mselves
to his will,--not always cruel in heart, even when his acts are cruel,
nor unfeeling when he inflicts unmerited suffering and needless pain,
but seeming both cruel and unfeeling, because education and habit have
dried up within him that fount of human sympathies which Nature has set
in the heart of man at his birth, that he might ever bear something
about him to remind him of a mother's tenderness and a father's pride.

If that be the best government wherein all the moral and intellectual
faculties of the governed receive their fullest development, and the
responsibility of the sovereign is made so immediate that he can neither
lose sight of it nor escape from its obligations, that surely must be
the worst in which one man thinks and judges for all, and, by an
unnatural union of spiritual and temporal attributes, is raised above
all human responsibility,--a theocracy, with man to interpret the will
of God, and to enforce his own interpretations.

* * * * *

CONCORD.

MAY 23, 1864.

How beautiful it was, that one bright day
In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
The omnipresent pain.

The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms,
Shot through with golden thread.

Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
The historic river flowed:--
I was as one who wanders in a trance,
Unconscious of his road.

The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;
Their voices I could hear,
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change
Their meaning to the ear.

For the one face I looked for was not there,
The one low voice was mute;
Only an unseen presence filled the air,
And baffled my pursuit.

Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream
Dimly my thought defines;
I only see--a dream within a dream--
The hill-top hearsed with pines.

I only hear above his place of rest
Their tender undertone,
The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
The voice so like his own.

There in seclusion and remote from men
The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the tale half told.

Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clue regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must remain!

* * *