"You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh speak to me, some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning, in the shortest and clearest way; behold, I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song so-called, and your fiddling talent,--even if you have one, much more if you have none,--we will talk of that a couple of centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome; but only when Troy is _taken_: alas, while the siege lasts, and battle's fury rages every where, what can I do with the Homer? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers!--" These bricks from Babylon convey but scanty intimation of the varied interest of the book. However the readers of it may differ from its opinions, they cannot but find, even in Mr. Carlyle's misjudgments and prejudices, ample matter for serious reflection: for if he misjudges, it is generally because he is looking too intently at a single truth, or a single side of a truth; and such misjudgments are more suggestive than the completest propositions of a less earnest, keen-sighted, and impassioned thinker. He is indeed more a prophet than a logician or a man of science. And one lesson we may all learn from this, as from everything he writes,--and it is a lesson that interferes with no creed,--that honesty of purpose, and resoluteness to do and to say the thing we believe to be the true thing, will give heart to a man's life, when all ordinary motives to action and all ordinary supports of energy have failed like a rotten reed. SONGS OF THE CASCADE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY A. OAKEY HALL. I. THE CASCADE VAUNTETH ITSELF. Over my pebbly bed I flow: Till foaming--now splashing, Soon leaping--then dashing Into the chasm's bowl below, Where my pearl drops glittering, Rival the driven snow. The chains of Winter I spurn! All Summer and Spring Through the grove I sing, Gladdening lily and fern, And the tired bird who kisses my cheek With a dainty touch of his thirsty beak. And when from the mountain side The sunshines of May Charm the snows away-- The torrent's impulsive tide Mingles its turbid strength with mine, Marking the thicket with surging line.