And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;
  Stirring the while in the shallow pool
  Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,
  To garnish the story, with here a streak
  Of Latin, and there another of Greek: 
  And the tales he heard and the notes he took,
  Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?

  Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. 
  If the snake does not, the tale runs still
  In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestone Hill. 
  And still, whenever husband and wife
  Publish the shame of their daily strife,
  And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain
  At either end of the marriage-chain,
  The gossips say, with a knowing shake
  Of their gray heads, “Look at the Double Snake! 
  One in body and two in will,
  The Amphisbaena is living still!”

A PLEA FOR THE FIJIANS;

OR, CAN NOTHING BE SAID IN FAVOR OF ROASTING ONE’S EQUALS?

It is with a feeling of no mean satisfaction, that, in this year of 1859, the philosopher can calmly propose the investigation of a subject, the mere mention of which would have created universal disgust, and even horror, at a period not long past.  Thanks to the progress of liberal ideas and sound criticism, we are able, in the middle of the ever-memorable Nineteenth Century, serenely to examine anew those questions which for entire centuries stolid prejudice and narrow dogmatism considered settled, and adjudicated in the High Court of Humanity for all times to come.  However signal the progress of our age may be in the useful arts and in aesthetics, especially in upholstery, in chemistry, in the government of large cities, and in the purity of commerce, in pottery, pills, and poetry, and in the dignity of politics, nothing, we may venture to say, will so distinctly and so broadly characterize the period in which we happily live, when the future historian shall sweep with his star-seeker over the past, as the joyful fact, that we, above all others, have divested ourselves of long-cherished errors, hugged by our forefathers as truths full of life and vigor, and have, indeed, so to speak, founded a Novum Organon in fact and reality, while the great Bacon proposed one in mind and theory.  To our enlightened age it was reserved to return to polygamy, after nearly three thousand dragging years of dull adhesion of our race to tiresome monogamy, leaping back by one bound over the whole European Past into ancient and respectable Asia. Ex Oriente lux; ex Oriente gaudia seraglii! It is in our blessed epoch that atheism, by some, and pantheism, by others, are boldly taught and vindicated, as once they were by Greeks or Orientals, and with an earnestness and enthusiasm very different from the sneer with which Encyclopaedists of Voltaire’s time attacked Christianity and Deism.  To prove, however, the magnificent many-sidedness of our noble times, it is we that have returned once more to pictures of the Virgin Mary with winking and with weeping eyes,