portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the
eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and
how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these
twenty years!

In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the difference
between the observer and the spectacle, between the man and nature.
Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe; I may say, a low degree of the
sublime is felt from the fact, probably, that man is hereby apprised,
that whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable.

THE RHODORA.[1]

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose,
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same power that brought me there brought you.

[1] On being asked, Whence is the flower?

HYMN.

[Sung at the completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836.]

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid time and nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

THE HAUNTED MIND.

What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of your
dream in full convocation round your bed and catch one broad glance at
them befor