Then from the airy corridors which wed
The shadowed halls where Death and Silence dwell,
With velvet foot-falls on the lonely floors,

Through closely bolted and unfriendly doors,
Thou- friend of friendless souls with hastening tread
Dost come to kneel - by cot and costly bed;

With juice of herbs from many a dream-land dell
Caught up and pressed betwixt thy soothing palms
To cool the eyes that weeping hath made red,
And plants, plucked from the fragrant earth, which shed
Their priceless drops for thee, and poppy balms
That breathe elysian airs, whose touch restores
Lost happier visions of sweet days, long dead,
To hungering hearts that feed on sorrow's bread.

Across the deep

Unguessed abysses of ethereal space

Bridged by wide arches of the glimmering stars,
Through darkling distances-on wind-reaped moors---
Beside dim rivers on whose soundless shores

The countless journeying years have left no trace
To tell Time had been there, thy friendly hand
Leads forth our spirits to that shrouded land

Beyond the vague impenetrable bars

Which hedge this conscious life—a world that beams
With other light than this—in which the soul
'Scapes for a little from the harsh control

Of tyrant circumstance, and oft it seems
We almost have cast off our chains and stand
Freed from the reach of care and earthly dole,
So far we wander in thy land of dreams.

Thus safe across the dreary gulfs that sunder The realm of Day we pass, by thy kind care;

And if some cloud, lit by the lightning's glare,

Or rent in pieces by the crashing thunder,
Wakes the deep-slumbering Earth to trembling wonder
And frights thee hence, how anxiously we stare
Out through the gloom, aghast, not knowing where

Thy startled flight hath left us; for a space,

Held by the lingering spell we have been under,

We see a world in which we have no place;

As though both Life and Death by some strange blunder Had fallen away and left us lonely there.

There with thee drifting, in thy shallow boat
Beneath thy up-stretched wings, which fan the air
With fragrant downy plumes, once more we float
Forgetful of this life that is so fair,

But where each blooming path by Death is haunted,
And where the burning hopes so often vaunted
Soon smolder in the ashes of despair,
And if they live again, some other-where,

No heart, however fearless and undaunted,

Can surely know; - No mortal hand may dare
Point out the road by which we shall come there.

But when upon thy tranquil breast reclining

No more we care if life hath used us ill

Or if for rain the summer fields be pining

Or if fierce winter scourge the naked hill;

Nor if dark clouds have quenched the moon's fair shining

Nor if the heart which loved us, loves us still.

And when at last Life will no longer stay,
But turns aside all heedless of our calling,
And we can go no farther on the way,

Because the great abyss, deep and appalling,
Gapes widely in the darkness for its prey-
Then, whether night be come, or slowly falling-
The twilight shadows of the evening gray,

-

Or some last dawn our swimming sight forestalling,
Or if the time be some fair summer day-

It hinders not thy coming nor thy care:

Kind first, last friend, thou wilt not leave us there.
Nay, lovelier seeming then, dear angel Sleep,
From thine abode, where Death and Silence keep
Watch on thy going,- down the cloud-built stair,
On thy last journey thou dost softly creep:
Thy cup of balm clasped in thy hand, to steep
Our anxious spirits as of old — in rest,
Once more, upon the pillows of thy breast.
But from his gloomy hall the black-robed king
Steps hastily and halts thee in thy flight.
And while his presence overawes thy sight:

The poisoned jewel drops within thy cup.
And when we drink, our fainting spirits yearn
For thy soft bosom where we fain would cling
To rest forever from our wandering:

Once more thy strong arms lift us gently up,
Once more the world fades out, and soon the light
Of worlds unknown and fabled suns that burn

Far off beyond the farthest star of night,

VOL. XXXIV.— 130.

Breaks on the plumes of thy space-cleaving wing.
So we go hence and never more return.

Robert Burns Wilson.

Soldier and Citizen.

TOPICS OF THE TIME.

