here slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

POPE.

* * * * *

THE FAITHFUL HOUND.

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS.

* * * * *

THE SPIDER'S LESSON.

Robert, the Bruce, in his dungeon stood,
Waiting the hour of doom;
Behind him the palace of Holyrood,
Before him--a nameless tomb.
And the foam on his lip was flecked with red,
As away to the past his memory sped,
Upcalling the day of his past renown,
When he won and he wore the Scottish crown:
Yet come there shadow or come there shine,
The spider is spinning his thread so fine.

"Time and again I have fronted the tide
Of the tyrant's vast array,
But only to see on the crimson tide
My hopes swept far away;--
Now a landless chief and a crownless king,
On the broad, broad earth not a living thing
To keep me court, save this insect small,
Striving to reach from wall to wall:"
For come there shadow or come there shine,
The spider is spinning his thread so fine.

"Work! work like a fool, to the certain loss,
Like myself, of your time and pain;
The space is too wide to be bridged across,
You but waste your strength in vain!"
And Bruce for the moment forgot his grief,
His soul now filled with the sure belief
That, howsoever the issue went,
For evil or good was the omen sent:
And come there shadow or come there shine,
The spider is spinning his thread so fine.

As a gambler watches the turning card
On which his all is staked,--
As a mother waits for the hopeful word
For which her soul has ached,--
It was thus Bruce watched, with every sense
Centred alone in that look intense;
All rigid he stood, with scattered breath--
Now white, now red, but as still as death:
Yet come there shadow or come there shine,
The spider is spinning his t