ble by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or
earl's son go sheer over a quarry fifty feet deep, and as many high;
yet, "without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows
on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage,--lo! all that remains
together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia,
leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, now strong as
stink, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they,
whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look
in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces,
gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and
warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly,
in his furze bush in the cover,--he is now piece-meal, in about thirty
distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?--
_Blackwood's Magazine_.

* * * * *

THE BLIND BEAUTY OF THE MOOR.

(_A Fragment._)

To thee--O palest phantom--clothed in white raiment, not like unto a
ghost risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph
descending from the skies to bless--unto thee will we dare to speak, as
through the mist of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming
us, while we cannot choose but weep, with the self-same vision that
often glided before us long, long ago in the wilderness, and at the
sound of our voice would pause for a little while, and then pass by,
like a white bird from the sea, floating unscared close by the
shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its plumes on a knoll far up an
inland glen! Death seems not to have touched that face, pale though it
be--life-like is the waving of those gentle hands--and the soft, sweet,
low music which now we hear, steals not sure from lips hushed by the
burial-mould! Restored by the power of love, she stands before us as she
stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her golden head was singed by
the lightning that shivered the tree under which the child had run for
shelter from the flashing sky. But in a moment the blue light in her
dewy eyes was dimmed--and never again did she behold either flower or
star. Yet all the images of all the things she had loved remained in her
memory, clear and distinct as the things themselves before
unextinguished eyes--and ere three summers had flown over head, which,
like the blossom of some fair perennial flower, in heaven's gracious dew