Oh, give me the book of Nature, open wide to every creature,
And the unconsecrated thoughts that spring like daisies everywhere!

Send me to the woods and waters,--to the studio,--to the market!
Give me simple conversation, books, arts, sports, and friends sincere!
Let no priest be e'er my tutor! on my brow no label written!
Coin or passport to salvation, rather none, than beg it here!

Give me air, and not a prison,--love for Heart, and light for Reason!
Let me walk no slave or bigot,--God's untrammelled, fearless child!
Yield me rights each soul is born to,--rights not given and not taken,--
Free to Cardinals and Princes and Campagna shepherds wild.

Like these Roman fountains gushing clear and sweet in open spaces,
Where the poorest beggar stoops to drink, and none can say him nay,--
Let the Law, the Truth, be common, free to man and child and woman,
Living waters for the souls that now in sickness waste away!

Therefore are these fields far sweeter than yon temple of Saint Peter;
Through this grander dome of azure God looks down and blesses all;
In these fields the birds sing clearer, to the Eternal Heart are nearer,
Than the sad monastic chants that yonder on my ears did fall.

Never smiled Christ's holy Vicar on the heretic and sinner
As this sun--true type of Godhead--smiles o'er all the peopled land!
Sweeter smells this blowing clover than the perfume of the censer,
And the touch of Spring is kinder than the Pontiff's jewelled hand!

THE EXPERIENCE OF SAMUEL ABSALOM, FILIBUSTER.

[Concluded.]

Some time after the departure of the riflemen, a detail of eight or nine
men from our company was ordered off towards the lake shore, and soon
afterward another smaller one to Potosi, a little village four or five
miles to the northward of Rivas, bearing orders to Captain Finney's
rangers, who had gone to scout in that direction. The rest of us ate
supper, and then lay listening for the boom of the little field-piece,
which should tell us that the rifles had met the enemy. But the
extraordinary toils and watchings of the last fortnight were too
overpowering, and we were all soon buried in dreamless sleep.

In an hour or two I was awakened by horses' feet clattering over the
stony pavement of the _porteria_, or gateway to the square courtyard,
in one of whose surrounding corridors we usually slept,--on blankets,
cow-hides, or hard tiles, according as each man was ab