A YEAR'S SPINNING. He listened at the porch that day To hear the wheel go on, and on, And then it stopped-ran back away While through the door he brought the sun : But now my spinning is all done. He sat beside me, with an oath That love ne'er ended once begun; What was the truth for only one. My mother cursed me that I heard A young man's wooing as I spun. For I have since a harder known! I thought—God!—my first-born's cry Both voices to my ear would drown. It was the silence made me groan ! Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave, Who not to bless me would not moan. A stone upon my heart and head, But no name written on the stone! “ This sinner was a loving one- And let the door ajar remain, In case he should pass by anon; That HE, when passing in the sun, THE MUSIC OF HEAVEN. “ The imaginative Irish of the lower orders believe and assert that music from Heaven is often heard by a peculiarly virtuous person when expiring.” The Death Flag.-By Miss CRUMP. TIe days of his life are well nigh spent. He lieth in patient meekness; To comfort him in his weakness : He doth not the mournful wailings hear Of the weeping friends who love him, He listeth with glad and earnest ear To the music of Heaven above him! i Voices, sweet voices, in choral lay, Are of loved and lost ones telling, To live in a brighter dwelling; They are eager to greet and love him, With the music of Heaven above him! Oh! if we hope in the hour of death For the añgels' kind assistance,' Let us serve the Lord in humble faith, Through the term of our brief existence; To the weeping friends who love us, With the music of Heaven above us ! 4* WATCH Watch !-watch where daylight's glow expires, Watch! But oh! watch most the heart within; Watch! JOANNA BAILLIE. WHEN we think of the women, who—not possessing a tithe of Joanna Baillie's creative fancy, nor a hundredth part of her power over the passions,—have appealed to their imaginations and to their sensibilities, in excuse for the flagrant and frantic errors in which they have rioted, we turn to the simple and pure life of the Scottish poetess, adorned by the practice of every duty, without the slightest accompaniment of self-assertion—as to a noble and holy vindication of Genius: an answer to those pretenders, who, possessing few of the gifts, claim, nevertheless, all the license. The word “womanly,” is repulsive if it be cited as a plea for inconsistency, as an excuse for frivolity, as a make-shift to gloss over disproportions, as a door to admit weaknesses. But the word has a speciality and a significance, if it be used to characterize something more gracious, and less gross, than is often possible to man-of necessity worn coarse in his intercourse with life, or his experience of trial. If we point to Joanna Baillie as a type of womanly genius, it neither means that she was weak nor imitative; but gentle, firm, and pure. As such, her name should be eminently dear to all women. That it has been cordially honoured by men, we had only the other day a new proof in the following sonnet, published among |