In these, "mysterious folds" thought is somehow developed. Here feeling resides. From here, the will sends forth its commands. Our passions, "the stormy world" of love and hate, joy and sorrow, all lie locked in their own particular cells. Hollow, glossy nerves, passing from the brain, carry the brain force like "lightning gleams of power" along their threads.

A marvellous structure truly is this body, much more marvellous to us after we have looked upon it with the help of Dr. Holmes. Truly it is a temple to be kept pure.

Therefore the poet, full of reverence for this sacred possession, implores divine love to control these "mystic temples." He thinks of the time when age and care will have worn out the body. He knows that some time the leaning walls of this temple will be sapped, its pillars will fall, darkness will gather over it, and it will turn to dust.

He implores that then the dust of these temples may be moulded by the hand of the Creator into "heavenly forms."

Shall we not think more highly of our bodies, guarding them like a temple?

THE LAST LEAF.

I saw him once before
As he passed by the door,
And again

The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,

Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,

And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest

In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago-

That he had a Roman nose,

And his cheek was like a rose In the snow.

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff.

And a crook is in his back
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin

For me to sit and grin

At him here;

But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,

Let them smile as I do now,

At the old forsaken bough

Where I cling.

A METRICAL ESSAY.

[EXTRACT.]

And, most of all, the pure ethereal fire,
Which seems to radiate from the poet's lyre,
Is to the world a mystery and a charm,
An Ægis wielded on a mortal arm,

While reason turns her dazzled eye away,
And bows her sceptre to her subject's sway;
And thus the poet, clothed with godlike state,
Usurpt his Maker's title-to create;

He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress,
What others feel more fitly can express,

Sits like the maniac on his fancied throne,

Peeps through the bars, and calls the world his own.
There breathes no being but has some pretence
To that fine instinct called poetic sense:

The rudest savage roaming through the wild;
The simplest rustic bending o'er his child;
The infant listening to the warbling bird;
The mother smiling at its half-formed word;
The boy uncaged, who tracks the fields at large;
The girl, turned matron to her babe-like charge;

*

E'en trembling age, when Spring's renewing air
Waves the thin ringlets of his silvery hair;
All, all are glowing with the inward flame,
Whose wider halo wreathes the poet's name.

5. ALFRED TENNYSON.

In the year 1809, a little dark-eyed English baby first opened his eyes. He is known as Baron Tennyson, to-day, a white-haired man past eighty, poet laureate of England.

The same year saw the birth of William Gladstone and of Abraham Lincoln.

The life of the great English poet has been rather quiet. Yet every boy and girl wants to know something about him who wrote "The Brook" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade."

Lord Tennyson is the third of the twelve children of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, an English rector. His mother was a clergyman's daughter. He has always enjoyed the advantages of a refined and wealthy home.

He studied first with his father and afterwards at Cambridge College where he graduated. While here he won a medal for writing a poem.

At eighteen, with his brother Charles, he published a little volume called "Poems by Two Brothers." Only those signed C. T. were thought promising. Yet Alfred has become a famous poet while Charles has ceased to write.

Mr. Tennyson married early and has a large and happy family.

For twelve years after he began to publish his