In the latter days, when, though we little thought it, the end was approaching, when the night of that long day of continuous activity and labor was at hand, he might as frequently have been found sauntering under the magnificent trees of the Poggio Imperiale avenue in the immediate vicinity of his own house.  Upright in figure and in carriage as ever, and with his eye as bright as ever, it was difficult to suppose that the venerable and stalwart figure of the old sculptor was not destined still for years of life and activity.  His malady was connected with the respiratory organs; and a specially painful circumstance of it for his friends was, that the loss of voice, which made the effort of talking injurious to him, rendered it a selfish and inconsiderate thing to visit him; for the activity of his mind was still such that in the contact with another mind he could not abstain from the old familiar intercourse which he had loved so well.  Like the old camel of the Arabian tale, that, having been all its life accustomed to lead the caravan, died in the effort to keep his old place to the last, Powers, who had been always wont to have rather the lion’s share of conversation, could not resign himself to hear another talk, in silence.  He would talk, and suffered for it afterward.  The result was that his friends felt that they were showing the best consideration for him by staying away.

To look at him, I say, as he would stand in the sunshine at his own gate, it was difficult to imagine that aught of a very serious nature ailed him.  But in the case of a man so habitually active his sauntering there was a bad sign.  He was emphatically one of those men with whom life and work are the same thing—­one whose sun was at the setting when he could work no more, and who would probably have cared little to survive his capacity for working.

     T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

CORN.

  To-day the woods are trembling through and through
    With shimmering forms, that flash into my view,
  Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. 
    The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
    Like women’s hands; the embracing boughs express
          A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
  The copse-depths into little noises start,
  That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
  Anon like talk ’twixt lips not far apart. 
    The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song,
    Through whose vague sweet float expirations strong
    From lithe young hickories, breathing deep and long
  With stress and urgence bold of inward spring,
        And ecstasy of burgeoning. 
    Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry,
    Come daintier smells, linked in soft company,
    Like velvet-slippered ladies pacing by. 
              Long muscadines,
  Like Jove’s locks curled round foreheads of great pines,
  Breathe out ambrosial passion from their