186 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
THE EONG AGO. 
Oh ! a wonderful stream is the river Time, 
As it runs through the realms of tears, 
With a faultless rhythm and musical rhyme. 
And a broad’ning sweep, and a surge sublime. 
That blends with the ocean of years. 
How the waters are drifting like flakes of snow. 
And the summers like buds between. 
And the year in the sheaf— so they come and they go 
On the river’s breast, with its ebb and flow. 
As it glides in the shadow anl. sheen. 
There’s a magical isle on the river Time, 
Where the softest of airs are playing ; 
There’s a cloudless sky and a tropical clime. 
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime, 
And the Junes with the roses are staying. 
And the name of this isle is the Long, Ago, 
And we bury our treasures there ; 
There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow— 
There are heaps of dust — but we loved them so ! 
There are trinkets and tresses of hair. 
There are fragments of song that nobody sings. 
And a part of an infant’s prayer. 
There’s a lute unswept, and a harp without strings, 
There are broken vows, and p'ecesuf rings, 
And the garments that she used to wear. 
There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore 
By the mirage is lifted in air ; 
And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar, 
Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before. 
When the wind down the river is fair. 
Oh ! remembered for aye be the blessed isle. 
All the days of life till night — 
When the evening comes with its beautiful smile, 
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile. 
May our “greenwood” of soul be in sight. 
BOOKS AND PICTURES. 
It is natural (says the editor of the Southern Banner,') 
for any one who is connected with the press, to say oc- 
casionally a good word for Books. They cannot supply 
the place of newspapers in giving the current events of the 
day, but they belong to the same literary army, which is 
fast quelling the power of ignorance and superstition. 
He who has selected a good librarjr, feels that he has 
gathered around himself a crowd of associates. Some of 
these, venerable for their age and honored for their wis- 
dom, are his instructors, who speak to his eye as effectu- 
ally as the most learned lecturer could to his ear. Others 
are his friends, varying in their disposition, and in the 
subjects of their quiet conversation. There is the Poet, 
who tells him of his strange fancies, his wild imaginings, 
his yearning love, or his indolent contentment. There is 
the Orator, who glows again with the passions that char- 
acterized his speeches in the pulpit, the bar, or the forum, 
and transfers to the pale, shroud-like pages where his 
thoughts lie buried, the life and fire of his former earnest- 
ness. There, too, are the jolly good fellows, who recount 
their queer adventures, emit flashes of wit, or dwell with 
satisfaction on the remembrance of some joke, or relate 
the pranks of their reckless, rollicking youth, until you 
laugh outright, and look around, half expecting to see 
the room thronged with mirthful boon-companions, — 
This is too long an introduction, however, to the extract 
we wish to quote. Although we have no fondness for 
the religious or political tenets of Henry Ward Beecher, we 
think we cannot be charged with heresy, if we in dorse the 
following opinions, to which he gives utterance in the 
New York Ledger : 
“We know of many and many a rich man’shouse where 
it would not be safe to ask for the commonest English 
classics. A few garish annuals on the table, a few pic- 
torial monstrosities, together with the stock of religious 
books of his ‘persuasion.’ and that is all! No range of 
poets, no essayists, no selection of historians, no travels, 
no biographies — no select fictions or curious legendary 
lore ; but then the walls have paper on which cost three 
dollars a roll, and the floors have carpets that cost four 
dollars a yard 1 Books are tlje windows through which 
the soul looks out. A house without books is like a 
room without windows. No man has a right to bring up 
his children without surrounding them with books, if he 
has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. 
He cheats them 1 Children learn to read by being in the 
presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with 
reading, and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, 
in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior 
excitement of passions and vices. 
“Let us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly in 
great bookless houses 1 Let us congratulate the poor 
that, in our day books are so cheap that a man may 
every year add a hundred volumes to his library for the 
price of what his tobacco and his beer would cost him. 
Among the earliest ambitions to be excited in clerks, 
workmen, journeymen, and, indeed, among all that are 
struggling up in life from nothing to something, is that 
of owning, and constantly adding to a library of good 
books. A little library, growing larger every year is an 
honorable part of a young man’s history. It is a man’s 
duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one 
of the necessaries of life.” 
Another writer, speaking of Pictures, truly remarks : 
“A room with pictures in it, and a room without pic- 
tures, differ by nearly as much as a room with windows 
and a room without windows. Nothing, we think, is 
more melancholy, particularly to a person who has to pass 
much time in his room, than blank walls with nothing 
on them ; for pictures are loop-holes of escape to the soul, 
leading it to other scenes and other spheres. It is such 
an inexpressible relief to a person engaged in writing, or 
even reading, on looking up, not to have his line of vision 
chopped off by an odious white wall, but to find his soul 
escaping, as it were, through the frame of an exquisite 
picture, to other beautiful and perhaps heavenly seen es, 
where the fancy for a moment may revel, refreshed and 
delighted. Thus, pictures are consolers of loneliness j 
they are a sweet flattery to the soul ; they are a relief to 
the jaded mind; they are windows to the imprisoned 
thought ; they are books ; they are histories and sermons, 
which we can read without the trouble of turning over 
the leaves.” 
|^°Hope is very falacious, and promises are more valu- 
able than the gifts of fortune, and it seldom frustrates us 
without assuring us of reeompensing the delay by great 
bounty. 
I^^Men should remember that sometimes the greater 
sound has the less sense ; as, though four is more than 
three, a third is more than a fourth. 
