MANY, MANY YEARS AGO. H, my golden days of child- How we thronged the frozen streamlets hood, Many, many years ago! Ah! how well do I remem ber What a pride it was to know, When my little playmates mustered On this old familiar spot To select their infant pastimes, That my name was ne'er forgot; They so eagerly would come, Chase each other to and fro, Oh, my balmy days of boyhood, Many, many years ago, For the berry or the sloe, Traced by its own perfume sweet, To the nutting groves repaired, And in warmth of purest boy-love The rich clusters with them shared! Or when hoary-headed Winter Brought his welcome frost and snow, Many, many years ago! Then my days of dawning manhood, Many, many years ago, When the future seemed all brightness, She as fair as I was proud-- Would so gladly dance along! Ah, ye golden days! Departed, Yet full oft on Memory's wing Ye return like some bright vision, And both joy and sorrow bring. Where are now my boy-companions, Those dear friends of love and truth? Death hath sealed the lips of many Fair and beautiful in youth. Robin's lute has long been silent, And the trees are old and bare; The old playground is not there; T. LOKER. His sombre face the storm defies, And thus from morn till eve he cries: "Charco' charco'!" While echo faint and far replies, "Hark, O! hark, O!" “Charco'!"—" Hark, O!" Such cheery sounds Then honored be the charcoal-man! Attend him on his daily rounds. Though dusky as an African, 'Tis not for you, that chance to be A little better clad than he, His honest manhood to despise, Although from morn till eve he cries, "Charco' charco'!" While mocking echo still replies, "Hark, O! hark, O!" "Charco' !"-" Hark, O!" Long may the Over the river, over the river, My brother stands waiting to welcome me. Over the river the boatman pale Carried another-the household pet; Her brown curls waved in the gentle gale; Darling Minnie! I see her yet. She crossed on her bosom her dimpled hands And fearlessly entered the phantom bark ; We felt it glide from the silver sands, And all our sunshine grew strangely dark. We know she is safe on the farther side, Where all the ransomed and angels be: Over the river, the mystic river, My childhood's idol is waiting for me. For none return from those quiet shores Who cross with the boatman cold and pale; We hear the dip of the golden oars And catch a gleam of the snowy sail, And, lo! they have passed from our yearning hearts, They cross the stream and are gone for aye. We may not sunder the veil apart Let us rise up and part: she will not know; Let us go seaward as the great winds go, Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here? There is no help, for all these things are so, And all the world is bitter as a tear; That hides from our vision the gates of And how these things are, though ye strove day; We only know that their barks no more May sail with us o'er life's stormy sea; Yet somewhere, I know, on the unseen shore, They watch and beckon and wait for me. And I sit and think, when the sunset's gold I shall one day stand by the water cold oar; I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail, I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand, Books should be read; but if you can't digest, Though all those waves went over us and The same's the surfeit, take the worst or best. drove Deep down the stifling lips and drowning Clear heads, sound hearts, full minds, with hair, She would not care. Let us go hence, go hence: she will not see. She too, remembering days and words that were, Will turn a little toward us, sighing, but we, We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there. Nay, and, though all men seeing had pity on me, She would not see. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. ADVICE TO LAWYERS. IN Justice Story's memorandum-book of arguments before the Supreme Court in 1831 and 1832, the following fragments are written on the fly-leaf: point may speak; All else how poor in fact! in law how weak! Who's a great lawyer? He who aims to say Greatness ne'er grew from soils of spongy mould, All on the surface dry, beneath all cold; And gather vigor as it seeks the skies. Whoe'er in law desires to win his cause Must speak with point, not measure out "wise saws, Must make his learning apt, his reasoning Pregnant in matter, but in style severe, JOSEPH STORY. EDWARD YOUNG. the merit of containing a number of epigrams, and, as they appeared rather earlier than those of Pope, they may boast of having afforded that writer some degree of example. The opinion of Swift concerning them, however, seems to us not to be an unjust one-that they should have either been more merry or more angry. One of his tragedies is still ular on the stage, and his Night Thoughts have many admirers both at home and abroad. Of his lyrical poetry he had himself the good sense to think but indifferently. In none of his works is he more spirited and amusing than in his "Essay on Original Composition," written at the age of eighty. pop OUNG'S satires have at least | ter. The Night Thoughts certainly contain many splendid and happy conceptions, but their beauty is thickly marred by false wit and overlabored antithesis. Indeed, his whole ideas seem to have been in a state of antithesis while he composed the poem. One portion of his fancy appears devoted to aggravate the picture of his desolate feelings, and the other half to contradict that picture by eccentric images and epigrammatic ingenuities. As a poet he was fond of exaggeration but it was that of the fancy more than of the heart. This appears no less in the noisy hyperboles of his tragedies than in the studied melancholy of the Night Thoughts, in which he pronounces the simple act of laughter to be half immoral. That he was a pious man, and had felt something from the afflictions described in the Complaint, need not be called in question; but he seems covenanting with himself to be as desolate as possible, as if he had continued the custom, ascribed to him at college, of studying with a candle stuck in a human skull, while, at the same time, the feelings and habits of a man of the world, which still adhere to him, throw a singular contrast over his renunciations of human vanity. He abjures the world in witty metaphors, commences his poem with a sarcasm on sleep, deplores his being neglected at court, compliments a lady of quality by asking the moon if she would choose to be called "the fair Portland of the skies," and dedicates to the patrons of "a much-indebted Muse," one of whom (Lord Wilmington) on some occasion he puts in the balance of The Night Thoughts have been translated into more than one foreign language, and it is usual for foreigners to regard them as eminently characteristic of the peculiar temperament of English genius. Madame de Staël has, indeed, gravely deduced the genealogy of our national melancholy from Ossian and the Northern Scalds down to Dr. Young. Few Englishmen, however, will, probably, be disposed to recognize the author of the Night Thoughts as their national poet by way of eminence. His devotional gloom is more in the spirit of St. Francis of Asisium than of an English divine, and his austerity is blended with a vein of whimsical conceit that is still more unlike the plainness of English charac |