'Grasp thy happiness and bear it with thee.' Is that Sanscrit or Persian? He who said that, had grasped a great truth. The Beautiful never perishes to him that _wills_. ONCE. No matter when: enough that moon and stars Shone as they shine to-night; That tales of desolation and of wars, Of struggle and of blight, Like the low mutterings of a troublous dream, Flitting across the still and peaceful night, Glanced o'er my heart and thine! The music of the pine-- The silver, witching stream An impress deeper, left upon our hearts. The murmuring song fell soothing on our ears; The silver stream with beauty charmed our eyes; And so we bade the tales of spears and darts, With all their train of agony and tears, Go to the winds; and leave us golden skies, And brooks, and reaching hills, and 'lovers' leaps,' With bold and rugged steeps; And all the romance of 'enchanting scenes;' For thou and I were--midway in our teens! Once! breathe it softly, softly, O my heart! And thou--my waiting one! My unforgotten! wheresoe'er thou art-- My heart's unfading sun! My guiding light beneath the storms and clouds; My solace when the woods and hills are lone; And the dark pine breathes out its saddening moan; And when the night the misty mountain shrouds, Breathe it still gently, wheresoe'er thou art, Light of my fainting heart! 'Once!' stop, O wheels of time! upon the word! Gather it in a knot of silken blue; Bind it all fondly--with a nuptial cord, Unto the widowed present! bear it through All change--all chance! Love, friendship! hold it fast: Let it no more be wedded to the past! And human hearts through all life's checkered scenes, Shall ever tarry 'midway in their teens'! We find the following paragraph floating through our exchanges: 'The venerable John J. Crittenden was in town to-day, preparing to start for home. I am sorry to hear that he speaks, to intimate friends, very despondingly of our future prospects. This is not as it should be. Public men, occupying seats in the high councils of the nation, ought never to despair of the republic.'--_N. Y. Letter._ And _how_ else could the venerable compromiser be expected to speak? The man who dallies with death and destruction to the last moment--who is only anxious to yield to an insolent and unscrupulous foe, is just the one of all others who, when the struggle comes, wails and howls despair. Their hearts were always with Southern aristocracy, these venerable Sweetsops who would have gladly compromised Northern dignity and manliness down to its very face in the mud before the devil himself, and then have explained their course by referring to Christian example, as though Christ himself had not dared death time and again, and finally suffered it as an example that there _is_ a limit where it is _better_ to perish than that evil should prevail over the truth.