XI.

It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

XII.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

XIII.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
IIe heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

XIV.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British regulars fired and fled, -
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

XV.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,-
A cry of defiance and not of fear,-
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

XI.-HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES.

66

H

ANDSOME is that handsome does,-hold up your

heads, girls!” was the language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters. The worthy matron was right. What is good-looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle, -gerierous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. Loving and pleasant associations will gather about you.

2. Never mind the ugly reflection which your glass may give you. That mirror has no heart. But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy. There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just as the calm moonlight melts those of a rougi landscape into harmonious loveliness.

3. “Hold up your heads, girls!” I repeat after Primrose. Why should you not ? Every mother's daughter of you can be beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels.

4. Beautiful to Ledvard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smoke-stained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of com passion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white stranger, who had “no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him corn.”

5. O, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiseled from marble or wrought out on canvas; speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.

6. This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness of young maternity, -Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct.

7. And their pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven, -how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony,

“Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-ordered law," do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance ?

8. "I have seen,” said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace sat brooding.” In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the Journal of John Woolman, there is a passage of which I have been more than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: "Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a divine harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance."

9. Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil” the evil and ungentle passions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely, unattractive, and

"Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories; they are beautisul through their associations; nor are they any the less welcome that with my admiration of them “the stranger intermeddleth not."

J. G. WHL TIER.

XII.—THE THREE BLACK CROW'S.

1.

TWO honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand,

"

"Hark ye,” said he, "'t is an odd story this,
About the crows!”—“I don't know what it is,”
Replied his friend.

II.

"No! I'm surprised at that;
Where I come from it is the common chat.
But you shall hear,-an odd affair indeed!
- And that it happened, they are all agreed.
Not to detain you from a thing so strange, -
A gentleman that lives not far from 'Change,
This week, in short (as all the alley knows),
Taking a dose, has thrown up three black crows!”

9

III.

“Impossible!”—“Nay, but it's really true; I have it from good hands, and so may you.” “From whose, I pray?” So, having named the man, Straight to inquire, his curious comrade ran.

IV.

“Sir, did you tell?” relating the affair:
“Yes, sir, I did; and, if it's worth your care,
Ask Mr. Such-a-one; he told it me;-
But, by-the-by, 't was two black crows, not three.”
Resolved to trace so wondrous an event,
Whip to the third, the virtuoso went.

V.

“Sir,"--and so forth,—“Why, yes, the thing is fact, Though in regard to number, not exact; It was not two black crows,—'t was only one;The truth of that you may depend upon: The gentleman himself told me the case.” “Where may I find him?”—“Why,-in such a place.”

VI.

Away he goes, and having found him out,-“Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt.”' Then to his last informant he referred, And begged to know if true what he had heard. “Did you, sir, throw up a black crow?”—“Not I!" “Bless me! how people propagate a lie! Black crows have been thrown up, three, two, and one, And here I find, at last, all comes to none!

6

VII.

“Did you say nothing of a crow at all?”
“Crow?-crow?-perhaps I might, now I recall
The matter over.”—“And pray, sir, what was 't?”
“Why, I was horrid sick, and, at the last,
I did throw up (and told my neighbor so),
Something that was as black, sir, as a crow.”

JOHN BYROM.