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We commend the following descrip-
tion to our readers as one of the finest
pieces of word-painting we have ever
read:

But here is the Cathedral at Milan;
the Church Mariae Nascenti; an inner
world history built up to sight in fret-
ted marble. If one stopped to read it
through—to read it up, from sculp-
tured base, along slow-rising walls of
rich relief, through forest pinnacles
and crowding imaged niches, and from
height to height of roof, and circle to
circle of its statue-types, one might give
up, not the rest of Italy, but the rest of
life before it. As men have died, gen-
eration after generation, passing down
from each to each the unfinished sen-
tences. For it has been all read but
once, and that has been the long read-
ing of the five hundred years in which
it has been builded. It has been the
slow spelling of the chisel. Yes, spel-
ling is the better word -- no doubt; for I
think many of these old architects and
workers were more like children spel-
ling letters and syllables carefully
along, not knowing, really, the story
they were making, in its wholeness.

'Have you made up your mind what
it is?" Stephen asked, when we had
slowly paced, twice round the great
square, gazing up at the wonderful,
delicate, many-hued body of it, pile of
solid stone and masonry as we knew it,
—breath, almost of a dream made vis-
ible, as it seemed in its lightness to be-
come—rising into thin fine traceries
and needle spires, that stood with their
hundreds of white points glittering
against the pure, blue sky; when we
had stopped before pillar after pillar
with their great bas-reliefs—each an
epoch and a history in its theme,—a
thing of years in its patient carving;
when we had wondered at the mon-
strous gargoyles,—figures of fierce evil
things leaping as if driven from under
every sacred eave and cornice;—when
we had noted how the statues of heroes
and saints, each in his niche, filled all
the window arches and the pilaster an-
gles, line after line, to height after
height of the attaining; when we
lost trace and order in lovely confu-
sion among the exqusite paintings and
surroundings of buttresses and parar-
pets and cupolas and thousand cluster-
ing slender pillars of turret and stee-
ple; until it seemed as if the whole vis-
ion were born out of the blue deep up
there in which it ended, and could only
have gathered itself together, drop by
drop, as jewels gather, "Have you
made up your mind what it is?"
"Yes."
"Is it a crystallization? Frostwork?
Did it grow? Is it growing? Was it
enchantment? Will it melt?"
"It was lived. It is being Lived."
That was all one could think or say.
For it began away down there in its
foundations, and you could see it was
just human life,—the world's life in
legend, type, and story.

Tier above tier, niche above niche, as
the solemn strength lifts upward,
gleam forth the forms of saints and
seers, heroes and servers, whose lives
and deaths have been in the building
of the world. They front the grand
pilasters; they stand right and left in
the tall window arches, where the light
streams in; above their heads where the
cleansing rains come down, under hal-
lowed eave and cornice, spring out,
exorcised, the fierce, horrible shapes
that may not abide in the House of
Ages as it rears to its final height and
its roofing in with beauty. Not all

seers and saints; not all conscious and
purposeful servers; yet there they are,
kings and leaders and men whose lives
were powers; and their glory is
brought into it, whether they knew it
or not.

We went up on those great, high
roofs. We found ourselves beside a
long parapet,—within which a kind of
passage ran along the transept to the
main roof. We were where the mar-
ble gave itself off, as it were, into the
intangible air, with thousands of last,
fine, beautiful frettings and taperings;
rushed up into lofty slender piercings;
crowned itself,—but that comes after
and higher,—with holier presences.
We were where we could look across
the vast slope of the southerly roof.
These were "The Gardens," our guide
told us. The lovely creeping arches
ran down in rows from center to
eaves; the graceful buttresses sprang
across the angles; and everywhere,
along the parapet lines and over the
trefoiled mouldings, in light, ex-
quisite finials, flowers and
fruits blossomed and rounded
from the marble. In pairs,—a fruit
and a flower,—like the knops and the
flowers of the candlestick in the taber-
nacle, made after the pattern showed
Moses in the mount. Thousands of
them; making the Housetop a wilder-
ness of beauty; sloping up over side
roofs from the basis of the eave—pin-
nacles through central spires again to
the upper wall of the nave with its in
numerable fine pointed archings, its
windows glorious with color, its groov-
ing and flutings of close pilaster work,
frosty white in the sun. Saints and
preachers, and I know not who,
standing on the first pyramids, look
down into the busy world of every day;
warriors with spears, martyrs with
palms, are above and above, a multi-
tude we could not count. We were led
up into the great bell tower, and we
stood among the first forest of them;
we climbed again into the first balcony
of the great dedicatery spire, and a
higher crown of pinnacles, a higher
circle of saints, prophets, evangelists
were round us, face to face; we ascend-
ed again, and looked forth among
winged angels; once more, away up in
the narrowing circle, and golden stars
shone upon the tops of the minarets,
like the stars of the seven churches
that John saw in the heavens;
last of all we leaned against the marble
rail, carved still to minutest beauty in
quatrefoil and fret-work, three hun-
dred feet above the city, and seated
archangels drooped their wings above
our heads from over the gallery arches.
Beyond these the slender line of the
last and upmost shaft runs into the
air, and bearing the Cross and wearing
the Crown, the golden figure of Our
Lady rises in light—emblem that the
world uprears as the knight binds a
woman's colors to his lance, and takes
"God and my lady!" for his valor cry. In
this Cathedral of Milan I think I have
seen, once and first, all Cathedrals. I
I am that it is in the world."—

