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CHAPTER IV.

HE ARRIVES AT THE GATES OF SUNRISE.

THE eagle flew so swiftly across the sky that Leo quite lost his breath. He was just able to gasp out, "What in the world are you?" and the eagle to answer, "I am only a Moment," before the journey was at an end, and the little boy was lying in a heap of clouds so deep and solid that it seemed pretty sure they would be a resting-place for him for a considerable time to come. It was well he was safe, for Leo had lost his senses from the rapidity of his voyage, and lay for a long time quite unconscious among the clouds.

When he recovered, he found that the whole scene had changed. He sat up and looked around him and saw that the moon had disappeared, and the dark lake in which the clouds were floating had turned grey. There was a pale white light over everything, and Leo said to himself, "I suppose it is morning."

He soon saw that there was a great bustle going on in the sky, and turning his eyes to the east beheld the most wonderful sight he had ever looked upon. One magnificent pillar of a great gate was already standing and the other was getting quickly built. He could not see who was building it or where it was coming from, but it was rising and growing before his eyes, and in a few more moments it was complete. This gate was made of gigantic pearls, mingled with diamonds and other precious stones, and silver palm-trees stood behind each pillar spreading their wide and delicate leaves above it. The bars of the gate were of gold, and it was shut. Outside the gate a crowd of countless figures were pressing towards it. Some knelt in groups together with their arms interlaced, some stood still with their faces raised and their hands clasped. Some lay flat on their faces, and others had their arms outstretched to the gate, and numbers kept moving and shifting and changing their position every instant.

"What can they be expecting?" thought Leo. "Something will come out of that gate, I dare say, and I shall see it, if the clouds will only keep steady long enough. Oh, I hope they will. I want so much to see what will come out."

The clouds seemed quite firm and quiet just at present; so Leo got his chin well up above the highest lump and kept gazing with all his might at the gate.

Suddenly all the assembled crowd of people began to blush greatly as it seemed to Leo. Their faces got very red and their arms and hands, and presently their very clothes got red. They nearly all wore some kind of very long skirts or trains or mantles, and, wonderful to tell, these draperies all turned as red as their faces!

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'Well," said Leo, "I have often seen people getting red in the face, but I never knew that clothes could blush before."

Redder and redder the people grew, however, and then Leo looked at the gate, which was also now glowing in the most beautiful crimson

light. The precious stones flashed, and the palm trees twinkled, and Leo could scarcely look at them they were so dazzlingly bright. Then he glanced back at the crowd of people. Some were falling on their knees and others were springing up. Some dropped back and sank away as if they had died or fainted, and some stood up on the shoulders of the rest waving banners which turned to gold as they raised them. At the same time he noticed that the people were differently dressed from what they had been. At first they had been all robed in silver grey; after the blushing began they had seemed to be clad in rose-colour; but now many of them had got mantles of the most gorgeous purple dye and also head-dresses of gold. He began now to distinguish the people better, and saw kings and queens and knights and beautiful ladies and little children. Some of them carried gold baskets full of fruit and flowers upon their heads, some strewed gold and precious stones over the sky, and some kept waving draperies. and long branches of palm. There were also very poor-looking people among the crowd, a good many with crutches, with tied-up heads and legs, and hands out-stretched as if for alms; but even these had a dash of gold about them somewhere, so that they looked very magnificent for beggars, and not at all like those whom you see on the earth. Away behind the crowd Leo fancied he saw gilded towers shining, and beautiful woods of golden trees, and the shimmering of many colours as if there were gardens and orchards and tawny meadows in the distance.

"I suppose," said Leo, to himself, "that is where these wonderful people live. What a curious place this sky-country is! Now, if I could only know what it is that they have all come out to look at."

