Oh, speak the joy! ye whom the sudden tear Surprises often, while you look around, And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss, All various nature pressing on the heart; An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease and alternate labor, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven. These are the matchless joys of virtuous love; And thus their moments fly. The Seasons thus, As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll, Still find them happy; and consenting Spring Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads: Till evening comes at last, serene and mild; When after the long vernal day of life, Enamor'd more, as more remembrance swells With many a proof of recollected love, Together down they sink in social sleep; Together freed, their gentle spirits fly To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign. [From Dickens's Household Words.] THE HEART OF JOHN MIDDLETON; OR, THE POWER OF LOVE. I was born at Sawley, where the shadow of Pendle Hill falls at sunrise. I suppose Sawley sprang up into a village in the time of the monks, who had an abbey there. Many of the cottages are strange old places; others again are built of the abbey stones, mixed up with the shale from the neighboring quarries; and you may see many a quaint bit of carving worked into the walls, or forming the lintels of the doors. There is a row of houses, built still more recently, where one Mr. Peel came to live for the sake of the water-power, and gave the place a fillip into something like life, though a different kind of life, as I take it, from the grand slow ways folks had when the monks were about. Now, it was six o'clock--ring the bell, throng to the factory; sharp home at twelve; and even at night, when work was done, we hardly knew how to walk slowly, we had been so bustled all day long. I can't recollect the time when I did not go to the factory. My father used to drag me there when I was quite a little fellow, in order to wind reels for him. I never remember my mother. I should have been a better man than I have been, if I had only had a notion of the sound of her voice, or the look on her face.