"But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?"
—Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take—my—precious—wife!
—The angel took a sapphire pen
And wrote in rainbow dew,
"The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too!"
—"And is there nothing yet unsaid
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!"
Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
I could not bear to leave them all:
I'll take—my—girl—and—boys!
The smiling angel dropped his pen,—
"Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"
And so I laughed,—my laughter woke
The household with its noise,—
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the gray-haired boys.
AGASSIZ'S NATURAL HISTORY.
The Great Professor has given the first Monograph of his Magnum Opus to the Great Republic and the wider realm of Science. The learned world resolves itself into committees to consider every important work; claiming leave to sit for as long a time as they choose,—for years, or for a whole generation. Every alleged fact is to be verified or cancelled or qualified, every inference to be measured over and over again by its premises, every proposition to be tried by all the tests that can prove its strength or weakness, and the whole to be marshalled to the place it may claim in the alcoves of the universal library. No hasty opinion can anticipate this final and peremptory judgment. Its elements must of necessity be gathered slowly from many and scattered sources. The accumulated learning of the great centres of civilization, the patient investigation of plodding observers, the keen insight of subtile analysts, the jealous clairvoyance of dissentient theorists, the oblique glances of suspicious sister-sciences, the random flashes that skepticism throws from her faithless mirror to dazzle all eyes that seek for truth; through such a varied and protracted ordeal must every record that embodies long and profound observation, large and lofty thought, reach the golden Imprimatur which is its warrant for immortality.
The work of Mr. Agassiz, if we may judge it by the portion now before us, has a right to challenge such a matured opinion, and to wait for it. Not the less does a certain duty belong to us as literary journalists with reference to these stately volumes, which are in the hands of thousands, learned and unlearned, and of which there are scores of thousands waiting to hear. Our duty we consider to be four-fold: first, that of recognition in terms of fitting courtesy; secondly, of analysis for the general reader; thirdly, of accentuation, so to speak, of what seems most widely applicable or interesting; and lastly, of making such comments as so pregnant a text may suggest.
And first, of recognition. Here are the fruits of ten years of patient labor, taken out of the heart of life, in the age of
