FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE LAURELS" ON THE MERRIMAC.

Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in the
French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in the United
States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and speaks in terms of
admiration of the view from Moulton's hill opposite Amesbury. The
"Laurel Party" so called, as composed of ladies and gentlemen in the
lower valley of the Merrimac, and invited friends and guests in other
sections of the country. Its thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were
held in the early summer on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of
the Newbury side of the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The
several poems called out by these gatherings are here printed in
sequence.

Once more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer's golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river,

Its pines above, its waves below,
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing,--
And bore its memory o'er the deep,
To soothe a martyr's sadness,
And fresco, hi his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.

We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our dreams
Of human love and glory
We know that Arno's banks are fair,
And Rhine has castled shadows,
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
Go singing down their meadows.

But while, unpictured and unsung
By painter or by poet,
Our river waits the tuneful tongue
And cunning hand to show it,--
We only know the fond skies lean
Above it, warm with blessing,
And the sweet soul of our Undine
Awakes to our caressing.

No fickle sun-god holds the flocks
That graze its shores in keeping;
No icy kiss of Dian mocks
The youth beside it sleeping
Our Christian river loveth most
The beautiful and human;
The heathen streams of Naiads boast,
But ours of man and woman.

The miner in his cabin hears
The ripple we are hearing;
It whispers soft to homesick ears
Around the settler's clearing
In Sacramento's vales of corn,
Or Santee's bloom of