When shall I be at rest? My eyes grow dim

With straining through the gloom,—I scarce can see
The waymarks that my Saviour left for me;
Would it were morn, and I were safe with Him!

When shall I be at rest? Hand over hand
I grasp, and climb an ever-steeper hill,
A rougher path. Oh! that it were Thy will,
My tired feet might tread the Promised Land!
Oh, that I were at rest! a thousand fears

Come thronging o'er me lest I fail at last.
Would I were safe, all toil and danger past,
And Thine own hand might wipe away my tears!
Oh, that I were at rest! like some I love,

Whose last fond looks drew half my life away,
Seeming to plead that either they might stay
With me on earth, or I with them above.

But why these murmurs? Thou didst never shrink
From any toil or weariness for me—
Not even from that last deep agony—
Shall I beneath my little trials sink?

No, Lord; for when I am indeed at rest,

One taste of that deep bliss will quite efface
The sternest memories of my earthly race,
Save but to swell the sense of being blest.

Then lay on me whatever cross I need

To bring me there. I know Thou canst not be
Unkind, unfaithful, or untrue to me!

Shall I not toil for Thee, when Thou for me didst bleed?

JOHN GEORGE FLEET.

XIX.-UNPAINTED PICTURES FROM AN
ARTIST'S DIARY.

BY ANNA MARY HOWITT WATTS, AUTHOR OF "AN ART STUDENT IN
MUNICH."

No. II.

A DESCENDANT OF THE VIKINGS.

November 21st.-Lately in the evenings we have read aloud Worsaae's "Danes and Norwegians in Great Britain;" thus my mind naturally has dwelt much upon our heroic Scandinavian ancestors, and the traces which still linger amongst us of those stern old times. This morning, whilst preparing for the day's

painting, besides visions of pictures to be drawn direct from Scandinavian story, and which were to be symbolic of the great and universal "Battle of Life," there floated into my mind the thought, that spirit, even upon this earth, asserts its immortality, and how we have a proof of this in the undaunted courage and endurance of our soldiers in the Crimea, and in India, who were quickened by the self-same dogged heroism which animated their old Scandinavian forefathers.

Whilst thus meditating, I was summoned suddenly from my work to speak to an old beggar who had knocked timidly at the kitchen door. "Come down and see the old fellow," exclaimed my summoner; "he is marvellously picturesque, and has the very head for you to paint as King of Thule, or as a Dying Viking!"

In the raw dampness of the November morning, I found, standing without the door, a tall spectral old man with a crippled leg; he was trembling all over with age and cold. He offered cabbagenets and lucifer matches for sale. Nothing more poverty-stricken and wan could well be imagined; he looked so feeble and ghostly, that one felt as if the first rude winter's blast must blow him away altogether. His hair, which hung from beneath the folds of a bluish-green handkerchief, tightly bound over his head, was thin, long, and white as snow. His beard, also, was silvery white; his whole countenance bore the stamp of a singular refinement; his nose was delicately arched, and finely chiselled, and his deeply-set eyes gleamed with a keen and clear brilliancy, in strange contrast with the hollowness of his cheeks, which had the yellow tints and texture of old parchment. These strange eyes were as the eyes of a youth gleaming forth from the sockets of an aged veteran. "Such a countenance truly," thought I, "must the Jarl Siward, Macbeth's opponent, have had; he whose dying words Henry of Huntington has chronicled;" and out of respect for the memory of the old Jarl, and of his heroic dying words, I bade the beggar enter and warm himself by the blazing kitchen fire.

"And how," asked I, "did you injure your leg?"

"That, Miss, was off the African coast," he replied; "my leg was shattered by a shell."

"You were a sailor, then?" I remarked, still thinking of the old Scandinavan sea-kings.

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"Yes," he said; he had been both sailor and soldier for many long years; had fought under Nelson and Wellington; was eightytwo years of age; had been in ten fierce engagements; had been in the battle of the Baltic, the battle of the Nile, and at Trafalgar; had been close to Nelson when he fell; had been wounded by bayonet, by shell, and by musket; had faced death in horrible forms by sea and by land, and yet death had not vanquished him." And as the old warrior spoke, his strange eye gleamed yet more brightly, and his voice became strong and clear. The soul of

the old Scandinavian ancestor, I felt, was quick within him. With the old dying Siward he might have exclaimed, "How shameful it is for me that I have never been slain in my numerous battles, but have been saved only to die with disgrace at last like an old cur!"

But William Robinson, the old sailor and soldier of the nineteenth century, was filled with a gentler philosophy than that of Siward in the eleventh. Dropping his head upon his breast, and trembling with age and cold, though he sat upon the warm kitchen hearth, he folded his thin yellow hands, and said, "Night and day, day and night, do I pray our Lord God to take me. He saved me in battle, and upon the sea, and in hospital; I pray Him now to take me; for my blood is no stronger than water, my wounds ache night and day, and I have no home. I pray our good Lord to take me soon-soon, and I know that He will hear me!"

"How!" said I, filled with a great compassion for the aged veteran, whose majestic figure shook like an aspen leaf; "how is it that you have not been pensioned, have not been provided for in Greenwich or in Chelsea; for, according to your account, you have a double claim upon your country?"

He replied that he had his shilling a day, which was his staff of life, and that he had had an offer of a home in Greenwich; but that his wife was then living, and that he could not endure to be parted from her. "She was more than my right hand to me," he said, "and was always slaving away, and always kept home right and snug; but now she is dead, and I wander about as you see me." Of his children, he had a long and doleful history to relate. It was a chronicle of the death of the good and kind, and the ingratitude of the living. Here, truly, was the history of a life, in which all the stern endurance and combative nature of the old Viking ancestor had found full scope to assert itself once more.

