VII. A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent VIII. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, IX. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height X. A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, 1 XI. It was twelve by the village clock, When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. And the barking of the farmer's dog, XII. It was one by the village clock, He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. XIII. It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. And the twitter of birds among the trees, XIV. You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British regulars fired and fled,— How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again And only pausing to fire and load. XV. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm A cry of defiance and not of fear,— A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. H. W. LONGFELLOW. XI.-HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. "H ANDSOME is that handsome does,-hold up your heads, girls!" was the language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters. The worthy matron was right. What is good-looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,-generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. Loving and pleasant associations will gather about you. 2. Never mind the ugly reflection which your glass may give you. That mirror has no heart. But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy. There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just as the calm moonlight melts those of a rougin landscape into harmonious loveliness. 3. "Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after Primrose. Why should you not? Every mother's daughter of you can be beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels. 4. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smoke-stained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of com passion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him corn." 5. O, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiseled from marble or wrought out on canvas; speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness. 6. This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness of young maternity,-Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. 7. And their pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven,-how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony, "Spirits moving musically do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance? 8. "I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace sat brooding." In that simple and beau |