Peace has a dwelling near a wood Where the cooing pigeons brood, Where the sweet-voiced nightingale Unto the moon her song doth pour, And songsters swell the echoing vale For evermore, for evermore. Peace has a dwelling in the soul That can its hopes and fears control; In silent wood or city's din Alike it may be found to dwell; Its dearest home is that within The chastened heart's profoundest cell. Peace has a dwelling where no more The ear can hear the torrent roar, Or lists the rippling of the river, As softly it turns up its wave, Where never more the moon-beams quiver Within the silent grave. Peace--oh, thou white-garmented Maiden, with the flower-decked head, Come, make thy mansion in my heart! A tenant thou shalt freely rest, And thou shalt soothe each bitter smart That racks the chambers of my breast CHARLES DRYDEN. [From Household Words.] ALCHEMY AND GUNPOWDER. The day-dream of mankind has ever been the Unattainable. To sigh for what is beyond our reach is, from infancy to age, a fixed condition of our nature. To it we owe all the improvement that distinguishes civilized from savage life--to it we are indebted for all the great discoveries which, at long intervals, have rewarded thought. Though the motives which stimulated the earliest inquiries were frequently undefined, and, if curiously examined, would be found to be sometimes questionable, it has rarely happened that the world has not benefited by them in the end. Thus Astrology, which ascribed to the stars an influence over the actions and destinies of man; Magic, which attempted to reverse the laws of nature, and Alchemy, which aimed at securing unlimited powers of self-reward; all tended to the final establishment of useful science. Of none of the sciences whose laws are fully understood, is this description truer than of that now called Chemistry, which once was Alchemy. That "knowledge of the substance or composition of bodies," which the Arabic root of both words implies, establishes a fact in place of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health; the concomitants of the Philosopher's Stone.