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And then I knew, my little one
Should by no vulgar lore be taught;
But by the symbol God has given
To solemnize our common thought.

The mystic angels, three in one,

The circling serpent's faultless round,
And, in far glory dim, the Cross,

Where love o'erleaps the human bound.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are

stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps, His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel; "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall

deal;

Let the Hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on!

OUR COUNTRY.

ON primal rocks she wrote her name,
Her towers were reared on holy graves,

The golden seed that bore her came

Swift-winged with prayer o'er ocean waves.

The Forest bowed his solemn crest,
And open flung his sylvan doors;
Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest

To clasp the wide-embracing shores;

Till, fold by fold, the 'broidered Land
To swell her virgin vestments grew,
While Sages, strong in heart and hand,
Her virtue's fiery girdle drew.

O Exile of the wrath of Kings!
O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!
The refuge of divinest things,
Their record must abide in thee.

First in the glories of thy front

Let the crown-jewel Truth be found: Thy right hand fling with generous wont Love's happy chain to furthest bound.

Let Justice with the faultless scales
Hold fast the worship of thy sons,
Thy commerce spread her shining sails
Where no dark tide of rapine runs.

So link thy ways to those of God,
So follow firm the heavenly laws,
That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,
And storm-sped angels hail thy cause.

O Land, the measure of our prayers,
Hope of the world, in grief and wrong!

Be thine the blessing of the years,

The gift of faith, the crown of song.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN, an American novelist; born at Martinsville, Belmont County, Ohio, March 1, 1837. When he was three years old his family removed to Hamilton, Ohio, and here he learned to set type in the office of the "Intelligencer," a weekly paper published by his father. On their removal to Dayton, in 1849, young Howells assisted his father in printing the "Transcript," and delivered the papers. He afterward worked on the "Ohio State Journal," and the "Sentinel" of Ashtabula, which the elder Howells purchased. At the age of twenty-two he became one of the editors of the "State Journal" at Columbus. From 1861 to 1865 he was United States Consul at Venice. In 1866 he became assistant editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," and in 1872 its editor. He resigned the position in 1881. In 1886 he took charge of the "Editor's Study" of "Harper's Magazine," but resigned in 1892 and took editorial charge of the "Cosmopolitan." His works include "Poems of Two Friends" (1860), with J. J. Piatt; "Life of Abraham Lincoln" (1860); six poems in "Poets and Poetry of the West" (1860); "Venetian Life" (1866); "Italian Journeys " (1867); "No Love Lost: a Romance of Travel" (1869); “Suburban Sketches" (1871); "Their Wedding Journey" (1872); "A Chance Acquaintance" (1873); "Poems" (1873); "A Foregone Conclusion" (1875); "Sketch of the Life and Character of Rutherford B. Hayes" (1876); "A Day's Pleasure" (1876); "The Parlor Car" (1876), a farce; "Out of the Question" (1877), a comedy; "A Counterfeit Presentment" (1877), a comedy; "The Lady of the Aroostook" (1879); "The Undiscovered Country" (1880); "A Fearful Responsibility, and Other Stories" (1881); "Dr. Breen's Practice (1881); Buying a Horse (1881); "A Modern Instance" (1882); "The Sleeping-Car" (1883), a farce; "A Woman's Reason" (1883); "A Little Girl among the Old Masters" (1884); "The Register" (1884), a farce; "Three Villages" (1884); "The Rise of Silas Lapham" (1885); "The Elevator" (1885), a farce; "Indian Summer 99 (1885); "Tuscan Cities " (1886); "The Garroters" (1886), a farce; "Poems" (1886); biographical sketch, "George Fuller: His Life and Works" (1886); " Modern Italian Poets" (1887); "The Minister's Charge" (1887); edited with T.

