“Jack, the Regular, is dead!  Honor to the man who slew him!”
So the Bergen farmers said as they crowded round to view him;
For the wretch that lay there slain had with wickedness unbending
To their roofs brought fiery rain, to their kinsfolk woeful ending. 
Not a mother but had prest, in a sudden pang of fearing,
Sobbing darlings to her breast when his name had smote her hearing;
Not a wife that did not feel terror when the words were uttered;
Not a man but chilled to steel when the hated sounds he muttered—­

                                                Jack, the Regular.

Bloody in his work was he, in his purpose iron-hearted—­
Gentle pity could not be when the pitiless had parted. 
So, the corse in wagon thrown, with no decent cover o’er it—­
Jeers its funeral rites alone—­into Hackensack they bore it,
’Mid the clanging of the bells in the old Brick Church’s steeple,
And the hooting and the yells of the gladdened, maddened people. 
Some they rode and some they ran by the wagon where it rumbled,
Scoffing at the lifeless man, all elate that death had humbled

                                                Jack, the Regular.

Thus within the winter night, when the hickory fire is roaring,
Flickering streams of ruddy light on the folk before it pouring—­
When the apples pass around, and the cider follows after,
And the well-worn jest is crowned by the hearers’ hearty laughter—­
When the cat is purring there, and the dog beside her dozing,
And within his easy-chair sits the grandsire old, reposing,—­
Then they tell the story true to the children, hushed and eager,
the two Van Valens slew, on a time, the Tory leaguer,

                                                Jack, the Regular.

THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH.

OBSERVATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN SUBMARINE DIVING.

[Greek:  —­liphon
eponumon te reuma kai petraerephae
autoktit’ antra.]—­AESCHYLUS:  Prometheus Bound.

Did you ever pause before a calm, bright little pool in the woods, and look steadily at the picture it presents, without feeling as if you had peeped into another world?  Every outline is preserved, every tint is freshened and purified, in the cool, glimmering reflection.  There is a grace and a softness in the prismatic lymph that give a new form and color to the common and familiar objects it has printed in its still, pellucid depths.  Every little basin of clear water by the roadside is a magic mirror, and transforms all that it encloses.  There is a vastness of depth, too, in that concave hemisphere, through which the vision sinks like a falling star, that excites and fills the imagination.  What it shows is only a shadow, but all things seen are mere shadows painted on the retina, and you have, at such times, a realistic sense of the beautiful and bold imagery which calls a favorite fountain of the East the Eye of the Desert.