December 18th.-The old soldier has been here again. We have ascertained why he is not a pensioner in Greenwich or Chelsea. The poor old fellow had the conscience to confess to his expulsion from Greenwich! Alas! like many an old Scandinavian ancestor, he had been vanquished by the demon of drunkenness ! The love for a wandering life seems very rife in him. How could he rest contentedly between four walls month after month, and year after year, with nothing more enlivening or adventurous than a stroll through Greenwich or Chelsea! The old Scandinavian heroes when they died, desired to have their funeral mounds raised high above them, and their corpses laid close to the margin of the restless ocean; so that the spirit, when it grew weary of the narrow, quiet grave, might rise up through the mound and gaze forth over the vast expanse of tossing billows, and thus become refreshed by a sense of immensity, liberty, and action. This deep mighty yearning after freedom and restless life is rooted firmly in the heart

of many a wretched vagabond, and is the stirring of the old ancestral blood within his veins. Oh magistrates and boards of guardians, how callous are your hearts towards these mysterious, poetic, Scandinavian yearnings, which agitate the bosoms of the vagabond wretches brought up before you!

I

I like to hear the beggar veteran ramble on in discourse. have been making a study of his fine old head, and whilst I paint hespins long yarns." This morning he commenced talking about the great white bears which he has seen prowling around the watch-fires when out upon an Arctic expedition; of the glories of the transient Arctic summer he also spoke, and of the sublime marvel of the Aurora; of combats with Blacks upon the coast of Africa, of shipwreck upon the coast of Madagascar, and of the burning skies of India.

Something led him to speak of dreams.

66

"Do I believe in

dreams?" said he. Of course I do, Miss; and so would you, you know all the things that I have known."

did

"What have you known?" asked I.

"I'll tell you, Miss, the first remarkable dream that ever I had to do with, and then you may judge for yourself whether I have not reason to think dreams are often prophecies."

"I must tell you," pursued the old man, "that I was quite a little chap when my mother dreamed the dream I am going to tell you. My father, late in life, had married a young woman. I never remember him as anything but an old man. We lived down in Cambridgeshire. My mother took in washing, and my father, old man though he was, carried the letters through the neighborhood. And wild, desolate places there were in those parts seventy and odd years ago. My father often tramped about thirty miles a day,-for though old, he was a very hale man for his years, and a man as tall and strong as you would wish to see. Sometimes it was no uncommon thing for him to be out on his rounds for a couple or three days together, so we never used to be uneasy about his absence. Once when he was away, one winter's night, or rather early in the morning-I remember it as clear as though it were last week, and yet it is above seventy years ago-mother woke me up suddenly. I was a little chap, and slept in a little bed beside my mother's bed, and, says she, looking very scared, 'Bill, I know your father's dead-something has happened to father!' Her face was as white as the sheet, and the bed shook under her, she trembled so with a kind of ague. 'Lord o' mercy, child, I've had such a frightful dream! I saw your father lying dead upon the snow; a horrid black something was fluttering about him, and his face was all streaming with blood! I'm sure he's dead, Bill! certain sure!' She was a strong woman, Miss, and not one of those who takes on and cries and worrits about trifles. She got up as usual in the early, cold winter's morning, and began her work just as usual. I don't remember her shedding a tear, but

It

she bustled about more than ever, and never spoke a word. might have been about twelve o'clock or so that same day, when playing at the door in the snow, I saw a man hurrying up the lane till he came within sight of the open door, when he stopped all of a sudden, as if considering. Mother had seen him also, and pushing aside her wash-tub, said hurriedly,-"There, child, he's come to tell us of father's death!' and was outside the house as quick as lightning, and talking to the man. I don't remember well what next happened, but it seems to me that mother and I went off straight with the man, and walked a precious long way through the snow till we came to a church. There was a crowd of people in the church, all talking and looking at something which was stretched on planks upon the floor. Mother gave

a scream, rushed between the people, and sat down sobbing upon the ground close up to a strange thing, which at first I took for a bundle of old clothes, but which I soon saw was the dead body of my father, sure enough. He had been frozen to death upon a wild heath we had crossed in coming to the church. He must have lain dead some time upon the snow, for when he was found his face was mangled and bloody-the famished crows having picked out his right eye. Thus you see, Miss, I have reason to think that dreams sometimes foretell things."

April 10th. It is long since the old soldier has been here. I fear my study from his head will not be completed. No tidings can I gain regarding him at his miserable lodgings in Oat Court, except that, on the temporary breaking up of the frost in January, he set off into the country, saying that he should be away for a few days, but as yet he has not returned. The bitter cold of February, and the cheerless biting east winds of this ungenial spring, have most probably extinguished the flickering flame of his feeble old life.

It is well to believe that at length the aged wanderer has entered in to his new life, and to picture his new-born spirit, so restless upon the earth, released from its feeble fleshly bonds, and commencing a nobler and more wondrous pilgrimage through the boundless plains of eternity.

XX.-TRAINING OF GIRLS; OR, THE VEXED PROBLEM.

IN ages past, it was affirmed that "there was no new thing under the sun;" and even in our advanced days, we may safely say the same. The world has seen reformers in the shape of women before now, and again they are to be met in various directions, flinging aside their robes of vanity, and putting on the sober garments of