Mrs. A D. T. Whitney, in "Sights and
Insights."

The Golden Side.
There is many a rest on the road of life,
If we only would stop to take it;
And many a tone from the better land,
If the querulous heart would wake it.
To the sunny soul that is full of hope,
And whose beautiful trust ne'er faileth,
The grass is green and the flowers are bright,
Though the wintry storm prevaileth.

Better to weave in the web of life
A bright and golden filling,
And to do God's will with a ready heart,
And hands that are swift and willing,
Than to snap the delicate silver threads
Of our curious lives asunder;
And then Heav'n blame for the tangled ends,
And sit to grieve and wonder.

THE TWO MYSTERIES.
In the middle of the room, in its white coffin,
lay the dead child, a nephew of the post. Near
it, in a great chair, sat Walt Whitman, sur-
rounded by little ones, and holding a beautiful
little girl on his lap. The child looked curious-
ly at the spectacle of death and then inquiring-
ly into the old man's face. You don't know
what it is, do you, my dear?" said he, adding,
"We don't either.",
We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep
and still;
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so
pale and chill;
The lids that will not lift again, though we may
call and call:
The strange, white solitude of peace that set-
tles over all.
We know not what it means, dear, this desolate
heart pain;
This dread to take our daily way, and walk in
it again;
We know not to what other sphere the loved
who leave us go.
Not why we're left to wonder still; not why we
do not know.

But this we know: Our loved and dead, if they
should come this day—
Should come and ask us, What is life?" not
one of us could say.
Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be;
Yet oh, how sweet it is so us, this life we live
and see!

Then might they say—these vanished ones—and
blessed is the thought!
"So death is sweet to us, beloved! though we
may tell ye naught;
We may not tell it to the quick—this mystery of
death—
Ye may not tell us, if ye would, the mystery of
breath."

The child who enters life comes not with knowl-
edge or intent.
So those who enter death must go as little
children sent.
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is
overhead;
And as life is to the living, so death is to the
dead.
—Scribner for October.

TIRED MOTHERS.
A little elbow leans upon your knee—
Your tired knee that has so much to bear;
A child's dear eyes are looking lovingly
From underneath a thatch of tangled hair.
Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch
Of warm, moist fingers holding yours so tight!
You do not prize the blessing overmuch—
You are almost too tired to pray to-night.

But it is blessedness? A year ago
I did not see it as I do to-day—
We are all so dull and thankless, and to slow
To catch the sunshine till it slips away.
And now it seems surpassing strange to me
That while I wore the badge of motherhood
I did not kiss more oft and tenderly
The little child that brought me only good.

And if, some night, when you sit down to rest,
You miss the elbow from your tired knee;
This restless curly head from off your breast;
This lisping tongue that chatters, constantly;
If from your own the dimpled hands had slip-
ped,
And ne'er would nestle in your palm again,
If the white feet into the grave had tripped—
I could not blame you for your heart-ache
then.

I wonder so that mothers ever fret
At their little children clinging to their gown;
Or that, the footprints, when the days are wet,
Are ever black enough to make them frown.
If I could find a little muddy boot,
Or cap, or jacket, on my chamber floor—
If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot,
And hear it patter in my house once more.

If I could mend a broken cart, to-day,
To-morrow make a kite to reach the sky—
There is no woman in God's world could say
She was more blissfully content than I!
But, ah, the dainty pillow next my own
Is never rumpled by a shining head;
My singing birdling from its nest has flown—
The little boy I used to kiss—is dead.