Rose like the throbbing of a single string: "I am an angel, and thou art the king!

King Robert, who was standing near the throne,
Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone,

But all appareled as in days of old,

With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold;
And when his courtiers came, they found him there
Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in silent prayer.

-HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

He who feels contempt

For any living thing, hath faculties

Which he has never used; and thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye

Is ever on himself doth look on one,

The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou!

Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.

THE LARK AT THE DIGGINGS

THE house was thatched and whitewashed, and English was written on it and on every foot of ground round it. A furze bush had been planted by the door. Vertical oak palings were the fence, with a five-barred gate in the middle of them. From the little plantation all the magnificent trees and shrubs of Australia had been excluded, and oak and ash reigned safe from overtowering rivals. They passed to the back of the house, and there George's countenance fell a little, for on the oval grassplot and gravel walk he found from thirty to forty rough fellows, most of them diggers.

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Ah, well," said he, on reflection, "we could not expect to have it all to ourselves, and indeed it would be a sin to wish it, you know. Now, Tom, come this way; here it is, here it is there!" Tom looked up, and in a gigantic cage was a light brown bird.

He was utterly confounded.

twelve miles to see?"

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"What, is it this we came

"Ay! and twice twelve wouldn't have been much to

me."

"Well, but what is the lark you talked of?"

"Oh, ay, I see! ha! ha! ha! ha!"

Robinson's merriment was interrupted by a harsh re

monstrance from several of the diggers, who were all from the other end of the camp.

"Hold your cackle," cried one; "he is going to sing;" and the whole party had their eyes turned with expectation towards the bird.

But at

Like most singers, he kept them waiting a bit. last, just at noon, when the mistress of the house had warranted him to sing, the little feathered exile began, as it were, to tune his pipes. The savage men gathered round the cage that moment, and amidst a dead stillness the bird uttered some very uncertain chirps; but after a while he seemed to revive his memories, to call his ancient cadences back to him one by one, and to string them together.

And then the same sun that had warmed his little heart at home came glowing down on him here, and he gave music back for it more and more, till at last amidst breathless silence and glistening eyes of the rough diggers hanging on his voice-out burst in that distant land his English song.

It swelled from his little throat and gushed from him with thrilling force and plenty, and every time he checked his song to think of its theme, the green meadows, the quiet stealing streams, the clover he first soared from, and the spring he sang so well, a loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a wild and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had held their breath to hear him. And when he swelled with song again, and poured with all his soul