Of the improvement in our social morals it is needless to speak, and indeed I must decline to do so, if only that in drawing a comparison I should have to shock the ears of “Pen and Pencil” with some allusions to _things gone by_. I will but casually refer to two salient characteristics of the enormities of bygone times—to novels and to the theatre. Compare but for a moment the wild and almost licentious writings of a Walter Scott, an Edgeworth, or an Austen with the pure and unexaggerated novels of the present halcyon time. And for our theatres, if it be possible to imagine anything more chaste and elevating than the existing drama—anything more stimulating to all that is purest, more repressive of all that is vulgar and low in our ballets or pantomimes—why, I very much mistake the realities that lie before us. Finally, in the religion of the country—there where one looks for the summing up and climax as it were of all the incidental advances we have glanced at, how glorious is the spectacle! The fopperies of ecclesiastical upholstery banished from the land; the hardness and cruelty of dogmatic intolerance heard no more; a noble life everywhere more honoured than an orthodox belief. Surely we have reached the Promised Land—it overflows with charity, with peace, plenty, and concord; and the only regret left to us is the fear that in so good a world none of us can entertain the hope to leave it better than we found it! THINGS GONE BY. SOME years go by so comfortably calm, So like their fellows, that they all seem one; Each answering each, as verses in a psalm, We miss them not—until the psalm is done: Until, above the mild responsive strain, An alter’d note, a louder passage rolls, Whose diapason of delight or pain Ends once for all the sameness of our souls: Until some year, with passionate bold hand, Breaks up at length our languid liberty, And changes for us, in one brief command, Both all that was, and all that was to be. Thenceforth, the New Year never comes unheard; No noise of mirth, no lulling winter’s snow Can hush the footsteps which are bringing word Of things that make us other than we know. Thenceforth, we differ from our former selves; We have an insight new, a sharper sense Of being; how unlike those thoughtless elves Who wait no end, and watch no providence! We watch, we wait, with not a star in view: Content, if haply whilst we dwell alone The memory of something live and true Can keep our hearts from freezing into stone. NO; OR, THE LITTLE GOOSE-GIRL. A TALE OF THE FIRST OF MAY, 2099.