age forecasts similar eventualities for an
early day and for the whole earth. Thus it is that the investigation of
The Great American Crisis, actual and urgent, might properly lead us up
to the consideration of a Great World Crisis, impending and probable. On
some other occasion it may be thought proper to give to this latter
subject a distinct and more elaborate treatment. The object which we
have proposed in the present series is now sufficiently accomplished,
and the writer takes leave of the reader, with a profound conviction
that to the anxious cry, What of the night? the answer, All is well, can
be conscientiously returned. Even should the seemingly disastrous
features sketched above in the alternative programme of our national
future yet providentially reveal themselves in the scroll of our
nation's history, let not the patriot or the lover of mankind for a
moment despair. It will be but the intensified darkness preceding the
light--the crisis of a deep-seated disease prognosticating health. The
destiny of America is the destiny of man; and that is, that we come soon
into the inheritance of new glories--an unlimited development and
prosperity, founded on Religion married to Science, eventuating in the
reconciliation of Order and Progression, in Universal Justice, and in
the elevation, protection, mutual cooeperation and happiness of all.

THISTLE-DOWN.

Pale and fleecy, ghosty and white,
Onward borne in their unknown flight--
Flimsy and fragile, pure and fair--
Mystic things the thistles are.

Drifting about on a windy day--
Ghosty children at their play--
Revelling up above the trees,
Hither and thither on the breeze.

Slow and sadly, how they fly,
Chasing shadows in the sky!
Never resting, never still,
Through the valley, o'er the hill.

Walking round o'er the churchyard mould,
Up above the bosoms cold;
Flitting past each marble door,
Sadly breathing: 'Gone before!'

Spectres _wild_ with their viewless steeds,
Riding on where nothing leads;
Up to the sky when the earth gets brown--
_Ever restless_ thistle-down.

Through the forest cool and dark,
Never hitting the destined mark;
Over the earth and through the air,
Downy thistles _everywhere_.

Darting in at the open door,
Telling of joys that come no more;
Robed in grave clothes fine and thin--
Shades of phantoms, ever dim.

Up the church-aisles Sabbath-days,
Where the dusky