narration of this plan, it must be understood
that we by no means print it to be laughed
at. Speculative as it is, and here and there
ridiculous, it contains one or two points worth
serious attention, and the scale on which it
is cast may be taken as a measure of not
a few thoughts that have been apt to spring
up lately in the heads of the many. Great
public achievements have produced a tendency
to large desires. The project here
stated is but one specimen out of a thousand
ideas, all tending grandly in a right direction,
which float through the mind of our people
like chaotic masses, out of which a world of
beauty may perhaps hereafter be created.

THE GHOSTS' BANQUET.

THE fields are blank, the trees are bare,
The snow is dancing in the air
A dance fantastical and strange;—
A dance, whose dancers, white and soft,
Fall like spirits from aloft,
Waltzing in their boundless range
Over woodland, over grange,
Over the uplifted hills,
Past the dumb, ice-solid rills,
Down into the valleys hollow,
Till the wind can scarcely follow,
Up the lanes and through the hedges—
Though the trees stand close in wedges—
Right across the open heath,
Maugre the prickly furze beneath,
Round about the old church spires,
Where the golden vanes live fires
Gleam, yet warm not; and so on,
Ever noiseless, swift, and wan,
Outward to the lonely sea.

Upon an evening such as this,
To wander foodless, moneyless,
And far from home, you 'll all agree
Is somewhat melancholy work.
Right so thought young Ralph Chetwynd,who,
In the December shadows murk
Of the year Fifteen fifty-two,
(Three centuries from this present telling)
Had left his wretched country dwelling,
To seek in London's active strife
Some honourable means of life.
Full fifty miles was he from home;
Aud underneath the heaven's wide dome
He stood, and looked into the night.

The fields were quickly getting white
Under the snow-flakes: all around,
Like sheets in which a corpse is wound,
The meadows stretched into the dark.
The red West, like a beacon-mark,
Burnt slowly out; and, that being dead,
The waves of blackness crept and spread,
And Death seem'd victor over Life.
The wind was eager as a knife,
And made a sort of ghostly talking,
As though some awful thing kept walking
Close against Ralph Chetwynd's side,
With stealthy footsteps undescried.
The trees and hedges, thereto replying,
Gave a low and weary sighing;
And never another voice was heard,
Either of man, or beast, or bird.

Ralph looked about, in hope that he
Some mansion or some hut might see,
Where he might crave to pass the night;
And at the last he saw a light
Steadily shining through the trees.
Nearer he walked; and, by degrees,
Beheld from out the darkness harden
A mansion standing in a garden,
With woods and silence all about.

Ralph, with a heart right glad and stout,
Stepped to the gate, and pulled the bell.
The sound was solemn as a knell,
As into the wide night it ran.
But soon an ancient serving-man
Came forth; to whom Ralph briefly told
His hard condition, and made bold
To hope his lord would succour him.
The servant, with a visage grim,
Went to the house, and soon came back
With two lean blood-hounds in his track.
"My master is no friend," quoth he,
"To such night-wanderers as ye;
But says that if you like to go
To some old ruins that have stood
Mouldering, a hundred years or so,
About a stone-cast from the wood
On the right hand, you may prevail
Upon the ghosts with which they 're haunted
(Provided that your heart's undaunted)
To give you shelter, bread, and ale."
And with these words he shut the gate.

Ralph stayed a moment more, to hurl
Contempt upon the sneering churl;
Then, weary and disconsolate,
He turned him from the lighted house,
And, underneath the drooping boughs
Of the dark forest, went his way.
"Perhaps," thought he, " within the bound
Of those old ruins may be found
Some shelter till the break of day."

By this, the snow had nearly ceas'd.
Over the dim line of the East,
And through the clouds that weltered by,
The moon had risen into the sky;
A spirit bright—a face of light—
It looked between the dusky trees;
And white beams fell on snow-paths white,
Like super-sensuous sympathies.
Thus aided, Ralph beheld at length
A building (sometime of great strength,
But crumbling now from roof to base)
Rising from out a grassy space.
A warlike castle it had been,
As by its loop-holed towers was seen,
And by its moat, weed-choked and dry,
And by its ramparts mounted high.
But now its chambers were bare and lonely;
The winds and the tempests entered only;
The doors swung to and fro on their hinges;
The ceilings had gotten them green moss fringes;
The shadowing ivy made funeral bowers
Of the winding stairs in the four round towers;
The brown-gold lichens had woven their tissues
Into the depths of the stony fissures;
And bearded grass, storm-beaten and ragged,
Clung round the tops of the battlements jagged.

Silent and dark the ruins stood,
Fronting the dark and silent wood;
When suddenly, across the night,
The empty windows flared with light,