It is the concrete rather than the abstract which draws him in through the turnstiles of the exposition enclosure.  Separated by the divisions of those ingeniously-contrived gates into taxed and untaxed spectators, the masses stream in with small thought of the philosophers or the chess-players.  Their minds are reached, but reached through the eye, and the first appeal is to that.  Each visitor constitutes himself a jury of one to consider and compare what he sees.  The hundreds of thousands of verdicts so reached will be published only by word of mouth, if published at all.  Their value will be none the less indubitable, though far from being in all cases the same.  The proportion of intelligent observers will be greater than on like occasions heretofore.  So will, perhaps, be that of solid matter for study, although in some specialties there may be default.  He who enters with the design of self-education will find the text-books in most branches abundant, wide open before him and printed in the clearest characters.  What shortcomings there may have been in the selection and arrangement of them he will have, if he can, himself to remedy.  There stands the school, founded and furnished with great labor.  The would-be scholar can only be invited to use it.  The centennial that is to turn out scholars ready-made has not yet rolled round.

DOLORES.

    A light at her feet and a light at her head,
      How fast asleep my Dolores lies! 
    Awaken, my love, for to-morrow we wed—­
      Uplift the lids of thy beautiful eyes.

    Too soon art thou clad in white, my spouse: 
      Who placed that garland above thy heart
    Which shall wreathe to-morrow thy bridal brows? 
      How quiet and mute and strange thou art!

    And hearest thou not my voice that speaks? 
      And feelest thou not my hot tears flow
    As I kiss thine eyes and thy lips and thy cheeks? 
      Do they not warm thee, my bride of snow?

    Thou knowest no grief, though thy love may weep. 
      A phantom smile, with a faint, wan beam,
    Is fixed on thy features sealed in sleep: 
      Oh tell me the secret bliss of thy dream.

    Does it lead to fair meadows with flowering trees,
      Where thy sister-angels hail thee their own? 
    Was not my love to thee dearer than these? 
      Thine was my world and my heaven in one.

    I dare not call thee aloud, nor cry,
      Thou art so solemn, so rapt in rest,
    But I will whisper:  Dolores, ’tis I: 
      My heart is breaking within my breast.

    Never ere now did I speak thy name,
      Itself a caress, but the lovelight leapt
    Into thine eyes with a kindling flame,
      And a ripple of rose o’er thy soft cheek crept.

    But now wilt thou stir not for passion or prayer,
      And makest no sign of the lips or the eyes,
    With a nun’s strait band o’er thy bright black hair—­
      Blind to mine anguish and deaf to my cries.