He hath no other life above;

He gave me a friend, and a true, true love,
And the new year will take them away.

Old year, you must not go;

So long as you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,—
Old year, you shall not go.
He frothed his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see;
But though his eyes are waxing dim,
And though his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.

Old year, you shall not die;
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.

He was full of joke and jest ;

But all his merry quips are o'er.

To see him die, across the waste

His son and heir doth ride post haste,
But he'll be dead before.

Every one for his own;

The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the new year blithe and bold, my friend
Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow

I heard just now the crowing cock; The shadows flicker to and fro,

The cricket chirps, the light burns low,'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.

Shake hands before you die;
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you.
What is it we can do for you?-
Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin;-
Alack! our friend is gone.

Close up his eyes, tie up his chin,

Step from the corpse, and let him in

Who standeth there alone,

And waiteth at the door.

There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,

And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.

JUDICIAL TRIBUNALS.-CHARLES SUMNER.

Let me here say that I hold judges, and especially the Supreme Court of the country, in much respect; but I am too familiar with the history of judicial proceedings to regard them with any superstitious reverence. Judges are but men, and in all ages have shown.a full share of frailty. Alas! alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction. The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment.

It was a judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Saviour barefoot over the pavements of Jerusalem, bending beneath his cross. It was a judicial tribunal which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judea to Rome; which, in the name of the old religion, adjudged the saints and fathers of the Christian Church to death, in all its most dreadful forms; and which afterwards, in the name of the new religion, enforced the tortures of the Inquisition, amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it compelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun.

It was a judicial tribunal which, in France, during the long reign of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instrument of every tyranny, as during the brief reign of terror it did not hesitate to stand forth the unpitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the Eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen to the beheading of Sir Thomas More; which lighted the fires of persecution, that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rogers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of ship money against the patriotic resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, sent Sydney and Russell to the block; which

persistently enforced the laws of conformity that our Pu ritan Fathers persistently refused to obey; and which afterwards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the pages of English history with massacre and murder,-even with the blood of innocent woman.

Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our country, surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem, which affirmed the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished “jurors and the people" to obey; and which now, in our day, has lent its sanction to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Bill.

BETTY AND THE BEAR.

In a pioneer's cabin out West, so they say,
A great big black grizzly trotted one day,
And seated himself on the hearth, and began
To lap the contents of a two-gallon pan

Of milk and potatoes,-an excellent meal,-
And then looked about to see what he could steal.
The lord of the mansion awoke from his sleep,
And, hearing a racket, he ventured to peep
Just out in the kitchen, to see what was there,
And was scared to behold a great grizzly bear.
So he screamed in alarm to his slumbering frow,
"Thar's a bar in the kitching as big's a cow!"

"A what?" "Why a bar!" Well, murder him, then!" "Yes, Betty, I will, if you'll first venture in."

So Betty leaped up, and the poker she seized,

While her man shut the door, and against it he squeezed

As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows,

Now on his forehead, and now on his nose,

Her man through the keyhole kept shouting within,
"Well done, my brave Betty, now hit him agin,
Now a rap on the ribs, now a knock on the snout,
Now poke with the poker and poke his eyes out."
So, with rapping and poking, poor Betty, alone,
At last laid Sir Bruin as dead as a stone.

Now when the old man saw the bear was no more,
He ventured to poke his nose out of the door,
And there was the grizzly, stretched on the floor.

Then off to the neighbors he hastened, to tell
All the wonderful things that that morning befell;
And he published the marvelous story afar,
How "me and my Betty jist slaughtered a bar!
Oh yes, come and see, all the neighbors hev sid it,
Come see what we did, ME and Betty, we did it."

THE DRAW-BRIDGE KEEPER.-HENRY ABBEY.

History and poetry celebrate no sublimer act of devotion than that of Albert G. Drecker, the watchman of the Passaic River draw-bridge, on the New York and Newark Railroad. The train was due, and he was closing the draw when his little child fell into the deep water. It would have been easy enough to rescue him, if the father could have taken the time, but already the thundering train was at hand. It was a cruel agony. His child could be saved only at the cost of other lives committed to his care. The brave man did his duty, but the child was drowned. The pass at Thermopyla was not more heroically kept. Sir Philip Sydney, giving the cup of cold water to the dying soldier, is not a nobler figure than that of Albert G. Drecker, keeping the Passaic bridge.

Drecker, the draw-bridge keeper, opened wide
The dangerous gate, to let the vessel through;
His little son was standing by his side,

Above Passaic river, deep and blue;

While in the distance, like a moan of pain,
Was heard the whistle of the coming train.

At once brave Drecker worked to swing it back,—
The gate-like bridge, that seems a gate of death;
Nearer and nearer, on the slender track,

Came the swift engine, puffing its white breath.
Then, with a shriek, the loving father saw
His darling boy fall headlong from the draw.

Either at once down in the stream to spring
And save his son, and let the living freight
Rush on to death, or to his work to cling,

And leave his boy unhelped to meet his fate;
Which should he do? Were you, as he was, tried,
Would not your love outweigh all else beside?

And yet the child to him was full as dear

As yours may be to you,—the light of eyes, A presence like a brighter atmosphere,

The household star that shone in love's mild skies,Yet side by side with duty, stern and grim,

Even his child became as nought to him.

For Drecker, being great of soul, and true,
Held to his work, and did not aid his boy,
Who in the deep, dark water sank from view.

Then from the father's life went forth all joy;
But, as he fell back, pallid with his pain,
Across the bridge, in safety, passed the train.
And yet the man was poor, and in his breast
Flowed no ancestral blood of king or lord;
True greatness needs no title and no crest

To win from men just honor and reward;
Nobility is not of rank, but mind,—
And is inborn, and common in our kind.
He is most noble whose humanity

Is least corrupted. To be just and good
The birthright of the lowest born may be;
Say what we can, we are one brotherhood,
And, rich or poor, or famous or unknown,
True hearts are noble, and true hearts alone.

THE GRAVE OF CHARLES DICKENS.

At the funeral, a crown of green leaves and white roses rested upon the coffin, and many who came to look into the grave, while it remained open, threw flow. ers into it. The closing stanza of the poem alludes to this beautiful incident.

He sleeps as he should sleep,-among the great

In the old Abbey; sleeps amidst the few

Of England's famous thousands whose high state
Is to lie with her monarchs,-monarchs too.

Monarchs, who men's minds 'neath their sway could bring
By might of wit and humor, wisdom, lore;
Music of spoken line or sounded string,—

Of Art that lives when artists are no more.

His grave is in this heart of England's heart,
This shrine within her shrine; and all around
Is no name but, in Letters or in Art,

Sounds as the names of the immortal sound.

Of some, the ashes lie beside his dust;

Of some, but marble forms and names are here;

But grave or cenotaph,-remains or bust,

They will find place for thee, their latest peer.
Make room, O tuneful Handel, at thy feet;
Make room, O witty Sheridan, at thy head;