The Pearl And The Poison.
From The French.
Chanced it, where along the strand
Softly foaming broke the sea,
Lay an oyster on the sand
'Mid her neighbors merrily:
And her shelly doors, ablaze
With the sapphire's thousand rays,
She had opened to the sigh
Of the zephyrs flitting by.
Fell into her bosom there
Just a single drop of rain—
Just a rain-drop dull and plain:
When, behold! a jewel rare—
A sudden pearl exceeding fair!
Chanced it on the heath hard by
That a viper, lurking dread,
Uttered then her hissing cry—
To the zephyr raised her head:
When upon her dart accurst
Fell a rain-drop like the first:
Just a drop of poison more
To recruit her venom's store.
With twofold nature are our hearts endued,
Nor open less to evil than to good:
Responding kindly to the tiller's care,
The soil becomes what skilful hands prepare.
Dear parents, take you heed. If yours the will
To guard your children's sacred innocence,
Be timely care and foresight the defence;
And drop by drop instil
Into their little spirits thoughts of good,
To be their daily food.
If you are wise, through years to come
A pearl of a child will make you blest:
If not, you'll cherish in your home
A very poison to your rest.
Foreign Literary Notes.
The testimony of so distinguished an authority as M. E. Littré, of the French Institute, is now added to that of Digby, Maitland, Montalembert, and so many others, to show that the middle ages were not "barbarous." M. Littré, as is well known, is very far from being a Catholic; but, treating the subject with his great erudition from a purely historical point of view, he shows, in his Etudes sur les Barbares et le Moyen Age, that, after the frightful degeneration of the Roman world—a degeneration aggravated and precipitated by the violent immixtion of barbarous peoples—the period of the middle ages was an era of renovation in institutions, in letters, and in morals; a renovation, slow, it is true, but certain and continuous; a renovation entirely due to Catholicity, revivifying by powerful and fecund impulsion the antique foundation formed by pagan society, and augmenting it by all that Christianity possesses superior to paganism. On this beneficial and constantly civilizing influence of the church, which formed the moral unity of a world whose material unity had disappeared, re-educating people fallen into infancy, rescuing letters by her schools, clearing the forests by her monks, founding social and political institutions worthy of the name, and the like of which the Roman empire had never seen—for the reason that all its conceptions of man and of liberty were false, and it could never raise itself to the idea of a spiritual power that was independent of the lay power—on all these points, so worthy the attention of the historian, there are, particularly in the first two chapters, some admirable pages. M. Littré speaks with admiration of the spread of monachism in the west, and distinctly recognizes the many great blessings that followed in its train. He (p. 3) reproaches Gibbon with having ignored the importance of the religious fact of Christianity. And yet his "naturalism" has led him astray from the conclusion to which the invincible logic of his own presentation of facts must bring him.
A valuable addition to biblical criticism is, unquestionably, the lately published Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philippians. A revised text, with introduction, notes, and dissertations. By J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., Hulsean Professor of Divinity, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London, Macmillan. 8vo, 337 pp. This book forms the second volume of an exegetical work that is to embrace all the epistles of St. Paul. Galatians has already been published. The present volume is particularly valuable for its introduction of the results of the latest archeological and historical research. The commentaries on Seneca and the doctrines of the Stoics are interesting, as also the remarks on the
