onomy. Adam Smith and Jefferson never
undertook to meditate at thirty-five miles an hour.

EDWARD C. BRUCE.

LINES WRITTEN AT VENICE IN OCTOBER, 1865.

Sleep, Venice, sleep! the evening gun resounds
Over the waves that rock thee on their breast:
The bugle blare to kennel calls the hounds
Who sleepless watch thy waking and thy rest.

Sleep till the night-stars do the day-star meet,
And shuddering echoes o'er the water run,
Rippling through every glass-green, wavering street
The stern good-morrow of thy guardian Hun.

Still do thy stones, O Venice! bid rejoice,
With their old majesty, the gazer's eye,
In their consummate grace uttering a voice,
From every line, of blended harmony.

Still glows the splendor of the wondrous dreams
Vouchsafed thy painters o'er each sacred shrine,
And from the radiant visions downward streams
In visible light an influence divine.

Still through thy golden day and silver night
Sings his soft jargon the gay gondolier,
And o'er thy floors of liquid malachite
Slide the black-hooded barks to mystery dear.

Like Spanish beauty in its sable veil,
They rustle sideling through the watery way,
The wild, monotonous cry with which they hail
Each other's passing dying far away.

As each steel prow grazes the island strands
Still ring the sweet Venetian voices clear,
And wondering wanderers from far, free lands
Entranced look round, enchanted listen here.

From the far lands of liberty they come--
England's proud children and her younger race;
Those who possess the Past's most noble home,
And those who claim the Future's boundless space.

Pitying they stand. For thee who would not weep?
Well it beseems these men to weep for thee,
Whose flags (as erst they own) control the deep,
Whose conquering sails o'ershadow every sea.

Yet not in pity only, but in hope,
Spring the hot tears the brave for thee may shed:
Thy chain shall prove but a sand-woven rope;
But sleep thou still: the sky is not yet red.

Sleep till the mighty helmsman of the world,
By the Almighty set at Fortune's wheel,
Steers toward thy freedom, and, once more unfurled,
The banner of St. Mark the sun shall feel.

Then wake, then rise, then hurl away thy yoke,
Then dye with crimson that pale livery,
Whose ghastly white has been the jailer's cloak
For years flung o'er thy