Shift, Johnson, till thou leave him grave space meet;
Garrick, whose art he loved, press to him dead.

Macaulay, many-sided mind, receive

By thine the frame that housed a mind as keen To take an impress, or an impress leave,

From things, or on things, read, or heard, or seen. Welcome, O Addison, with calm, wise face,

His coming, who has peopled English air With types of humor, tenderness, and grace,

Than which thine own are less rich and more rare.

Thou, too, his brother of our time, last lost,

Thackeray,-bend thy brow with kindly cheer On him, thy comrade, wave-worn, tempest-tossed, Who, from life's voyage, comes to harbor here. All the more welcome that he seeks his rest

Without the pomps that follow great ones' ends;
No mourners, save the natural ones that pressed
About the father's coffin, or the friend's;

No sable train, with plume, and plate, and pall;
No long parade of undertaker's woe,

Scarfed mutes, and feathered hearse, and coursers tall,-
All that bemocks the grave with hollow show.

Humbly they brought him in the summer morn,
Humbly and hopefully they laid him down,
And on the plate that tells when dead, when born,
His children's love, like England's lays a crown.

LITTLE NELL'S FUNERAL.-CHARLES DICKENS.

In its most pathetic and beautiful passages, the prose of Dickens runs easily and naturally into rhyme and meter, and shows him to be a poet no less than a novelist, of high order This tendency of his writing is very vividly illustrated by the account of the funeral of Little Nell, in the “Old Curiosity Shop," which is appended exactly as it stands in the book, with the exception of a few slight verbal alterations.

And now the bell,-the bell

She had so often heard by night and day,
And listened to with solemn pleasure,

E'en as a living voice,

Rung its remorseless toll for her
So young, so beautiful, so good.

Decrepit age, and vigorous life,

And blooming youth, and helpless infancy,
Poured forth,-on crutches, in the pride of strength
And health, in the full blush

Of promise, the mere dawn of life,

To gather round her tomb. Old men were there,
Whose eyes were dim

And senses failing,

Grandames, who might have died ten years ago,
And still been old,-the deaf, the blind, the lame,
The palsied,

The living dead in many shapes and forms,
To see the closing of this early grave.

What was the death it would shut in,

To that which still could crawl and keep above it!
Along the crowded path they bore her now;
Pure as the new fallen snow

That covered it; whose day on earth
Had been as fleeting.

Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,
She passed again, and the old church
Received her in its quiet shade.

They carried her to one old nook,

Where she had many and many a time sat musing,
And laid their burden softly on the pavement.
The light streamed on it through

The colored window,--a window where the boughs
Of trees were ever rustling

In the summer, and where the birds
Sang sweetly all day long.

ARTEMUS WARD AT THE TOMB OF SHAKSPEARE. C. F. BROWN.

I've been lingerin by the Tomb of the lamentid Shakspeare.

It is a success.

I do not hesitate to pronounce it as such.

You may make any use of this opinion that you see fit. If you think its publication will subswerve the cause of literatoor, you may publicate it.

I told my wife Betsey, when I left home, that I should go to the birthplace of the orthur of Otheller and other Plays. She said that as long as I kept out of Newgate she didn't care where I went. "But," I said, "don't you know he was the greatest Poit that ever lived? Not one of these common poits, like that young idyit who writes verses to our daughter, about the Roses as growses, and the breezes as blowses-but a Boss poit-also a philosopher, also a man who knew a great deal about everything."

Yes. I've been to Stratford onto the Avon, the Birthplace of Shakspeare. Mr. S. is now no more. He's been dead over three hundred (300) years. The people of his native town are justly proud of him. mem'ry, and them as sell picturs of his birthplace, &c., make it proftible cherishin it. Almost everybody buys a pictur to put into their Albiom.

They cherish his

"And this," I said, as I stood in the old church-yard at Stratford, beside a Tombstone, "this marks the spot where lies William W. Shakspeare. Alars! and this is the spot where-"

"You've got the wrong grave," said a man,—a worthy villager; Shakspeare is buried inside the church."

