THE WOOD OF CHANCELLORSVILLE.

THE ripe red berries of the wintergreen

Lure me to pause awhile

In this deep, tangled wood. I stop and lean
Down where these wild flowers smile,

And rest me in this shade; for many a mile,
Through lane and dusty street,

I've walked with weary, weary feet,

And now I tarry 'mid this woodland scene, 'Mong ferns and mosses sweet.

Here all around me blows

The pale primrose.

I wonder if the gentle blossom knows
The feeling at my heart-the solemn grief,
So whelming and so deep

That it disdains relicf,

And will not let me weep.

I wonder that the woodbine thrives and grows,
And is indifferent to the nation's wocs.

For while these mornings shine, these blossoms
bloom,

Impious rebellion wraps the land in gloom.

Nature, thou art unkind,

Unsympathizing, blind!

Yon lichen, clinging to th' o'erhanging rock,
Is happy, and each blade of grass,
O'er which unconsciously I pass,
Smiles in my face, and seems to mock

Me with its joy. Alas! I cannot find

One chirm in bounteous nature, while the wind That blows upon my cheek, bears on each gust The groans of my poor country, bleeding in the dust.

The air is musical with notes

That gush from winged warblers' throats,
And in the leafy trees

I hear the drowsy hum of bees.

Prone from the blinding sky

Dance rainbow-tinted sunbeams, thick with

Until the suffering earth,

Of treason sick, shall spew the monster forth-
And each regenerate sod

Be consecrate anew, to Freedom and to God!
-Della R. German.

"MORE THAN CONQUEROR."

F. B C." Died at his Guns."-Chancellorsville.

Ay, leave the Stripes and Stars

Above him, with the precious cip and sish,
The mute mementoes of the battle's crash,
And of a hero's scars.

He entered into rest,"

Ennobled e'en in dying. Christ's true knight
Is now a king, in royal glory dight,
With Victor" on his crest.

And yet-God giveth sleep!

Earth's freshest, fairest laurels never shed
A glory like the halo round his head.
Ye love him-Will you weep?

Say ye" His life is lost;

Our home's sweet comfort and our crown of
hope"?

Nay, friends! His life has now a grander scope :
A living holocaust.

To God and Truth and Right

It aye hath been. And if the living coal
On God's own altar hath upborne the soul
In fiery chariot bright,

'Mid battle roar and strife :

If to the fearless soldier Gol's release
Came swiftly, with the seal of "perfect peace,"
Upon his earthly life:

Ay, though it sorely crush

The hearts that clung to him,-poor hearts, that
ache

With growing sense of loss,-oh, for his sake
Each wail of anguish hush!

And yet ye well may weep,

As those who mourned o'er holy Stephen, erst
On whose glad eyes heaven's glories burst
Before he fell asleep.'

A hero heart is still,

And eyes are sealed, and loving lips are mute,

For mourning, not for gladness. While this Which bore on earth the Spirit's golden fruit.

smart

Of treason dire gishes the nation's heart,

Let birds refuse to sing,

And flowers to bloom upon the lap of spring.
Let Nature's face itself with tears o'erflow,
In deepest anguish for a people's woe.

While rank Rebellion stands

With blood of martyrs on his impious hands;
While slavery and chains

And cruelty and direst hate

Uplift their heads within th' afflicted State,
And freeze the blood in every patriot's veins-
Let these old woodlands fair

Grow black with gloom, and from its thunder-lair
Let lightning leap, and scorch th' accursed air;|

But peace! It was God's will!

And for our precious land

The land he loved and died for in her need,
The blood of heroes is the country's seed-
As he stood may we stand!

The Lord of hosts doth reign!
He crowned your soldier, "dying at his guns."
Oh, be the nation worthy of her sons,
The noble-hearted slain.

From The Saturday Review.
MAGNANIMITY.

sian court-that he himself had been the target of faction and conspiracy, and that a man of such antecedents was, as it were, trained and moulded to suspicion. Nevertheless, he handed the letter to Philip, and he drank the cup.