"Less than a year afterward we changed our policy, but it was then too late to induce many of the regular officers to take regimental positions in the volunteer troops. I hesitate to declare that this was not, after all, for the best; for, although the organization of our army would have been more rapidly perfected, there are other considerations which have much weight. The army would not have been the popular thing it was, its close identification with the people's movement would have been weakened, and it perhaps would not so readily have melted again into the mass of the nation at the close of the war.'

literature. But it is as true as the equation of action and reaction, that the soldier vote must disappear with

GENERAL J. D. Cox, in writing of the policy of the the conviction on the part of the veterans that their War Department in 1861 of retaining the old orcause, the cause of national unity, which all now ganizations of the regular army instead of assigning its clearly see to have been the cause of human progress, officers to command volunteer regiments, has recently - is no longer in danger. Many came to this conclusion said: deficient either in intelligence or in candor. For what years ago; the man who does not admit it now must be sentiment of alarm can exist in the presence of the reiterated expressions of loyalty and patriotism which have been heard from all parts of the busy South within the past three years,- a sentiment which even the burning discussion of the disposal of the battle-flags has not served to diminish in the least! With some opportunity of knowing the feelings of Southern soldiers on this subject, we believe that they are expressed in the fullest measure by the speech of Colonel Aylett of Pickett's division at the memorable meeting of Union and Confederate veterans on the battle-field of Gettysburg last July. "The flags which have been won," said he, “are yours, and what is yours is ours; we have made them lustrous with American heroism. Keep them, return them, destroy them, as you will." The cordial feeling on the Union side was not less noticeable. To take a true measure of the importance of such reunions (and this is but one of scores) the reader has but to fancy how impossible their counterpart would be twenty-five years after the battle of Sedan between survivors of that memorable field. No, it would be unwise to send back the flags in a body so long as their voluntary return by the separate commands who took them thus widens the area of intersectional good feeling.

Herein is recorded one of the chief glories of the Union veteran. Like Grant, he was without any liking for war. His enlistment was for a definite purpose and as a solemn duty, its term being in most cases for "three years or during [not after] the war." He never had any doubts as to what he was fighting for, and when that object was accomplished, so far as it could be accomplished by his musket, he came home rejoicing as from exile and without resentment, and looking upon himself not as a soldier whose duty it was to vote, but as a citizen whose duty it had been to fight. His theory was that he came back to be part of a restored civil government, and not of a perpetual standing army. Valuing peace thus highly, it is natural that he should have become the chief of peacemakers. The distribution of the military element into the employments of ordinary life was a hardly less wonderful phenomenon than its composition from the farms, offices, and workshops of 1861. In a few months these men became again an integral part of our civil life, abreast of their fellows in the pursuits of peace. This recuperation from the ravages of war and absorption into the life of the citizen, was naturally even more noticeable in the South, which has since given not inferior evidences of forbearance and good citizenship.

Since the war the country has owed much to the Union veterans for services in many capacities as Presidents, Governors, Senators, Representatives, and in other stations to which a grateful people has elevated them. It was natural that they should receive honor and distinction; moreover, so long as there could possibly be any doubt of the faithful acquiescence of the South in the results of the war, it was natural that, in a political point of view, they should receive special consideration and exercise special influence as a class. Individually, such will doubtless be the case for years to come, but there are distinct evidences that as a factor in the politics of the future the "soldier vote," in the mass, is likely to play a less important part. Such an event will be fortunate for their fame and for the country. The traditions of the veteran will always be held in honor, and the story of his deeds in the greatest war of modern times one of the few moral and necessary conflicts of arms will never cease to be a cherished part of our *Article on "War Preparations in the North," in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War."

In the face of these multiplied evidences of a Union restored in sentiment as well as in fact,- and it was surely for the larger and truer Union that the Northern soldier fought, we hold that the man who at tempts to revive or trade upon the dead issues of the war should be regarded as a public enemy, to be held in deeper contempt than an ordinary disturber of the peace as his offense is more far-reaching and his motives more deliberate. There can now be no motive for sectional feeling that is not personal, partisan, or mercenary, and we believe that recent events indicate that the public is in no mood to tolerate its revival, whether exhibited in the cant of ambitious party leaders, in the public bad manners of political boycotters, or in the adroit and interested flattery of pension agents. Not the least of the reasons why the veteran should disavow this misuse of his honorable history is that the ultimate object of all such class movements is to distract public attention from the evasion by political parties of their real business and their only reason for existence, namely, to take a definite stand on questions of the day, to the end that the public will may have through them an unmistakable expression in the guidance of the government. Any other conception of party is a farce and a delusion, under which the purposes of the party managers and not those of the voters become successful. This tergiversation of parties can measurably be reduced by the completer fusion of the soldier element, as well as of every other class,