isle, grew dumb and languished. Seldom did it sing, and only when it saw a dweller from its distant land, or to its drowsy perch there came a tone heard long ago in its own woods. So with the song that woman sings; best heard within Home's sacred temple. Elsewhere, a trumpet-tone-perhaps a clarion-cry, but the lute-like voice has fled: the "mezzo-soprano" is lost in the discords of earth. The old homestead! I wish I could paint it for you, as it isno, no, I dare not say, as it is—as it was; that we could go together, to-night, from room to room; sit by the old hearth round which that circle of light and love once swept, and there linger till all those simpler, purer times returned, and we should grow young again.

And how can we leave that spot without remembering one form, that occupied, in days gone by, the old arm-chair,—that “oldfashioned MOTHER?"—one, in all the world, the law of whose life was love; one who was the divinity of our infancy, and the sacred presence in the shrine of our first earthly idolatry; one whose heart is far below the frosts that gather so thickly on her brow; one to whom we never grow old, but in "the plumed troop" or the grave council are children still; one who welcomed us coming, blest us going, and never forgets us-never.

And when, in some closet, some drawer, some corner, she finds a garment or a toy that once was yours, how does she weep as she thinks you may be suffering or sad. And when Spring

"Leaves her robe on the trees,"

does she not remember your tree, and wish you were there to see it in its glory?

Nothing is "far," and nothing "long," to her; she girdles the globe with a cincture of love; she encircles her child, if he be on the face of the earth.

Think you, as she sits in that well remembered corner to-night, she dreams her trembling arm is less powerful to protect him now, stalwart man though he is, than when it clasped him, in infancy, to her bosom?

Does the battle of life drive the wanderer to the old homestead,

at last? Her hand is upon his shoulder; her dim and fading eyes are kindled with something of "the light of other days," as she gazes upon his brow: "Be of stout heart, my son! No harm can reach thee here!"

Surely, there is but one Heaven-one Mother-and one God. But sometimes that arm-chair is set back against the wall, the corner is vacant, or another's, and they seek the dear old occupant in the graveyard. God grant you never have! Pray God, I never may!

There are some there, though, whom we loved-there must be to make it easy dying; some, perhaps, who were cradled on that mother's bosom; some, perhaps, who had grown fast to our own.

The old graveyard in L-! How the cloudy years clear away from before that little acre in God's fallow field, and the memories return.

Work

There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so mammonish, mean, is in communication with nature; the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth.

"Know thy work, and do it." that poor "self" of thine tor"know" it, I believe! Think

The latest gospel in this world is: "Know thyself:" long enough has mented thee; thou wilt never get to it not thy business, this of knowing thyself, thou art an unknowable individual; know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.

It has been written "an endless significance lies in work," as man perfects himself by writing. Foul jungles are cleared away,

fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul, unwholesome desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, desire, sorrow, remorse, indignation, despair itself, all these, like hell-dogs, lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man, but as he bends himself with free valor against his task, all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring afar off into their caves. The man is now The blessed glow of labor in him, is it not a purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright, blessed flame?

a man.

Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A formless chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever rounder; ranges itself, by mere force of gravity, into strata, spherical courses; is no longer a chaos, but a round, compacted world. What would become of the earth did she cease to revolve? In the poor old earth, so long as she revolves, all inequalities, irregularities, disperse themselves; all irregularities are incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on the potter's wheel, one of the venerablest objects; old as the prophet Ezekiel, and far older? Rude lumps of clay, how they spin themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes. And fancy the most assiduous potter, but without his wheel, reduced to make dishes, or rather amorphous botches, by mere kneading and baking! Even such a potter were destiny with a human soul that would rest and lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle, unrevolving man, the kindest destiny, like the most assiduous potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what expensive coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, amorphous botch, a mere enameled vessel of dishonor! Let the idle think of this.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it and

will follow it! How, as the free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows, draining off the sour, festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade, making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green, fruitful meadow with its clear, flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself,

let the stream and its value be great or small!

Labor is life! From the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred, celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, "self-knowledge" and much else, so soon as work fitly begins. Knowledge! the knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that, for nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working,-the rest is yet all an hypothesis of knowledge, a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic vortices, till we try it and fix it. "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone."

And again, hast thou valued patience, courage, perseverance, openness to light, readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do better next time? All these, all virtues in wrestling with the dim brute powers of fact, in ordering of thy fellows in such wrestle, there, and elsewhere not at all, thou wilt continually learn. Set down a brave Sir Christopher in the middle of black, ruined stone-heaps of foolish unarchitectural bishops, red-tape officials, idle Nell Gwyn defenders of the faith, and see whether he will ever raise a Paul's Cathedral out of all that, yea or no! Rough, rude, contradictory are all things and persons, from the mutinous masons and Irish hod-men, up to the idle Nell Gwyn defenders, to blustering red-tape officials, foolish unarchitectural bishops. All these things and persons are there, not for Christopher's sake and his cathedrals; they are there for their own sake, mainly! Christopher will have to conquer and constrain all these, if he be able. All these are against

him.

Equitable nature herself, who carries her mathematics and

architectonics not on the face of her, but deep in the hidden heart of her nature herself is but partially for him,-will be wholly against him, if he constrain her not! His very money, where is it to come from? The pious munificence of England lies far scattered, distant, unable to speak and say, "I am here;" must be spoken to before it can speak. Pious munificence, and all help, is so silent, invisible like the gods; impediment, contradictions manifold are so loud and near! O brave Sir Christopher, trust thou in those notwithstanding, and front all these; understand all these; by valiant patience, noble effort, insight, vanquish and compel all these, and, on the whole, strike down victoriously the last top-stone of that Paul's edifice, thy monument for certain centuries, the stamp "Great Man" impressed very legibly in Portland stone there!

Yes, all manner of work, and pious response from men or nature, is always what we call silent, cannot speak or come to light till it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is at first "impossible." In very truth, for every noble work the possibilities will lie diffused through immensity, inarticulate, undiscoverable except to faith. Like Gideon, thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the door of thy tent; see whether under the wide arch of heaven there be any bounteous moisture, or none. Thy heart and lifepurpose shall be a miraculous Gideon's fleece spread out in silent appeal to heaven; and from the kind immensities, what from the poor unkind localities and town and country parishes there never could, blessed dew-moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen!

Work is of a religious nature: work is of a brave nature, which it is the aim of all religion to be. "All work of man's is as the swimmer's," a waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely it will keep its word. By incessant, wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along. "It is so," says Goethe, "with all things that man undertakes in this world."

Brave sea-captain, Norse sea-king, Columbus, my hero, royalist sea-king of all! it is no friendly environment this of thine in the