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dox of words-smiting down stoutly evil wheresoever we shall find it, and saying, "What ought to be, we know not; God alone can know: but that this ought not to be, we do know, and here, in God's name, it shall not stay." We repeat it : war, in some shape or other, is the normal condition of the world. It is a fearful fact; but we shall not abolish it by ignoring it, and ignoring by the same method the teaching of our Bibles. Not in mere metaphor does the gospel of love describe the life of the individual good man as a perpetual warfare. Not in mere metaphor does the apostle of love see in his visions of the world's future no Arcadian shepherd paradises, not even a perfect civilisation, but an eternal war in hea--From "Monographs," by Lord Houghton. ven, wrath and woe, plague and earthquake; and amid the everlasting storm, the voices of the saints beneath the altar, crying, "Lord how long?" Shall we pretend to have more tender hearts than the old man of Ephesus, whose dying sermon, so old legends say, was nought but"Little children, love one another"; and who yet could denounce the liar and the hater and the covetous man, and proclaim the vengeance of God against all evil-doers, with all the fierceness of an Isaiah ?-From" Plays and Puritans," by the Rev. C. Kingsley.

vey and retort the sentiments of a Bonaparte and a Robespierre ?" So say we to-day; though the thought has sometimes come across public men whether our relations with the United States would not be more stable and more happy if we did not speak the same language, if we did not understand and attend to everything disagreeable and untoward that is said or written on either side, if we had not all the accompaniments and conditions of family ties, in the sense in which Mr. Rogers answered some one who spoke of a distinguished literary fraternity as being "like brothers," "I had heard they were not well together, but did not know it was so bad as that."

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This one truth have I learned: That death alone was certain in my life.

"BROTHERLY" RELATIONS.-In the dedication to Washington there is a passage that might be addressed to President Grant:-" Your importance, your influence, and, I believe, your wishes, rest entirely on the comforts and happiness of your people. A declaration of hostilities against Great Britain would much and grievously diminish them, however popular it might be in the commencement, however glorious it might be in the result. My apprehension lest this popularity should in any degree sway your mind is the sole cause by which I am determined in submitting to you these considerations. Popularity in a free state like yours, where places are not exposed to traffic, nor dignities to accident, is a legitimate and noble desire; and the prospects of territory are to nations growing rich and powerful what the hopes of progeny are to individuals of rank and station. A war between America and England would at all times be a civil war. Our origin, our language, our interests are the same. Would it not be deplorable-would it not be intolerable to reason and humanity-that the language of a Locke and a Milton should con

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Ar old Egyptian festals, we are told,

Was aye a guest

Who through the feast sat rigid, silent, cold;
Whom no one prest

To share the banquet, yet who still remained
Till the last song was sung, the last cup drained.
The cup, the song, the jest, and laugh went round,
No cheek turned pale,

No guest amazed did query e'er propound,
Or lift the veil

To learn the wherefore one alone sat mute,
With whom nor host, nor friend, exchanged salute.
Usance and rose-crowned drapery did all;
That thing of bone,

That hideous skeleton in festive hall,
Evoked no groan;

No thrill of horror checked the flow of mirth,
Unseen, unfelt that grisly type of earth.
But did the host return when all were gone,
The lights put out,

The unseen presence of that nameless one
Might put to rout

All the gay fancies born of wine and song,
And speechless dread the fleeting night prolong.
At every hearth, in every human heart
There sits such guest,

We may not, cannot bid it thence depart.
E'en at the best,

We can but crown with roses, veil and drape ;
The thing exists, though we conceal its shape.
We shroud our skeletons from public gaze,
And from our own;

Ignore their presence with life's lamps ablaze,
Till left alone

With festal fragments, wine-stains, lights gone dim,
We feel them with us, icy, bloodless, grim.

Our nerves would quiver to unveil the bones
Of the dead past;

We lock them in our hearts, with sighs and moans,
To keep them fast;

'Tis but in solitude we turn the key,
And dare to look upon them as they be.

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