To impious use-by process indirect,

Declares his due, while he makes known his need.
This sacred right is fruitlessly announced,
This universal plea in vain addressed,
To eyes and ears of parents, who themselves
Did, in the time of their necessity,

Urge it in vain; and, therefore, like a prayer
That from the humblest floor ascends to heaven,
It mounts to reach the State's parental ear;
Who, if indeed she own a mother's heart,
And be not most unfeelingly devoid
Of gratitude to Providence, will grant
The unquestionable good.

The discipline of slavery is unknown
Amongst us, hence the more do we require
The discipline of virtue :-order else
Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace.
Thus, duties rising out of good possessed,
And prudent caution needful to avert
Impending evil, do alike require
That permanent provision should be made
For the whole people to be taught and trained :—
So shall licentiousness and black resolve

Be rooted out, and virtuous habits take
Their place; and genuine piety descend,
Like an inheritance, from age to age.

LESSON CLI.

An Evening in the Grave-yard.-AMERICAN WATCHMAN. THE moon is up, the evening star

Shines lovely from its home of blueThe fox-howl's heard on the fell afar,

And the earth is robed in a sombre hue; From the shores of light the beams come down, On the river's breast, and cold grave stone.

The kindling fires o'er heaven so bright,
Look sweetly out from yon azure sea;
While the glittering pearls of the dewy night,
Seem trying to mimick their brilliancy;
Yet all those charms no joy can bring
To the dead, in the cold grave slumbering.

To numbers wild, yet sweet withal,

Should the harp be struck o'er the sleepy pillow; Soft as the murmuring, breezy fall,

Of sighing winds on the foamy billow; For who would disturb in their silent bed, The fancied dreams of the lowly dead?

Oh! is there one in this world can say,
That the soul exists not after death!

That the powers which illumine this mould of clay,
Are but a puff of common breath!
Oh! come this night to the grave and see
The sleepy sloth of your destiny.

The night's soft voice, in breathings low,

Imparts a calm to the breast of the weeper:
The water's dash and murmuring flow

No more will sooth the ear of the sleeper,
Till he, who slept on Judah's plains,
Shall burst death's cold and icy chains.

I've seen the moon gild the mountain's brow;

I've watch'd the mist o'er the river stealing, But ne'er did I feel in my breast till now,

So deep, so calm, and so holy a feeling: "Tis soft as the thrill which memory throws Athwart the soul in the hour of repose.

Thou Father of all! in the worlds of light,
Fain would my spirit aspire to thee;
And thro' the scenes of this gentle night,
Behold the dawn of eternity:

For this is the path, which thou hast given,
The only path to the bliss of Heaven,

LESSON CLH.

A natural mirror.-WORDSWORTH.

BEHOLD, the shades of afternoon have fallen
Upon this flowery slope; and see-beyond-
The lake, though bright, is of a placid blue; -
As if preparing for the peace of evening.
How temptingly the landscape shines!-The air

Breathes invitation; easy is the walk

To the lake's margin, where a boat lies moored
Beneath her sheltering tree.-—

*

*

*

*

Forth we went,
And down the valley, on the streamlet's bank,
Pursued our way, a broken company,
Mute or conversing, single or in pairs.-
Thus having reached a bridge that overarched
The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalmed
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A two-fold image ;-on the grassy bank
A snow-white ram, and, in the crystal flood,
Another and the same!-Most beautiful,
On the green turf, with his imperial front
Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,
The breathing creature stood; as beautiful
Beneath him showed his shadowy counterpart.
Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,
And each seemed centre of his own fair world
Antipodes unconscious of each other,
Yet, in partition, with their several spheres,
Blended in perfect stillness, to our sight!
Ah! what a pity were it to disperse,
Or to disturb so fair a spectacle;
And yet a breath can do it.-

LESSON CLIII.

Burial places near Constantinople.—ANASTASIUS.

