Comes the sound of many voices,
              Comes the rushing of many wings;
          And with those huge, harmonious noises
                                 The dull air rings.

          And the stagnant trees are shaken
              As with wind in Autumn moaning;
          And the ripples begin to waken,
                                  And the bees cease droning

          In the fox-gloves, and the spider
             Shrinks in fear to a yellow ball.
          Deeper spread the tones, and wider,
                                    Round the Hall.

          The near rocks thrill with an iron tongue,
              The distant rocks give faint replies:
          The doom'd man hears his death-knell rung,
                                  And, swooning, dies.

          Then sinks the Goblin down below;
              The Harp lies idly by the lake;
          The wreathed ripples cease to flow,
                                  The leaves to shake;

          The bees again in the fox-gloves blare,
              The crags hum fainter, thrill on thrill,
          The spider trails out in the air,
                                  And all is still.

          A Power e'en yet in Finland reigns,
             Who waits some music from beneath
          To tell him that his planet wanes
                                In bloody death.

          The hissing of glad swords,—the throng
              Of bullets singing as they wend,
          Like storms in March,—will be the song
                                That marks his end.

          He watches in the day and night
             To see the dreadful shape burn through;
          And Europe, gathering up her might,
                                  Stands watching too.

                 MODEL OFFICIALS.

THE public mind is supposed just now to
be considerably occupied with what is called
Administrative Reform; and, therefore, any
little hint on the subject will not be entirely
thrown away. Now, there are two ways of
illustrating a topic; either to surround it
with a halo of perfection—to idealise it and
offer its glorified image—to invest humanity
with celestial beauty—to select the faultless
features of a hundred models in order to
compose one perfect statue; in short, to exhibit
a pattern for imitation; or, to set before the
spectator a picture of warning,—to teach
temperance by parading a drunken Helot—to
show Orson in all his wildness to anti-
educationists—to point out the bottom (if
there is one) of many easy descents, and to
make it clear what we may come to, if we
don't take care what we are about, and pull
up others as well as ourselves when they are
drifting a little too far in a wrong direction,
and when even veteran red-tapers are obliged
to endorse an application for a job with
the unwonted memorandum, "This is too
bad!"

Certainly, we are blest in England with
a few official personages,—from the worthy
magistrate who adorns the bench to the
managers of various public establishments
and offices,—who are striving to raise the
standard of the British character in
respect to faithfulness, despatch, and
integrity. If we go on thus, we shall come to
a climax soon. Public confidence will have
reached a point beyond which it will not be
possible to proceed further,—that way, at
least. Thus, setting aside whatever has come
to the private knowledge of myself and mine,
my newspaper this morning informs me, in
its Multum in Parvo, appropriately so styled
in the present instance, that, "on a Post-
office official, arrested the other day in the
Duchy of Brunswick, the enormous quantity
of fourteen hundred stolen letters were found.
He had only been attached to the post-office
for one year." And again, "out of one
hundred and thirty-five letters containing money,
which passed through the Wolverhampton
post-office during the month of July, forty-
nine have not yet reached their destination."
Who is so unreasonable as to suppose that they
ever will? And what should I deserve, but
the bastinado, if I were so impertinent as to
complain about my ten-pound note, and my
maiden aunt's law-papers, which haven't
come to hand, and don't mean to,—unless a
handsome reward is offered for the latter,—or
to grumble that the postage stamps with
which I deface the front of my letters are
considerately removed before the stampers of St.
Martin's have had time to blacken them?
What, but stripes, are the meed of
malcontents? And to that mode of discipline an
insurgent populace will have to submit. The
case is not without precedent, as you now shall
learn.

Certain French officers have been
compelled to act the part of police magistrates in
Algeria; not that they particularly liked the
task, but, "force," says the vulgar dictum,
"has no choice." What must be—must. So
these Frenchmen set to work to administer
justice in the Arab courts of police and law,
with much the same expression of
countenance as you would assume previous to
swallowing a bumper of salts and senna.
Several of them, after a lapse of years, have
turned their stipendiary magisterial
experience to a literary account. Among others,
Charles Richard, Capitaine du Génie, &c.,
has written what would be an amusing book,
Scènes de Mœurs Arabes, were it not evident
that he too is an official reformer in his way;
—that he is by no means satisfied with his
underlings—that he works with them, in a
state of high disgust, like a man who is
compelled to handle dirty tools, and that he only
employs them for want of better.