contemplation, keep tireless bivouac with starry thought, storm endless batteries of doubt, do successful battle with legions of giant errors, win countless laurels of glory, lead weaker, fainter souls fast and far in the field of truth and duty! major-general of regiments of drooping, despairing hearts, leading them upward and onward to the palace named Beautiful, and the chamber called Peace! Yes, Ernest Heart! thy good, great soul can do all this, and vastly more, and grow grander and braver still. Is not this thy mission? predestined, sure, successful! But a day's march on the rough field, a week's bearing the knapsack, and thy foot may falter forever, thy hand evermore lose its cunning, thy eye fade, thy lips be hushed, and that sweet lyre of song be unstrung forever! The name of Ernest Heart, that might have thrilled our country's loving hearts, years after War's long agony shall be over, will only be hidden in a soldier's quiet grave, or carved on a lonely Greenwood slab. It must not, must not be! There are limbs stronger than thine, stalwart arms that can better grasp the sword, feet that without faltering can march to victory; with their strong, enduring humanity, these athletic forms shall do battle, and conquer.

In the green fields of our fatherland are innumerable companies of flowers, precious for their deathless perfume, and in the blue dome o'erarching that fair land are troops of golden stars, priceless for their ceaseless shining.

So let us keep, priceless and precious, some goodly companies of crowned, imperial, sweet-flowering, and star-lit souls, to do their

unfailing shining over the desolate homes of our living, and the sacred graves of our dead! But that Ernest Heart's flowercrowned and star-lit soul must fade and die! Oh, I wish I could call him back to his home among the living stars! But where has he gone? When I know not where, each hour seems a perilous one. I would shelter his dear head from every storm. I cannot help it, but ever since Harry told me this morning that he was gone, these sweet, sad words wail through my heart, like a dirge,

“Oh, empty heart! Oh, palace, rich and purple-chambered, when will thy lord come home?"

Here comes Jane, with a note from Harry, enclosing these few lines, written with a pencil, in Ernest Heart's hand. They are dated this morning; perhaps late last night he heard of Prof. Mitchell's death. They are written hurriedly. I read them as well as I can with my blind eyes, as I think how far that Ernest Heart is departing from me; that to-morrow and to-morrow will bring him no nearer. It sounds to me like a message from the dying.

IN MEMORIAM.

'MID starry souls of ages! our country's joy and pride,
Among our living sages none standeth by thy side;
We in the valley crown thee with glory all thine own,
On Science's mountain hoary, high priest thou reign'st alone;
Her holiest holy entering, low bending at her shrine,

We see through cloud-veil rending, thy breastplate starry shine.

In Glory's Alpine eyrie thy fame hath nestled long,-
Let star-eyed poets wreathe thee with sweetest bay of song;
How soon thy mantle radiant was downward, backward flung,
As through a land indignant the warrior-clarion rung.

Thy tireless bivouac ended, thy sleepless watch with stars,
As thy great soul ascended, with ne "red planet Mars;"
And left thou, without murmuring, thy growing, dazzling fame,
To write with patriot's bleeding thy loved and honored name.

On Danger's mountain lofty we saw thee nobly stand,
Toiling for starless Afric, with thy devoted band;
Well o'er thy pall so proudly the starry flag may wave;
Was ne'er laid hero sadly, beneath more star-lit grave.

As through the land in sorrow came tidings dark and wild,
We veiled our hearts in sackcloth, for Fame's beloved child;
And oh! how Science mourneth her tearful, stricken lot,
And without comfort waileth, for Benjamin is not.

Yet weep no longer, mortal, chained to this earthly shore,
For him who 'll rise in glory, for ever, evermore;

Far up those heights celestial there peals no note of war,
To break communion blissful with each beloved star.

For there, so close beside him, Capella takes her place;
He meets the full-orbed Sirius, like angel, face to face;
And in the great blue highway, Orion comes once more,
As gentle sister Pleiad dawns on the shining shore.

He sees the mystic clusters, on earth so faint and dim,
Shouting for joy around him, singing their morning hymn;
Their grand and mighty anthem, so faint to mortal ear,
On Music's tuneful daughters bursts ravishing and clear.

With floods of dazzling glory, his raptured soul awakes,
As on his unsealed vision the Via Lactea breaks;
With brow like angel's shining, on his new, ravished sight,
Shall break, and break forever, those endless fields of light.

