there is a stronger
power which bars them inexorably from their desire, and which has ensured
that intolerable pain shall last only for a very little while. For
either the circumstances or the sufferer will change after no long time.
If the circumstances are intolerable, the sufferer dies: if they are not
intolerable, he becomes accustomed to them, and will cease to feel them
grievously. No matter what the burden, there always has been, and always
must be, a way for us also to escape.

A PSALM OF MONTREAL.

[The City of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in many respects,
most agreeable on the American continent, but its inhabitants are as yet
too busy with commerce to care greatly about the masterpieces of old
Greek Art. A cast of one of these masterpieces--the finest of the
several statues of Discoboli, or Quoit-throwers--was found by the present
writer in the Montreal Museum of Natural History; it was, however,
banished from public view, to a room where were all manner of skins,
plants, snakes, insects, &c., and in the middle of these, an old man,
stuffing an owl. The dialogue--perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps
a little of one and a little of the other--between the writer and this
old man gave rise to the lines that follow.]

Stowed away in a Montreal lumber-room,
The Discobolus standeth, and turneth his face to the wall;
Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed, and set at naught,
Beauty crieth in an attic, and no man regardeth.
O God! O Montreal!

Beautiful by night and day, beautiful in summer and winter,
Whole or maimed, always and alike beautiful,--
He preacheth gospel of grace to the skins of owls,
And to one who seasoneth the skins of Canadian owls.
O God! O Montreal!

When I saw him, I was wroth, and I said, "O Discobolus!
Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among gods and men,
What doest thou here, how camest thou here, Discobolus,
Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls?"
O God! O Montreal!

And I turned to the man of skins, and said unto him, "Oh! thou man of
skins,
Wherefore hast thou done thus, to shame the beauty of the Discobolus?"
But the Lord had hardened the heart of the man of skins,
And he answered, "My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."
O God! O Montreal!

"The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar,--
He hath neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs;
I, sir, am a person of most respectable connections,--