Silence and odorous dimness, like a ghost,
  Possess this ancient garden utterly:
The grass-plots smile beneath the starry host;
  The trees look conscious of the conscious sky;
The flowers, insphered in sleep, and dew, and balm,
Seem holding at their hearts an infinite calm.

Even the old brick wall — that with the sun
  Of many years has ripened like a fruit,
In streaks of softened yellow, red, and dun,
  With broidery of gold lichens, that strike root
In arid fissures— wears a face of rest,
Like one who blesses all things, and is blest.

The empty vases on the terrace-walk.
  The path-ways winding underneath the trees,
The moon-white fountains that aye stir and talk,
  The ivy's dark and murmuring mysteries,
And all the pale and quiet statues, seem
Half shrouded in some bright and filmy dream.

There is a soul to-night in everything
  Within this garden, old, and green, and still:
The Spirit of the Stars, with noiseless wing.
  Glides round about it,— and his odours fill
All things with life; but most of all the flowers,
Close shut, like maidens in enchanted towers.

The sweet breath of the flowers ascends the air,
  And perfumes all the starry palace-gates.
Climbing the vaulted heavens like a prayer:
  The quickly answering star-light penetrates
Between the close lids of the flowers, and parts
Its way, and thrills against their golden hearts.

"Oh, bright sky-people!" say the flowers, "we know
  That we must pass and vanish like a breath
Whenever the sharp winds shall bid us go;
  And that your being hath no shade of death,
But floats upon the azure stream of years,
Lucid and smooth, where never end appears.

"And yet— oh, pardon the bold thought!— we yearn
  In love towards your distant orbs; and we
Have quivered at your touch, and sighed to burn
  Our lives away in a long dream of ye.
Oh, let us die into your light— as hues
Of sunset lapse, and faint, and interfuse!

"Out of the mystery of the formless night
  We woke, and trembled into life's strange dawn.
And felt the air, and laughed against the light;
  And soon our fragile souls will be withdrawn
Like sighs into the wide air's emptiness:
Yet sometimes of new life we dream and guess.

"Millions of blossoms like ourselves, we feel,
  Have flushed before austere Eternity,
And twined about the year's fast running wheel,
  And drooped, and faded to the quiet sky.
We are as dew in noon; yet we aspire.
Moth-like, towards your white, etherial fire."

And the stars answer— "There is no true death;
  What seems to blight the green earth like a curse
Is but a shade that briefly fluttereth,
  God-thrown upon the luminous universe,
To dusk the too great splendour. Therefore, flowers,
Your souls shall incense all the endless hours.

"Within the light of our unsetting day
  Your withered blooms shall waken, and expand
More fair than now when set in earthly clay,
  Fast ripening to the grave in which ye stand.
The tender ghosts of hues and odours dead
Are as the ground on which our nations tread."

At this, the flowers, as if in pleasure stirr'd,
  And a new joy was born within the night:
The wind breathed low its one primeval word,
  Like some most ancient secret on its flight;
And Heaven, and Earth, and all things, seemed to kiss.
Love-lost in many mingling sympathies.

THE GREAT SADDLEWORTH
EXHIBITION.

LAST week my friend. Miss Clytemnestra
Stanley, asked me to go with her and her
sister, Miss Cordelia, to the Saddleworth
Great Exhibition, and to have a day's holiday
upon the moors to gather bilberries. As
I am rather proud of Miss Clytemnestra's
regard, I felt flattered by her invitation,
to say nothing of wishing to see the Exhibition,
of which I had heard wonders.
One fine day last week we started early,
to have a long day before us. The railway
would have taken us within half a
mile of the place, but we preferred going
in our own conveyance— a light butcher's
cart, drawn by a mare of many virtues,
but considerably more spirit than was desirable.

Clytemnestra and her two sisters are
dealers in fish and game; fine high-spirited
women, who live by themselves, and scorn to
have the shadow of a man near them. They
have lived together for years. Miss Cordelia
was taught to groom the mare and stable it
down when she was so little that she had to
stand upon a stool to reach its neck. She is
grown a fine tall young woman now, and
nobody to look at her would suspect that she
can not only groom her horse, but build a
stable with her own hands if need be. They
are three very remarkable women, but they
would require an article all to themselves.
How they came to be christened such magnificent
names is a mystery I never was
told.

Well, we started with many injunctions
from the eldest sister to take care of ourselves.
Miss Adeliza seemed to consider us
as giddy young creatures who would be sure
to get into mischief— and she could not go
along with us, as she had to attend to the
scaling of a fine cod and the boiling of a peck
of shrimps— after stuffing an armful of cloaks
into the cart behind us, and enquiring whether
we had recollected to take money enough, she
allowed us to depart, watching us all the way
down the street. Clytemnestra drove. She
was accustomed to it.

"The Saddleworth district," as it is called,
lies on the confines of Yorkshire and Lancashire.
The high road runs along the edge
of a deep valley, surrounded on all sides by
a labyrinth of hills, the ridges forming a
combination of perspective which seems more