UNSEEN WATCHERS.

SILENCE a moment the glad marriage peal,
The resonant trump, and the re-echoing cheers!
Put from you for a while,

The jocund welcome-song, and joyous smile,

And give a little interval for tears,

Due to that sweetness of the bygone years;
Whereon has Death placed his memorial seal.

For when we see young hand in young hand placed, And hear young lips the solemn vows accept

Of love through life and death, through woe and weal,
Swiftly in memory is the path retraced

To thoughts of plighted faith, unblemished kept
Of love enduring, fenced from doubts and fears,—
Of him-untimely lost, and fondly wept!

Forgive me, then, if my sad sight perceives,
Beneath the myrtles and the orange bloom,
The darkling yew and sombre cypress leaves,
That should be gathered only for a tomb;-
For is not all light perfected by gloom,
And love's pure gold by careful seasons tried,
And chiefly by great sorrows sanctified?
Wherefore an omen good I recognize-

Where some faint hearts have presage ill descried—
In that pale Queen and her most mournful weeds
Here present now, where all is bright beside.
For life-and life's sad truths-she intercedes,
Lest too much happiness should blind our eyes,
And we forget how joy is so allied

With grief, its very fulness is expressed

In tears the best,

And how come blessings oft in Sorrow's guisc.

Blame me not, therefore, for the darker thread
Which in the silver marriage-veil I weave,
For so its beauty must be perfected:-
And he no poet is, and does deceive,
Who tells not of the shade, as well as sun,

Or calls clouds gold, whereas their hue is dun:

For those, who list to him, will wake to grieve,
And shed vain tears, and utter useless sighs,
O'erwhelmed with care as by a strange surprise.

Look up, young pair, where that pale lady sits;—
A more than earthly crown is on her brows,
That deathless wreath the hand of Sorrow knits
For bruiséd love, tried faith, accomplished vows;
As child and mother-Queen and tender spouse,
Crowned thus as her true majesty befits:

She has earth's purest, brightest pleasures known,
Wherefore she drank of grief's most bitter cup
When those she prized were called in God's good time
To take their places by the Great White Throne,
Whither, through all her anguish, she looks up
In faith, which only renders life sublime!
Gaze on her, newly-wed ones,-look, and own
She is not left alone:

For round her is a holy influence shed,

And her beloved dead

Are with her now, as in the happy past,

When not a shade was o'er her pathway cast!

Clash forth then, merry marriage peals, once more, And let the resonant trumpet-notes ring out,

With welcome, and with shout!

And wear again the happy smile you wore;
For all the sadness of my song is o'er,
To see Affection claim the conqueror's wreath,
And wrest his weapon from the hand of Death.
Behold, they are not lost but gone before!
Ring out, then, joyous wedding-bells, again,
For the Grave's triumph is in vain-in vain,
And armed with faith and hope, this human Life
Is victor in the strife!

For lo; beside our Queen her cherished dead
Look on and smile to see her children wed.

Learn, then, with gladness, chastened, not reproved,

Even Death cannot deprive us of the loved!

"THE FISH THAT SWALLOWED JONAH."

"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah."-JON. i. 17.

lowed Jonah," once remarked a naturalist to the writer of this article,

was no more a real animal than the horses of fire that took Elijah up into heaven."

On account, therefore, of the assumed incapability of any fish to swallow a man whole, various fanciful hypotheses have been invented with a view, it is supposed, to render the sacred narrative intelligible. Hermann von der Hardt, for instance, regarded the whole history of Jonah as symbolical. The prophet represents Manasseh; the ship is

the Hebrew commonwealth, the "great fish" is the King of Assyria, who shuts up Manasseh in prison ("the belly"), but afterwards liberates him. Such is one ingenious but highly objectionable mode of explaining the sacred story. Here is another by Godfrey Less, at one time Professor of Divinity in the University of Göttingen-It was no fish at all, but a ship with the figure-head of a fish, or the painted representation of a fish on the stern, into which Jonah, after having been thrown overboard by the sailors of Joppa, was received safely, and so brought to land. We give one more curious attempt at an explanation; it is that of C. G. Anton, who maintained that, just at the time that Jonah was cast overboard, the dead hollow carcase of some large sea-monster floated by, into which he crept; that the carcase drifted to shore, and thus saved the life of the prophet! It certainly seems very strange that although our Lord himself expressly refers to Jonah's detention in the belly of a fish, and adopts this very incident as a symbol of his own temporary sojourn in the grave, men should thus have "wearied themselves to find the door" to an explanation of a narrative, whose literal fidelity is attested of the Lord himself.

To those who found their objections on the absolute denial of miracle, we have obviously in this place nothing to answer; but there are many people who give only a qualified assent to the Scriptural account, because they do not believe in the existence of any animal capable of swallowing a man whole, or any substance at all approaching a man in size. Their objections rest on mistaken notions. There are animals whose gullets are sufficiently wide to allow of the passage of a man into the stomach.

The translation in the authorized version of the Greek word (TOS) used by St. Matthew (xii. 40) is "whale." Let us then see whether any known species of whale will answer to the required conditions. In the family of the Balanida, the gullet is so narrow as scarcely to allow the passage of any substance larger than a man's fist, the food therefore of these whales consists of small animals, such as Medusa, Crustacea, and Molluscs. The Delphinidae, in which family are included some of the most fierce and voracious of the whole order of Cetacea, do not attain to any immense size, and are also incapable of swallowing a man. But there is at least one species in the family of the Catodontide, viz., the Spermaceti whale (Catodon macrocephalus), whose throat is wide enough to give passage to a man's body. Can this be the great fish in question? The probabilities, we think, are rather against it; for this reason principally, that, notwithstanding the size of its capacious gullet, this animal does not in its natural state swallow very large substances. Its food consists for the most part of squids, or cuttle-fish (Sepiada). Still it is a fact that fish as large as good sized salmon are sometimes ejected from its stomach, and Mr. Bennet ("Whaling Voyage," p. 176)