Dear, dear! what a to-do there was when
we ran away! Why, don't you know, Mr. Trewhella, that I ran away from
a ball with him, and drove to Gretna Green with my ball-dress on, as
I'm a living woman? Such a ride it was!--why, when we got up to
Carlisle--"

But that story has been told before.

CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.

II.--NIGHT--LAKE HELEN.

I lie in my red canoe
On the water still and deep,
And o'er me darkens the blue,
And beneath the billows sleep,

Till, between the stars o'erhead
And those in the lake's embrace,
I seem to float like the dead
In the noiselessness of space.

Betwixt two worlds I drift,
A bodiless soul again--
Between the still thoughts of God
And those which belong to men;

And out of the height above,
And out of the deep below,
A thought that is like a ghost
Seems to gather and gain and grow,

That now and for evermore
This silence of death shall hold,
While the nations fade and die
And the countless years are rolled.

But I turn the light canoe,
And, darting across the night,
Am glad of the paddles' noise
And the camp-fire's honest light.

EDWARD KEARSLEY.

* * * * *

MILL'S ESSAYS ON RELIGION.

An interest attaches to Mr. Mill's posthumous _Essays on Religion_
which is quite independent of their intrinsic value or importance. The
position of their author at the head of an active school of thinkers
gives them to a certain extent a representative character, while, in
connection with the curious account of his mental training presented
in his autobiography, they merit perhaps still closer attention as a
subject of psychological study. It is not, however, in this latter
light that we can undertake to examine them here. Our object is merely
to point out some of the fallacies and contradictions which might
escape the notice of a cursory reader, and which show with how
uncertain a step a philosopher who piqued himself on the clearness and
severity of his logic moves on ground where a stronger light than that
of reason was needed to irradiate his path.

The first essay is devoted to an examination of the ways of Nature as
unmodified by the voluntary agency of man. These the author finds
worthy of all abhorrence; and Nature in its purely physical aspect he
considers to be full of blemishes, which are patent to the eye of
modern science, and which "all but monkish qui