lectual exertion! the triumph of mind! What a proud testimony does it bear to the character of our nation, that it is able to make a proper estimate of services like these! That while, in other countries, the senseless mob fall down in stupid admiration, before the bloody wheels of the conqueror even of the conqueror by accident-in this, our people rise, with one accord, to pay their homage to intellect and virtue! What a cheering pledge does it give of the stability of our institutions, that while abroad, the yet benighted multitude are prostrating themselves before the idols, which their own hands have fashioned into kings, here, in this land of the free, our people are every where starting up, with one impulse, to follow with their acclamations the ascending spirits of the great fathers of the republic! This is a spectacle of which we may be permitted to be proud. It honors our country no less than the illustrious dead. And could these great patriots speak to us from the tomb, they would tell us that they have more pleasure in the testimony, which these honors bear to the character of their country, than in that, which they bear to their individual services. They now see as they were seen, while in the body, and know the nature of the feeling from which these honors flow. It is love for love. It is the gratitude of an enlightened nation to the noblest order of benefactors. It is the only glory worth the aspiration of a generous spirit. Who would not prefer this living tomb in the hearts of his countrymen, to the proudest mausoleum that the genius of sculpture could erect! Jefferson and Adams were great men by nature. Not great and eccentric minds, 'shot madly from their spheres,' to affright the world and scatter pestilence in their course, but minds whose strong and steady lights, restrained within their proper orbits by the happy poise of their characters, came to cheer and gladden a world that had been buried for ages in political night. They were heaven-called avengers of degraded man. They came to lift him to the station for which God had formed him, and to put to flight those idiot superstitions, with which tyrants had contrived to inthral his reason and his liberty. And that Being, who had sent them upon this mission, had fitted them, preeminently, for his glorious work. He filled their hearts with a love of country which burned strong within them, even in death. He gave them a power of understanding which no sophistry could baffle, no art elude; and a moral heroism which no dangers could appal. Careless of themselves, reckless of all personal consequences, trampling under foot that petty ambition of office and honor, which constitutes the master-passion of little minds, they bent all their mighty powers to the task for which they had been delegated—the freedom of their beloved country, and the restoration of fallen man. They felt that they were apostles of human liberty; and well did they fulfil their high commission. They rested not till they had accomplished their work at home, and given such an impulse to the great ocean of mind, that they saw the waves rolling on the farthest shore, before they were called to their reward. And then left the world, hand in hand, exulting, as they rose, in the success of their labors. LESSON CVII. Incomprehensibility of God.-MISS TOWNSEND. WHERE art thou?-THOU! Source and Support of all That is or seen or felt; Thyself unseen, Unfelt, unknown,-alas! unknowable! I look abroad among thy works-the sky, (If such, perchance, were mine) did they behold Thee? And next interrogate futurity So fondly tenanted with better things Than e'er experience owned-but both are mute; So full of memories and phantasies, