But there is a road from Winchester town,

A good broad highway leading down;

And, there, through the flash of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night
Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;
As if he knew the terrible need,

He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell - but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering south,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;
Or the tail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.

The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battlefield calls;

Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.

Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape flowed away behind,
Like an ocean flying before the wind;

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire,
Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire;
But lo, he is nearing his heart's desire,

He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first that the General saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops.

CH. LIT. VI. - -4

he wave of retreat checked its course there, because ight of the master compelled it to pause.

foam and with dust the black charger was gray; emed to the whole great army to say,

ve brought you Sheridan all the way
Winchester down to save the day!"
h! Hurrah for Sheridan!

ah! Hurrah for horse and man!
when their statues are placed on high,
r the dome of the Union sky,
American soldier's temple of fame,-
with the glorious General's name,
said in letters both bold and bright,
e is the steed that saved the day
rrying Sheridan into the fight,
Winchester, twenty miles away!"

PUCK AND THE FAIRY

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Puck. How now, spirit! Whither wander you?
Fairy. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;

e be rubies, fairy favors,

ose freckles live their savors:

st go seek some dewdrops here,
hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
well, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone:
queen and all her elves come here anon.

THE NEWSPAPER

WILLIAM ADAMS

NG which is familiar to us strikes us as erful. Were miracles repeated every day, we eto glance at them very heedlessly. We get bows, and stars, and sunsets, and the flashing north. Surprise wears away in time from the coveries and inventions; and we send thought e air, ride in carriages without horses, and in st the wind, just as carelessly and composedly uch things had always been.

the old dramatist, was counted as half crazy ut into the mouth of Arbaces this ranting

He shall have chariots easier than air,
Which I have invented; and thyself,

That art the messenger, shall ride before him
On a horse cut out of an entire diamond,
That shall be made to go with golden wheels
I know not how yet."

The wonder of the promise has long ago been realized; and, if the poetry of the dream should yet come to pass, and locomotives cut from solid diamonds, and car wheels wrought from gold, should become common, we should ride after them with as little surprise, as we now talk beneath the azure and the gold of God's glorious firmament. Who can forget the feeling of awe which came over him, when, for the first time, he received a telegraphic dispatch from a distant city, transmitted from New York to New Orleans, actually in advance of time itself! This approaches spiritual power more nearly than anything we have seen and handled.

The times of which we are writing are remarkable for the extension of periodical literature, especially for the ubiquity of the Newspaper. The authors of the Spectator, the Tattler, the Rambler, had no conception of the modern newspaper. It seems like putting the gravity of our readers to the test, when we name this as one of the most wonderful and powerful agents of our times. It is made of rags, ropes, rushes, and lampblack.

Great pains are taken in fitting up the visitant to make a respectable appearance in our mansions; but in its best trim, its pretensions are very humble. It is dumb, yet it tells us of all which is done upon the earth. It bears in its own name the initials of the four points of the compass, N.E.W.S.-news. Reeking, in hot haste, as if out of breath, it delivers its message, and then is crumpled up and thrown into the waste-paper basket, to ignite the morning's fire. Yet there is nothing more worthy of preservation; for it is the great dial plate on the clock of time.

An artist expends great time and labor in painting a

panorama, and crowds find delight in gazing upon the canvas; yet it is of limited space,—a ruin, a river, a city, -Thebes or Jerusalem, the Nile, the Hudson, or the Mississippi. But a newspaper is a daguerreotype of the whole world, its warrings and diplomacies, its buyings and sellings, its governments and revolutions, its marryings, births, and deaths.

66

A newspaper is a real microcosm, -the world made smaller, held in the hand, and brought under the eye. The huge telescope of Sir John Herschel is so swung that it reflects all the distant wonders of the sky which sweep across its lenses, upon a small horizontal table under the eye of the observer; and analogous to this, a newspaper brings all the occurrences of remote continents, incidents at the North Pole and the Antipodes, under the light of your reading lamp, and within the space of your parlor table. The evening has come, the damp sheet is spread out before you, and with an ill-concealed impatience you sit down to see what new spectacle Time, the scene shifter" has prepared for your astonished and delighted eye. The whole world is in motion before you. This is no small gossip about what took place under your own windows; but as Isaiah, in the visions of prophecy, beheld the concourse from all quarters of the earth, the dromedaries from Midian and Ephah, the ships of Tarshish, and the forces of the Gentiles hastening to the rendezvous, so, in sober fact, the most remote and improbable agencies, from the four winds under heaven, are hurrying through the air and over the sea, to deliver their separate tidings in that small sheet of paper which you now hold in your hand.