Ask you what provocation I have had ?-
The strong antipathy of good to bad.
When Truth or Virtue an affront endures,
The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours :
Mine, as a foe professed to false pretence,
Who thinks a coxcomb's honor like his sense ;
Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind;
And mine as man who feel for all mankind.

F. You're strangely proud-P. So proud, I am no slave:
So impudent, I own myself no knave :
So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave.
Yes, I am proud : I must be proud, to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touched, and shamed by ridicule alone.
O, sacred weapon ! left for Truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!
Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal;
To rouse the watchmen of the public weal,
To Virtue's work provoke the tardy hall,
And goad the prěl’ate slumbering in his stall.

LESSON CLXXIX.
Dialogue between Prince Edward and his Keeper.-Miss

BALLLIE.
Ed. What brings thee now ? it surely cannot be
The time of food: my prison hours are wont
To fly more heavily.

Keep. It is not food : I bring wherewith, my lord,
To stop a rent in these old walls, that oft
Hath grieved me, when I've thought of you o’nights ;
Through it the cold wind visits you.

Ed. And let it enter ! it shall not be stopped.
Who visits me besides the winds of heaven?
Who mourns with me but the sad-sighing wind ?
Who bringeth to mine ear the mimic'd tones
Of voices once beloved and sounds long past,
But the light-winged and many voiced wind ?
Who fans the prisoner's lean and fevered cheek
As kindly as the monarch's wreathed brows,
But the free piteous wind ?
I will not have it stopped.

Keep. My lord, the winter now creeps on apace.
Hoar frost this morning on our sheltered fields
Lay thick, and glănced to the up-risen sun,
Which scarce had power to melt it.

Ed. Glanced to the up-risen sun! Ay, such fair morns,
When every bush doth put its glory on,
Like a gemmed bride! your rustics now
And early hinds, will set their clouted feet

Through silver webs, so bright and finely wrought
As royal dames ne'er fashioned, yet plod on
Their careless way, unheeding.
Alas, how many glorious things there be
To look upon! Wear not the forests, now,
Their latest coat of richly varied dyes ?

Keep. Yes, good my lord, the cold chill year advănces, Therefore I pray you, let me close that wall.

Ed. I tell thee no, man; if the north air bites, Bring me a cloak. Where is thy dog to-day?

Keep. Indeed I wonder that he came not with me As he is wont. Ed. Bring him, I pray thee, when thou comest again, his tail, and looks

up

face With the assured kindness of one Who has not injured me.

He wags

to my

LESSON CLXXX.

A Summer Evening Meditation.—MRS. BARBAULD. 'Tis past! The sultry tyrant of the south Has spent his short-lived rage; more grateful hours Move silent on; the skies no more repel The dazzled sight, but with mild maiden beams Of tempered lustre, court the cherished eye To wander o'er their sphere; where, hung aloft, Dian's bright crescent, like a silver low, New strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns, Impatient for the night, and seems to push Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood Of sostened radiance from her dewy locks. The shadows spread apace; while meeked-eyed Eve, Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires

Through the Hesperian gardens of the west,
And shuts the gates of day. 'Tis now the hour
When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts,
The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth
Of unpierced woods, where wrapt in solid shade
She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,
And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun,
Moves forward ; and with radiant finger points
To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine,
Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven
Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ēther
One boundless blaze ; ten thousand trembling fires,
And dăncing lustres, where the unsteady eye,
Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined
O'er all this field of glories ; spacious field,
And worthy of the Master; he, whose hand
With hieroglyphics older than the Nile
Inscribed the mystic tablet; hung on high
To public gaze, and said, Adore, O man!
The finger of thy God!
How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise !
But are they silent all ? or is there not
A tongue in every star, that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise? or wooes in vain :
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour, the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine,
Which must burn on for ages, when the sun
(Fair transitory creature of a day !)
Has closed his golden eye, and, wrapt in shades,
Forgets his wonted journey through the east.

Seized in thought,
On fancy's wild and roving wing I sail,
From the

Sits like an exiled monarch : fearless thence
I launch into the trackless deeps of space,
Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear,
Of elder beam, which ask no leave to shine,
Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light
From the proud regent of our scanty day-
Sons of the morning, first-born of creation,
And only less than He who marks their track
And guides their fiery wheels.
But O thou mighty Mind ! whose powerful word
Said, Thus let all things be, and thus they were,
Where shall I seek thy presence ? how, unblamed,
Invoke thy dread perfection?
Have the broad eye-lids of the morn beheld thee?
Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion
Support thy throne ? Oh! look with pity down
On erring, guilty man; not in thy names
Of terror clad ; not with those thunders armed
That conscious Sinai felt, when fear appalled
The scattered tribes : thou hast a gentler voice,
That whispers comfort to the swelling heart,
Abashed, yet longing to behold her Maker.
But now my soul, unused to stretch her powers
In flight so daring, drops her weary wing,
And seeks again the known accustomed spot,
Drest up with sun, and shade, and lawns, and streams,
A mansion fair and spacious for its guest,
And all replete with wonders.. Let me here,
Content and grateful, wait the appointed time,
And ripen for the skies : the hour will come,
When all these splendors bursting on my sight
Shall stand unveiled, and to my ravished sense
Unlock the glories of the world unknown.

LESSON CLXXXI.

The blind Preacher : Extract

from a Letter of the British Spy.-WIRT.

RICHMOND, OCTOBER 10, 1803. I HAVE been, my dear S... on an excursion through the counties which lie along the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. A general description of that country and its inhabitants may form the subject of a future letter. For the present, I must entertain you with an account of a most singular and interesting adventure, which I met with, in the course of the tour.

It was one Sunday, as I travelled through the county of Orange, that my eye was caught by a cluster of horses tied near a ruinous, old, wooden house, in the forest, not far from the road side. Having frequently seen such objects before, in travelling through these states, I had no difficulty in understanding that this was a place of religious worship.

Devotion alone should have stopped me, to join in the duties of the congregation; but I must confess, that curiosity, to hear the preacher of such a wilderness, was not the least of my motives. On entering, I was struck with his preternatural appearance. He was a tall and very spare old man ; his head, which was covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and his voice, were all shaking under the influence of a palsy; and a few moments ascertained to me that he was perfectly blind.

The first emotions which touched my breast, were those of mingled pity and veneration. But how soon were all my feelings changed ! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees, than were the lips of this holy man! It was a day of the administration of the săcrament; and his subject, of course, was the passion of our Savior. I had heard the subject handled a thousand times : I had thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose, that in the wild woods of America, I was to meet with a man whose eloquence would give to this topic a new and more sublime pathos, than I had ever before witnessed.

As he descended from the pulpit, to distrib’ute the mystic symbols, there was a peculiar, a more than human solemnity in his air and manner, which made my blood run cold, and

my

whole frame shiver. He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Savior ; his trial before Pilate ; his ascent up Calvary; his crucifixion; and his death. I knew the whole history ; but never, until then, had I heard the circumstances so selected, so arrānged, so colored! It was all new: and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in life. His enunciation was so deliberate, that his voice trembled on every syllable ; and every heart in the assembly trembled in uni

His peculiar phrases had thal force of description,

my