Of long ago; And wrap our satisfied desires But now the cross our worthies bore Profession's quiet sleep is o'er, The cry of innocent blood at last An answer in the whirlwind blast, From Heaven's dark frown. The land is red with judgments. Who Have we been faithful as we knew, To Heaven and Earth? How faint through din of merchandise And count of gain, Has seemed to us the captives' cries! This day the fearful reckoning comes To each and all; We hear amidst our peaceful homes The summons of the conscript drums, The bugle's call. Our path is plain: the war-net draws Round us in vain, While, faithful to the Higher Cause, We keep our fealty to the laws Through patient pain. The levelled gun, the battle brand We may not take; But, calmly loyal, we can stand, Why ask for case where all is pain? Be left to add our gain to gain, To suffer well is well to serve ; The rigid lines of law shall curve And light is mingled with the gloom, Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom Thanks for our privilege to bless The widow in her keen distress, For fields of duty opening wide, Ours by traditions dear and old Our wards to cherish and uphold, Of Christian grace. And we may tread the sick-bed floors Who murmurs that in these dark days God's hand within the shadow lays Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand! The years have never dropped their sand On mortal issue vast and grand As ours to-day. Already, on the sable ground Is freedom's glorious picture found, Upraised in prayer. Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice And pain and loss, When God shall wipe the weeping eyes, For suffering give the victor's prize, The crown for cross. WHEN THOU SLEEPEST. BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE. WHEN thou sleepest, lulled in night, Float a moment mid that ray, Touch some answering mental string, Wake a note and pass away? When thou watchest, as the hours, Mute and blind, are speeding on, O'er that rayless path, where lowers Muffled midnight, black and lone; Comes there nothing hovering near, Thought or half reality, Whispering marvels in thine ear, Every word a mystery, Chanting low an ancient lay, Every plaintive note a spell, Clearing memory's clouds away, Showing scenes thy heart loves well? Songs forgot, in childhood sung, Airs in youth beloved and known Whispered by that airy tongue, Once again are made thine own Be it dream in haunted sleep Be it thought in vigil lone, Drink'st thou not a rapture deep From the feeling, 'tis thine own? All thine own; thou need'st not tell What bright form thy slumber blest All thine own; remember well Night and shade were round thy rest Nothing looked upon thy bed Save the lonely watchlight's gleam Not a whisper, not a tread Scared thy spirit's glorious dream Sometimes, when the midnight gale, Breathed a moan and then was still, Seemed the spell of thought to fail, Checked by one ecstatic thrill; Felt as all external things, Robed in moonlight, smote thine eye; Then thy spirit's waiting wings Quivered, trembled, spread to fly; Then th' aspirer, wildly swelling, Looked where, mid transcendency, Star to star was mutely telling Heaven's resolve and fate's decree. Oh, it longed for holier fire Than this spark in earthly shrine; Oh, it soared, and higher, higher, Sought to reach a home divine! Hopeless quest! soon weak and weary Flagged the pinion, drooped the plume, And again in sadness dreary Came the baffled wanderer home. And again it turned for soothing POETRY.-The Itinerant's Wife, 50. Ballad on a Bishop, 65. Shakspeare on Copperheads, 65. The Nile Song, 77. Spring at the Capital, 96. "Out in the Cold," 96. SHORT ARTICLES.-Source of the Nile, 77. The Many Mansions in the House of the Father, 92. Sorry that we cannot go so far out of our line as to copy from the Knickerbocker for July the leading article, from which our correspondent has derived so much advantage. We have read it with interest. It is on the Movement Cure; the curative effects of special bodily exercise. It is, we see, by our friend Mr. Henry C. Williston, one of whose California articles was copied into The Living Age from an English Magazine. Mr. W. when we saw him last, ten or fifteen years ago, was in full health and vigor; but we can hardly entirely regret a change which has given occasion for so much fortitude and perseverance. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON & CO., BOSTON For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. From The Dublin University Magazine. THE SCIENCE AND TRADITIONS OF THE SUPERNATURAL. of entering. From Zoroaster to the man who subjects household furniture to sleight-ofhand tricks, all professors and disciples of forbidden arts are obnoxious to be ranged in one of these categories. MAGIC, SORCERY, AND WITCHCRAFT. THE wide and full view of nature and its operations enjoyed by our first parents was It would take us out of our way to examine probably much contracted after their fall, and the various processes through which the clear only descended in a fragmentary manner to insight, accorded to our first parents of the their posterity. After the flood, this treas- relation in which all creatures stand to the ure, diminished and broken up, was far from Creator, passed in degenerating to the worbeing common property to the sons of the ship of created things, human passions, the children of Noah. It remained in greatest functions of nature, and the souls of departed fulness among the heads of families of the de- heroes. It is merely requisite for our purscent of Heber; and, when idolatry began to pose to say that the heavenly bodies, so mysprevail, it continued in an inferior and per- terious in their unapproachableness, and in verted form among the Assyrian and Egyptian their motions, and the undoubted influence priests. Among them were known, or be- of the apparently largest two on the condition lieved to be known, all means by which of the parent earth, became chief objects of knowledge of present and future things, and adoration. The prolific earth, which appeared of the cure of diseases, could be innocently to give birth to all living beings, to furnish obtained, or evilly wrung from spiritual pow- them with food, and all things essential to ers. This knowledge got in time the name their existence, and in whose bosom all seek of magic, for which different derivations have their final rest, was the loved, the genial been given. "Priestly knowledge" is prob- Alma Mater. Her handmaidens, the subtle ably the best equivalent. When any one and (as was supposed) simple elements, the gifted with a portion of this science chose to water, the fire, and the air, came in for their exert it for the mere attainment of power or measure of worship. The original notion of temporal possessions, or for the destruction the heavenly messengers and guardian angels or harm of others, he was looked on as a ma- became deteriorated in time to that of dæmons lignant sorcerer or witch would be in modern or genii. Our modern. verse-makers, when times. Sir Edward Bulwer, who has made mentioning the genius of Rome, the genius magic, in its use and abuse, his particular of Cæsar, etc., scarcely reflect that what to study, has well individualized the higher class of sages in the noble-minded Zanoni, and the evil-disposed professors in Arbaces, priest of Isis, and the poison-concocting witch of Vesuvius. There were at all times individuals tormented with a desire to penetrate the designs of Providence, the cause and mode of natural processes ever before their eyes, the dark mysteries of life, and of the union of mind and matter, and they ardently longed that these deep and inexplicable arcana should become intelligible to their intellect. These classes of men saw within the range of their mental and bodily faculties no means of gratifying their wishes. Unblessed with patience or acquiescence in the Divine Will, or faith in the power, or confidence in the goodness of the Creator, they determined on devising some means to oblige those beings whose presence cannot be detected by bodily organs, to be their guides through the labyrinth which they never should have thought them is a mere poetic image, was an existing, potent being to the contemporaries of the Tarquinii, the Fabii, and the Julian family. As has been observed, nothing evil was necessarily connected with the word magic. The Persian Magi were well qualified to rule their subjects by their superior attainments in science. They sacrificed to the gods; they consulted them on their own affairs, but particularly as to the issue of events pregnant with the weal or woe of their people. The Egyptian priests were depositories of all the knowledge that had survived the dispersion at Babel in a fragmentary form. Both priests and Magi had recourse to rites in presence of the people for the foreknowledge of future events. This, in fact, formed a portion of the state religion; but an acquaintance with more recondite and solemn ceremonies, which they practised in sccret, was carefully kept from the commonalty. While the Greeks and Romans paid divine honors to Jupiter and Juno, or their doubles, |