The Nile Voyage.

"O! dulces comitum valete cætus,
Longe quos simul a domo profectos

Diversæ vanæ viæ reportant."-CATULLUS.

On, on; still on we rowed, as gay a crew
Of youths as ere explored old Father Nile;
We swept by Thebes and Philæ's lovely isle,
The Cataracts, and desolate Edfoù;

We passed all Nubia's narrow confine through,
Until at Ebn Simbul's rock-hewn pile

Turning, we set our sail, and many a mile

Down with the widening stream for Cairo flew.

There shook we hands: some sought their English home;

Some braved the Desert for thy Holy Place,

Jerusalem; some turned for Greece, some Rome;

And I for India, eastward, set my face.

So when a rocket bursts up in the sky,

Its falling meteors assunder fly.

My Study.

"Nevertheless, we come back to our starting-point, that what is unseen forms the real value of the library. The type, the paper, the binding, the age, are all visible; but the soul that conceived it, the mind that arranged it, the hand that wrote it, the associations which cling to it, are the invisible links in a long chain of thought, effort, and history, which make the book what it is.

"In wandering through the great libraries of Europe, how often has this truth been impressed upon the mind !-such a library as that in the old city of Nuremberg, housed in what was once a monastery, and looking so ancient, quaint, and black-lettered, visibly and invisibly, that if the old monk in the legend who slipped over a thousand years while the little bird sang to him in the wood, and was thereby taught, what he could not understand in the written Word, that a thousand yearin God's sight are but as a day,—if that old mouk had walked out of the Nurem berg monastery and now walked back again, he might also take up the selfsame manuscript he had laid down a thousand years ago.

"What invisible heads have ached, and hands become weary, over those vellum volumes, with their bright initial letters! What hearts have throbbed over the early printed book! How triumphantly was the first copy, now worm eaten and forgotten, contemplated by the author! How was that invisible world which surrounded him to be stirred by that new book!"

I sit within my study, clothed from floor
To roof with books, a monumental room,
Full of the dead: as in some ancient tomb
Urns ranged around hold all that was of yore
A living race, my shelves are but the store
Of all that part of genius, which the doom
Of Time hath spared from death's eternal gloom :
Each volume is the fruit a life-time bore.

And quaintly thus my reverie I nurse;

'When I perchance have joined those silent ranks,

'Some may read me, as others I, with thanks

For joy or profit; little thinking they,

'How little portion of myself display

'These fragmentary hints embalmed in verse.'

Dead Authors.

My days among the dead are past,
Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old:

My never failing friends are they ;

With whom I converse night and day."-SOUTHEY.

In the long twilight of a Summer eve,
I love to sit among my silent books,
Not reading, but with both-hand-shaded looks
Intent upon my shelves, till I believe

Some witch hath vowed my senses to deceive;
For lo! the volumes vanish from their nooks,

And forth upon me fly, as thick as rooks

When their tall trees, disturbed, with screams they leave, The writers ghosts; and then distinct I see

Their form and fashion, as in life they stood:

Some smile and nod; some look severe and cold;
Some seem deep commune with themselves to hold;
But all look kindly for a while on me.

Ah! I shall join you my dear brotherhood!

The School of Life.

How many teachers, ministers of grace,
Attend on Man to guide him on his way ?
The Sun runs on before him all the day;
The Rivers babble to him as they race
On, downward, to their Ocean resting-place;
The woods, and meadows in their herbage gay,
Lilies, unrivalled in their robes array,

And all the fairy flowers that deck Earth's face,
Whisper to him, in garden or in wild.

Sea, mountain, cloud, the wind, moon, stars, and sky,
In eloquent discourse their tales express :

For him temptation, failure, and success,
All joy and sorrow, wealth, and poverty,
Are as appointed masters to a child.