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KIDDS OWN JOURNAL. 



could continue these antitheses till to- 

 morrow, and many would be less ridiculous 

 if they spent some hours in considering them 

 attentively. In works of literature, what 

 pleases, is what touches the heart, or amuses 

 the mind, and occupies it without fatiguing 

 it. It therefore is not those kind of compo- 

 sitions in which the whimsicality of terms, 

 the use of obsolete expressions, the combi- 

 nations of the most uncouth words, the | 

 amalgamation of the most unsuitable ideas, 

 occasion you all the labor of painful study ; 

 or, in which, without suffering you to breathe, 

 picture after picture is presented to the 

 imagination, as if it were not necessary to 

 take time to comprehend what is before our 

 eyes, in order to be affected by it ; in which 

 the fogs of the marshes, the ferns, the moon- 

 beams, the heaths, the meadows, the streams, 

 the burning sands, the birds of the desert, 

 the fowls of the court-yard, the mountains, 

 the streets, the valleys are mixed pell-mell, 

 in the same page, as if one could contemplate 

 a hundred points of view at once, and have 

 at the same time eyes to the right and left, 

 behind and before. Were they as numerous 

 as those in the tail of the peacock, they 

 would be insufficient for this ; and even then 

 it would require as many minds as eyes ! 



COLD AND THIRST. 



Dr. Sutherland, in his " Voyage of the 

 Lady Franklin and Sophia, 1 ' gives us some 

 very interesting particulars of the cause and 

 effects of cold and thirst. 



Captain Penny's party, it appears, had 

 an abundant experience of the intensity of 

 cold. At one time the temperature fell 

 below the freezing point of Mercury. Nor 

 is exercise any complete cure for this evil. 

 Exercise, in what an Arctic voyager would 

 call cold weather, produces extreme thirst 

 and abundant exhalation from the skin, 

 which, of course, freezes in the shape of 

 hoar-frost under the clothes. 



With reference to this, Dr. Sutherland 

 observes, — " I believe the true cause of such 

 intense thirst is the extreme dryness of the 

 air when the temperature is low. In this 

 state it extracts a large amount of moisture 

 from the human body. The soft and exten- 

 sive surface which the lungs expose, twenty- 

 five times or oftener every minute, to nearly 

 two hundred cubic inches of dry air, must 

 yield a quantity of vapor which one can 

 hardly spare with impunity. The human 

 skin throughout its whole extent, even 

 where it is brought to the hardness of horn, 

 as well as the softest and most delicate 

 parts, is continually exhaling vapor ; and this 

 exhalation creates, in due proportion, a de- 

 mand for water. 



" Let a person but examine the inside of 



his boots, after a walk in the open air at a 

 low temperature, and the accumulation of 

 condensed vapor which he finds there will 

 convince him of the active state of the skin. 

 I often found my stockings adhering to the 

 soles of my Kilby's boots after a walk of a 

 few hours. The hoar-frost and snow which 

 they contained could not have been there by 

 anv other means except exhalation from the 

 skin." 



THE POETRY OF GRIEF. 



Poetry from the soul of a mourning parent must 

 be exquisite ; though it requires the lapse of some 

 interval ere the reality of grief can be suited for, 

 and transmuted into poetry. 



Dr. Johnson's objection to elegies has some ele- 

 ments of truth. A relation or friend will not, in the 

 first troubled moment after the bereavement, think 

 of pouring out his sorrows in melodious verse. So 

 far we agree with the doctor ; but that that friend 

 cannot afterwards, when the troubled soul is com- 

 posed into a melancholy mood, bewail his loss in 

 song, is egregiously untrue. He may produce the 

 finest elegy without being exposed to the vile 

 charge of counterfeiting grief. Who would doubt 

 the sincerity of Milton's attachment to " Lycidas ?" 

 We should not expect a mother to plant a rose 

 over her son's grave on the day of burial ; but if 

 some weeks afterwards she should do this, would 

 she forfeit the character of being an affectionate 

 mourner? 



The broken heart does make melody ; and under 

 the immediate and crushing pressure of grief the 

 harp is hung upon willows. Then, the only vision 

 which fills the soul is the cold face — asunsuggestive 

 of poetry as a mask. Genius is altogether inactive 

 beside the unburied, beloved dead. But when 

 the grief is becoming calm — when it can be studied 

 as well as felt — when the soul is set free from the 

 death chamber, suns itself in the past, and can go 

 backwards gleaning fondly the memorials of the 

 precious life which has been withdrawn, and form- 

 ing an image to be cherished as the substitute of 

 the lost one, — when thus the process of imagina- 

 tion is being begun upon the anguish, then flows 

 freely the exquisite poetry of grief. 



THE OLD THORN. 



BY CHARLES SWAIN. 



Thou art grey, old thorn, and leafless — 

 Leafless, though the Spring be near ; 



But " my love " hath sat beside thee, 

 And each branch of thine is dear ! 



Thou art small, green cot, and humble ; 



Little in thy looks to cheer ; 

 But my true love dwells within thee, 



And each stone of thine is dear. 



Love makes all things sweet and holy, 

 All things bright, however drear ; 



All things high, however lowly ; 



What were Life were Love not 



THERE ? 



