reprobates? God bless and strengthen that dear
Lady's hands! God bless and prosper the
Leytonstone Home!

MIDNIGHT DISCOURSE.

THERE is no silence in nature; there is no
stillness of midnight. The London householder,
who has the ceaseless beating of the great
city's mighty heart close to his pillow, whose
rest is hourly disturbed by the voices of
innumerable church clocks, thinks of a country
house as a place as free from sound at midnight
as a spell-bound palace of sleep. The waiter
in a railway hotel, who is kept by the steam
whistle in a bondage more constant than that
of Aladdin's slave, pictures to himself his
cousin, the unambitious young man who took
service at the farm-house down in Devonshire,
as snug between lavender-scented sheets, in a
repose as sure not to be broken as that of his
forefathers who sleep under the churchyard
yews. The lady's maid, as she keeps her
unwilling and sulky vigil in the cause of fashion,
fancies that if she were far from the rattle of
those ricketty cabs she could doze in her chair
without a breath of interruption. Even those
dwellers in the country, to whom it is as
portentous a matter to omit to lay hands on a
bed-room candlestick at the last stroke of ten, as if
without that talisman they would turn into mice
or monsters, not being awake at midnight
subscribe to the general belief, and suppose
themselves to snore through a profound and otherwise
unbroken stillness. To-night, however, as I
stand at my open window and look out upon the
trees, and the lawn, and the old church tower,
silvery under the summer moon, and listen from
my own nest in the quiet house, I hear the many
voices of the midnight even here.

From afar, there comes what sounds at first
like a faint wavering cry. As it draws nearer, it
becomes a strange sound, as of a laugh, and yet a
sob. The two great powers of joy and sorrow,
who divide the empire of the human breast,
seem to speak with one voice somewhere in the
air. This is the cry of the night-hawk, who
always flies after sundown. He delights in
darting through the dusky air over the upland
fields, where the strained sinews and heated
feet of the tired cart-horses are getting their
wholesome cold bath in the dew from the long
tremulous grass. He strikes the fresh night
breeze with his strong wings, making his own
strange music as he goes, and is a merry
though eccentric bird, who turns night into
day in a rollicking fashion. But now, as I
lean out over the white stars of the jasmine, a
much more unearthly spirit-like cry reaches my
ear. It touches the nerves for a moment,
though I well know that it is only the owl who
is sailing through the moonlight, and talking to
himself about the probability of finding supper
for his little family. I know of nothing which
leads one so readily into a tide of spiritual
musing as this midnight cry of the owl. The
most hard worked matter-of-fact man on earth
could hardly listen to it without getting a
twinge of poetry. He might see the face of his
mother, as he used to see it long ago, in the
old family pew, with the light of the church
window falling upon it. The ringlet of his first
love might again touch his cheek. He might
re-enter castles in the air, built in boyhood,
and commune there with ghosts of long dead
hopes and starved ambitions. But what is
that new sound, like the noise of half a dozen
fairy steam threshing-machines all in full
motion? It is but the buzzing of two or three
cockchafers who have been attracted by the
light of my candle, and are fluttering among
the jasmine blossoms just below.

It is not the greenwood only that
furnishes voices for the chorus of midnight.
The poultry-yard and the aviary are by no
means silent. The geese are bad sleepers or
much given to talking in their sleep. They
cackle loudly. He knew the ways of geese who
first told the old story about the saving of the
capitol. Their voices seem so animated that I
think they must be discussing an excursion
to the stream in the valley for to-morrow,
and disputing as to which willow they shall
choose for their rest in the shade at noon.
Chanticleer is saluting the moon with as "lively a
din" as that with which he wakes up the morning.
Our west country common people are
much troubled in their minds when they are
wide enough awake to hear a cock crowing at
midnight; they regard it as a foreboding of
death. If somebody in our village had died
every time the cocks crowed at midnight
during this year 'sixty eight, there would not
be sixty-eight of us left. Shakespeare must
have heard the cocks crowing, on bright clear
frosty winter nights, in the court-yard of Ann
Hathaway's dwelling as he left the old farm-
house after some convivial meeting; and
finding thus that a beautiful sacred ancient
superstition, which he had learned at his
mother's knee, was confirmed by nature, wrote
those familiar lines in Hamlet of "the bird of
dawn:"

   Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes,
   Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
   This bird of dawning singeth all night long,
   And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad,
   The nights are wholesome.

A melody comes stealing towards me, seeming
to rise and fall with the breeze. So might
Jessica call to Lorenzo from her balcony
while Shylock sleeps. So might Laura's spirit
speak. These are the voices of the doves that
live in the large cage in the garden, and spend
much of the night in sweet discourse together.
Somewhere near at hand I hear a monotonous
grinding, a lazy comfortable noise that makes
me drowsy. It is made by the teeth of the
horses as they crunch sleepily at their oats.
There is a plaintive whimper under the window
sad to hear. It is the voice of a poor hungry
dog strayed hither to look for food. Catching