For who on earth would mark or miss
    Each year a million less or more
Small moths? Who of the whole race is
    Next year extinct, will much deplore?

Yearly, on this auspicious day,
    How vext must Nature feel, how loth
To leave some nursling star, and play
    The midwife to my lady moth!

A foolish thought! Yet I am not
    The first to think it. There's a story
Which into this good world hath got
    I know not how. A peasant hoary

Once, sitting by the hostel fire,
    Across the tankards told it me:
The old man had it from his sire,
    And from the village Parson he.

Saint Peter, who of all the saints, you
    Know loves best to loose and bind,
Upon a day (this tale acquaints you)
    Had strange misgivings in his mind.

Things might, it seem'd, be better order'd
    On earth, where wrong is always sprouting.
(And, once the verge of doubt is border'd,
    There is, you know, no end to doubting.)

Reform in most, if not in all
    Departments of the Administration
Of mundane matters seem'd to call
    At least for prompt consideration.

So spake the Saint. The Lord replied,
    " How wondrous wisely every novice
Can talk of things he never tried!
    Opinions change when once in office.

"To-morrow thou shalt have in charge,
   —Not all the world and human nature,
No need at first of field so large,
    But simply one small living creature.

"To one mere life of my creation
    My servant, for one day devote
Thy genius for administration.
    Be Providence to yonder goat."

The Saint next morn, the mandate praising,
    Sits down upon the mountain-tops,
And kindly eyes the creature grazing.
    The goat the mountain grasses crops:

Anon, a greener tuft entices
    His hungry eye, and straight he leaps
Across the dizzy precipices,
    And lights upon the hither steeps.

The Saint, alarm'd, with deep emotion,
    Leaps after, lest some harm befal
His charge: meanwhile, without a notion
    That any harm's to fear at all,

The goat his new meal idly munches,
    Nor bleats a Thank-you for the dainty;
Then turns to browse the red ash-bunches
    His Providence provides in plenty.

But every goat objects to sameness,
    And peaceful plentv cloys at last:
Without adventure ease is tameness:
    Away the wild thing scampers fast:

He scrambles up the pebbly passes:
    He leaps the wild ravines: in vain
To woo him wave the choicest grasses:
    He nibbles, and is off again:

The Saint, tho' somewhat sorely winded,
    Runs, climbs, or crawls, as best he may,
With anxious heart, and fearful-minded:
    The goat ungrateful darts away:

The good Saint Peter, puffing, blowing,
    All out of breath behind him follows:
At noon the sun is fiercely glowing:
    The creature will not keep the hollows.

At length, his hands in anguish clasping,
    O'ercome with toil and consternation,
The Saint sinks down, and, fairly gasping,
    Resigns the goat-administration.

"Take back, Lord, this wilful creature,
    And from its whimsies set me free.
I abdicate my usurpature,
    And own the task's too much for me!"

Well, in our world of men of letters,
    Who all talk finer than they think,
What, if my peasant's learnèd betters,
    Who praise the Lord with pen and ink,

Denounce his well-meant homely fable?
    Sweet root hath sometimes roughest stalk.
Thy health, old friend, across the table!
    Thy thoughts were finer than thy talk.

In that rude garb the poor man gave it,
    I tell the tale the poor man told,
Revering, what from blame may save it,
    The reverent thought the rude words told.

WOOD-AND-STRAW MUSIC.

AIR (which may be taken to mean any kind
of gas) is the principal vehicle of sound, and the
means by which it most commonly reaches our
ear. Put a clock which strikes under an airpump,
resting on a cushion of cotton or wool, to
prevent any vibration from being communicated
to the stand, and make a vacuum. When the
hands of the clock point to the hour, you will see
the hammer strike the bell, but you will hear
nothing. To make a still more decisive experiment,
let the hammer and the bell be enclosed
in a first receiver full of air; cover them with
another receiver from which you then exhaust
the air. When the bell is struck, you will still
hear nothing, because the surrounding belt of
vacuum is unable to convey the sound which is
really made in the first receiver.

The thinner the air, the feebler the sound; a
pistol-shot on the top of Mont Blanc is only an
insignificant crack. The denser the air (if dry
and unladen with fog or snow, which are foreign
bodies that oppose a material obstacle to the
propagation of sound), the louder and the
further-reaching is the sound. In a Polar winter
when the air is much condensed, during a
calm, two men can converse by word of mouth
at distances incredible, because impossible, in
England.