s world's hospital;
Welcome, for verily I knew ye could not but be children of the light;
Welcome, chiefly welcome, for I find I have friends in heaven,
And some I have scarcely looked for; as thou, light-hearted Mirth;
Thou, also, star-robed Urania; and thou with the curious glass,
That rejoicest in tracking beauty where the eye was too dull to note it.
And art thou, too, among the blessed, mild, much-injured Poetry?
That quickenest with light and beauty the leaden face of matter,
That not unheard, though silent, fillest earth's gardens with music,
And not unseen, though a spirit, dost look down upon us from the stars."

THE LIGHTING UP.

"He spak to the spynnsters to spynnen it oute."
PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

THIS evening, the 20th of the ninth month, is the time fixed upon for
lighting the mills for night-labor; and I have just returned from
witnessing for the first time the effect of the new illumination.

Passing over the bridge, nearly to the Dracut shore, I had a fine view
of the long line of mills, the city beyond, and the broad sweep of the
river from the falls. The light of a tranquil and gorgeous sunset was
slowly fading from river and sky, and the shadows of the trees on the
Dracut slopes were blending in dusky indistinctness with the great
shadow of night. Suddenly gleams of light broke from the black masses
of masonry on the Lowell bank, at first feeble and scattered, flitting
from window to window, appearing and disappearing, like will-o'-wisps in
a forest or fireflies in a summer's night. Anon tier after tier of
windows became radiant, until the whole vast wall, stretching far up the
river, from basement to roof, became checkered with light reflected with
the starbeams from the still water beneath. With a little effort of
fancy, one could readily transform the huge mills, thus illuminated,
into palaces lighted up for festival occasions, and the figures of the
workers, passing to and fro before the windows, into forms of beauty and
fashion, moving in graceful dances.

Alas! this music of the shuttle and the daylong dance to it are not
altogether of the kind which Milton speaks of when he invokes the "soft
Lydian airs" of voluptuous leisure. From this time henceforward for
half a weary year, from the bell-call of morning twilight to half-past
seven in the evening, with brief intermissions for two hasty meals, the
operatives will be confin