66

“Oh,” I said, “a boy told me this was it." The boy larfed and put the shillin I'd given him into his left eye in a inglorious manner, and commenced moving backwards towards the street.

I pursood and captered him, and after talking to him a spell in a skarcastic stile, I let him went.

William Shakspeare was born in Stratford in 1564. All the commentaters, Shaksperian scholars, etsetry, are agreed on this, which is about the only thing they are agreed on in regard to him, except that his mantle hasn't fallen onto any poet or dramatist hard enough to hurt said poet or dramatist much. And there is no doubt if these commen. tators and persons continner investigatin Shakspeare's ca reer, we shall not, in doo time, know anything about it at all. When a mere lad little William attended the Grammar School, because, as he said, the Grammar School wouldn't attend him. This remarkable remark, coming from one so young and inexperunced, set to thinkin there might

people

be something in this lad. He subsequently wrote Hamle and George Barnwell. When his kind teacher went to London to accept a position in the offices of the Metropolitan Railway, little William was chosen by his fellow pupils to deliver a farewell address. "Go on, sir," he said, “in a glorus career. Be like a eagle, and soar, and the soarer you get the more we shall all be gratified! That's so."

THE IRISHWOMAN'S LETTER.

And shure, I was tould to come in till yer honor,
To see would ye write a few lines to me Pat,
He's gone for a soger, is Misther O'Conner,
Wid a sthripe on his arm, and a band on his hat.

And what 'ill ye tell him? shure it must be aisy
For the likes of yer honor to spake wid the pen,
Tell him I'm well, and mavourneen Daisy,

(The baby, yer honor,) is better again.

For when he wint off, so sick was the crayther
She never hilt up her blue eyes till his face;
And when I'd be cryin' he'd look at me wild like,
And ax
"would I wish for the counthry's disgrace."
So he left her in danger, and me sorely gravin,'
And followed the flag wid an Irishman's joy;
And it's often I drame of the big drums a batin,'
And a bullet gone straight to the heart of me boy.

Tell him to sind us a bit of his money,

For the rint and the docther's bill due in a wake,
And-shure there's a tear on your eyelashes, honey,
I' faith I've no right wid such fradom to spake.
I'm over much thrifling, I'll not give ye trouble,
I'll find some one willin'-oh, what can it be?
What's that in the newspaper folded up double?
Yer honor, don't hide it, but rade it to me.
Dead! Patrick O'Conner! O God, it's some ither,
Shot dead! shure 'tis a wake scarce gone by,
And the kiss on the chake of his sorrowin' mother,
It hasn't had time yet, yer honor, to dhry.

Dead! dead! O God, am I crazy?

Shure it's brakin' my heart ye are, tellin' me so, And what en the world will I do wid poor Daisy? Oh what can I do? Oh where can I go?

-And a sob, hard and dry,

This room is so dark I'm not seein' yer honor;
I think I'll go home.-
Rose up from the bosom of Mary O'Conner,

But never a tear drop welled up to her eye.

NOT ON THE BATTLE-FIELD.-JOHN PIERPONT.

Oh no, no,-let me lie

Not on a field of battle, when I die.

Let not the iron tread

Of the mad war-horse crush my helmed head;
Nor let the reeking knife,

That I have drawn against a brother's life,
Be in my hand when death
Thunders along, and tramples me beneath
His heavy squadron's heels,
Or gory felloes of his cannon's wheels.

From such a dying bed,

Though o'er it float the stripes of white and red,
And the bald eagle brings

The clustered stars upon his wide-spread wings,
To sparkle in my sight,
Oh, never let my spirit take her flight!

I know that beauty's eye

Is all the brighter where gay pennants fly,
And brazen helmets dance,

And sunshine flashes on the lifted lance;
I know that bards have sung,
And people shouted till the welkin rung,
In honor of the brave

Who on the battle-field have found a grave.
I know that o'er their bones

Have grateful hands piled monumental stones
Some of those piles I've seen:

The one at Lexington, upon the green
Where the first blood was shed,
And to my country's independence led;