2. "Work! work! work! Till the brain begins to swim; Till the eyes are heavy and dim! 3. "O men, with sisters dear! O men, with mothers and wives! In poverty, hunger, and dirt,- 4. "But why do I talk of Death,— O God! that bread should be so dear, 5. "Oh but for one short hour,— No blessed leisure for love or hope, A little weeping would ease my heart, My tears must stop, for every drop 6. With fingers weary and worn, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,— 1. "In most of Hood's works," says a recent critic, "even in his puns and levities, there is a spirit of good, directed to some kindly or philanthropic object." "The pen of Hood," said Douglas Jerrold, "touches alike the springs of laughter and the sources of tears." All must certainly have a tender pity awakened in them for the outcasts of society, on reading the well-known poem, The Bridge of Sighs. 2. Hood's prose works, the National Tales, and the novels Tylney Hall and Our Family, added nothing to his reputation. In his poetic works he was capable of a grave and lofty style, as in the Ode to the Moon; and in one instance he enters on mysterious ground. "His Dream of Eugene Aram," says Allan Cunningham, "places him high among the bards who deal in dark and fearful themes, and intimate, rather than express, deeds which men shudder to hear named." The poet's life was one of trial arising from ill health and the uneasiness incident to the uncertainty of literary pursuits. Tennyson's lament at Hood's death was, "Would he could have stayed with us!" To him have been applied the words of Hamlet characterizing Yorick, “He was a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." CHAPTER LXII.-MISCELLANEOUS. The Printing-Press. 1. I doubt whether we can select another illustration of the mechanical progress of the last four hundred years that is so obvious and tangible as the printing-press. For, in the first place, within that period there has been no other mechanical agent of such direct and momentous importance. We divide time into epochs and crises, perhaps too much forgetting that there is no period or event which is sudden and complete in itself, but that historical changes work in sublime unity and silence, like the elements which filter among the ribs of the earth. But if ever, out of inspired history, there was palpable sign and embodied symbol of crisis and change for the world, it appeared in that creaking, clumsy machine of Faust and Gutenberg, the first printing-press. 2. Yes, that was a queer, portentous creature, that rickety thing of wood and iron, that came stalking into the world among kings and priests, thrones and castles, and other feudal respectabilities. There was a revolutionist; there was a troublesome democrat; there was a voice for the groaning people; there was a prophet of free and beautiful thought; there was a working preacher that should tear the chained word of God from the pillars of monasteries, and scatter it all over the world, and kindle the light to read it by. 3. And if the printing-press was thus important, both as an agent and a symbol of improvement, it is equally true that the greatest inventions and discoveries since that time have been allied with it, and in some way brought to serve its vast ends. Surely the applications of steam power are not more splendidly illustrated even in the railcar and the steamship-great instruments of civilization as they are-than in the working of a hundred marvellous pieces of machinery to publish and multiply those vehicles of intelligence, out of which all genuine civilization flows. 4. Surely the electric telegraph demonstrates its capacity in no way so wonderfully as in being a reporter for the daily paper, bringing the last word from fusion conventions and confusion caucuses, revealing the midnight in terior of senates, and daguerrotyping the passing life and interest of a world upon a breakfast table. 5. And now, in order that you may realize the marvel of the wonderful progress of the printing-press, I only ask you to go back in imagination to the workshop of Gutenberg, striking off his first Bible in the presence of Caxton, holding up a damp sheet of the Histories of Troy, or the Golden Legend; and then just take a walk through the vast manufactories of some of our great publishing houses. Begin down cellar with the best hand they have in the shop, the old fire-eater that tugs away there with forty or fifty horsepower, and keeps everything moving and all hands busy; and then go on and go up through Chinese walls of printing paper, and catacombs of type, and armies of well-employed men and healthy, happy girls, each with an appointed task; and look at the iron arms, lifting and folding; the whizzing wheels, the enormous slabs of pressure, the delicate stamps, the countless agents, that, with inconceivable quickness, work between the manuscript and the printer's book, turning brains into type, and type into print, and print into folded sheets, and sheets into volumes, and volumes into influences of diffused and illimitable power. 6. Almost the first thought-the comprehensive and most glorious thought-which the printing-press awakens in our minds, is that of great and beneficent uses. All its appurtenances are quickly translated into this meaning. Human measures are defeated, methods fail, but God's own purposes never; and the processes of his eternal righteousness and truth run in the iron grooves of the printing-press. 7. I look upon these great printing-offices, and factories of books, as so many moral encampments, and upon these hosts of working men and working women, as indeed a vast army arrayed against huge Redans and Malakoffs of ignorance. I thank you, American publishers, for these munitions of war, these embattled hosts. Women, bending over your work, toil on, for it leads to a result well worthy the spirit and the true mission of woman. And you, my brethren with rolled-up sleeves, remember it is a world-wide, a final conflict in which you are engaged. The rumble of the power press is better than the roar of artillery. The clink of composing-sticks is more inspiring than the clank of armor; and every type, more sure than a bullet, and shooting noiseless as the summer air, shall hit the mark, though it be a thousand years ahead. Advance, battalions! for with every forward step the old wrong and falsehood of the world grows weaker, and is made ready to pass away. Rev. E. H. Chapin. “Oh, the click of the type as it falls into line, And the clank of the press, make a music divine! CHAPTER LXIII.-THOMAS CAMPBELL.-1799-1844. I.-Biographical. Walter Scott told Washington Irving that "the brightness of Campbell's early success was a detriment to all his after-efforts. He was afraid of the shadow that his own fame cast before him."-Campbell was born in Glasgow when his father was at an advanced age; but he was carefully educated, and he graduated at the University of that city, where he was remarkable for his classical attainments. At the early age of twenty-two he published the Pleasures of Hope, which passed through four editions in a year, and at once established his fame. Its measure is that of Spenser (England's first heroic poet), and its scheme is like that of the |