The magnificence of the action speaks to the plainest understanding. But when we try to analyze it, and to discover that in it which, on the bare mention, touches our hearts and elevates our minds, the task is by no means easy. In one aspect at least, it might be possible, with a show of reason, to accuse Alexander of mere rashness and frivolity. It would not have been a great action

ALEXANDER was not always magnanimous, but when he drank the suspected cup from the band of his maligned friend and physician, he gave one of those examples of magnanimity which raise human nature on tiptoe, and descend to posterity as the heirlooms of civilization. It may be doubted whether the history of the world contains a finer instance of that quality which alone assimilates man to the immortal gods. But, in order fully to realize the beauty and grandeur of his action, there are many things to consider. There is, first, the greatness of Alexander. He was at that time the greatest man in the in any other man to sacrifice Alexander to his world, and might, without undue conceit, physician-the greater to the less; and why, have set an extraordinary value on his own it might be argued, should that be the height life. Then we must consider the nature of of magnanimity, rather than mere folly, in his ambition, and its immensity. It was an Alexander himself, which in another man ambition subject, in his inmost heart, to none would have been a piece of brutal stupidity? of the checks or drawbacks of which modern Would Alexander have been less magnanimen are often conscious. It constituted the mous had he reasoned thus: "I am of invery marrow and essence of his mind-was finitely more importance, not only to myself, confirmed by every spell of education and but to the world, than this man; and it would public opinion, whipped by every dream of be grossly absurd to endanger my life for the his imagination, and ratified by every dictate sake of sparing him a suspicion which is probof his conscience, such as it was. And if his ably unjust, but which is not impossibly true. ambition was unbounded, so was the tide of He himself must forgive me, and must underhis success unprecedented and astounding, stand how natural such a feeling on my part intoxicating and overwhelming. Then, on is. I will address him frankly, as becomes a the other hand, we must look at the provok- man: You have been to me a faithful sering triviality of the obstacle in the way of his vant and a friend. I know it, and acknowlglory. It was an illness, severe it is true, edge it with all my heart. But at this critbut so brief and so casual as to involve no ical moment of my life, upon which you corroding disappointment, and to suggest no yourself know as well as I do how much dedisgust, but rather to make him grasp at life pends, you will not misinterpret my sentiwith the eagerness of a young, happy, and ments towards you if I consult the dictates ambitious man—a man ambitious and happy of prudence. The cup you hold in your hand beyond all usual conditions of happiness and may have been poisoned by the very man who ambition. Moreover, in such a desperate attempts to throw suspicion upon you, and state, when men drunk with the desire to who may be equally hostile to you and to live seize at every straw, and cast everything me. You see how ready I am to make allowaside which endangers their last chance, we ances for you; I only ask you to make equal must place in the opposite scale the insignifi- filowances for me when I decline to drink the cance of Philip of Acarnania, as Alexander medicine you have prepared.'" Some such might have thought it, in comparison with address as this, spoken as Alexander could his own life and the conquest of the world-have spoken it, would have seemed to many of Philip, not a great general, nor a great minds, and perhaps not unjustly, the height poet, nor a great philosopher, but only a phy- of nobility on the part of one who need only sician, and, if an old friend, still a mere de- have spoken the word to have the man's head pendant. Finally, we must remember that chopped off, and get that suspicion, at all Alexander, from his youth up, had been events, cleared out of his way. Or take reared in an atinosphere of relentless intrigue another supposition. Suppose the cup had -intrigue almost as black as that of a Rus- been poisoned, and Alexander had died.

6

from one thing to another we pass to the con-
tempt of death as unworthy to overawe a
great mind, and so to the contempt of one's
own life, which comes to seem, as it were, an
accident, external to a man's own true self,
his name and fame, his honor and reputation,
his truth, loyalty, friendship, and that beauty
of character which is as dear to the civilized
man as his tattooing is to the savage. Hence
the lines of the Latin poet :—
"Summum crede nefas animam præferre pudori,
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas."
To treat life not as its own end, but as a means
towards higher ends, is in fact the climax of
human magnanimity, and the example given
by Alexander rivets the attention because it
sets this cardinal quality of magnanimity most
nakedly before us. Philip of Acarnania was
perhaps his oldest friend and most tried at-

Would history have placed on record the the admiration of great things to the conmagnanimity of Alexander, or his madness? tempt of small, there is but a step. And The action would in either case have been the same, yet it can hardly be doubted that, had he died, half the world would have pronounced him a fool. On the other hand, his death would have shed additional lustre on his action in the eyes of all those who look upon martyrdom as the truest seal of sincerity. But, in either case, it was not an instance in which success is any real test of policy. And, indeed, it would seem to be of the essence of magnanimity in all cases to override policy in the pursuit of higher ends. If we attempt to analyze magnanimity, the first consideration evidently arises out of the naked meaning of the word-largeness of mind. No doubt, too, the first elementary notion which the word suggests is connected with bodily size. It is easier to conceive of the elephant as being magnanimous than the flea. Giants, says Mr. Thackeray, are good-tendant. To have doubted or sacrificed him natured and fond of beer. True, the elephant can be inconceivably petty and spiteful at times. And who can describe the daring of the unblushing flea? But, for all that, the popular notion holds good. And there is, further, the subjective notion of size as applied to the mind itself. Indeed, we could make further distinctions, but they might be wearisome. So much, however, is plain and useful to consider, that from the physical notion of the indifference to trifles which characterizes big and strong men, insensible to pain, we come to the more subjective notion of a mind raised above trifles and occupied with great things-a mind which neglects the blades of grass at its feet, which traverses continents, leaps over deserts, spans the seas, and yearns towards the inaccessible stars. And thus magnanimity is the reverse of everything finicking and small. It is, in its elementary condition, a state of mind which feeds upon large objects, and is less conscious of small ones. Hence it is the temper which, both by speculation and experience, we are taught to attribute to all the governing classes of mankind—to conquerors and statesmen and generals, even to soldiers and sailors, and, by analogy, to all those whose pursuits incline them to consider things in their more general aspects, such as great poets, great philosophers, great judges. And thus it is that, by degrees, the purely physical idea of magnitude is extended to moral subjects. From

