QUEEN MAB.

BY THOMAS HOOD.

LITTLE fairy comes at night,

Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown, With silver spots upon her wings; And from the moon she flutters down.

She has a little silver wand,

And when a good child goes to bed,
She waves her hand from right to left,
And makes a circle round its head:

And then it dreams of pleasant things-
Of fountains filled with fairy fish,
And trees that bear delicious fruit,
And bow their branches at a wish;
Of arbours filled with dainty scents,

From lovely flowers that never fade;
Bright flies that glitter in the sun,

And glow-worm shining in the shade; And talking birds, with gifted tongues For singing songs and telling tales; And pretty dwarfs, to show the way Through fairy hills and fairy dales.

But when a bad child goes to bed,

From left to right she weaves her rings, And then it dreams all through the night Of only ugly, horrid things!

Then lions come with glaring eyes,
And tigers growl-a dreadful noise!
And ogres draw their cruel knives,
To shed the blood of girls and boys;

Then stormy waves rush on to drown,
Or raging flames come scorching round,
Fierce dragons hover in the air,

And serpents crawl along the ground.
Then wicked children wake and weep,

And wish the long black gloom away: But good ones love the dark, and find The night as pleasant as the day.

LIFE'S AIM.

THY aim, what is it?-think, my friend;
Life takes its hue from life's great end;
The inmost motive of the soul

Holds the whole being in control.

The thirsty soul, whose aim is still
His cup at Pleasure's fount to fill,
The fever of his life is seen
In weary look and restless mien ;

His useless life goes flitting by
On wings of troubled ecstacy;
Or where ennui so loads the air,
Uneasy lounging in an easy chair.

He fills his cup, and drinks again,
To find but short respite from pain;
Yet never tastes the healthful rest
A noble purpose gives the breast.
While who bids Pleasure stand aside,
Choosing stern duty as his guide;
Joy waits beside his pathway still,
His cup of happiness to fill.

Daring the thorny paths of pain,
The thorns to blossoms turn again,
Their sweetness fills the summer air,
And bathes his sense in pleasure rare.

Who choosing, as his dearest part,
To bless on earth another heart-
Or sister, mother, brother, friend,
Making their good his life's sweet end :

In such blest task-his efforts given
A tribute to the GOD of Heaven-
His life, o'erspanned by heavenly skies,
Outblooms a fadeless paradise.

Love sings for him her summer song,
And all the Graces round him throng;
Unwooed, they lay their service sweet,
A joyful offering at his feet.

B. H. F.

THE BETTER AGE.

ARDS, in praise of golden ages,
Long have sung in lofty rhyme;
But, except in their own pages,
Never was there such a time:
The era they so much regret-
The better age-is coming yet.

Iron, iron, iron only,

All our ages yet have been;
Barren were they, bleak and lonely-
Here and there a flower between ;
With blood and tears they all are wet-
A better age is coming yet.

By the aims we fondly cherish,
By the hope that never dies,
Error's legions soon shall perish,
Truth and Liberty arise-
A pair on earth that never met-
A better age is coming yet.

Up then, brethren, and be doing,
Every effort helps it on;
And the humblest, truth pursuing,
From its pathway lifts a stone :
Love your labour-ne'er forget
A better age is coming yet.

London: FRED. PITMAN, 20, Paternoster Row, E.C. Printed by J. WARD, Dewsbury.

Popular Lecturer and Reader.

Edited by HENRY PITMAN, Manchester.

wo years ago to-day, I was on my way home, having concluded a pleasant tour of two years in the United States. The chief object of my visit to that country was to witness the operation of republican institutions, and especially to acquaint myself with that political ferment that results in the election of a President. Little did I think that the presidential campaign in which I bore a part, fighting energetically, and of course on the winning side as became an Englishman, for the election of Abraham Lincoln, little did I think that its immediate result would be that fearful outburst of passionate fury on the part of the defeated, which has now for nearly two years deluged the land with blood. I heard the Southern threats of separation, and believed them just as much as you would believe the Irish, if they declared that they would set up a King Prien if the Protestants won their elections, and with just as much reason. I shall say very little about politics, but give you a rough sketch of some things I saw, and repeat some of the opinions I formed of men and customs, on the other side of the Atlantic. You know, that very many years ago, this country of ours was successively occupied by the Britons, Celts, Romans, Picts, Saxons, Angles, Jutes, Danes, and Normans. Those nine peoples, speaking different languages, hating one another, and each

* Sept. 18th, 1863. The lecture was delivered at Nantwich, Cheshire. 11.-NOV.

trying to exterminate the others, finally settled down, intermarried, and the result is the energetic, industrious English nation of the present day. Now, in America the same thing is going on, on a much larger scale, which began here more than a thousand years ago. There is the cute, active, New Englander, descendant of the Puritans,-nicknamed a Yankee, inventing, scheming, often failing, but always in the end succeeding. There is a story told of one Yankee, who invented a machine, into one end of which a live pig was put, and he came out at the other end converted into smoked hams, flitches of well-cured bacon, brawn, and sausages, his bristles were made into brushes, and the inventor went mad after all, because he could not tell what to do with the squeak. Still it is a remarkable fact, to quote the words of a distinguished American orator, that "at this moment, the rivers and seas of the globe are navigated with that marvellous application of steam as a propelling power which was first effected by Fulton. The harvests of the civilised world are gathered by American reapers; the newspapers which lead the journalism of Europe are printed on American presses; there are railroads in Europe, constructed by American engineers, and travelled by American locomotives; troops armed with American weapons, and ships of war built in American dock-yards. In the factories of Europe there is machinery of American invention or improvement; in their observatories, telescopes of American construction; and apparatus of American invention for recording the celestial phenomena. America contests with Europe the introduction into actual use of the electric telegraph, and her mode of operating it is adopted throughout the French empire; and, though last not least, the sewing machine was invented and perfected in America." There are the descendants of chivalric British cavaliers, and of French and Spanish adventurers, in the South. Germans and Irish furnish a large proportion of the inhabitants of the North. The Welsh have formed little colonies in some of the states. Negroes are everywhere, idle, swaggering, impudent, and disgusting, from the smell caused by their oily skins; and in the west and over the desert, tribes of Indians roam in the only part remaining to them of a continent once all their own.

In the wilderness of Utah and Nebraska I have seen many Indians. As a race they are very lazy, and cannot be induced