"We praise Thee, God,

And we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!"
Augustine on the instant caught the tone
Of answering exultation:

"All the earth

Doth worship Thee, the Father everlasting!"
And from the altar-rail came back again

The antiphony:

"To Thee all angels cry

Aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein."

And from the font:

"To Thee the Cherubim

And Seraphim continually do cry,

O Holy, Holy, Holy, Thou Lord God

Of Sabaoth! heaven and earth are full of all
The glory of Thy Majesty !"

And then

With upward gaze, as if he looked upon The unnumbered multitudes about the throne, Saint Ambrose answered, with triumphant voice: "The glorious company of the Apostles ""Praise Thee!" brake reverent from Augustine's lips. "The goodly fellowship of the Prophets""Praise Thee!" "The nobly army of the Martyrs""Praise Thee!" And back and forth responsive rolled The grand antiphonal, until the crowd

That kneeled throughout the vast Basilica
Rose to their feet and toward the altar pressed,
With one strong impulse drawn. The breath of God
Had, to their thought, inspired these mortal lips
To which they listened, held as in a spell
Vatic and wonderful.

And when the last

Response was reached, and the rapt speakers stood
With eyelids dropped, as those who had seen God,
And could not brook at once a mortal face,
Awe-struck, the people bowed their heads and wept,
Then uttered, with acclaim, one long "Amen!"

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

CAT-TAILS.

OUR old cats sat down to tea,

FOUR sat down black

And their robes were black as black could be,

For the council'was grave, as you

To decide the fate of Tony Lee.

will see,

For a cruel, cruel deed had he done :
To a tree near by, and "merely for fun,"

A dear little kitten, just learning to run,

He had wickedly, cruelly by the tail hung.

“An example, I say, must be made of that," Said the oldest and wisest and gravest cat, As at the head of the table she sat,

And held in her paw a morsel of fat.

And heads were nodded and plans were made,
Freely discussed and carefully weighed,
By which the boy should be fully paid
For the crime these cats at his door had laid.

'Twas twelve o'clock when Tony Lee Sprang up in bed to look and see

What the terrible noise could be

That made him tremble and quake in each knee.

Now, picture a moment the sight that he saw:
Everywhere cats, from ceiling to floor;

There were cats on the mantel and cats round the door, There were cats in the closet, and on the bed more.

There were cats on the table and cats on each chair, There were cats in the window, and none would dare To say if they ended on earth or in air,

And each grave cat was dressed with care.

In robes of black they were all arrayed,
And every tail with care was laid

By the side of its owner, who music made
As her head and her body were gently swayed.

And the poor boy gasped, but no word could he say,
For the wails and the shrieks of this horrible lay
As plain to him were as the sun is by day,
And he trembled and shook in a sad, sad way.

Then down from the mantel and on to the bed
Sprang the oldest cat with a gentle tread,
And closer and closer she came to his head,
Till his face was brushed by her tail widespread.

"Never again," she murmured low,

"Shall you harm a cat or cause one woe."

Then a long procession, moving slow,

Passed over the boy from head to toe.

And every tail o'er his face was brushed,

Till all of a sudden his breathing was hushed.

He had fainted away, completely crushed

By the terror of this punishment that over him rushed.

'Twas day when he opened his eyes to the light,
And he thought it a miserable dream of the night,
Till turning, he gazed on a horrible sight
That gave him another and terrible fright.

For there by his side-just think of that!--
All furry and black, lay the tail of a cat.
Then up he sprang and in bed he sat,
While his heart went rapidly pit-a-pat.

He buried that tail ere the close of day
In a dismal swamp, in the mud and clay,
Thinking there out of sight it would always stay,
While he could forget and return to play.

But, alas! no play has he ever done yet
For lo! in spite of the mud and wet,
The stump of that tail was most solidly set,
And a large crop of cat-tails it did beget.

At last my tale is finished and done,
A tale of a tail when first begun ;
But now, instead of a tale of one,

There are cat-tails everywhere under the sun.

ANNIE WESTON WHITNEY.

GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.

IN

N the fullness of time a republic rose up in the wilderness of America. Thousands of years had passed away before this child of the ages could be born. From whatever there was of good in the systems of former centuries she drew her nourishment; the wrecks of the past were her warnings. With the deepest sentiment of faith fixed in her inmost nature, she disenthralled religion from bondage to temporal power, that her worship might be worship only in spirit and in truth. The wisdom which had passed from India through Greece, with what Greece had added of her own; the jurisprudence of Rome; the medieval municipalities; the Teutonic method of representation; the political experience of England; the benignant wisdom of the expositors of the law of nature and of nations in France and Holland, all shed on her their selectest influence. She washed the gold of political wisdom from the sands wherever it was found; she cleft it from the rocks; she gleaned it among ruins. Out of all the discoveries of statesmen and sages, out of all the experience of past human life, she compiled a perennial political philosophy, the primordial principles of national ethics. The wise men of Europe sought the best government in a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; and America went behind these names to extract from them the vital elements of social forms, and blend them harmoniously in the free Commonwealth, which comes nearest to the illustration of the natural equality of all men. She intrusted the guardianship of established rights to law; the movements of reform to the spirit of the people, and drew her force from the happy reconciliation of both. GEORGE BANCROFT.