would have been to have sacrificed everything worth living for in this life. Alexander killed Clytus, indeed, in an access of rage, because Clytus denied that his actions were those of a god. But for whom besides himself should he care whether or not his actions were those of a god, save for those, as Philip of Acarnania, whom he so valued and who so valued him? It was as if he had said, "Life is the highest good, but I will not even have life if it is not such a life as I choose-a life free from taint or suspicion, and according to my own ideal.”

The contempt for our life in comparison with our ideal of what life should be, is thus, perhaps, the ultimate and most comprehensive definition of magnanimity. The contempt for personal comfort in comparison with the satisfaction of a thousand small claims of a higher kind is only a corollary of the main principle. For magnanimity consists in preferring the greater to the less, and there is always some point at which we reach the culminating price of life itself. This is the foundation of Christian magnanimity, the magnanimity of self-abnegation-that magnanimity which enters into countless forms of Christian conduct and politeness, no small part of which might fairly be described as a series of miniature martyrdoms, which gradually cease to be felt as such, but without which no man in the present day can claim to realize in any degree the prevaling ideal

of true refinement, courtesy, and high-breed- | steps, and bows to one side and to the other. ing. No doubt, too, the magnanimity of He likes what is pretty and smooth and chivalry in olden times contributed to endear subtle. He is bored by what is large and so many minute observances to minds other-solid and noble. He is fond of tinsel, and diswise so busy and so masculine. And in the likes plain gold. His favorite expression is present day, when the general operation of" nice." We are very far indeed from unmoral qualities is of more importance than dervaluing the blessings of a more diffused their occasionally heroic aspects, everything education, and of the increase of that which which helps to counteract the intense and is called, though much of it is falsely called, microscopic tendency of our social life and refinement and civilization. But every adthe subdivision of social interests must be re- vantage has its disadvantages, and we only garded as a blessing. There is the magna- attempt to point them out. And though we nimity of temper-a generosity of emotion should not be prepared to recommend the exwhich overleaps trifles; and there is the mag- ample of the gallant and impulsive old noblenanimity of wisdom, or of an enlarged expe- man who, after a lifetime spent in all the rience, neither soured by too much misfortune great wars of the past generation, declared nor spoiled by too much prosperity. There that none of his children should learn to do is the magnanimity of pride-a loftiness of more than read and sign their names, we can self-esteem that cannot condescend from the fully enter into the sharp contempt with dignity of its own pedestal to dip its feet in which a man who had seen life in all its the common mud of little men. There is the aspects of grandeur, heroism, and devotion magnanimity of intellect, in those who, per- would look upon much that he observed haps without much moral magnanimity, are around him in the rising generation. After so trained by their pursuits to generalization all, the aim of education is to make men and that is, to consider things in their most women. If the end of civilization really were general aspects-that they lose the sense of to make pedantic simpletons of women, and petty interests. Yet such men, who smile babies and fops of men, some of us would over the quarrels of governments and kings, prefer to retrace our steps towards so-called will perhaps squabble frantically over a fossil barbarism, as being, in fact, the higher state bone. And, indeed, though intellectual pur- of things. But then there is also the affectasuits have an unquestionable tendency to eletion of magnanimity-the affectation of the vate the mind, their effect is not universal. frog trying to swell itself out to the dimenIf some of the most intellectual men have been among the noblest, many have been among the meanest of mankind.

