The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 | Page 4

and sighed: 'Ah, me! That I the Judge's bride might be!
"'He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine.
"'My father should wear a broad-cloth coat: My brother should sail a painted boat.'
"'I'd dress my mother so grand and gay, And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"'And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor. And all should bless me who left our door.
"The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud M��ller standing still.
"'A form more fair, a face more sweet, Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"'And her modest answer and graceful air, Show her wise and good as she is fair.
"'Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her a harvester of hay.'"
--_Whittier's Maud M��ller._

THE ALDINE.
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_AT NEWPORT._
I stand beside the sea once more; Its measured murmur comes to me; The breeze is low upon the shore, And low upon the purple sea.
Across the bay the flat sand sweeps, To where the helm��d light-house stands Upon his post, and vigil keeps, Far seaward marshaling all the lands.
The hollow surges rise and fall, The ships steal up the quiet bay; I scarcely hear or see at all, My thoughts are flown so far away.
They follow on yon sea-bird's track. Beyond the beacon's crystal dome; They will not falter, nor come back, Until they find my darkened home.
Ah, woe is me! 'tis scarce a year Since, gazing o'er this moaning main, My thoughts flew home without a fear. And with content returned again.
To-day, alas! the fancies dark That from my laden bosom flew, Returning, came into the ark, Not with the olive, with the yew.
The ships draw slowly towards the strand, The watchers' hearts with hope beat high; But ne'er again wilt thou touch land-- Lost, lost in yonder sapphire sky!
--_Geo. H. Boker._

_MILLERISM._
Toward the close of the last century there was born in New England one William Miller, whose life, until he was past fifty, was the life of the average American of his time. He drank, we suppose, his share of New England rum, when a young man; married a comely Yankee girl, and reared a family of chubby-cheeked children; went about his business, whatever it was, on week days, and when Sunday came, went to meeting with commendable regularity. He certainly read the Old Testament, especially the Book of Daniel, and of the New Testament at least the Book of Revelation. Like many a wiser man before him, he was troubled at what he read, filled as it was with mystical numbers and strange beasts, and he sought to understand it, and to apply it to the days in which he lived. He made the discovery that the world was to be destroyed in 1843, and went to and fro in the land preaching that comfortable doctrine. He had many followers--as many as fifty thousand, it is said, who thought they were prepared for the end of all things; some going so far as to lay in a large stock of ascension robes. Though no writer himself, he was the cause of a great deal of writing on the part of others, who flooded the land with a special and curious literature--the literature of Millerism. It is not of that, however, that we would speak now.
But before this Miller arose--we proceed to say, if only to show that we are familiar with other members of the family--there was another, and very different Miller, who was born in old England, about one hundred years earlier than our sadly, or gladly, mistaken Second Adventist. His Christian name was Joseph, and he was an actor of repute, celebrated for his excellence in some of the comedies of Congreve. The characters which he played may have been comic ones, but he was a serious man. Indeed, his gravity was so well known in his lifetime that it was reckoned the height of wit, when he was dead, to father off upon him a Jest Book! This joke, bad as it was, was better than any joke in the book. It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years every little bon mot was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, the puniest youngest brat of them being christened "Old Joe."
After Joseph Miller had become what Mercutio calls "a grave man," his descendants went into literature largely, as any one may see by turning to Allibone's very voluminous dictionary, where upwards of seventy of the name are immortalized, the most noted of whom are Thomas Miller, basket-maker and poet, and Hugh Miller, the learned stone-mason of Cromarty, whose many works, we confess with