In Greenwood's quiet shadows was whispered, "Dust to dust; "
No faithful marble vigil could keep so precious trust;
Thy soul, when grieved hearts aching, laid thee so lowly down,
Its lofty flight was taking for God's great Northern Crown.

Had

I don't criticize this poem! It is written with a pencil, and bears the marks of thought's first rough hieroglyphs. Ernest Heart prepared it for publication, he would have chiselled, measured, and toned it down to his ideal type of melody; then, without friction or fault, it might float on the tide of song into your inmost soul. Yet I like it, because in its carcanet of thought I see a little pearly tear glisten in every word.

Something else should be said of Mitchell besides this obituary in a national almanac. "He was a devout man, and carefully attended to the moral welfare of his troops." I never wished I had been a man, but I would like to be one for once. I would stand in the New York Academy of Music, and deliver an oration, studded with starry praise; thought's moonlight and meteor glow should gleam and glisten in each enthusiastic, eloquent word. I would call the oration "The laurel and the stars," and this is the way I would close it: :

"We lisping children of Science were carried in the strong arms of his great soul, up the celestial heights. He gathered and bouquetted for us those golden flowers of Heaven, spelling out for us the dim, faint characters of those earliest runic rhymes, cut in starry lines on the sapphire Bible above. Far up those highest latitudes, he carried us aloft, guiding through pathlesss labyrinths, exploring those primitive caverns, those deep, dark, mammoth caves of beauty, hung with starry stalactites! We could see his brow, damp with the dew of thought; his soul, fevered with sleepless

longing, and faint with far climbing, as he bore us up the golden palisades, - our brows unwearied, and our souls bathed in the light of his starry communings. Shall not we dumb children, nurtured by his genius, as we see the chariot of his ascending soul part the war-clouds and join the stars, break forth into song as we cry, 'My father, my father, the chariot of glory, and the rider thereof!"

I can never forget his thrilling speech at the great meeting on Union Square, and I wish I could rear in this little book a monument half as goodly and grand as went up in my soul's great Greenwood last night, among the many lowlier marbles rearing their heads, grass-grown and tear-inscribed, among Grief's drooping willows. May some of the Future's gifted sculptors chisel out of the great rock of immortality, and monumental builders rear on Fame's great Central Park, this monument, with the device of a wreath of laurel, inwoven with a crown of stars, and carve beneath it this inscription :

ORMSBY MACKNIGHT MITCHELL,
Died at Beaufort, S. C.,
Oct. 30, 1862.

Director of Thought's Observatory;

Brigadier-General of Volunteers on the field of Stars;
Commander of the Department of Astronomic Science;
Defender of the Faithful Free;

Martyr to the Fearless Brave;
Soldier and Sage:

Thy wreath-crown is inwoven with Laurels, inlaid with Stars.

CHAPTER XXII.

AUREOLA.

"Oh that my words were now written! O that they were printed in a book." JOB XIX. 23.

I CANNOT bear to sit still alone with sorrow. It is like looking into my own coffin, or listening to my own dirge. If the trouble is one I can improve or mend, I have a giant's strength of heart. I can lift the heavy weight or roll the great stone away! If the trouble is a lost joy, or a joy that is dead and cannot live again, I give it Christian burial, rear above it the marble of patient regret, carve upon it the word “resignation,” and plant about it as many heart's-ease as I can, and, wiping away my tears, go and robe my spirit anew for young Joy's coming; but if a trouble is neither a dead or buried joy, but a living trouble, like a perpetual ghost, an endless shadow; no time lessens it, no oblivion hides it, no forgetfulness veils it, even with a gossamer veil. I have a vivid memory; it is an evergreen. Nothing ever growing beside it fades or withers; and so, as I think of Ernest Heart, it will be a new grief every morning, and fresh every evening. I cannot wish him back. I cannot make one march less weary, or rob an hour of its peril. The news of each battle shocks, alarms, terrifies me; I lie awake all night, and at morning dream of cannon-roar, battle-din, and terrible death. So every night I have no sleep, and every morning I endure a battle. This will never do, I say. I shall fall at last, wounded in life's conflict, with no laurel upon my head, no glory gilding my name; and conscience, the sternest of coroners, will say, "Died for want of nourishing faith and sustaining patience." I wish God would give me something absorbing to do, claiming my thoughts, energy, and time. I suppose if I had a dozen halfclad children to feed and clothe, I might be torn rudely away from this daily bread of tears; but my wardrobe is abundant and complete, my wants satisfied, and I have no heart to gratify taste and enjoy pleasant sights and sweet sounds, while the ear