ture of beauty, and over them hung the
silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy
which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic
agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life
of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not
unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for
quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:--

"Other hands may grasp the field or forest,
Proud proprietors in pomp may shine;
Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."

But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the
north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John
Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard,
blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the
storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed.
Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again
the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a
good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of
a Barrington beggar.

THE TRAINING.

"Send for the milingtary."
NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.

WHAT'S now in the wind? Sounds of distant music float in at my window
on this still October air. Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones,
wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the
urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, each
martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow,
regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping
time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly
beneath me. Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and
tinselled uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly
impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as
self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,--the United States
of America, and possibly Texas. They look out with honest, citizen
faces under their leathern visors (their ferocity being mostly the work
of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as
innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury
Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples and turnips
without so much as giving a glance at the proces