t century ever knew.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
And in that year the good Prince Albert died
The land changed owners, and the new-made lord
Sent down his workmen to revamp the Hall
And make the waste place blossom as the rose.
By chance, a workman in the eastern wing,
Fitting the cornice, stumbled on a door,
Which creaked, and seemed to open of itself;
And there within the chamber, on the flags,
He saw two figures in outlandish guise
Of hose and doublet,--one stretched out full-length,
And one half fallen forward on his breast,
Holding the other's hand with vice-like grip:
One face was calm, the other sad as death,
With something in it of a pleading look,
As might befall a man that dies at prayer.
Amazed, the workman hallooed to his mates
To see the wonder; but ere they could come,
The figures crumbled and were shapeless dust.

THE PLEIADES OF CONNECTICUT.

In that remote period of history which is especially visited upon us in
our school-days, in expiation of the sins of our forefathers, there
nourished seven poets at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Royal favor
and amiable dispositions united them in a club: public applause and
self-appreciation led them to call it The Pleiades. In the middle of the
sixteenth century, Pierre Ronsard, emulous of Greek fame, took to him
six other poets more wretched than himself, and made up a second
Pleiades for France. The third rising of this rhythmical constellation
was seen in Connecticut a long time ago.

Connecticut is pleasant, with wooded hills and a beautiful river;
plenteous with tobacco and cheese; fruitful of merchants, missionaries,
sailors, peddlers, and singlewomen;--but there are no poets known to
exist there, unless it be that well-paid band who write the rhymed puffs
of cheap garments and cosmetics. The brisk little democratic State has
turned its brains upon its machinery. Not a snug valley, with a few
drops of water at the bottom of it, but rattles with the manufacture of
notions, great and small,--axes and pistols, carriages and clocks, tin
pans and toys, hats, garters, combs, buttons, and pins. You see that the
enterprising natives can turn out any article on which a profit may be
made,--except poetry. That product, you would say, was out of the
question. Nevertheless, the species poet, although extinct, did once
exist on that soil. The evidence is