elephants. The Home has survived even these
sarcasms, and unpretendingly does good; it is
not very important in its benevolence, but as no
sparrow falls to the ground without an all-wise
supervision, it may be granted that the charity
which provides food and shelter for a starving
dog is worthy of approbation. The place does
good in its sphere. To do some good in any
sphere, is much better than to do none.

Pincher returned: not from the Home for
Lost Dogs, he knew better than so far to
jeopardise his social standing. He returned with
a ruffled coat, a torn ear, a fierceness of eye
which bespoke recent trouble. I afterwards
learned that he had been a principal in a combat
held in the adjoining parish, where he acquitted
himself with a certain amount of honour, and
was pinning his adversary, when a rustic person
from a farm broke in upon the ring and kicked
both the combatants out of it. This ignominy
was more than Pincher could bear; he flung
himself upon the rustic's leg, and brought him
to the ground: then fled and remained hidden
in a wood until hunger compelled him to come
home. We have interchanged no communication
since, but regard each other with sulky
dignity. I perceive that he intends to remain
obdurate until I make the first advances.

THE STORY OF THE LIGHTNING.

'TIS summer eve beneath the shivering lindens,
                The soft warm air
Sways the green branches to and fro, as gently
                As childhood's prayer.

The sheeted lightning in the heavens blazing,
                Cleaves clouds in twain;
Flash following flash, till darkness
                Seems almost vain.

Fire leaps from cloud to cloud, and the horizon
                Is all alight,
As if the skies had opened, that the angels
                Might beat back night.

And as they part, quicker than thought can travel,
                It seems almost
That living lightning leaped from the artillery
                Of a mysterious host.

And that beyond the iron frontier
                Of all that's real,
Light chasèd darkness through the shadowy cloud-land
                Of the ideal.

There is a cloud-land also in reality
                Where night and day
Ever encounter in mysterious armour
                For sovereign sway.

When good and evil meet, and clash within us
                In heart and brain,
When sorrow seems to gather ever o'er us,
                And hope is vain.

When the will that would work is stricken powerless,
                And friendship's smile
Is like the mockery of a crimson sunset
                On snow awhile.

'Tis bright but warms not; and the deep'ning shadows
                Of gathering night
Drop down, and leave the wanderer cold and frozen
                On fields of white.

There's many a battle in our shadowy cloud-land
                Of Heart and Brain,
When Might makes Right, and Right sits, worn and listless,
                Moaning with pain.

There's many a battle in the shadowy cloud-land
                When tiny feet
Tramp for the first time, houseless and forlorn,
                Adown the street.

When little blue eyes, wondering at the stars
                That shine o'erhead,
Ask sobbing from a weary half-starved father
                A piece of bread.

And many a one is fought around the dying
                For thirst of gold,
In hearts that grasp at purses or possessions
                Ere the clay's cold.

When solemn death-beds seem at best but gullies,
                Where miners' hands
May jostle with each other in the plunder
                Of golden sands.

And there are many battles that do almost
                Nature convulse,
Fought between good and evil, with the weapons
                Of wild impulse.

When reckless heedless passion's dread rebellion
                Breaks reason's sway,
And tender ties are severed in a moment,
                Or flung away.

But in our cloud-land, if there's sometimes darkness,
                There's also light,
Legions of angels minister to those who
                Strive to do right.

If we but lift our arms, and not sit idly
                Nursing Despair,
But work with hands and brain until its phantoms
                Vanish in air.

So underneath the shivering German lindens
                I close my eyes,
To dream again this story of the lightning
                Up in the skies.

COURT-MARTIAL HISTORY.

A MILITARY court anciently existed in
England known as the Court of Chivalry. A statute
of Richard the Second declared that it had
cognisance of all deeds of arms and of war out of
the realm, and of things which touch war within
the realm, that could not be determined by the
common law. The president of that court was
the lord high constable, the leader of the
king's armies, a magnate of the highest dignity;
but the last possessor, Edward Stafford Duke
of Buckingham, having been attainted of treason
in the reign of Henry the Eighth, the office
became forfeited to the crown, and was never
revived. In the course of time this tribunal,
over which the earl marshal afterwards presided,