4. If for good you've taken ill,
Let it pass!

Oh! be kind and gentle still!
Let it pass!

Time at last makes all things straight;

Let us not resent, but wait,

And our triumph shall be great;
Let it pass!

5. Bid your anger to depart;

Let it pass!

Lay these homely words to heart;

Let it pass!

Follow not the giddy throng;
Better to be wronged than wrong;
Therefore sing this cheery song,
Let it pass!

THE CEDAR OF LEBANON.

1. Many years ago, a Frenchman, who was travelling in the Holy Land, found a seedling among the cedars of Lebanon, which he longed to bring

away as a memorial of his travels. He took it up tenderly, with all the earth about its little roots, and, for want of a better flower-pot, planted it carefully in his hat; and there he kept it and tended it. 2. The voyage home was rough and tempestuous, and so much longer than usual, that the supply of

fresh water in the ship fell short; they were obliged to measure it out most carefully to each person. The captain was allowed two glasses a day; the sailors, who had the work of the ship on their hands, one glass each; and the poor passengers but half a

glass. In such a scarcity you may suppose the little cedar had no allowance at all.

3. But our friend the traveller felt for it as his child, and each day shared with it his small half glass of precious water; and so it was, that when the vessel arrived at the port, the traveller had drunk so little water that he was almost dying, and the young cedar had taken so much that, behold, it was a noble and fresh little tree, six inches high!

4. At the Custom-house, the officers, who are always suspicious of smuggling, wished to empty the hat; for they would not believe but that something more valuable lay hidden beneath the moist mould. They thought of lace or of diamonds, and began to thrust their fingers into the soil. But our poor traveller implored them so earnestly to spare his tree, and talked to them so eloquently of all that we read in the Bible of the cedar of Lebanon, telling them of David's House and Solomon's Temple, that the men's hearts were softened, and they suffered the young cedar to remain undisturbed in its strange dwelling.

5. From thence it was carried to Paris, and planted most carefully in the Jardin des Plantes. A large tile was set against it as a protection and a shade, and its name was written in Latin and placed in front, to tell all the world that it was something new and precious. The soil was good, and the tree grewgrew till it no longer needed the shelter of the tile, nor the dignified protection of the Latin inscription; grew till it was taller than its kind protector the traveller; grew till it could give shelter to a nurse

and her child, tired of walking about in the pleasant gardens, and glad of the coolness of the thick dark branches. The cedar grew larger and larger, and became the noblest tree there.

6. All the birds of the garden could have assembled in its branches; all the lions and tigers, and apes and bears, and panthers and elephants of the great menagerie close at hand, could have lain at ease under its shade. It became the tree of all the trees in the wide garden that the people loved the best; there, each Thursday, when the gardens were open to all the city, the blind people from their asylum used to ask to be brought under the cedar; there they would stand together and measure its great trunk, and guess how large and wide must be its branches. It was a pleasure to see them listening to the sweet songs of the birds overhead, and breathing in its fragrant eastern perfume.

7. There was once a prison at the end of these gardens, a dark and dismal and terrible place, where the unfortunate and the guilty were all mixed together in wretched confusion. The building was a lofty one, divided into many stories, and by the time the top was reached, one would be exhausted and breathless. The cells were as dreary and comfortless there as in those below; and yet those who could procure a little money by any means, gladly paid it to be allowed to rent one of these topmost cells.

8. What was it that made them value this weary height? It was the sight of the cedar of Lebanon, beyond that forest of chimneys and that desert

plain of slates. With his cheeks pressed against the rusty bars, the poor debtor would pass hours looking upon it. It was the prisoner's garden, and he would console himself in the weariness of a long, rainy, sunless day, by the thought, "The cedar will look greener to-morrow." It was shown to every friend and visitor; and each felt it a comfort, in the midst of so much wretchedness, to see it.

9. Who will not grieve for the fate of the cedar of Lebanon? It had grown and flourished for a hundred years, for cedars do not need centuries, like the oak, to attain their highest growth, when, just as its hundredth year was attained, the noble, the beautiful tree was cut down to make room for a railway! Such things, it seems, must be; and we must not grieve too much or complain at any of the changes that pass around us in this world of changes; yet we cannot but feel sorry for the cedar of Lebanon.