which
our literature, art, and science are now suffering, and will continue to
suffer, the consequences.

In a highly artificial state of society, where a command, not merely of
the essentials, but of some of the superfluities of life are requisite
as passports to society, no man will willingly devote himself to
pursuits which will render him an outlaw, and his family dependent on
the tardy gratitude of an indifferent world. The stimulus of fame will
be inadequate to maintain the energies even of _great_ minds, in a
contest of which the victories are wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any
man willingly consume the morning of his days in amassing intellectual
treasures for posterity, when his contemporaries behold him dimming with
unavailing tears his twilight of existence, and dying with the worse
than deadly pang, the consciousness that those who are nearest and
dearest to his heart must eat the bread of charity. Nor is it quite
clear to our apprehension, that the prevalent system of providing for
merely intellectual men, by a State annuity or pension, is the best that
can be devised: it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy of talent
should be exposed to the taunt of receiving the means of their
subsistence from this or that minister, upon suppositions of this or
that ministerial assistance which, whether true or false, cannot fail to
derogate from that independent dignity of mind which is never
extinguished in the breast of the true aristocrat of talent, save by
unavailing struggles, long-continued, with the unkindness of fortune.

We wish the aristocracy of power to think over this, and so very
heartily bid them farewell.

* * * * *

THE LOST LAMB.

BY DELTA.

A shepherd laid upon his bed,
With many a sigh, his aching head,
For him--his favourite boy--on whom
Had fallen death, a sudden doom.
"But yesterday," with sobs he cried,
"Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,
Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,
Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!
It cannot be that thou art gone;
It cannot be, that now, alone,
A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,
Whilst thou within its bosom lie?
Methinks I see thee smiling there,
With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,
As thou were wont, when fondling me,
To clasp my neck from off my knee!
Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,
My boy, or else my heart will break!"

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