Guardian angels, hovering o'er us,
Keep the soul, in mercy, pure;
Had we not bright hope before us,
Could we this frail world endure?
Then, be sure, that ever near us
Voices come from forms unseen,
Breathed by angels sent to cheer us—
Watching earth and heaven between!

THE OLD ARM-CHAIR.

ELIZA COOK. MUSIC BY HENRY RUSSELL.

I LOVE it, I love it: and who shall dare
To chide me for loving that old arm-chair?
I've treasured it long as a sainted prize,

I've bedew'd it with tears, and embalm'd it with sighs; 'Tis bound by a thousand bands to my heart;

Not a tie will break, not a link will start.

Would ye learn the spell ?-a mother sat there,
And a sacred thing is that old arm-chair.

In childhood's hour I linger'd near

The hallowed seat with listening ear;

And gentle words that mother would give,
To fit me to die, and teach me to live.

She told me shame would never betide,

With truth for my creed and God for my guide; She taught me to lisp my earliest prayer,

As I knelt beside that old arm-chair.

I sat, and watch'd her many a day,

When her eye grew dim, and her locks were grey;
And I almost worshipp'd her when she smiled,
And turn'd from her Bible to bless her child.
Years roll'd on, but the last one sped-
My idol was shatter'd, my earth-star fled;
I learn'd how much the heart can bear,
When I saw her die in that old arm-chair.

'Tis past, 'tis past, but I gaze on it now With quivering breath and throbbing brow: 'Twas there she nursed me, 'twas there she died And Memory flows with lava tide.

Say it is folly, and deem me weak,

While the scalding drops start down my cheek;

But I love it, I love it, and cannot tear

My soul from my mother's old arm-chair.

MARY.

REV. CHARLES WOLFE, BORN IN DUBLIN, DECEMBER 13, 1791, DIED AT THE COVE of cork,

FEBRUARY 21, 1823.

IF I had thought thou could'st have died,
I might not weep for thee;

But I forgot, when by thy side,

That thou could'st mortal be:
It never through my mind had past,
The time would e'er be o'er,

And I on thee should look my last,
And thou should'st smile no more!

And still upon that face I look,

And think 'twill smile again';

And still the thought I will not brook,
That I must look in vain !

But when I speak, thou dost not say

What thou ne'er left'st unsaid;

And now I feel, as well I may,

Sweet Mary thou art dead!

If thou wouldst stay e'en as thou art,
All cold, and all serene-

I still might press thy silent heart,

And where thy smiles have been !
While e'en thy chill bleak corse I have,
Thou seemest still mine own;
But there I lay thee in thy grave—
And I am now alone.

I do not think, where'er thou art,
Thou hast forgotten me;

And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart,
In thinking too of thee:

Yet there was round thee such a dawn,
Of light ne'er seen before,

As fancy never could have drawn,

And never can restore.

The above pathetic lyric is adapted to the Irish air Grammachree. Wolfe said he on one occasion sang the air over and over till he burst into a flood of tears, in which mood he composed the song.-Chambers' Cyclopædia of English Literature.

JUST INSTINCT AND BRUTE REASON.

A MANCHESTER OPERATIVE. FROM "HOWITT'S JOURNAL."

KEEN Hawk, on that old elm-bough gravely sitting, Tearing that singing-bird with desperate skill, Great Nature says that what thou dost is fitting— Through instinct and for hunger thou dost kill.

Rend thou the yet warm flesh, 'tis thy vocation;
Mind thou hast none-nor dost thou torture mind!
Nay, thou, no doubt, art gentle in thy station,
And, when thou killest, art most promptly kind.

On other tribes the lightning of thy pinion
Flashing descends-nor always on the weak:
In other Hawks, the mates of thy dominion,
Thou dost not flesh thy talons and thy beak.

O, natural Hawk, our lords of wheels and spindles
Gorge as it grows the liver of their kind :

Once in their clutch, both mind and body dwindles—
For Gain to Mercy is both deaf and blind.

O, instinct there is none-nor show of reason,
But outrage gross on God and Nature's plan,
With rarest gifts in blasphemy and treason,

That Man, the soul'd, should piecemeal murder Man.