C. Scribner.

[16] 'Caxtoniana.'

A SIGH.

How can I live, my love, so far from thee,
Since far from thee my spirit droops and dies?
Who is there left, my love, for me to see,
Since beauty is concentrate in thine eyes?
My only life is sending thee my sighs,
Which, as sweet birds fly home from deserts lone,
Fly swift to thee as each swift moment flies,
Uprising from the current of my moan.
But closed is still thy heart of cruel stone,
And my poor sighs drop murdered at thy feet,
For which, while I in grief do sigh and groan,
New hosts arise to meet a death so sweet,
Ah! love, give scorn; for if love thou shouldst give,
How could I love thee in thy sight, and live?

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

A PHILOSOPHIC DEBATE.

_A._ I would like to hear your opinions regarding the antiquity of our
race: geologists are daily becoming bolder and more unhesitating in
their assertions on the subject; and we are fast drifting toward
conclusions that seem to startle the religious world, and threaten to
upset our confidence in that Book which we have been accustomed to
regard with profoundest reverence.

_B._ Never, sir, never: the hand of true science can never rise as the
antagonist of revelation: revelation, rightly understood, must ever find
in science a brother, a protector, a friend.

_A._ How would you maintain your position, if the geologists should
arrive at a final conclusion on the subject, and declare positively that
men existed in the world twenty or thirty thousand years ago?

_B._ They have arrived at such a conclusion already; that is to say,
they have, in a stratum which cannot be less than twenty thousand years
old, unearthed some skeletons of a mammal resembling man. But let these
skeletons resemble ours ever so closely, I, for one, am not prepared to
concede that these creatures, when they existed, were men in the sense
that we are. Revelation declares quite explicitly that the present race
is not more than six thousand years old.

_A._ What theory, then, must we adopt respecting these human-shaped
fossils? Why do you deny that they were men like us?

_B._ Tell me what a human being is, and I will answer your query.

_A._ The definition would be a somewhat prolix one.

_B._ It will be sufficient for our purpose that you admit two points
regarding the existing race.

_A._ The first?

_B._ That man _has_ a body.

_A._ Good. The second?

_B._ Tha