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From The London Review.
LIFE IN HEAVEN.*

THIS little book is a curious, and perhaps
a well-meant performance. There are many
things in the Bible which people take little
or no account of, and yet concerning which
some remarkable things are written. The
author touches upon some of them.
the angels, for instance, he writes:-

Upon

is

and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire;'-that they are immortal, and will thus never die Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection;'-that their number The chariots of God are very great: twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place:' And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, "The Scriptures, however, make known to and the beasts, and the elders: and the numus much incidentally respecting these angels ber of them was ten thousand times ten thouof God: that they were created before the sand, and thousands of thousands;'-that earth was, or man was formed; for when God, they join in the worship of God: And all on the morning of creation, summoned into the angels stood round about the throne, and existence the heavens and the earth, the about the elders and the four beasts, and fell morning stars sang together, and the sons of before the throne on their faces, and worGod shouted for joy-that heaven is their shipped God, saying, Amen: Blessing, and usual habitation and home, where they are made glad by a habitual and uninterrupted honor, and power, and might, be unto our God glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and view of the face of God: Take heed that ye for ever and ever: Amen ;'-that they hold despise not one of these little ones: for I say converse, and are able to communicate intelunto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is ligence to the members of the human family : in heaven;-that they differ in rank-angels, for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great And the angel said unto them, Fear not: archangels, principalities, powers, cherubim, seraphim; that their rank in heaven is high feel a deep interest in us: Likewise, I say joy, which shall be to all people;'-that they -Sons of God, morning stars, undying cour- unto you, there is joy in the presence of the tiers in the high palace of eternity;-that angels of God over one sinner that repenteth ;' their form is beautiful and their appearance that they are our guardians here during bright; And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud; * "Life in Heaven." By the Author of "Heaven our Home" and "Meet for Heaven." London: Simpkin, Marshal, & Co. Edinburgh: W. P. Nimmo.

life, and bear us home to heaven at death. In heaven, angels will associate with us for eternity, and will freely communicate to us what they have seen and what they know of the ways and works of God."

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CONTENTS:

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne on England and the English, Reader, 2. The French Conquest of Mexico,

3. Tony Butler,"

Westminster Review,
Blackwood's Magazine,

*Preparing for separate publication at this office.

PAGE

243

251

270

PCETRY.-Amen!-in the Cathedral, St. Andrews, 242. Something Left Undone, 242. SHORT ARTICLES.-Antiquities, 269. Literary Intelligence, 269, 288.

The dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg on 19 November, with the accompaniments of an Oration by Mr. Everett and a Poem by Mr. Longfellow, will attract everybody's attention. In No. 1015 of The Living Age we shall print a very good account of the Battle of Gettysburg, and The Campaign in Pennsylvania.

The Shadow Dance, a poem in No. 1012, which we copied from a Washington paper, and on its authority credited to R. W. Emerson,-was originally published in the Boston Transcript as by W. R. Emerson. The Washington paper thought the initials wrong-and so gave to Mr. Ralph W. Emerson the honor which belongs to Mr. William R. Emerson.

TO NEWSPAPER EDITORS.

A friend in the country writes to us that he sees almost every week, in his country paper, some article copied from The Living Age, without acknowledgment. And he advises us to say as follows: (and so we proceed to say)

"We have been accustomed to exchange with many newspapers which we do not read, out of courtesy, or from remembrance of their early introduction of The Living Age to their readers. While some of these papers are very sensitive and tenacious in regard to credit due themselves, they habitually copy from us without acknowledgment, preferring to give credit only to the foreign journals, which we always quote. They thus set up a claim on their own subscribers, as if they (the newspapers) were at the trouble and expense of importing all the Quarterlies, Monthlies, and Weeklies. We are therefore forced to give notice that where we are overlooked in this way, we must stop the exchange."

TO READERS OF THE LIVING AGE.

In making remittance, please send UNITED STATES NOTES. Having the opportunity of establishing a sound and uniform Currency, let no man delay to make use of it; and to do what he can to make it the only paper money.

Bank Notes are very good-at least we have not had a bad one for a long time-but while our Government stands, its notes are better than any other: and "when that flag goes down" (to adopt the words of our gallant neighbor, Captain Selfridge of the Navy), "we are more than willing to go down with it."

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HERE stood the altar in the ancient days,
And here, no priest, a stranger I, and lone,
Stand silent on the steps of mossy stone,
Ascended once with highest notes of praise.

All silent on the broken altar-stairs

While through the vacant window the blue
heaven

Looks wistful in, defrauded of the prayers
Once here in high response and answer given.

O silent shrine, that knows no matin-song,

Nor voice of vespers through the falling dew! O silent heart, distraught with echoes long

Of the past prayers that find no voice in you!

Listen! for in the gales and in the tides

That sweep and echo round this northern shore, One voice of old devotion evermore, Priestlike, beside the fallen altar bides.

The great sea speaks and the wild winds reply, They breathe their worship through the broken aisles;

Nor change the strain when lowers the wintry sky,

Nor when reluctant summer chides and smiles.

And thus through all the year they sigh and say

Grave ministrants, answering in solemn strain Depth unto depth :-Amen! Amen! Amen! The burden of the night and of the day.

