s its dearest hope!
I knelt before the holy martyred form,
The perfect Victim given in perfect love,
The highest symbol of the highest Power,
_Self-abnegation perfected in God_!
Circling the brow like diadem, there shone
Each letter pierced with thorns and dyed in blood,
Yet dazzling vision with the hopes of heaven:
'I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE!'
Upon the outstretched hands, mangled and torn,
I found that mighty truth the heart divines,
Which strews our midnight thick with stars, solves doubts,
And makes the chasm of the yawning grave
The womb of higher life, in which the lost
Are gently rocked into their angel forms--
That truth of mystic rapture--'GOD IS LOVE!'

Still chants the snowy DOVE from heaven's shore:
'LENORE! LENORE! FOREVER! EVERMORE!'

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND ITS PECULIARITIES.

Few of the people of the North have ever inquisitively considered the
Mississippi River, and as a consequence its numerous peculiarities are
not generally known. Indeed, its only characteristic features are
supposed to be immensity of proportions rather than any specific
variation from the universal nature of rivers. Many there are that have
never seen the river, and have conceptions of its appearance merely in
imagination; others have been more fortunate, have crossed its turbid
flood, or have been borne upon its noble bosom the full breadth of the
land, from beautiful Minnesota to its great reservoir in the South, the
Gulf of Mexico. As the result of this experience, great have been the
sensations of satisfaction or disappointment. Many have turned away with
their extravagant anticipations materially chagrined. This might be
expected in a casual observer. It is true, some portions of the
Mississippi do not present that vastness which a person would very
naturally expect, having previously accepted literally the figurative
appellations that have been applied to it. The Mississippi is not
superficially a great stream, but when it is recognized as the mighty
conduit of the surplus waters of fifty large streams, some of which are
as large as itself, besides receiving innumerable of less
pretensions--when we consider, too, the great physical phenomena which
it presents in its turbid waters, its islands, its bars, and its bayous,
its vast banks of alluvial deposit, its omnipotent force, and the signal
futility of all human endeavors to control it,