Invite the eye to see and heart to feel

The beauty and the joy within their reach,-
Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes

Of nature free to all.

Haply in years

That wait to take the places of our own,

Heard where some breezy balcony looks down
On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,
In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet
Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine.
May seem the burden of a prophecy,
Finding its late fulfilment in a change
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up
Through broader culture, finer manners, love,
And reverence, to the level of the hills.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

[The reputation of Abraham Lincoln is not based upon ability in literature, yet he occupies a recognized position in this field by his orations, which are characterized by a forcible directness of thought, and a grasp of the true nature and spirit of democratic institutions, which will give them a long life in the history of American oratory. We refer in particular to the two short orations given below, the “Second Inaugural” and the “Gettysburg Address," which contain sentiments well worthy to become the accepted mottoes of the American republic.]

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN,-At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then,

a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city, seeking to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with,

Each

or even before the conflict itself should cease. looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered

fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences, which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on, to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the

battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

GETTYSBURG ORATION.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

WINTER LIFE AND SCENERY IN SIBERIA.

GEORGE KENNAN.

[The failure of the first Atlantic telegraph cable led the Western Union Telegraph Company to attempt the arduous undertaking of reaching Europe by a telegraphic line through British America and Siberia, and a party of engineers was sent to the latter country in 1865 to make the preliminary explorations. The adventures of these pioneers are described in a highly interesting manner by George Kennan, one of their number, in his "Tent Life in Siberia," which is perhaps the best description extant of the dreary northwest of that country. It may be stated here that, after two or three years of hard engineering labor, the enterprise was abandoned. We copy the author's graphic narrative of a sleighing expedition in search of a party of Americans who had been landed in Northwestern Siberia months before, and had been snowed in. To this we add a spirited account of a remarkably brilliant display of the Arctic aurora.]

On the eleventh day after our departure from Anadyrsk, toward the close of the long twilight which succeeds an Arctic day, our little train of eleven sledges drew near the place where, from Chookchee accounts, we expected to find the long-exiled party of Americans. The night was clear, still, and intensely cold, the thermometer at sunset marking forty-four degrees below zero, and sinking rapidly to -50° as the rosy flush in the west grew fainter and fainter and darkness settled down upon the vast steppe. Many times before, in Siberia and Kamtchatka, I had seen Nature in her sterner moods and winter garb; but never before had the elements of cold, barrenness, and desolation seemed to combine into a picture so dreary as the one which was presented to us that night near Behring's Straits. Far as the eye could pierce the gathering gloom in every direction lay the barren steppe, like a boundless ocean of snow, blown into long wave-like ridges