Few, as all noblest words are, pearls and gems
Of rarest lustre; but they found their way,
More than all gifts of speech or poet's skill,
To stir the depths of England's heart of hearts,
And gave to Sidney's name a brighter life,
A nobler fame through all the immortal years,
Than Raleigh's friendship, or his own brave deeds,
Or counsels wise, or Spenser's silver notes,-
A trumpet-call to bid the heart awake,
A beacon-light to all the rising youth,
Fit crown of glory to that stainless life,
The perfect pattern of a Christian knight,
The noblest hero of our noblest age.

IV.

AND one day they shall meet before their God,
The Hebrew, and the Moslem, and the flower
Of England's knighthood. On the great white throne
The Judge shall sit, and from His lips shall flow
Divinest words: 66
Come, friends and brothers, come;
I speak as one whose soul has known your pangs;
Your weariness and woe were also mine;
The cry, 'I thirst,' has issued from these lips,
And I too would not drink, but bore the pain,
Yielding My will to do My Father's work,
And so that work was finish'd; so I learnt
The fullest measure of obedience, learnt
The wide deep love embracing all mankind,
Passing through all the phases of their woe,
That I before their God might plead for all.
And thus through all the pulses of their life
I suffer when they suffer; count each deed
Of mercy done to them as done to Me;
Am one with them in sorrow and in joy,
Rejoicing in their likeness to My life,
And bearing still the burden of their sins
For which I once was offer'd. I was there,

The light of each man's soul, in that wild cave,
On that parch'd desert, on that tented field;
That self-forgetting love I own'd as mine,
And ye who, true to that diviner Light
Which triumph'd over nature, freely gave
That water to the thirsty, gave to Me.
Brother, and friend, and Lord of all men, I
Count nothing human alien to myself,
And lifted up upon the Cross, I draw
By that supremest love the hearts of all.
Come, therefore, come, ye blessed, to the Light
That, shining through the world's great darkness, led
Your feet the upward path. That Light ye saw,
Or dimly dawning on the mountain height,
Or bursting forth in glory as the morn,

Or brightening onward to the perfect day,
And, seeing it, were glad. Ye heard the Voice
Which bade you mount the steep and narrow way,
And did not close your ears. Ye knew not then
Whence came the Light, and whose the Voice that
spake.

Now, when all mists are fled, and ever hush'd
The world's loud murmur, ye shall see and hear,
As children looking on their Father's face,
And welcomed by their Brother's words of peace.
Yours was the work of yielding all for Him,
Through clouds and darkness pressing on in faith;
Yours the reward of looking back on life,
The fight well fought, the race well run, to see
That all things true and good were wrought in God."

TU

THE OWLET OF OWLSTONE EDGE.

REV. F. E. PAGET.

U-WHIT! Tu-whoo! I am an owl. And owls are birds of wisdom. And being an owl, and therefore full of wisdom, I am about to indulge mankind with some portions of my auto-biography; in which, following the ways of the wise, I mean to tell as much as possible about my neighbours, and as little as possible about myself.

My father and mother occupied a highly respectable position in the tower of the Church of Consall St. Michael, which, as all the world knows, lay on the edge of Consall Forest, and within a stone's throw of the old Manor House of the Heaths of Consall Dale.

A rare place was that for birds of our feather, though the neighbours would give it no better designation than Rat Hall. Such jolly old yew trees! Such bowers of ivy among the old gables and chimneystacks! Such sheltered nooks in the roof of the old quadrangle! No pert plumbers, or slaters, or carpenters ever ventured there to keep it weather-tight! It was a tumble-down place, no doubt: but it was in keeping with the fortunes of the family: some show at a distance, but very little that would bear examination.

Well! a great northern railway now passes over its very site, and the Church of Consall St. Michael is a spick and span new building from crypt to crowning vane: not a leaf of ivy to shelter a Gilliehowter! and not a hole or cranny in any part of the fabric that is large enough to shelter even a half-starved church

mouse.

Nasty, slippery tiles on the floor! Not a pew to be seen! Wire-work before the windows! Gratings in the outside door! A bridle-road, as one may say, into the bell-chamber! Even the luffer-boards protected by netting! And that fidget of a woman, the

sexton's wife, with her broom, and her duster, and her turk's-head, thrusting her nose into every corner, sweeping, and rubbing, and scrubbing, till it makes one's bones ache to think of it! No harbour now within the precincts of Consall St. Michael, for starlings, or jackdaws, or owls! We have been compelled to seek refuge elsewhere; and thus it has come to pass that I am the Owlet of Owlstone Edge.

Of course I don't mean to speak of all these changes as having been matters of my own personal observation, for, as I have already toid you, I am but a chick. My mother, however, poor soul! dreams of them all day long, so that her rest is quite disturbed; and when she wakes up for the night, this subject is the first on her tongue. Nobody likes to be turned out of quarters where they have lived snugly and comfortably for scores of years. And my respected parents are not as young as they were. They don't care to be changing their lodgings every spring and fall. They have grown nervous, too, and find it a great exertion to keep snapping their bills, as we owls do when we feel uneasy: yet there is nothing else to be done in a strange neighbourhood. And ever since her accident my mother finds mousing much more difficult; and so it is necessary for her to be where vermin is plentiful.

All these causes combined have brought us to Owlstone Edge: but more than these, I suspect was the disappointment which my parents have experienced in their families. My poor mother said that she was really worn out with laying eggs whose invariable destiny was to be stolen, and blown, and strung by those pests of creation, the schoolboys. And of the few of my elder brothers and sisters who chipped their way out of the shell, not one but came to an untimely end before he was a month old. The growing audacity of the schoolboys, and the rapidly increasing dilapidation of Consall Church had made their old quarters no longer tenable. But I dare say

they would have stayed there to the last, if it had not been for the shameful usage which my mother received.

When that happened, my father resolved to flit at once, and so they moved up the very next night to Owlstone Edge, not at all intending to make it their permanent residence, but choosing it as a secure and convenient abode till they had had leisure to find better accommodation. The limestone cliff is quite inaccessible,- —even to boys; there are three or four farm-houses, and fold-yards, and other good mousingplaces within an easy distance; there is no gamekeeper going about with his gun on his shoulder, as there used to be at Squire Heath's, at Consall; and every church-tower in the country is to be seen from hence. And as my respected parents have determined to examine each in turn, before they finally determine their future residence, Owlstone Edge is very convenient as a centre from which to make their expeditions.

I have already alluded to the misfortune which befell my mother, and as it had no inconsiderable influence on the results which ensued, it seems proper to relieve that curiosity on the subject which has been naturally awakened in the bosom of the public. And thus it fell out.

The parson of Consall, poor old gentleman, was an easy kind of a man that didn't interfere much in parish matters, and left the church to the care of the churchwardens, who, as is usually the case, left it very much to the care of the owls.

But it so happened that at the time of which I am speaking, the landlady of the Jolly Butchers at Consall had had a quarrel with a set of rollicking young men who used to frequent her house nightly, and of whom my father was wont to declare that though he was esteemed a good hooter in his youth, their hootings beat his hollow.

Well, these young fellows quarrelled with the Jolly