" And add, 'God bless us' to it," said the
clergyman.

"Bravo! " said Broadhurst — " Oliver
Goldsmith, and God bless us!"

The toast was drank amid a strange
accompaniment of smiles and tears.

The rest of our story is short. Every one
may imagine it. The speedy recovery of
Longmore Park; the repurchase of the ample
old wool warehouses, for  Longmore would
rebuild all his old trade again, and make his
rounds amongst his old former friends again;
the marriage of Tom and Mary, and a score
of other good things which all sprung from
the happy change begun by Christmas, and
completed by Mrs. Ranford's New Year's Dinner.

THE BURIAL OF THE OLD YEAR

We were a mighty multitude
That, mourning for the Old Year, stood,
The great, the poor, the wise, the good,
The wicked and the fair:
No matter for their rank or place;
The beggar; he of noble race;
All come to pay a farewell grace
To the departed Year.

It had been snowing day and night,
And the sable earth had a fringe of light,
As the velvet pall hath a border of white
When they mourn a virgin dead;
And the solemn wind sang mournfully
A dirge of deep solemnity;
And the stars looked down from the cold grey sky,
And the moon sailed overhead.

Why art thou robed in thy pure white dress
Thy type of virgin loveliness?
Our load is a load of wickedness,
Of sin, and want, and gloom:
Loaded with every vice and crime,
That has stained the children of every clime
Throughout all lands, throughout all time,
Was the Year that we entomb!

Fearful and hushed, and awed, and still,
Was Nature: on every sloping hill
The frost had chained each trickling rill,
And stiffened each rippling wave;
The very wind had a muffled sound,
As it swept o'er the snow-encrusted ground,
And went moaning sadly round and round
The brink of the new-made grave!

They brought the corpse to his lowly bed:
We saw in the moonlight the aged head,
Bowed down by the weight of the tears he had shed
In his mortal pilgrimage;
But there was a fleeting shadow-like smile,
As a halo around his lips the while,
The last faint trace of a youth without guile,
Had lingered till mournful age.

Then there were groans, and sobs, and sighs,
And uplift hands, and tearful eyes,
And wailing moans, and piercing cries,
And many a heavy breast;
And those he had treated cruelly
Looked on him even mourningly,
And murmured low and pityingly.
" God send his soul may rest! "

And they parted a path through the close-pressed throng,
And I stept to the grave side, the crowd among:
For they saw I was moved by the Spirit of Song,
To lament for the cold corpse clay;
And I stood by his narrow resting-place,
And looked my last on his dear old face
And prayed for him to God's great grace,
And kissed him where he lay.

A solemn voice chimed the midnight hour
From the height of an old embattled tower,
And struck by a more than mortal power,
A deep bell 'gan to toll;
And I stood erect, and cast my eyes
Up to the stars in the dark drear skies
And hearing only mourning sighs,
I prayed for the parted Soul.

"Father ! — earth's nations in their joy and pain
"Look up to Thee; let it not be in vain!
"We pray Thee that this parted year may rest
"With his old brethren; may their home be blest!
"Hark the bell tolls!
"And with that knell arises In our souls
"The memory of what has passed away. This Year
"Hath plundered us of many we held Dear,
"Hath taken from us many a precious One,
"Hath left us desolate; bereaved, alone!
"Father! our hearts are lifted at this time
"Above the world, of sin, and guilt, and crime:
"Those this Year injured, those he heaped with
"gain
"Alike pray for him ; Father not in vain!
"We bury in his grave our memories
"Of wrongs and woes, and guilts, and injuries:
"We offer up a sacrifice divine
"Of human passions at this funeral shrine;
"Within this dead Year's misty shroud we lay
"Our crimes, revenges, evermore away!
"So, may the Aged Man before Thy throne,
"Burdened with our sins and with his own,
"Alike by Thy great love, all sins forgiven,
"Await our coming with pure Joy—in Heaven !"

THE IRISH CALIFORNIA.

TOWARDS the end of the session of 1849,
Lord Ashley and the O' Gorman Mahon
astonished the House of Common with a piece
of intelligence of that kind which, in popular
phrase, is described as seeming far too good
to be true. They announced a discovery that
upwards of ninety pounds might be made out
of one hundred tons of Irish peat by an outlay
of sixteen pounds—namely, eight pounds for
the peat, and the same sum for the magic
requisite to turn it into cash. Now there are
in Ireland two million eight hundred and
thirty thousand acres of peat bog, varying
in depth from six to forty feet. At the
above rate, the products of peat would have
returned some five hundred per cent. Thus,
one-seventh of the whole surface of Ireland
would have proved to be a territory far
exceeding in wealth the most auriferous of
regions—California proper, El Dorado, or the
imaginary domains of Mr. Thomas Tidler.

Experiment, however, it was found, had not
yet warranted a dependence on these golden