s so little?
They are vastly engaging at the age:
I was so myself.
Now I am a disagreeable old hog,
A middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half.
My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired!

I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect; and can read the Lord's
Prayer in common type, by the help of a candle, without making many
mistakes.

Believe me, that, while my faculties last, I shall ever cherish a proper
appreciation of your many kindnesses in this way, and that the last
lingering relish of past favors upon my dying memory will be the smack
of that little ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many happy
returns,--not of the pig, but of the New Year, to both!

Mary, for her share of the pig and the memoirs, desires to send the
same.

Yours truly,
C. LAMB.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] "Who this modern poet was," says Mr. Collier, "is a secret worth
discovering." The wood-cut on the title of the pamphlet is an ass with a
wreath of laurel round his neck.

[C] Milton, _from memory_.

[D] Fletcher, in the "Faithful Shepherdess." The Satyr offers to Clorin

"grapes whose lusty blood Is the learned poet's good; Sweeter yet did
never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Than the _squirrels'
teeth_ that crack them."

[E] Fauntleroy.

[F] The reader, says Mr. Patmore, need not be told that all the above
items of home-news are pure fiction.

TO WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.

NOVEMBER 3, 1864.

Calm priest of Nature, her maternal hand
Led thee, a reverent child,
To mountain-altars, by the lonely strand,
And through the forest wild.

Haunting her temple, filled with love and awe,
To thy responsive youth
The harmonies of her benignant law
Revealed consoling truth.

Thenceforth, when toiling in the grasp of Care
Amid the eager throng,
A votive seer, her greetings thou didst bear,
Her oracles prolong.

The vagrant winds and the far heaving main
Breathed in thy chastened rhyme,
Their latent music to the soul again,
Above the din of time.

The seasons, at thy call, renewed the spell
That thrilled our better years,
The primal wonder o'er our spirits fell,
And woke the fount of tears.

And Faith's monition, like an organ's strain,
Followed the sea-bird's flight,
The river's bounteous flow, the ripening grain,