fought, it was under the Oak; if two lovers gave a rendezvous, it was at the Oak; if the officers of the parish wished to address the inhabitants, they met under the Oak. When the church was pulled down, and divine worship was chanted in the open air, the Oak at once sheltered the assembly from the rays of the sun, and from the showers of heaven. The candidates for senatorial honours spoke to the electors of the spot, and the neighbourhood, under the Oak. The little children were left to play under the Oak; and their mothers or their sisters confided them with

a degree of confidence to his protection for he was as the father of the village, and the household god of the villagers. In Summer time, the master of the charity school conducted his little flock on a Saturday to the shade of the Oak; and before they separated till the Monday, from their books and studies, they sang the evening hymn beneath its branches. In troublesome and warlike time, when invasion was spoken of, and foreign foes were feared, the "Loyal Volunteers" used to exercise and drill under "the Oak." And when even Winter was most drear and the storm most pitiless, still the Oak raised his venerable head; and the thought that the Spring would return, and the tree and the green be once

more gay and enlivening, softened the severity of the hour, and mitigated even the roughness of the blast. The Oak was a constant benefactor and a neverfailing friend. Other friends might be faithless other trees might perish other shades might be destroyed by the interested or the powerful: but "the Oak" belonged to the village - and the hearts of all the village for all time belonged to him. But even the Oak was mortal even the Oak was destined to perish: and in the midst of a horrible tempest, which desolated this once happy and once prosperous, but now sad and desponding village, the lightning from the skies descended the Oakupon tore from it its branches struck even to its roots, and the Oak fell, and was no more! So there was no more singing and no more dancing-no more carolling and no more meeting; and the green became deserted; and a simple monument marked the place where the venerable friend of the village had once stood; and it became deserted, lonely, and sad. And the first days of grief were as the days of weeping of an orphan who mourneth over the tomb of her mother, and as the grief of a widow who was suddenly bereft of her husband, and as the tears of a mother who weepeth over the loss of her only, her

-

And no eye was dry,

virtuous, her beloved son. and no cheek was rosy or healthy; for all felt the loss of the Oak to be the greatest of all losses; and the village was in mourning. And to the credit of that village be it said, the mourning was a long mourning, and the tears were oft shed tears, and the grief was not of short duration, and "the Oak" is engraved on the hearts, and hangs up in the form of pictures and of paintings, in the cottage of every villager; and pieces of the branches, and of the trunk, and of the root, are handed down as precious relics from father to son, and from generation to generation. For it is still "The Oak."

Anonymous.

MEN are often capable of greater things than they

perform; they are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to the full extent.

A MIDNIGHT THOUGHT.

As I lay listening to the mournful wind
In hollow gusts that swept my casement by ;
Fond thoughts of absent dear ones fill'd my mind,
And busy fancy prompted many a sigh!

Methought, while shelter'd on my couch of ease,
Chiding the murmurs of the storm to cease,
Of many a tar, who plough'd the angry seas,
Far from a haven of repose and peace!

And as I watch'd gray morning's twilight dim
Glance through the shadow night had round me shed,
I wept to think how lone the fate of him
Who slept unpillow'd on cold Ocean's bed!
Far from those friends to pity and to mourn,
Whose eyes had dewed him with affection's tear,
Whose hearts were beating for his wish'd return,
While he unconscious press'd his wat'ry bier!

*

Such thoughts are only for the coward slave,
Who never felt the bliss of being free;
Whose soul would "sicken at the heaving wave,"
The sailor's glorious home of liberty!
There's bliss to him in ocean's stormy strife,
As safe he rides his gallant bark within;
These howling blasts to me with terror rife,
Are only spirit-stirring sounds to him!

And should he sleep beneath the billow's swell,
Lull'd by the murmurs of the surgy wave,
What dirge so fitting for a sailor's knell?
What tomb like ocean for a sailor's grave?

Mrs. Cornwell Baron Wilson.

WIT is brushwood, judgment timber; the one gives the greatest flame, the other the most heat, and both meeting make the best fire.