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So is it also in the mind

That its own progeny entombeth :
Continual thoughts their passage find;
One goeth, and another cometh.

Thus, each thing points beyond the sky,
Where all delights salvation summeth;
Where this spring flows eternally,
And still-a more transporting cometh.

A FEW BRIEF YEARS.

(From "The Lake, and Poetic Musings.")

A FEW brief years, a few brief years,
And all the' anxieties and fears

That now thy soul with gloom o'erspread,
And like a bulrush bow thy head,

Afar, like morning mists, for ever shall have fled.

The sun shall shine as warm and gay
Upon our graves; the young, who play
Around us, shall possess this scene,

The heavens as blue, the earth as green :

And we have disappear'd, as though we ne'er had been!

Where, then, believer, shalt thou be?

With Christ in endless ecstasy !

And seeing, in his light made plain,

The' unsever'd links of mercy's chain,

Wilt own thy present fears of vainest things most vain.

And why not grasp this comfort now?
O! more above, by faith, live thou!
Faith that translates us to the sky,
Brings both the past and future nigh,

And the grand whole peruses, as with God's own eye.

Away, then, with each phantom care,
Wherewith the fiend thy mind would scare!
Know thou art safe: the' eternal love,

That lured thy heart, shall changeless prove,

Nor aught of suffering thee from God's own care remove.

Roche, Printer, 25, Hoxton-square, London.

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THE Mediterranean is a wonderful sea, and suggests to the mind a panorama rich in the most important historical associations. Advancing from westward, projecting between the coasts of France and Spain on the west, and Greece on the east, is Italy; and near the western shore of Italy stands Rome, the symbol of masculine grandeur and warlike power, conquest, and universal domination. A few miles from the sea, on the western coast of Greece, is Athens, the city of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and symbolizing the developement of human intellect, and the brilliant, though often artificial, splendour of human philosophy. Still advancing onward, on the north is Asia Minor, teeming with cities, wealth, and inhabitants, and symbolizing the dignity and power of human civilization. And to the south is Egypt, mother of nations, symbolizing the pomp of barbaric civilization, the commencement of human letters, and the potency of mechanical art, in the excavation of rudely magnificent temples in the solid rock, and the erection of vast monuments, massive as the rock itself, and seeming, in all the grandeur of strength, to defy the destroying energy of time. Arrived at the coast where this mighty inland sea terminates, only VOL. XI. Second Series.

C

forty miles from the coast, is Jerusalem, the holy city, symbol of divinely-revealed truth, with its hill of Zion, where once the great Sovereign of the universe had his palace in which he dwelt, his throne on which he sat; whence issued the laws which were to govern the world; and in whose immediate vicinity was offered the glorious sacrifice through which the world's redemption was to be effected. Rome, Athens, Egypt, and Jerusalem, all in one sea.

Athens itself, where the great experiment of human intellectual power was tried,-tried under the most favourable circumstances, by men whose souls towered in all the sublimity of thought, and were moved by the clearest perceptions of physical beauty and grace; and within reach, too, of the lessons which might have been learned in Judea where God was known, and not without the reflections of the light that shone there, and the fragments of the truths which there were familiar to all; an experiment which, while it accomplished much, utterly failed in that which was most important, most needed, -religious truth; and which, in one brief but pregnant declaration was expressed by St. Paul, "The world by wisdom knew not God;"-that Athens, whose very ruins attest her former splendour, and which teach, even to modern art, the proper expression of the grand and beautiful in proportion and form, stands in Attica, the southern territory of Greece, and which is surrounded by the sea, except on the north, where nature has fixed its strongly-marked boundary of mountains which stretch across from west to east, and from sea to sea.

If Egypt marks the first stages of human civilization, in splendid pomp, and shadowy yet massive grandeur, southern Greece marks its next stage, where intellect was more fully developed, and graceful elegance advanced and sustained its claims.

Of Attica, Athens was the capital. It was situated some four miles from the sea, and with the harbour on the coast was connected by a road, between strongly-fortified walls. This port, the Piræus, was the principal dockyard, and the harbour for trading-vessels.

The origin of the city is lost in remote antiquity. To the war of Troy, sung by Homer, Athens sent fifty vessels.

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