He turned once more to the gate, and was just in time to see it part slowly, slowly, till it stood wide open, and the next instant a river of gold poured out through the opening and flooded the sky. It did not seem to hurt or wet the people, though it flowed just like water, but it sprinkled them all over with golden spray, so that they glittered a thousand times more than they had glittered before. Then figures began to march slowly through the gate. First, came ten splendid purple giants waving gold banners, next twelve crimson knights blowing golden bugles, then twenty tiny gold and silver dwarfs, rolling and frollicking and tumbling head over heels as they came along. After these walked a hundred silver virgins with lamps in their hands burning with an orange flame, and following these, a thousand fiery youths swinging censers. Then came a leash of wild horses, snowwhite, with golden manes and scarlet hoofs, and a little cherub with wings flew along with them, holding them all in his hand by a silver thread. A team of purple oxen came next with gilded horns and their necks wreathed with flowers, and a fool in a scarlet cap and jingling bells was dragging them along. Then came an enormous waggon of golden hay, drawn by butterflies as large as ships in full sail, and another waggon of fruit borne by snails as large as horses. Last of all came twenty thousand golden guards with lances glittering and silver shields. And then there was a pause. The dazzling procession which had poured through the gate marched across the sky,

broke up, and dispersed, the new arrivals mingling with the crowd outside the gate. The gate grew brighter and brighter, the opening behind it began to burn with so red a gold that Leo's eyes ached, and he had to cover them with his hand. When he was able to look again, he saw the most curious sight.

"The sun! the sun!" cried Leo as an enormous ball of fire rolled slowly through the gate. "A ball of fire!" thought Leo, as he peered at it cautiously between his fingers. "Yes, but is it not certainly something more besides that? It is a face, a fiery face, and I declare it walks upon legs!"

And so it did, indeed. There were two slender black legs like those of a spider straying down to the ground from under the sun's red face, and there were little arms of the same description, which flourished about. As he walked in through the gate, Leo noticed a whole circle of long golden spears which were ranged all round the sun with the points outward. They appeared short at first, but shot suddenly out all over the sky, and Leo got a little stab from them in one of his eyes which shut it up completely. He covered the eye with his hand and made the best use he could of his other eye, trying to save it from the spears while he watched the movements of the

sun.

The sun had curious little round eyes and a wide mouth, and as he rolled his face from side to side he grinned in the broadest manner, and Leo saw that it was this grin of his which shed the bright light all over the sky and poured down what we call sunshine on the earth. As Leo was observing this, the sun caught sight of his little head peeping out of the clouds and winked at him. The violence of this wink quite blinded Leo's second eye, and just as the sun marched away across the sky on his little spider legs among the crowds of his attendants, the little boy fell back into the clouds, unable to see anything more.

HURRIED TO REST.

O late upon our hearths he stood, the priest of God, the friend of Art;
So late we met his smiling eyes, the gentleman of tender heart!

But yesterday we touched his hand, and heard his laughter blithe and free;
But yesterday-and yet this morn began his fair Eternity!

Serenely shone the winter sun upon Saint Brendan's altar stone,
And sweetly piped the winter bird that perched upon its cross alone,
When that pure soul came forth to pray and lay his hope before the Lord,
Nor knew it was the festal hour that gained to him the great reward.

Oh, harsh and bitter is to us his death upon the stony sod,
But good and strong it seemed to him that brought him swiftly unto God.
Now chant, ye anointed saintly choirs, and wave your censers round his head-
He hears diviner melodies than your sweet psalms above the dead!

We scarce believe him gone from us, who yet are thrilling with the sense
Of that electric life that lived, and moved, and spoke with soul intense,
That fed our faith, and warmed our love, and richly swelled our fancy's store
With thought and deed of bard and saint long buried in forgotten lore.

For dear to him were distant song of bard and scribe in Erin's land,
And dear the storied fane and shrine fair-sprung from many a kingly hand;
But dearer still the Cross's gleam on martyred brow and saintly breast,
Far-reaching down the ages long, soft-shining o'er the world's unrest.

Oh, proud and joyful was the heart that bore him towards the stranger's clime,
To track the snow-white print of feet that left our land in olden time,
With holy stones for foreign earth, and sacred fire to strike a flame
In alien hearts that leaped to hear sweet promise in the Saviour's name!

Neath softer skies their graves are made who bore those early beacon-lights,
And lit the lamp in sullen glooms, and swung the bell on dizzy heights;
And he, their kin by birth and vow, with loving zeal went forth to trace
The godlike marks they left on earth, those heroes of the dear old race.

