Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/245

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 The clouds are rosy above her, The trees catch the hue of the sky, Where they bend to the distant gable All a-glow with an amethyst dye.

A noise at the garden wicket, A heavier step on the ground; Two voices talking in whispers, And one has a deeper sound.

Two figures framed in the window, Blurr’d in with the leaves and sky; The breeze from the grave of the daylight Coming up with an ominous sigh.

The black trees mourn o’er the gable, The mists steam up from the dell; Of two, that are framed in the window, There’s one that loves far too well.



is very curious to observe the opinions of a former age in respect of novelties which have been matured and perfectionated—suffered to take root and yield, their fruits only in our own. Montesquieu confessed himself decidedly opposed to all mechanical contrivances, on the ground of their pernicious action upon the manual industry of skilled labour. In a work written by Lancellotti in 1636, there is mention made of a certain genius who constructed a loom, by which haberdashery was so immensely multiplied that the municipal council of Dantzic took fright lest the heads of the citizens should get crushed by cogs and levers, and the hands of their artizans be tied and fettered with the ribbons of an automaton. The sentence which, in virtue of this decision, was pronounced against the artist, was death; a just