so familiar in all its phases. At such a place, at such a time, one has a curiously mingled sense of solitude and companionship. No one was near me; no one knew where I was, - perhaps no one greatly cared: :

I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.

But before and below me, here and there, twinkled the home stars, around which were gathered father and mother, sister and brother-yes and doubtless

a dearer one

Still, and a nearer one
Yet than all other.

Might I not venture to claim a part in all this home-life, and, resting upon my solitary terrace, drop a gentle thought to mingle with, perhaps to fructify and stimulate the lives which it should touch?

MAY 17, 1894.

I

XXI.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky.

IT has been absolutely superb. The long storm with which the drought closed has finally passed away, and it has left us with the atmosphere washed clean, but with great floating masses of cloud, lagging, not by any means superfluous, upon the stage, but so as to present to us every variety of beauty that we could desire.

I have spent nearly the whole day, sitting in the shade of my own ash tree, reading and receiving sundry callers, and listening to the birds of all sorts and sizes, as merry as grigs; and anon looking across the field of the cloth of gold made by the buttercups, upon the valley and the distant hills, where the shadows of the slowly moving clouds produced an ever-varying play of light that was infinitely beautiful.

And I have been travelling in delightful familiar paths, and steeping myself in the

joys of the past, tempered by that regret which must now always endure, as I have read the manuscript pages of the story of the life of our Bayard, our knight without fear and without reproach, Curtis, whom, alas! we shall see no more on this earth forever. What joy he would have taken in this day and in this spot! There were no need of Titbottom's spectacles, and the finest castles in Spain could not rank as real estate at a higher value than the invisible cottage outlined by cords, and surrounded by rough boarding here at my side, which he would so gladly have seen complete and tenanted.

How can it be possible that any one who was so fortunate as to be baptized with the holy chrism of the love and confidence of this sweet and tender spirit, shoud VAR thereafter do an unworthy thing or think an unworthy thought! Alas! that it should be so! As I read, and the years of the past are recalled, I again become conscious of the noble presence, I feel once more the touch of the gentle hand, I see the tender, affectionate look in the true eye, and I hear the musical voice which is now silent forevermore. Ah! me! it is worth having lived to have had such a friend; and how

wide and rich was his capacity for friendship!

Last week it was my fortune to attend a meeting at the club of those who are charged with the duty of preparing some appropriate memorial which shall testify to coming generations of the supreme regard in which he is held by many of the best of this. There was the ex-mayor, who is rapidly building a somnolent college into a great university; there was the poet-editor who lately sang of the blossoming and the evanishment of the great White City; there was the genial essayist, my neighbour - still going with good cheer on his little journey in the world; there was the representative of the time-honoured publishing house of the Cheerible brothers; there was the barrister by whom rogues most dread to be crossexamined, the doctor for whom the profession does not afford a field broad enough for his energies, the painter who knows how to catch the very spirit of the New England village, and the general who can hold an audience hanging upon his word, and who can tell, because he saw it with his own eyes, how his great chief received the sword of Lee under the tree at Appomattox. And there were the best of words

Y 4. We pray Sidang We at tulen New York." Do you t ize that in wat ensis & reay seemed that Wassington must go, and that it is most singular that it did not ? It was completely at the mercy of the southeru troops. In April, 1892, while a party of us were on our way to Baltimore, our friend the general-not the general of whom I spoke a moment ago - told us the story of how h