is shed.

I do not weep as some may weep,
Upon thy rayless brow to look;
A boon more rare 'twas thine to keep,
When light forsook.

A glorious boon! Thou shalt not view
One treasure from the earth depart--
Its starry buds, its pearls of dew,
Lie in thy heart.

No need to heed the frosty air,
No need to heed the blasts that chafe,
The scatter'd sheaf, the vintage spare--
_Thy hoard is safe_.

Thou shalt not mark the silent change
That falls upon the heart like blight,
The smile that grows all cold and strange.--
Bless'd is thy night!

Thou shalt not watch the slow decay,
Nor see the ivy clasp the fane,
Nor trace upon the column gray
The mildew stain.

_Ours_ is the darkness--thine the light.
Within thy brow a glory plays;
Shrine, blossom, dewdrop, all are bright
With quenchless rays.

J. D.

THE FORCED SALE.

A large red brick house, with a multitude of gable-ends, and rows of
small, dingy-looking windows, had hidden itself for many generations
in a clump of fine old trees in a large green field--almost qualified
to take rank as a park--at a distance of six or seven miles from St
Paul's. In the days of the good Queen Anne, the city lay comfortably
huddled up round the cathedral church, and looked upon her sister of
Westminster as too far removed, and of too lofty a rank, to be visited
except on rare occasions. London was then contained within reasonable
limits, and it was easy to walk round her boundaries; you could even
point out the precise spot at which the town ended and the country
began. The inhabitants of the large brick house, known by the name of
Surbridge Hall, at rare intervals, and then only to visit the shops,
undertook the journey into the city; and, unless in the stillest of
autumn evenings, when the enormous tongue of the metropolitan clock
made itself audible on the Surbridge lawn, they might have forgotten
that such a place as the capital was within fifty miles. That
generation died off; and London had begun to put out feelers in all
directions, and had outgrown the ancient limits. Streets began to move
out a little way into the country for change of air; and, in making
their usual shopping-visits to the great city, the inhabitants of
Surbridge Hall had now to drive through a short row of houses, where
the elders of the party remembered nothing but a hedge. That
generation also