bowed.

See, the golden-rod no longer bends its yellow-plumed head,
By the roadside lies it faded--'mid the grasses--pale and dead;
While alone the stately mullein rears its brown and withered crest.
Quiet skies of early Autumn mirrors now the lake no more,
But its waters struggle fiercely, laden storm-clouds flying o'er,
And the rain it falleth ever, and the wind will never rest.

Once the hills were clad in scarlet: vanished all their beauty now;
Perished now the crown of glory that encircled then their brow;
Low the crimson leaves are lying, and the withered boughs are chill;
Faded are the purple daisies, and the little pool looks sad,
Missing now the gentle flowers that once made it bright and glad;
For the rain it falleth ever, and the wind is never still.

Closer fall the gloomy shadows, and the forests drearier seem,
Still the leaden clouds are flying, rusheth wilder yet the stream;
And the reckless wind is telling now a wild and fearful tale,
While the trees all listen trembling, and the mullein bows its head,
And the dusky lake grows angrier, and the dark pool mourns its dead;
For the rain it falleth ever, and the winds but louder wail.

THE ASSIZES OF JERUSALEM.

There is in the Royal Library at Munich a room called the Cimelian Hall,
in which the manuscripts and works with binding richly ornamented in
gold and precious stones are kept. Many a visitor to this hall has felt
deep interest as his eyes have rested upon an open manuscript, to be
seen through the glass doors of its case, written with inverted strokes
and adorned with various colored initial letters. The interest has risen
on learning that this contains the 'Assizes of Jerusalem,' of which
there are but few manuscripts in existence--one at Venice and several at
Paris. This work is in the old French language, and the frequent
recurrence on the open page of such words as _jures_, _larcin_, _vol_,
_meurtre_,[1] in connection with the word '_assises_,' leads the visitor
to suppose that this may be a judicial report of remarkable criminal
cases--a kind of 'Pitaval.'[2]

But these yellow leaves contain one of the most important documents
connected with the history of civilization which the night of the middle
ages has given us: it is indeed an invaluable inheritance from that
period--nothing less than the laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem, as
founded by the Crusaders at the end of the eleventh ce