Oh! that this lovely vale were mine-
Then from glad youth to calm decline,

My years would gently glide ;
Hope would rejoice in endless dreams,
And Memory's oft-returning gleams

By peace be sanctified.

There would unto my soul be given,
From presence of that gracious Heaven,

A piety sublime;
And thoughts would come of mystic mood,
To make, in this deep solitude,

Eternity of Time!

The
young

Herdsman.-WORDSWORTH.
From early childhood, even, as hath been said,
From his sixth year, he had been sent abroad
In summer to tend herds: such was his task
Thenceforward till the latter day of youth.
0, then, what soul was his, when on the tops
Of the high mountains, he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light! He looked-
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth,
And ocean's liquid mass beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces did he read

Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank
The spectacle; sensation, soul, and form,
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live ; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed; he proffered no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him ;-it was blessedness and love!

A Herdsman, on the lonely mountain tops Such intercourse was his; and in this sort Was his existence oftentimes possessed. Oh, then, how beautiful, how bright appeared The written pronrise! He had early learned To reverence the Volume which displays The mystery, the life that cannot die ; But in the mountains did he feel his faith ; There did he see the writing ;-all things there Breathed immortality, revolving life, And greatness still revolving ;-infinite! There littleness was not;—the least of things Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped Her prospects; nor did he believe,-he saw. What wonder if his being thus became Sublime and comprehensive ! low desires, Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude, Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind, And whence they flowed ;-and from them he acquired Wisdom which works through patience; thence he learned In many a calmer hour of sober thought, To look on nature with an humble heart, Self-questioned where he did not understand, And with a reverential eye of love.

LESSON CXXII.

The Shiproreck.—WILSON.

Her giant form
O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
Majestically calm, would go
Mid the deep darkness white as snow !
But gentler now the small waves glide
Like playful lambs o'er a mountain's side.
So stately her bearing, so proud her array,
The main she will traverse for ever and aye.
Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast!
-Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer ! this hour is her last.
Five hundred souls in one instant of dread
Are hurried o'er the deck;
And fast the miserable ship
Becomes a lifeless wreck.
Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock,
Her planks are torn asunder,
And down come her masts with a reeling shock,
And a hideous crash like thunder.
Her sails are draggled in the brine
That gladdened late the skies,
And her pendant that kissed the fair moonshine
Down many a fathom lies.
Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues
Gleamed softly from below,
And flung a warm and sunny

flush
O’er the wreaths of murmuring snow,
To the coral rocks are hurrying down,
To sleep amid colors as bright as their own.

Oh! many a dream was in the ship
An hour before her death;
And sights of home with sighs disturbed
The sleeper's long-drawn breath.
Instead of the murmur of the sea,
The sailor heard the humming tree,
Alive through all its leaves,
The hum of the spreading sycamore
That grows before his cottage-door,
And the swallow's song in the eaves.
His arms enclosed a blooming boy,
Who listened with tears of sorrow and joy

To the dangers his father had passed ;
And his wife—by turns she wept and smiled,
As she looked on the father of her child
Returned to her heart at last.

-He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll,
And the rush of waters is in his soul.
Astounded the reeling deck he paces,
Mid hurrying forms and ghastly faces ;-
The whole ship's crew are there.
Wailings around and overhead,
Brave spirits stupified or dead,
And madness and despair.
Now is the ocean's bosom bare,
Unbroken as the floating air ;
The ship hath melted quite away,
Like a struggling dream at break of day.
No image meets my wandering eye,
But the new-risen sun and the sunny sky.
Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapor dull
Bedims the waves so beautiful;
While a low and melancholy moan
Mourns for the glory chat hath flown.

LESSON CXXIII.

Dr. Slop and Obadiah, meeting.-STERNE. IMAGINE to yourself, a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Dr. Slop, of about four feet and a half, perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honor to a sergeant* in the horse-guards.

Such were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, which—if you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, (and if you have not, I wish you would ;)—you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred.

Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling through the diri. upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty color—but of strengthalack! scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.—They wero not. Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way.

Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.

Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate, splashing and plunging like a devil through thick and thin as he approached, would not such a phenomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis,--have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. Slop in his situation, than the worst of Whiston's comets ? -To say nothing of the nucleus ; that is, of Obadiah and the coach-horse. In my idea, the vortex alone of them was enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor's pony, quite away with it.

What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy Hall, and had approached within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden wall,—and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid, furious,-pop,-full upon him Nothing, I think, in nature can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter,--so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as Dr. Slop was !

What could Dr. Slop do ?- -he crossed himself- -Pugh! -but the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.-No matter; he had better have kept hold of the pommel.—He had so; nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip, and in attempting

to save his whip between his knee and his saddle's skirt, as it slipped, he lost his stirrup,—in losing which he lost his seat; and in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the by, shew what little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. So that without waiting for Obadiah's onset, he left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the style and manner of a pack of wool, and without any

other consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in the mire.

Obadiah pulled off his cap twice to Dr. Slop ;-once as he was falling, and then again when he saw him seated.-Illtimed complaisance Shad not the fellow better have stopped