Where muskets sang the funeral hymn,
They'll show no traces of the dead,
Unless the daisy's silver rim
Be dappled with a deeper red.

Laburnums their gold chains will swing,
Hawthorns in star-like May be 'rayed,
Lilacs their early perfumes bring,
Roses the wildbriar branches braid.
And lovely forms amid them mourn,
Who fondly hoped, when they should bloom,
He— crowned with victory — would return,
Who now sleeps in a soldier's tomb.

Some with the swallow o'er the sea,
To cottage-homes in tranquil dells
Will come — and   'neath the orchard-tree,
Once more hear the sweet village bells.
And as the Spring her gentle rain
Sheds on the bending buds below,
Their thoughts will stray to comrades slain,
Who sleep where other wildflowers blow.

Spring's gathered blossoms soon will throw
Their light shapes on the rustic floor,
Bees through the open casement go, —
While in the sunshine at the door
The childless sire will sit for hours,
A statue in his deep distress: —
Where his loved boy once gathered flowers
There will not be a bud the less.

Through the dim golden mists of dawn,
And the blue twilight's dewy fall,
Loved eyes will look across the lawn  —
From the bay-windows of the hall —
For him whose shadow never more
Along the pathway quaint and trim,
Will send his likeness on before,
To call them out to welcome him.

Nor morning red, nor ev'ning grey,
That presence dear shall ever bring,
Nor starry night, nor sunny day,
Nor all the bright hopes of the Spring.
Many lost shadows lengthen'd out
Into a gloom profound and grand,
From the far East will close about  —
A shadow upon all the Land.

HOUSES IN FLATS.

Of course, where there are mills there are
millowners and operatives; where there are
ships there are sailors; where there are
houses built there are people to tenant them:
but, just as you may have Edwin and
Emma — foolish and fond pair — doubling
each other's bliss in a hard stone house
in the High Street, and Thumbscrew the
usurer at Woodbine Retreat in the suburbs,
buried among roses and laurustinuses, so
you may have practical town-populations
shelled in romance, and highly imaginative
communities with nothing but a dull crust
over them. You can no more tell what is in a
town than you can tell what is in a pie, till you
begin your diggings into it. We have been
woefully deceived by pies, and by towns also.

For example, we have been deceived by
London. The bachelor, or any other man
whose domestic wants happen to be limited,
has a right when he comes to London to
believe — if faith can be put in town exteriors
— that he has come to a matter-of-fact place,
in which he may settle down methodically,
get what he wants, and never be perplexed
by any nonsense. Oxford Street, Cheapside,
and the Strand, are manifestly mere places of
business. It is impossible to give rein to the
fancy and become sentimental in presence of
Somerset House. The strongest emotion it
can excite is by reminding one of a half-year's
income-tax which has to be paid.
But how dreadful a mistake will the young
bachelor have made, who judges Londoners
by London in this way!

Let him attempt to settle down among
them. How will he live? He will go into
lodgings, or he will take a house. Perhaps
the gentleman is not a bachelor, but a man
with a small family, and an income not
particularly large. He would prefer a house,
and looks about accordingly. Soon he discovers
that the great bulk of the professional
and trading classes must be particularly well
to do; for house-agents laugh at the possibility
of any one who is able to keep decent
broadcloth on his back paying less than
forty pounds a year for house-rent, exclusive
of taxes. Far out of town, and in some suburbs
of equivocal respectability, thirty-five pound
houses may be found, in which a government
clerk, a retired tradesman, or anyone holding a
like position, could, by chance, get a dwelling
suited to his circumstances. But, unless it
be distant enough from town to cease to
be a London residence, even the occasional
house offered at that rent to a tenant from
the middle classes of society, is scantily  supplied
with the things necessary to a civilised
existence. It contains but an imitation of a
kitchen, probably no pantry, and a little nook
for coals under the bed-room stairs. Its cistern
holds only water enough to make a little
scrubbing possible after the kettle has been
supplied, and enough water taken for the
washing of a few hands and faces. As for the
washing of bodies by a free use of the bath
daily, no such thing can be attempted in a
thirty-five pound house. The majority of
houses at this rent, and nearly all houses at a
lower price in London, are intended for the
tenancy of people, who pay for them at a rate
above their means; small milliners, journey-men
carpenters, bricklayers' foremen, working
shoemakers, chimney-sweeps, and so forth.
They do what the young surgeon does, who
screws his brass plate on a door in some
street leading from a square, and pays upwards
of a hundred pounds of rent and taxes
out of ninety pounds of income,— each, " having
a larger house than he requires, desires to
let a portion."  The streets of London and
its suburbs, are in fact, except in a few
quarters, lines of make-believe. They are
full of houses which are in no degree proportioned
to the incomes of their tenants.
The master and mistress of a house often