will teach; but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty, universal Truth. When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven. It was late when the old man came home. He repaired to her chamber straight. Not finding what he had left there, he returned with distracted looks to the room in which they were assembled. From that he rushed into the schoolmaster's cottage, calling her name. They followed close upon him, and, when he had vainly searched it, brought him home. With such persuasive words as pity and affection could suggest, they prevailed upon him to sit among them and hear what they should tell him. Then, endeavouring by every little artifice to prepare his mind for what must come, and dwelling with many fervent words upon the happy lot to which she had been removed, they told him, at last, the truth. The moment it had passed their lips, he fell down among them like a murdered man. For many hours they had little hope of his surviving; but grief is strong, and he recovered. If there be any who have never known the blank that follows death-the weary void-the sense of desolation that will come upon the strongest minds, when something familiar and beloved is missed at every turn-the connection between inanimate and senseless things, and the object of recollection, when every household god becomes a monument, and every room a grave-if there be any who have not known this, and proved it by their own experience, they can never faintly guess how, for many days, the old man pined and moped away the time, and wandered here and there as seeking something, and had no comfort. * * At length, they found, one day, that he had risen early, and, with his knapsack on his back, his staff in his hand, her own straw hat, and little basket full of such things as she had been used to carry, was gone. As they were making ready to pursue him far and wide, a frightened school-boy came who had seen him, but a moment before, sitting in the church— upon her grave, he said. They hastened there, and, going softly to the door, espied him in the attitude of one who waited patiently. They did not disturb him then, but kept a watch upon him all that lay. When it grew quite dark, he rose and returned home, and went to bed, murmuring to himself, "She will come to-morrow!" Upon the morrow he was there again from sunrise until night; and still at night he laid him down to rest, and murmured, "She will come to-morrow!" And thenceforth, every day, and all day long, he waited at her grave for her. How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant country, of resting-places under the free broad sky, of rambles in the fields and woods, and paths not often trodden-how many tones of that one well-remembered voice-how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind-how many visions of what had been, and what he hoped was yet to be-rose up before him, in the old, dull, silent church! He never told them what he thought, or where he went. He would sit with them at night, pondering with a secret satisfaction, they could see, upon the flight that he and she would take before night came again; and still they would hear him whisper in his prayers, “Lord! let her come to-morrow!" The last time was on a genial day in spring. He did not return at the usual hour, and they went to seek him. He was lying dead upon the stone. They laid him by the side of her whom he had loved so well; and, in the church where they had often prayed, and mused, and lingered hand-in-hand, the child and the old man slept together. CHARLES DICKENS. [From "The Old Curiosity Shop."-By kind permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall.] DIVISION I. SERIOUS, PATHETIC, &c. PART II.-POETRY. THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, They are weeping in the playtime of the others, Do you question the young children in the sorrow The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers, Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, They look up with their pale and sunken faces, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses "Your old earth," they say, " is very dreary, Our young feet," they say, are very weak; Few paces have we taken, yet are weary— Our grave-rest is very far to seek; Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children, And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old. "True," say the children, "it may happen That we die before our time: Little Alice died last year, her grave Like a snowball, in the rime. is shapen We looked into the pit prepared to take her : Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries; Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, It is good when it happens," say the children, |