Year: 1861

| Reauty OF the Ideal.


benjamin F. Taylor, in the Chicago Evsn-
ming Journal, says:


The superstition Of childhood is lifes
morning twilight, and strange and beautiful
would dispel them If it could.


We envy the children who believe in
santa CLAUS, and who rejoice in the mystery
OF his coming we envy the boy that chases
the rainbow with beating heart, and thinks
that the purple hills be sees are the walls of
Who would not know enough less to make
hlm happy, perhaps, if he thought as he
useo 70 DO, when he bent over the curb, that
tbere was boy in the well, with q round
young face, enough like his own to be his
brothers? If he believed that "the babyn
came down by the light of stars in an angels
armsi an angel with wings of silver white
and making music all the way? If he THOUGHT
he saw sainted sister riding on pleasure
cloud; pleasure-cloud with a crimson sail
and Prov of gold? If he heard, as he did
W1en nearer Heaven than now, voices that
syllabled his name from forest shades?


Who does not wish for that old faith, when
through the rain he saw the "Babes in the
woods as they laid them down to die, and
robin red-breast did cover them with
leaves?" '-


Who that was a child a score of years
ago.. and lived in the rural districts of New
! Ok, can ever forget ''Old Sickles" and his
shows Z" The great waxen snake he trailed
ABOUT with MIN, as long as the Trojan war,
ana thousand times as real; the gallant
battle Of the ships on the fearful rolling of a
green baize sea; but chief the melancholy
fate of the "Babes in the Woods What
real tears were she'd when hand in hand,
they wandered up and down." How we
blest the robins, as they brought the with
cred leaves for that sad burial. And then.
when down among the shadows of the lonely
wood, that angels snowy wings came like a
dawn, and hoyered like pure white dove
abouts its callow young, and bore those
children, safely folded in her radiant arms.
so tenderly from sight, and as we thought,
TO Heaven, we were ready to have "a cruel
uncle,' and die then, if only we could be
sure of the robins and the angell


Where is he who rent the vail of sweet H.
lusion, and disclosed the skeleton of wires
that lent the puppets liie2 Where is he. who
with breath as cruel as the North, dispelled
the vision; that he may be arraigued for
angel-murder, and robbing childhood of a
faith he never can restore2


But we believe in fairies yet some of those
dewy shadows of the morning linger still:
and there is nothing in Moses to which we
attach credence more complete. than that
spirits do walk the earth both when we
wake, and when we Sleep" Verify things
are around us, that have ceased to be: and
even as the stars of last night lend threads
ofsilver to grace the golden wear of TODAY,
SO they That are gone, mingle with careless
lives we lead; we hear their football on the
stair, and think it but the wind; the rustic
OF their garments at our side, and say. the
vine that climbs about the window sill is
waving, and forget the air is breathless and
no hand is near.


The fairy. haunted dreams of "the drowsy
East have counterparts in all the real, Not
grave was ever heaped and rounded, that
has not, at some time, given up its dead
not heart has ever beat or broken. that has
not harbored, in some shining hour, those
who neither when they came nor when they
went left faintest ot-print on the thresh-
old. Even happiness, that brightens all
the soul like wondering eye beginning to
be glad, is as invisible as "Ariel' when he
sang,


"Full fathom five thy father lies;


VI his bones are coral made;


Tp9ss otn are pearls peg that were his eyes;


But doth suffer sea. change


Into some thing rich and strange"


We make mansions for it, but it goes as the
wind goes, and how few of them all are
haunted houses to- day. =


80 even in these times of the dusty and
the stubborn real W hen they dew is gone off
the world with its cool and blessed fresh
ness, ana the unseen informing soul has gone
out OF the earth and out of the air, and out
of the human heart; gone like the morning
cloud; when


"a primrose by the rivers brim,"
is "a yellow primrose to" half the world.
and IT Is nothing more" even now, we say,
there can hardly be any thing more real than