field; and she means to find there a pleasant spot for reading the novel she has under her arm. I see her making off toward the hill in the hot sun, and even hear the pale, silvery lichens crunch beneath her footsteps. Startled sheep bound away before the apparition of this gorgeous little fairy, as she heaves into sight over the pasture-hill; and long branches bend and rustle behind her, as she disappears within the wood, into the realm of ferns and cool mosses. There are snakes sometimes in those woods; their glassy eyes watch her now from under damp leaves, and her skirt-hem almost brushes against their forked tongues as she moves along. Overhead, bead-like eyes look down upon her, in hushed observance, from silent boughs. She seats herself within the spreading roots of an old tree, and thinks she has at last realized one of her dreams. Leaf-shadows shimmer over the pages that she spreads before her; and the trickle of the brook near by sounds infinitely sweet. Through half-shut eyes. she takes in the full beauty of the scene, and then turns to her book, and is lost to all but the adventures of Angelina and her noble knight. The inhabitants of the wood dare to breathe and to move about as before. Birds twitter faintly from the boughs; a couple of daddy-long-legs start out on a race around the broad brim of her Leghorn hat; and sundry strange bugs go prospecting over the folds of her flowing skirt. Soon a grasshopper climbs to her shoulder, to wink his long horns under her very eyes; and a score of mosquitoes begin their mazy dance before her face. A little jewelled hand waves them away, and finally plucks a fern-leaf to beat about in self-defence.

Just then Madge starts to hear a great rustling and trampling behind her, and the near breathing of some dreadful creature whom she does not stop to see. Had she turned, she would have beheld only a pair of soft,

liquid eyes peering through the bushes,-such eyes as Juno herself was said to have, and a pair of budding horns amid the leaves; for a young heifer has come upon the scene of action, and is wondering who this visitor may be. But Madge does chance to discern the snake in his covert; and fearful is the smothered cry and sudden the plunges with which she departs headlong from her paradise. She snatches the Leghorn hat by its ribbon, thereby finishing the race of the daddy-long-legs at the second heat, and bringing the explorations of insect scouting-parties to an untimely end. The birds, the heifer, the bugs, the mosquitoes, the snakes, all pause to stare once more as she departs; and once more the scarlet-cloaked fairy is seen upon the top of the pasture-hill. Rough scrambling it has proved for the French slippers; their rosettes are filled with sticks and grasses; and the train of vaporous muslin has caught on a tree-stump, and its hem is rent in twain. Madge will never again venture within that wood; it is to her, ever after, the fearsome home of snakes and goblins; an enchanted forest, haunted by shapes upon which she dares not look.

Will Madge tell us of these her troubles in Arcady when she returns in the fall, and we are so glad to look once more into her face and to hear the cheery carol of her greeting? Whatever her sorrows may be,-and they shall be heard with decorous patience, it will delight us to behold that in spite of them all she has grown to be a fullfaced, nut-brown maid, with a fresh sparkle in her eyes and a stronger love of home in her heart.

SUNSHINE AND HOPE.

The brightness and the shadow of life, the hopes that beacon us onward with their rainbowed light, and the griefs that cloud the pathway of our years, have alike given inspiration to the poet, whose song now sparkles with gayety, now touches our hearts with its affecting pathos. It is our present purpose to group some of the light-hearted and hopeful strains, which we may follow, farther on, with a similar cluster of songs of the shadow-land. The opening stanzas of Lowell's "Ode to Happiness" will serve as a fitting introduction to our theme.

SPIRIT, that rarely comest now,

And only to contrast my gloom,

Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom
A moment on some autumn bough
That, with the spurn of their farewell,

Sheds its last leaves,-thou once didst dwell
With me year-long, and make intense

To boyhood's wisely vacant days

Their fleet but all-sufficing grace

Of trustful inexperience

While soul could still transfigure sense,
And thrill, as with love's first caress
At life's mere unexpectedness.

Days when my blood would leap and run,
As full of sunshine as a breeze,

Or
spray tossed up by summer seas
That doubts if it be sea or sun;
Days that flew swiftly, like the band

That played in Grecian games at strife
And passed from cager hand to hand
The onward-dancing torch of life.

Wing-footed! thou abid'st with him
Who asks it not; but he who hath
Watched o'er the waves thy waning path
Shall nevermore behold returning

Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning!
Thou first reveal'st to us thy face

Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace,

A moment glimpsed, then seen no more,—
Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace
Away from every mortal door.

Nymph of the unreturning feet,
How may I win thee back? But no,
I do thee wrong to call thee so;
'Tis I am changed, not thou art fleet:
The man thy presence feels again,
Not in the blood, but in the brain,
Spirit, that lov'st the upper air,
Serene and passionless and rare,
Such as on mountain-heights we find
And wide-viewed uplands of the mind,
Or such as scorns to coil and sing
Round any but the eagle's wing

Of souls that with long upward beat
Have won an undisturbed retreat,
Where, poised like wingéd victories,
They mirror in relentless eyes

The life broad-basking 'neath their feet,

Man ever with his Now at strife,

Pained with first gasps of earthly air,

Then praying Death the last to spare,

Still fearful of the ampler life.

Memory is an essential element of the happiness of mature life, as hope is of our youthful joys, and we look back to boyhood with eyes

that lose sight of its griefs and regret its vanished pleasures. This feeling has been charmingly expressed by Washington Allston, the artist-poet.

Ah! then how sweetly closed those crowded days,
The minutes parting one by one like rays

That fade upon a summer's eve!
But oh! what charm, or magic numbers,
Can give me back the gentle slumbers
Those weary, happy days did leave,
When by my bed I saw my mother kneel,
And with her blessing took her nightly kiss?
Whatever Time destroys, he cannot this:
E'en now that nameless kiss I feel.

The sunshine of the outer world beautifully illustrates the sunshine of the heart in the "Betrothed Anew" of Edmund Clarence Stedman.

The sunlight fills the trembling air,

And balmy days their guerdons bring;

The Earth again is young and fair,
And amorous with musky spring.

The golden nurslings of the May

In splendor strew the spangled green,
And hues of tender beauty play,
Entangled where the willows lean.

Mark how the rippled currents flow;
What lustres on the meadows lie!
And, hark! the songsters come and go,
And trill between the earth and sky.

Who told us that the years had fled,
Or borne afar our blissful youth?