* * * * *

THE SONG OF FATIMA.

On, sad are they who know not love,
But, far from passion's tears and smiles,
Drift down a moonless sea, and pass
The silver coasts of fairy isles!

And sadder they whose longing lips
Kiss empty air, and never touch
The dear warm mouth of those they love,
Waiting, wasting, suffering much!

But clear as amber, sweet as musk,
Is life to those whose lives unite:
They walk in Allah's smile by day,
And nestle in his heart by night!

SOMETHING ABOUT HISTORY.

There is no kind of writing which is undertaken so much from will and so
little from instinct as History. It seems the great resource of baffled
ambition, of leisure, of minds disciplined rather than inspired, of men
with pecuniary means and without professional obligations. Sympathy
with or opposition to an author prompts those thus situated to write
criticism; a dominant sentiment inspires poetical composition; and
usually an impressive experience suggests adventure in the field of
fiction: but we find educated men, in independent circumstances, not
remarkable for sensibility to Nature, acute critical perception, or
dramatic talent, whose literary aspirations are vague, and who desire
to be occupied eligibly, turn to History as the most available
vantage-ground, busy themselves with wars and councils that happened
ages ago,--with kings and soldiers, institutions and adventures,
politics and dynasties, so far removed from the associations and
interests of the hour, that only a scholar's enthusiasm or ambition
could sustain the research or keep alive the enterprise thus voluntarily
assumed. It is this objective method and motive that chiefly accounts
for the numberless inert and the few vital histories. Like any
intellectual task assumed without special fitness therefor or motive
thereto,--without a comprehensive grasp of mind that impels to
historic exploration,--without a patriotic zeal that warms to national
heroism,--without, especially, a love of some principle, a conviction
of some truth, an admiration of some national development, irresistibly
urging the cultivated and ardent mind to seek for the facts, to
celebrate the persons, to evolve the truth involved in and manifest
through public events,--the annals recorded are but dry chronology,--a
monotonous, more or less authentic, perhaps quite respectable, but far
from a very important or peculiarly interesting w