An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me-the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die-but see again
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth,
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Molder beneath them.

Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death-yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne,the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them;-and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still.

O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill
With all the waters of the firmament
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities,-who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strife and folly by?

Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

IF WE WOULD.

If we would but check the speaker,
When he spoils a neighbor's fame;
If we would but help the erring,
Ere we utter words of blame;
If we would, how many might we
Turn from paths of sin and shame!

Ah, the wrongs that might be righted,
If we would but see the way!

Ah, the pains that might be brightened,
Every hour and every day,

If we would but hear the pleadings
Of the hearts that go astray!

Let us step outside the stronghold
Of our selfishness and pride;
Let us lift our fainting brothers;
Let us strengthen ere we chide;
Let us, ere we blame the fallen,

Hold a light to cheer and guide.

Ah, how blessed!-ah, how blessed
Earth would be if we'd but try
Thus to aid and right the weaker,
Thus to check each brother's sigh;-

Thus to walk in duty's pathway
To our better life on high!

In each life, however lowly,
There are seeds of mighty good;
Still we shrink from souls appealing
With a timid "If we could,"-

But God, who judgeth all things,

Knows the truth is, "If we would."

RIP VAN WINKLE.-WASHINGTON IRVING.

(HIS RETURN AFTER THE LONG SLEEP IN THE MOUNTAINS.)

A troop

He had now entered the skirts of the village. of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors, -strange faces at the windows,-everything was strange.

His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains,—there ran the silver Hudson at a distance,—there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been. Rip was sorely perplexed. That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled my poor head sadly."

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay-the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A halfstarved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed. “My very dog,” sighed poor Rip, “has forgotten me!”

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolation overcame all his connubial fears-he called loudly for his wife and children-the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn-but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some

of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes;-all this was strange and incomprehensible.

He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in his hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, General Washington.

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling. disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, biliouslooking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens-electionsmembers of Congress-liberty-Bunker's Hill-heroes of Seventy-six and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip, with his long, grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern-politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "whether he was a Federal or Democrat?"

Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question;

when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and the left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded, in an austere tone," what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" "Alas! gentlemen,” cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!"

Here a general shout burst from the bystanders-"A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking. The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern.

"Well-who are they? name them."

Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, "Where's Nicholas Vedder?"

There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too."

"Where's Brom Dutcher?"

66

'Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point,others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Anthony's Nose. I don't know-he never came back again."

66

'Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?"

"He went off to the wars, too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress."

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such