Still musing o'er their works of might he tracks their glorious flight to Heaven!
And renders up the unfinished task to Him by whom the task was given.
Now numbered in their blissful band, he leaves for other lips to tell
Fair news from o'er the centuries of those who served the Lord so well.

Oh! Motherland has many a son with genial heart and spirit true,
And many a son with brain of power for noble work she has to do;
But none more good to love while here, more fit to mourn when passed away,
Than the pure soul that sped to heaven so swiftly on this winter day!
January 4, 1876.

R. M.

IN

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

1776.

N the lifetime of the human race, a century is a span. There have been centuries seemingly flowing in a noiseless current, like the tacit stream of the Liris, celebrated by Horace: "Quæ Liris quietá mordet aquá taciturnus amnis." But as to the hundred years which now lie behind us, few epochs so eventful have been seen by man. They begin with the great American revolution; they embrace the enormous convulsion of France, which, like a vast chasm, separates the past from the present and future of Europe. They witnessed the miraculous rise and fall of the great Napoleon, and, again, the rise and fall, almost as wonderful, of his nephew. They have brought us to the establishment in the heart of Europe of an arrogant and overbearing military monarchy, tyrannous in principle and design; at this hour a standing menace to all liberties, civil and religious. Two or three centuries at most, could be chosen among all the ages of an importance at all commensurate. Edmund Burke, writing in 1796, says of the political contests of his earlier years: "These things then seemed great which the revolutions of our time have reduced to parochial importance !" And Byron, more than twenty years after, says, in a letter to Scott: "Remember that we have lived in gigantic and exaggerated times,

which make all below Gog and Magog seem pygmean." The fifty and odd years which have elapsed since Byron wrote, have been of scarcely less magnitude. And this, not in the fields of war and conquest alone, but in the silent growth of states; in the world of science, in the mass of inventions undreamed of by our ancestors; in the rapid advance of the arts of peace and war; in all the circumstances and surroundings which makes the life, habits, and usages of men so different from those of their grandsires.

In youth the most fascinating study is biography. In mature age we are won by the deeper and more comprehensive charm of history. When a long life of hope and possible achievement appears to lie before us, we love to dwell on the actions, thoughts, and passions of individual men, examples or beacons to ourselves. Afterwards, when the littleness of individual man is brought painfully home to us, we turn with increasing interest to the great drama which the evolution of ages presents, affecting the family of mankind. We range in thought epoch after epoch, tracing the germinating seeds of good and evil till they bear their destined fruit.

It is not intended in this paper to give any sketch, however slight, of the marvellous events which the past century has brought forth. Our idea is a much humbler one. We ask our readers to cast with us their eyes back for a hundred years, to survey briefly the state of the world as it then existed, and by that survey to form a measure of the changes wrought in the interval. Our theme is simply the year 1776.

THE EMPIRE. And to begin with the state of Europe. How much is said when we say that the Empire was still subsisting-the German Empire, as it was popularly but erroneously called, its true name being the Holy Roman Empire. It subsisted in form such as the middle ages had transmitted it. From the coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800, it counted duration of nigh a thousand years. And slight, indeed, was the idea that its days were numbered, and that in thirty years more (1806) it would be shattered by the mighty hand of a new Charlemagne, who at the time we write of was a boy of seven years of age, the son of a Corsican attorney. At the head of the Holy Roman Empire was the Emperor, not, as now, one Emperor among many, but the Kaiser, the so deemed representative of the ancient Cæsars of Rome. The sovereigns of Russia and of Turkey were, it is true, sometimes named Emperors, but the one was only a Tartar Czar, the other an Asiatic Sultan. The Emperor held, by universal consent, the first place among the princes of Europe. In theory, the office was not hereditary but elective. The electors were nine, three spiritual, the Archbishops of Cologne, Mayence and Treves; six temporal, the Elector King of Bohemia, head of the house of Austria, the Elector of Brandenburgh, who was king of Prussia, the Elector of Saxony, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, the Elector of Bavaria, and the Elector of Hanover, who was George III., King of England. So high was the Electoral dignity reputed that the title took precedence of every other title below that of king. Thus, the Grand Dukes of Bavaria and Saxony were styled Electors, not Grand Dukes. It was the same with Brandenburgh and Hanover, till these sovereigns.

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