t. Peter's, at Rome. This was the true spirit of art.
Yet it is not altogether pleasant to contemplate this bell; the mind
cannot but reflect upon the length of time it has survived those to
whose joys or sorrows it has lent a passing utterance, and who are
dust in the yard beneath.

For full five hundred years I've swung
In my old grey turret high,
And many a changing theme I've sung
As the time went stealing by.

Even the 'old grey turret' shows more signs of age and of decay than
the bell, for it is strengthened with iron clamps and rods to bind
its feeble walls together. Of the pavements, whose flagstones are
monuments, the dates and names worn by footsteps; of the vaults
beneath, with their grim and ghastly traditions of coffins moved out
of place, as was supposed, by supernatural agency, but, as
explained, by water; of the thick walls, in which, in at least one
village church, the trembling victim of priestly cruelty was immured
alive--of these and a thousand other matters that suggest themselves
there is no time to speak.

But just a word must be spared to notice one lovely spot where two
village churches stand not a hundred yards apart, separated by a
stream, both in the hands of one Vicar, whose 'cure' is,
nevertheless, so scant of souls that service in the morning in one
and in the evening in the other church is amply sufficient. And
where is there a place where springtime possesses such a tender yet
melancholy interest to the heart as in a village churchyard, where
the budding leaves and flowers in the grass may naturally be taken
as symbolical of a still more beautiful springtime yet in store for
the soul?

BIRDS OF SPRING

The birds of spring come as imperceptibly as the leaves. One by one
the buds open on hawthorn and willow, till all at once the hedges
appear green, and so the birds steal quietly into the bushes and
trees, till by-and-by a chorus fills the wood, and each warm shower
is welcomed with varied song. To many, the majority of spring-birds
are really unknown; the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the swallow,
are all with which they are acquainted, and these three make the
summer. The loud cuckoo cannot be overlooked by anyone passing even
a short time in the fields; the nightingale is so familiar in verse
that everyone tries to hear it; and the swallows enter the towns and
twitter at the chimney-top. But these are really only the principal
representatives of the