Out of the depth of their soft rich throats Languidly fluted the thrushes, and said: “Musical thought in the mild air floats, Spring is coming, and winter is dead! Come, O Swallows, and stir the air, For the buds are all bursting unaware, And the drooping eaves and the elm-trees long To hear the sound of your low sweet song.” Over the roofs of the white Algiers, Flashingly shadowing the bright bazaar, Flitted the swallows, and not one hears The call of the thrushes from far, from far; Sighed the thrushes; then, all at once, Broke out singing the old sweet tones, Singing the bridal of sap and shoot, The tree’s slow life between root and fruit. But just when the dingles of April flowers Shine with the earliest daffodils, When, before sunrise, the cold, clear hours Gleam with a promise that noon fulfils,— Deep in the leafage the cuckoo cried, Perched on a spray by a rivulet-side, “Swallows, O Swallows, come back again To swoop and herald the April rain!” And something awoke in the slumbering heart Of the alien birds in their African air, And they paused, and alighted, and twittered apart, And met in the broad white dreamy square, And the sad slave woman, who lifted up From the fountain her broad-lipped earthen cup, Said to herself with a weary sigh, “To-morrow the swallows will northward fly!” AULD LANG SYNE; OR, THE LAW IN 1874. IN 1868 it was determined by Lord Cairns, then Lord Chancellor, that a revised edition of the statutes of the realm should be published containing only such statutes as were actually in force. In looking over the first volume, which contains statutes passed between 1235 and 1685, one is struck by the number of stringent Acts of Parliament forming part of our present law, which nevertheless are habitually neglected. Now that the destroying hands of the Gladstonian iconoclasts are stayed there can be no more useful task than to look around us and see how many of these relics of the embodied wisdom of our ancestors still remain to us, rusted indeed but ready for our use. In enumerating a few of these enactments I have two objects in view. First, I would remind those whose province it is to administer law and justice to the subjects of Queen Victoria of powers with which they are armed; and, secondly, I would offer timely warning to those against whom these powers, when again exercised, which the present healthy state of public feeling assures us they will be, must inevitably be directed.