The republic of these men without a God has quickly been stranded. The liberty, won by so much heroism and so much genius, has not found in France a conscience to shelter it, a God to avenge it, a people to defend it against that atheism which has been called glory. All ended in a soldier and some apostate republicans travestied into courtiers. An atheistic republicanism can not be heroic. When you terrify it, it bends; when you would buy it, it sells itself. It would be very foolish to immolate itself. Who would take any heed? the people ungrateful and God non-existent! So finish atheist revolutions!—Bien Publique.
[ [From Dickens's Household Words.]
THOMAS HARLOWE.
All amid the summer roses
In his garden, with his wife,
Sate the cheerful Thomas Harlowe,
Glancing backward through his life.
Woodlarks in the trees were singing,
And the breezes, low and sweet,
Wafted down laburnum blossoms,
Like an offering, at his feet.
There he sate, good Thomas Harlowe,
Living o'er the past in thought;
And old griefs, like mountain summits,
Golden hues of sunset caught.
Thus he spake: "The truest poet
Is the one whose touch reveals
Those deep springs of human feeling
Which the conscious heart conceals.
"Human nature's living fountains,
Ever-flowing, round us lie,
Yet the poets seek their waters
As from cisterns old and dry.
"Hence they seldom write, my Ellen,
Aught so full of natural woe,
As that song which thy good uncle
Made so many years ago.