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S. Perry "Library of Universal Adventure by Sea and Land" (1888); "April Hopes" (1888); "A Sea-Change, a Lyricated. Farce" (1888); "Annie Kilburn " (1889); "The Mouse Trap and Farces" (1889); "A Hazard of New Fortunes" (1890); "The Shadow of a Dream" (1890); "A Boy's Town" (1890); "Criticism and Fiction" (1891); edited "Poems" (1892), by George Pellew; "An Imperative Duty" (1892); "The Albany Depot " (1892); "A Letter of Introduction" (1892), a farce; “A Little Swiss Sojourn" (1892); "The Quality of Mercy" (1892); "The World of Chance" (1893); "The Coast of Bohemia" (1893); "The Niagara Book" (1893), with S. L. Clemens and others; "Christmas Every Day, and Other Stories Told for Children" (1893); “Evening Dress" (1893), a farce; "My Year in a Log Cabin " (1893); "The Unexpected Guests" (1893), a farce; " A Likely Story" (1894), a farce; "Five O'clock Tea" (1894), a farce; "A Traveller from Altruria" (1894), a romance; "My Literary Passions" (1895); "Stops of Various Quills" (1895); "Landlord at Lion's Head" (1896); "The Day of their Wedding" (1896), "A Parting and a Meeting" (1896); "Impressions and Experiences" (1896), largely autobiographical; "An Open-Eyed Conspiracy" (1897); "A Previous Engagement" (1897).

LYOF TOLSTOY.

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THERE is a certain unsatisfactory meagreness in the facts. of Lyof Tolstoy's life, as they are given outside of his own works. In these he has imparted himself with a fulness which has an air almost of anxiety to leave nothing unsaid, as if any reticence would rest like a sense of insincerity on his conscience. But such truth as relates to dates and places, and seems the basis of our knowledge concerning other men, is with him hardly at all structural: we do not try to build his moral or intellectual figure upon it or about it.

He is of an aristocratic lineage, which may be traced back to Count Piotr Tolstoy, a friend and comrade of Peter the Great; and he was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana near Tula, where he still lives. His parents died during his childhood, and he was left with their other children to the care of one of his mother's relatives at Kazan, where he entered the university. He did not stay to take a degree, but returned to Yasnaya Polyana, where he lived in retirement till 1851; when he went into the army, and served in the Caucasus and the Crimea, seeing both the big wars and the little. He quitted the service with the rank of

division commander, and gave himself up to literary work at St. Petersburg, where his success was in every sort most brilliant; but when the serfs were set free, he retired to his estates, and took his part in fitting them for freedom by teaching them, personally and through books which he wrote for them.

He learned from these poor people far more than he taught them; and his real life dates from his efforts to make it one with their lives. He had married the daughter of a German physician in Moscow, the admirable woman who has remained constant to the idealist through all his changing ideals, and a family of children was growing up about him; but neither the cares nor the joys of his home sufficed to keep him from the despair which all his military and literary and social success had deepened upon him, and which had begun to oppress him from the earliest moments of moral consciousness.

The wisdom that he learned from toil and poverty was, that life has no meaning and no happiness except as it is spent for others; and it did not matter that the toiling poor themselves illustrated the lesson unwittingly and unwillingly. Tolstoy perceived that they had the true way often in spite of themselves; but that their reluctance or their ignorance could not keep the blessing from them which had been withheld from him, and from all the men of his kind and quality. He found that they took sickness and misfortune simply and patiently, and that when their time came to die, they took death simply and patiently. To them life was not a problem or a puzzle: it was often heavy and hard, but it did not mock or deride them; it was not malign, and it was not ironical. He believed that the happiness he saw in them came first of all from their labor.

So he began to work out his salvation with his own hands. He put labor before everything else in his philosophy, and through all his changes and his seeming changes he has kept it there. There had been a time when he thought he must destroy himself, after glory in arms and in letters had failed to suffice him, after the love of wife and children had failed to console him, and nothing would ease the intolerable burden of being. But labor gave him rest; and he tasted the happiness of those whose existence is a continual sacrifice through service to others.

He must work hard every day, or else he must begin to die at heart; and so he believes must every man. But then, for the life which labor renders tolerable and significant, some sort of

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