and assessor,--
Heaven keep the great Professor!

May he find, with his apostles,
That the land is full of fossils,
That the waters swarm with fishes
Shaped according to his wishes,
That every pool is fertile
In fancy kinds of turtle,
New birds around him singing,
New insects, never stinging,
With a million novel data
About the articulata,
And facts that strip off all husks
From the history of mollusks.

And when, with loud Te Deum,
He returns to his Museum,
May he find the monstrous reptile
That so long the land has kept ill
By Grant and Sherman throttled,
And by Father Abraham bottled,
(All specked and streaked and mottled
With the scars of murderous battles,
Where he clashed the iron rattles
That gods and men he shook at,)
For all the world to look at!

God bless the great Professor!
And Madam too, God bless her!
Bless him and all his band,
On the sea and on the land,
As they sail, ride, walk, and stand,--
Bless them head and heart and hand,
Till their glorious raid is o'er,
And they touch our ransomed shore!
Then the welcome of a nation,
With its shout of exultation,
Shall awake the dumb creation,
And the shapes of buried aeons
Join the living creatures' paeans,
While the mighty megalosaurus
Leads the palaeozoic chorus,--
God bless the great Professor,
And the land his proud possessor,--
Bless them now and evermore!

THE FORGE.

CHAPTER I.

"One more horse to shoe, Sandy. The man's late, but he's come a matter
of ten mile, perhaps, over the cross road by Derby, yonder. Lead the
critter up, boy, and give a look at the furnace."

I stooped to replenish the glowing fire, then turned toward the door,
made broad and high for entrance of man and beast, and giving a coarse
frame to the winter landscape without. The trees fluttered their
snow-plumed wings in the chill wind; on the opposite hill a red light
glared a response to our glowing smithy. It was the eye of elegant
luxury confronting the eye of toil; for it shone from the windows of the
only really fine mansion for miles around. I had always felt grateful to
those stone walls for standing there, surrounded by old trees on lawn
and woodland, an embodiment to my imagination of all I had heard or read
of stately homes, and a style of life remote from my own, and
fascin