outside the tent-web which they had made, and
he may say a more singular structure he never
saw."

PAST AND FUTURE.
Eternal is the Power serene
That brings the Spring to all,
But brief the space that lies between
The ripeness and the fall.
The earth, in shadow and in glow,
Around the sun is roll'd,
And lightly come and lightly go
The years that make us old.

Oh, Autumn night, reposing now,
Like bird with folded wing!
As old men think of youth, so thou
Recall's! the vanished Spring.
The lov'd one dies, the love remains;
As, when the East is grey,
The lull'd and dreaming West retains
Its memory of the day.

Across the air the hasty brooks
Seem babbling of the Past,
Saying, " How tender-sweet the looks
That are not made to last!"
The mild breath of the waning year
Comes up from holt and lea,
And over distant downs I hear
The sighing of the sea.

I stand beneath the infant night,
Besprent with dewy drops,
And see the crescent moon hang white
Above the dark hill-tops.
And, as the stars bloom thick and fast
Out of the tremulous sky,
Yet, by the waxing moon surpass'd,
Faintly beneath her lie,—

Perfect, but faint, while she, secure
In growth and power to come,
Holds in a silver trance the pure
Dark of the skyey dome,—
I find a symbol of our life
Express'd in moon and stars,
And reach at inner meanings, rife
Beyond the world's dim bars.

The Pasts are many and complete,
With separate deeds, desires,
Orbing with motion slow or fleet
Their small but perfect fires.
The Future, moving up the night,
Its dusky bulk unshown
Behind its glimmering verge of light,
Is crescent and alone.

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLES.

I HAVE been made aware, by a slight hissing
sound which emanates from rny conversation
vat, that there is more chronicling to do in
connexion with that subject: albeit I had
thought that in a previous report I had said all
that was to be said about our small-talk as it
used to be, and our small-talk as it is.

I wonder, with all my power of wonder, what
ancient—quite ancient—small-talk was like.
How can one get an idea of it? Was there any
small-talk in the days of Julius Caesar? Was
all their dialogue in the "Friends, Romans,
countrymen" style? Impossible. Any
antiquarians who may find themselves in future ages
speculating about us, might as well take their
ideas of our modes of conversing from the
Parliamentary Reports, as we our notions of classic
chat from the speeches in the Roman forum.
The Bard of Avon—of whom it has been
sometimes remarked by partial critics, that he was
acquainted with mankind— was evidently of
opinion that the ladies and gentlemen of Rome and
Antium talked to each other much as those of
his own time were in the habit of talking. When
the conspirators meet in Brutus's orchard, they
at once begin a common-place conversation about
the night, the time when the day may be
expected to dawn, and the exact position of the sun
when it rises. Valeria's conversation, taken as a
specimen of that of a fine lady of the time, is
light and frivolous in the extreme, and plentifully
interspersed with the interjection " La!"
an expression, by-the-by, which it is extremely
difficult to imagine was much in use in the days
of Brutus.

I fancy that we would most of us give up a
good many pages of Livy, or Cornelius Nepos,
if we could have in exchange some authentic
and detailed account of the small-talk and the
small-life of the ancient time. The Small-Beer
of those days, though certainly chronicled to a
certain extent by some classic authors, is not
recorded completely and exactly enough. It is
well to refer me to the Satires of Horace, and
other light literature of the period: I still say it
is not enough, and that I would sacrifice half a
dozen Odes of Horace and a play or two of
Aristophanes, for a Small-Beer Chronicle of the
time of Augustus—just as I would exchange
many an antique statue and gem, for a photograph
of Socrates, or a carte de visite of
Cleopatra.

What did a Roman " swell" say when he
arrived at the house where he had been asked to
dinner? What was the nature of his conversation
between the moment of his so arriving, and the
time when he performed the uncomfortable feat
of dining in a recumbent position, and propped
up on each of his elbows alternately. Once
engaged in this laborious achievement, of course
what with the difficulty of swallowing in such a
position, what with the pins and needles in his
elbows, and the other miseries incident to
the position, he must have had enough to
think of without troubling himself to make
conversation. But the meal over, and Publius
Claudius on his legs again, what did he say?
Did he ask Publia Claudia whether she had been
walking on the Quirinal in the morning, and
whether there were many people there? Did
he say that he had just heard that the Corneliuses
were going to let their villa on the Tiber,
on account of the damp, and that the Metellus
Cimbers were going to take it for the season?
And Publia Claudia what did she say? Did she
remark that the Corneliuses would be a great
loss to their society, and that she heard the Cimbers
were horrid people, horrid style, especially
the girls, and that detestable Sophronia
Cimber going to be married to young Castor