easant strand, more than once
we saw the glow of the vanished sun behind the western mountains or the
western waves, darkly piled in mist and shadow along the sky; near at
hand, the dead pine, mighty in decay, stretching its ragged arms athwart
the burning heavens, the crow perched on its top like an image carved in
jet; and aloft, the night-hawk, circling in his flight, and, with a
strange whining sound, diving through the air each moment for the
insects he makes his prey.

But all good things, as well as others, have an end. The season drew to
a close at last. August nights are chilly for sleeping in tents. Our
flitting must cease, and our thoughts and steps turn homeward. But a few
days are still left us. At Buffalo once more we go to see the Falls.
Then by boat to Hamilton, thence to Kingston at the foot of the lake,
and so on through the Thousand Isles to Montreal, and finally to
Quebec,--a tour as fascinating in its innumerable and singularly wild
and beautiful "sights" as heart could desire.

* * * * *

OUR NATIONAL CEMETERIES.

By Charles Cowley, LL.D.

There are circumstances generally attending the death of the soldier or
the sailor, whether on battle-field or gun-deck, whether in the
captives' prison, the cockpit, or the field-hospital, which touch our
sensibilities far more deeply than any circumstances which usually
attend the death of men of any other class; moving within us mingled
emotions of pathos and pity, of mystery and awe.

"There is a tear for all that die,
A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And freedom weeps above the brave;

"For them is sorrow's purest sigh,
O'er ocean's heaving bosom sent;
In vain their bones unburied lie,--
All earth becomes their monument.

"A tomb is their's on every page;
An epitaph on every tongue;
The present hours, the future age,
Nor them bewail, to them belong.

"A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,
Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?"

A similar halo invests our National Cemeteries--which are the most
permanent mementos of our sanguinary Civil War.

Nature labors diligently to cover up her scars. Most of the
battle-fields of the Rebellion now show growths of use and beauty. Many
of the structures of that great conflict have already ceased to be. Some
of t