which we reside, a group, consisting of a man in
his shirt sleeves carrying a baby, a short woman,
with a black eye, holding a refractory child by
the hand, and bidding it "hold its noise,"
between the verses of the hundredth psalm,
which the whole party is singing? Should this
family group be free to occupy the middle of a
street by the hour together, moving a few inches
at a time, and turning round continually to note
whether their psalmody is telling on the second
floors? Take, again, the spouting man, who is
quite as long getting through a street as the
musical family, and whose ringing tones are
heard nearly half a mile off—"My dear friends,"
he has the audacity to say, "it his, I assure you,
with feelings of the most painful nature that I
thus address you. Hi ham a pore mechanic," &c.

Surely if this "poor mechanic" were required
by the laws of our happy country to return to
the cultivation of that peculiar branch of
mechanics which may formerly have been his
study, and if the gentleman in the shirt-sleeves
were compelled to abandon his career of psalm-
singing and black-eye administering, and to
turn his attention to some useful occupation—
surely this would be a good and important
change in that part of our system which may
be called the Government of our Interior.

OLD AND NEW.

I.
ALL, in its place as of old!
Nothing changed to the eye.
The moss'd rust-tinted mass
Of the Manse in the meadow grass;
The half moon afloat in a sky
Grey, neither warm nor cold.
All in its place as of old,
Nothing changed to the eye!
High over the mildewy pane
Of the long, low granary room,
In the mothy, moist ground-story,
The grass ripples russet, and hoary
With the cuckoo-flowers in bloom,
That mix their sick perfume
With the earthy smell of the rain,
Clinging under each violet stain
Of the streak'd and showery gloom.
The red beech weepeth;
The cuckoo calleth;
In the fields afar
Night waits.
The silence sleepeth;
The twilight falleth,
And the dim yellow star
Dilates.
All in the dew
Hath the self-same hue.
Nothing looks new.

II.

Nothing changed to the eye;
Yet something is not as of old.
Where, and what, is the change?
All is the same, yet strange.
My very heart grows cold;
My lightest breath is a sigh.
Between the earth and the sky,
Something is not as of old.
The buttercup's glimmering gold!

And the vetch with the purple dye!
And the wallflower fading fast!
And the reeds in the creek where aghast,
The stream, like a ghost, flits by,
With a moan to the watery sky,
Grazing the bulrush cold!
All in its place as of old,
Nothing changed to the eye!
The thin wave fleeteth;
The white sail glideth;
The blue reeds sigh
To the shore.
The light retreateth;
The place abideth
Under my eye,
As of yore.
But the very dew
Doth chill me thro'.
All things feel new.

III.

Ah, memory is of the brain!
The heart remembers not;
The heart can never recal;
It feels, it hath felt, this is all;
And a feeling unforgot
Is a feeling felt again.
This is a joy which the brain
Renews, but the heart cannot.
I recal what I felt of old,
But I feel not what I recal.
This,—this is the change!
This is why all feels strange!
Happy for man, after all,
That his Eden, after his fall,
God suffer'd him not to behold!
What I never may feel as of old
I would I might never recal,
But the river glideth;
The red beech weepeth;
The reeds to the shore
Shall sigh.
The place abideth;
The dead Past weepeth
The form it first wore
To the eye.
Ah few, how few!
In the head can renew
What the eye may review.

A BUTTERFLY FEAST.

"I'D be a butterfly!" says the song; and to
the singer I put the question "Where? In
what part of the world would you like to be a
butterfly?" For you may choose your habitat
wherever you please—from the tropical zone, to
the Arctic regions; in sunny gardens, in verdant
plains, on mountain-tops, or as you cross the
ocean wave; wherever you wander, in either
hemisphere, you may be a butterfly. But you
must choose which family of the Lepidoptera
you would be a member of; there having been
discovered no fewer than fifteen hundred
different tribes, and in all probability as many
more remain to be classified.

Should your choice for transmigration fall on
"The Insect-Queen of Eastern Spring," go to
the land where transmigration is yet a religious
doctrine, traverse the Himalayan range,
descend to the plains of Sirinagur, and, as the