their
commands, supervising the staffs of the regiments, who are in direct
communication with the officers of companies.

Prepared for service by the unremitting labors of the staff officers, it
is seldom that the army cannot move in complete order at six hours'
notice. Think what preparation is required for a family of half a dozen
to get ready to spend a month in the country--how tailors and milliners
and dressmakers are put in requisition--how business arrangements must
be made--how a thousand little vexing details constantly suggest
themselves which need attention. Think of a thousand families--ten
thousand--making these preparations! What a vast hurly burly! What an
ocean of confusion! How many delays and disappointments! During the
fortnight or month which has elapsed while these families have been
getting ready, an army of fifty or a hundred thousand men has marched a
hundred miles, fought a battle, been reequipped, reclothed, reorganized,
and, perhaps, the order of a nation's history has experienced an entire
change.

Our next paper will describe in detail the operations of the staff
departments.

SLEEPING.

The purple light sleeps on the hills,
The shadowed valleys sleep between,
Down through the shadows slide the rills,
The drooping hazels o'er them lean.

The clouds lie sleeping in the sky--
The crimson beds of sleeping airs;
The broad sun shuts his lazy eye
On all the long day's weary cares.

The far, low meadows sleep in light,
The river sleeps, a molten tide;
I dream reclined, with half-shut sight--
My dog sleeps, couching at my side.

The branches droop above my head,
The motes sleep in the slanting beam,
Yon hawk sails through the sunset red--
Adieu thought, sailing through a dream!

And here upon this bank I lie,
Beneath the drooping, airless leaves,
And watch the long, low sunset die,
On silent, dreamy summer eves.

The slant light creeps the boughs among,
And drops upon the sleeping sod--
SHE lies below, in slumber long,
ASLEEP till the great morn of GOD!

DR. FOX'S PRESCRIPTION.

'None but bigots will in vain
Adore a heaven they cannot gain.'--SHERIDAN.

There is a story, familiar to most people of extensive reading, and
quite frequently alluded to, of a fox that, after endeavoring in vain to
possess himself of some luscious grapes whic