vibrating like a mighty pendulum, the "horologe of eternity"
itself, with tremendous oscillations, through the depths of space,--he
taught us that the earth endures; and so that the clay with which we are
clothed still makes a part of the great revolution. Yet, since the
future is no possession of our own, but a dole and pittance, we know
that the earth does not endure for us, but that when we shall have
submitted to the conditions of eternal spirit, yesterday, to-morrow, and
to-day must alike have ceased to exist, must have vanished like
illusions; for eternity can be no mere duration of time, but rather some
state of being past all our power of cognition.

And though we are to inherit eternity, yet have authority now only over
the period that we have passed, with what wealth then are the aged
furnished! Sweet must it be to sit with folded hands and dream life over
once again. How rich we are, how happy! How dear is the old hand in
ours! Years have added up the sum of all the felicity that we have known
together, and carried it over to to-day. Those that have left our arms
and gone out into other homes are still our own; but little sunny heads
besides cluster round the knees as once before they did. Not only have
we age and wisdom, but youth and gayety as well. On what light and
jocund scenes we look! on what deep and dearer bliss! We see the
meaning of our sorrows now, and bless them that they came. With such
firm feet we have walked in the lighted way that we gaze back upon, how
can we fear the Valley of the Shadow? Ah! none but they, indeed, who
have threescore years and ten hived away in the past, can see the high
design of Heaven in their lives, and from the wrong side of the pattern
picture out the right.

"So at the last shall come old age,
Decrepit, as befits that stage.
How else wouldst thou retire apart
With the hoarded memories of thy heart,
And gather all to the very least
Of the fragments of life's earlier feast,
Let fall through eagerness to find
The crowning dainties yet behind?
Ponder on the entire past,
Laid together thus at last,
When the twilight helps to fuse
The first fresh with the faded hues,
And the outline of the whole,
As round Eve's shades their framework roll,
Grandly fronts for once thy soul!"

THE JOHNSON PARTY.

The President of the United States has so singular a combination of
defects for the office of a const