The storm's wild heart gives forth no sharper

cry,

No warmer accents know the summer calm;
Monotonous from changeless sea and sky,
It swells and falls, an everlasting psalm.

Amen! Amen! Dumb on the altar-stairs
I kneel, nor dare take up a loftier part,
Knowing full well that in my speechless heart
The lauds are faint, and broken are the prayers.

Here once the glad Te Deum flung abroad

To heaven the music of its matchless song; Here once the Miserere wailed to God,

Joy echoing sweet, and sorrow sobbing long.

But silent, silent now through ages drear,
In their old consecration standing dumb,
The holy walls rise sad to heaven, and hear
Through the long gloom those deeper voices

come.

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Where youth, high priest of all glad mysteries, sang

Of joy miraculous and endless woes,—

Listen for in the aching silence round,
O'er the lost lilies and the dying lights,
The same deep voices, with an awful sound,
Say their response through all the days and
nights.

Here once the prayers were more than words could tell,

Impatient wishes that besieged the sky; Nor was there doubt of any miracle,

Save that life's longings and its hopes could die.

But now, subdued by tedious toils and cares,
Desire falls faint-hope falters on the strain;
And Time and Nature with a deep Amen,
Fill up the breaks and echoes of old prayers.
Amen! Amen! No warmer voice of praise
The ruined walls, the silent soul, may find;
But O thou solemn sea and mournful wind,
Take up the burden of our elder days!—

Amen! Our hearts are hushed, we frame again
No other gospel of fresh hopes in store,
But, weary of all tempests, join the strain
That beats in grave accord on this stern shore.
Amen! Amen! Amen!

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From The Reader.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE ON ENGLAND

AND THE ENGLISH.

Our Old Home. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Author of Transformations," "The Scar-
let Letter," etc. In Two Volumes. Smith,
Elder, and Co.

66

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Mr.

thought, word, and metaphor, none of the Mississippi-bred eloquence, which disgusts us so often in the writings and speeches of some even of his most celebrated countrymen, but, along with a genuine and original power of intellect and of fancy, all the grace, delicacy, and subtle ease and proportionateness of exUNDER the title of " Our Old Home" Mr. pression to which we have been accustomed by Hawthorne has here published, both for his our best native writers. We should take to American fellow-countrymen and for our him as readily, and with as little fear of offence selves, two volumes of descriptive sketches of to our literary taste as to De Quincey or Leigh England and the English, compiled from Hunt or Thackeray, or any other of our most notes made in his journals during the years silver-tongued English authors, and yet with he recently spent among us in his capacity the certainty that it would not be De Quincey as Consul for the United States in Liverpool. or Leigh Hunt or Thackeray that we should The title of the book is significant. The be reading, but precisely the American HawAmericans, one and all, still think of Eng-thorne. land as their Old Home. "After all these Well, the present is a beautiful book, and bloody wars and vindictive animosities," says worthy of Hawthorne. If you want to see Mr. Hawthorne, "we have still an unspeak- how a real artist and man of genius can deable yearning towards England. When our scribe his tours and register his impressions forefathers left the old home, they pulled up of people and scenery, as compared with a many of their roots, but trailed along with traveller of the Koch species "doing а them others which were never snapped asun-country systematically for the purposes of a der by the tug of such a lengthening distance, book, you can find no better specimen of the nor have been torn out of the original soil by superior method than in these volumes. the violence of subsequent struggles, nor Hawthorne, indeed, does not in any sense, severed by the edge of the sword. Even so do" England in their pages. He does not, late as these days, they remain entangled divide England, or Great Britain, as in the with our heart-strings, and might often have maps of the guide-books for tourists, into influenced our national course like the tiller- squares and districts, and devote a chapter to ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of England each district or square until the whole is had been capable of managing so sensitive a surveyed. It does not appear that he travkind of machinery." It must be plain to all elled over our country in that manner while who have read Mr. Hawthorn's previous he was here on his long visit. In these volbooks that there is no American in whose umes, at least, it is but a few spots of the genius these fibres of lingering connection British territory that he touches with his with the old country are more firmly knitted reminiscences; and, were his journeys over than in his; and if, on the one hand, no that territory during the period of his consulAmerican could have been more welcome in ship to be indicated on a map from these volEngland in the representative capacity in umes alone, the line would be a very interwhich he was sent hither, it is probable, on rupted one, and would cross but a portion the other hand, that America could have sent here and there of the total surface. Liverno one more thoroughly fitted to walk with pool, as the seat of his consulate, was his meditative enjoyment over our English acres, head-quarters; and the first chapter is about note their picturesque features, and lovingly Liverpool, or rather about his consulate there, exhaust their antique lore. Perhaps there is and the queer sorts of business which it deno American from whom a book about Eng- volved upon him. It appears, however, that, land would be expected with more affection- in vacation-times, he used to reside a good ate interest and with higher anticipations of deal in Leamington; and a large portion of pleasure than from Nathaniel Hawthorne. the book is taken up with excursions in the He is a favorite with us all. Whatever faults neighborhood of Leamington-more particuwe have to find with other American writers, larly to Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon. we all think him charming. In his writings We follow him, also, to Oxford and its enviwe find none of the grotesque braggartism of | rons. Then there are leaps away in one

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