A DENSE and motionless cloud of stagnant vapours ever shrouds these dreary realms. From afar a chilling sensation informs the traveller that he approaches their dark and dismal precincts; and as he enters them, an icy blast, rising from their inmost bosom, rushes forth to meet his breath, suddenly strikes his chest, and seems to oppose his progress. His very horse snuffs up the deadly effluvia with signs of manifest terrour, and, exhaling a cold and clammy sweat, advances reluctantly over a hollow ground, which shakes as he treads it, and loudly re-echoes his slow and fearful step.

So long and so busily has time been at work to fill this chosen spot, so repeatedly has Constantinople poured into this ultimate receptacle almost its whole contents, that the capital of the living, spite of its immense population, scarce counts a single breathing inhabitant for every ten silent inmates of this city of the dead. Already do its fields of blooming sepulchres stretch far away on every side, across the brow of the hills and the bend of the valleys; already are the avenues which cross each other at every step in this domain of death so lengthened, that the weary stranger, from whatever point he comes, still finds before him many a dreary mile of road between marshalled tombs and mournful cypresses, ere he reaches his journey's seemingly receding end; and yet, every year does this common patrimony of all the heirs to decay still exhibit a rapidly increasing size, a fresh and wider line of boundary, and a new belt of young plantations, growing up between new flower-beds of graves.

As I hurried on through this awful repository, the pale far-stretching monumental ranges rose in sight, and again receded rapidly from my view in such unceasing succession, that at last I fancied some spell possessed my soul, some fascination kept locked my senses; and I therefore still increased my speed, as if only on quitting these melancholy abodes I could hope to shake off my waking delusion. Nor was it until, near the verge of the funereal forest through which I had been pacing for a full hour, a brighter light again gleamed athwart the ghost-like trees, that I stopped to look round, and to take a more leisurely survey of the ground which I had traversed.

"There," said I to myself, "lie, scarce one foot beneath the surface of a swelling soil, ready to burst at every point with its festering contents, more than half the generations whom death has continued to mow down for near four centuries in the vast capital of Islamism. There lie, side by side, on the same level, in cells the size of their bodies, and only distinguished by a marble turban somewhat longer or deeper, somewhat rounder or squarer,-personages in life far as heaven and earth asunder, in birth, in station, in gifts of nature, and in long-laboured acquirements. There lie, sunk alike in their last sleep,-alike food for the worm that lives on death-the conqueror who filled the universe with his name, and the peasant scarce known in his own hamlet; Sultan Mahmoud, and Sultan Mahmoud's perhaps more de

A

serving horse; elders bending under the weight of years, and infants of a single hour; men with intellects of angels, and men with understandings inferiour to those of brutes; the beauty of Georgia, and the black of Sennaar; Visiers, beggars, heroes, and women.

There, perhaps, mingle their insensible dust the corrupt judge and the innocent he condemned, the murdered man and his murderer, the master and his meanest slave. There vile insects consume the hand of the artist, the brain of the philosopher, the eye which sparkled with celestial fire, and the lip from which flowed irresistible eloquence. All the soil pressed by me for the last two hours, was once animated like myself; all the mould which now clings to my feet, once formed limbs and features similar to my own. Like myself, all this black unseemly dust once thought, and willed, and moved! And I, creature of clay like those here cast around; I, who travel through life as I do on this road, with the remains of past generations strewed* along my trembling path; I, whether my journey last a few hours more or less, must still, like those here deposited, shortly rejoin the silent tenants of some cluster of tombs, be stretched out by the side of some already sleeping corpse, and while time continues its course, have all my hopes and fears all my faculties and prospects-laid at rest on a couch of clammy earth.

LESSON CLIV.

Thoughts on Letter-writing.-BLACKWOOD'S ED. MAGAZINE.

人

EPISTOLARY as well as personal intercourse is, according to the mode in which it is carried on, one of the pleasantest or most irksome things in the world. It is delightful to drop in on a friend without the solemn preludet of invitation and acceptance-to join a social circle, where we may suffer our minds and hearts to relax and expand in the happy consciousness of perfect security from invidious remark and carping criticism; where we may give the reins to the sportiveness of innocent fancy, or the enthusiasm of warm-hearted feeling; where we may talk sense or nonsense, (I pity people who cannot talk nonsense,) without fear of being looked + Pron. prěl'ude.

*Pron. strowed.