It must be admitted that magnanimity, although the most beautiful and glorious of all the qualities to which a human being can aspire, is not that which our modern civilization is most calculated to encourage. Our interests are too minute and subdivided, our life too feverish and rapid. The ties which bind us to one another and to society are too infinite in number and too liliputian in dimension. Petty and peddling pursuits and accomplishments, minute training, the increase of education by the spoon, a state of petty dependence due to the infinitesimal network of mutual claims and responsibilities-all tend to dwarf any natural tendency to magnanimity. The modern man learns from his youth up, for the most part, to tread delicately among our modern china. He learns to stoop and quibble and manœuvre. He shuffles, sneers, and backbites. He picks his

sions of the bull. It is inconceivable how the ramifications of false magnanimity extend throughout society, and under what infinite aspects it displays itself, from the affectation of wearing no crinoline to the affectation of wearing it bigger than any other woman. There is the affectation of being superior to trifles, with which dishonest men conceal their ignorance under pretence of laughing at botany and beetles. The part of true magnanimity here is not to pooh-pooh the subject, but to recognize its importance, and survey one's own ignorance with perfect ease, without flutter or dismay. Those who do this are ever superior to their ignorance. There is just as much little-mindedness in the industry with which some people drag the attention of their neighbors to their own defects, as there is in the hot and cowardly haste of others in covering up the minutest shortcoming. True magnanimity is too great to be much concerned to do either.

Aristotle has said that all great men are

melancholy, and it is interesting to trace the are usually, except at particular moments of part which melancholy plays as an almost extraordinary activity, melancholy, and of a inseparable feature of magnanimity. The brooding disposition. The sparrows that are ancients, when they ascribed a slow gait and forever chirping, the rabbits that are forever the absence of eagerness to men of great hopping about, the doves that are forever minds, touched, unconsciously perhaps, upon cooing, and, generally speaking, the more this side of magnanimity. Zcal may, indeed, mobile part of creation, are illustrations on at certain critical moments, be essential to the opposite side of the same great principle greatness of mind, but as a rule it is of the which Aristotle expressed in reference to manessence of a large mind to be impressed with kind when he said that great men are melanthe comparative triviality of things rather choly. It does not in the least follow that than with their overwhelming importance. peevish and melancholy people are therefore Hence we come upon the true explanation of great. Peevishness and melancholy are, unthe notorious fact that zealots of all denomi- luckily, as common as true magnanimity is nations are, invariably and without exception, rare. Still, in spite of this, it remains true men of little minds. It is true that zealots often do great things, and bring down men infinitely their superiors, just as some vermin will fasten undaunted on the neck of the eagle, and, wingless themselves, bring the imperial bird down from the skies. But the secret of their audacity is the blindness and contraction, not the largeness, of their vision. The melancholy and the magnanimity of Hamlet go hand in hand, and a zealot is incapable of either. And largeness of vision is inseparable from a special melancholy, due not to the peevishness and grumbling of discontent, but partly to a truer estimate of things, and partly to the perception of the infinitesimally small weight of the greatest man in the general scale of the universe. It is curious to observe also that, as a rule, beasts and birds of prey-that is to say, animals accustomed to look down upon a portion of the world from a higher point of view

that a certain sadness and melancholy, far removed, indeed, from the affectation of it, are the almost invariable concomitants of the greatest of human qualities. But if this be considered a drawback, what shall we say of the indefinable charm, the magnetic influence of true magnanimity? Magnanimity lends a mellowness, an ease, a grace, a boundless sense of liberty to human intercourse, which are its highest and rarest fruits. Magnanimity heightens all enjoyments, smooths all asperities, exaggerates nothing, knows no revenge, nor selfishness, nor egotism, nor pettiness, nor spite-is not a time-server, nor a tuft-hunter, nor a fortune-hunter. The pleasures of vanity may grow cold, and even those of sober and well-gotten fame may grow pale; but magnanimity never palls, for it depends upon itself, and is the halo of its own existence.

"IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE."-One moment, the sick-room, the scaffold, the stake; the next, the paradisiacal glory. One moment, the sob of parting anguish; the next, the great deep swell of the angels' song. Never think, reader, that the dear ones you have seen die had far to go to meet Gol after they parted from you. Never think, parents, who have seen your children die, that after they left you they had to traverse a dark, solitary way, along which you would have liked, if it had been possible, to lead them by the hand, and bear them company till they came into the presence of God. You did so if you stood by them till the last breath was drawn. You did bear them company into God's very presence if you only stayed beside them till they died. The moment they left you they were

with him. The slight pressure of the cold fingers lingered with you yet, but the little child was with his Saviour.-Recreations of a Country Parson.

"THE Bible, we all know, is not a 'logical' book mercly. It has the richness and redundancy of Oriental fancy. Nor is it a day-book, to be treated dryly. It is all wet through and through with the dew of the Spirit. From a certain point of view and under a certain light its dewdrops begin to flash and sparkle, as it were. There is a rainbow-like effulgence of celestial things. Nor is this a fickle, uncertain, inharmonious splendor. The same light flashes from Genesis to Revelation.”—Mahan.