If that be the best government wherein all the moral and intellectual faculties of the governed receive their fullest development, and the responsibility of the sovereign is made so immediate that he can neither lose sight of it nor escape from its obligations, that surely must be the worst in which one man thinks and judges for all, and, by an unnatural union of spiritual and temporal attributes, is raised above all human responsibility,—­a theocracy, with man to interpret the will of God, and to enforce his own interpretations.

* * * * *

CONCORD.

MAY 23, 1864.

  How beautiful it was, that one bright day
    In the long week of rain! 
  Though all its splendor could not chase away
    The omnipresent pain.

  The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
    And the great elms o’erhead
  Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms,
    Shot through with golden thread.

  Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
    The historic river flowed:—­
  I was as one who wanders in a trance,
    Unconscious of his road.

  The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;
    Their voices I could hear,
  And yet the words they uttered seemed to change
    Their meaning to the ear.

  For the one face I looked for was not there,
    The one low voice was mute;
  Only an unseen presence filled the air,
    And baffled my pursuit.

  Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream
    Dimly my thought defines;
  I only see—­a dream within a dream—­
    The hill-top hearsed with pines.

  I only hear above his place of rest
    Their tender undertone,
  The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
    The voice so like his own.

  There in seclusion and remote from men
    The wizard hand lies cold,
  Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
    And left the tale half told.

  Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,
    And the lost clue regain? 
  The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower
    Unfinished must remain!

* * * * *

WHAT WILL BECOME OF THEM?

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.

PART I

“Please, Ma’am, I want to come in out of the rain,” said the dripping figure at the door.

“And who are you, Sir?” demanded the lady, astonished; for the bell had been rung familiarly, and, thinking her son had come home, she had hastened to let him in, but had met instead (at the front-door of her fine house!) this wretch.

“I’m Fessenden’s fool, please, Ma’am,” replied the son—­not of this happy mother, thank Heaven! not of this proud, elegant lady, oh, no!—­but of some no less human-hearted mother, I suppose, who had likewise loved her boy, perhaps all the more fondly for his infirmity,—­who had hugged him to her bosom so many, many times, with wild and sorrowful love,—­and who, be sure, would not have kept him standing there, ragged and shivering, in the rain.