TWO LITTLE KITTENS. WO little kittens, one stormy night, Began to quarrel and then to fight; One had a mouse, the other had none, And that was the way the quarrel begun. I will have that mouse," said the eldest son. "You shan't have that mouse," said the little one. I told you before 'twas a stormy night 'I'll have that mouse," said the biggest When these two little kittens began to fight; cat. "You'll have that mouse, we'll see about that." The old woman seized her sweeping-broom And swept the two kittens right out of the room. The ground was covered with frost and snow, And the two little kittens had nowhere to go, So they laid them down on the mat at the door, While the old woman finished sweeping the floor. Then they both crept in, as quiet as mice, All wet with snow and cold as ice; For they found it was better, that stormy night, To lie down and sleep, than to quarrel and fight. MOTHERHOOD. Y neighbor's house is not so high Nor half so nice as mine; I often see the blind ajar, And tho' the curtain's fine, 'Tis only muslin, and the steps Are not of stone at all, And yet I long for her small home To give mine all in all. AD it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived, he would have purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and-whatever my querulous weakness might suggest-a far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honors; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his who visited his dung-hill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege; it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct and under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me; they who should have been to me as posterity, are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation— which ever must subsist in memory-that act of piety which he would have performed to me; I owe it to him to show, that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent. MILTON. T T. B. MACAULAY. O Milton, and to Milton alone, belonged the secrets of the great deep, the beach of sulphur, the ocean of fire; the palaces of the fallen dominations, glimmering through the everlasting shade, the silent wilderness of verdure and fragrance where armed angels kept watch over the sleep of the first lovers, the portico of diamond, the sea of jasper, the sapphire pavement empurpled with celestial roses, and the infinite ranks of the Cherubim, blazing with adamant and gold. |