THE PAST.

  This common field, this little brook—­
    What is there hidden in these two,
  That I so often on them look,
    Oftener than on the heavens blue? 
  No beauty lies upon the field;
  Small music doth the river yield;
  And yet I look and look again,
  With something of a pleasant pain.

  ’Tis thirty—­can’t be thirty years,
    Since last I stood upon this plank. 
  Which o’er the brook its figure rears,
    And watch’d the pebbles as they sank? 
  How white the stream!  I still remember
  Its margin glassed by hoar December,
  And how the sun fell on the snow: 
  Ah! can it be so long ago?

  It cometh back;—­so blithe, so bright,
    It hurries to my eager ken. 
  As though but one short winter’s night
    Had darkened o’er the world since then. 
  It is the same clear dazzling scene;—­
  Perhaps the grass is scarce as green;
  Perhaps the river’s troubled voice
  Doth not so plainly say—­“Rejoice.”

  Yet Nature surely never ranges,
    Ne’er quits her gay and flowery crown;—­
  But, ever joyful, merely changes
    The primrose for the thistle-down. 
  ’Tis we alone who, waxing old,
  Look on her with an aspect cold,
  Dissolve her in our burning tears,
  Or clothe her with the mists of years!

  Then, why should not the grass be green? 
    And why should not the river’s song
  Be merry,—­as they both have been
    When I was here an urchin strong?

  Ah, true—­too true!  I see the sun
  Through thirty winter years hath run. 
  For grave eyes, mirrored in the brook,
  Usurp the urchin’s laughing look!

  So be it!  I have lost,—­and won! 
    For, once, the past was poor to me,—­
  The future dim:  and though the sun
    Shed life and strength, and I was free,
  I felt not—­knew no grateful pleasure: 
  All seemed but as the common measure: 
  But NOW—­the experienced spirit old
  Turns all the leaden past to gold.

* * * * *

FRENCH MANNERS.

(The Duchess of Abrantes, in her recently published Memoirs, gives a striking picture of the difference in the fashions and habits of living which has resulted from the old French Revolution.)

Transported from Corsica to Paris at the close of the reign of Louis XV., my mother had imbibed a second nature in the midst of the luxuries and excellencies of that period.  We flatter ourselves that we have gained much by our changes in that particular; but we are quite wrong.  Forty thousand livres a-year fifty years ago, would have commanded more luxury than two hundred thousand now.  The elegancies that at that period surrounded a woman of fashion cannot be numbered; a profusion of luxuries were in common use, of which even the name is now forgotten.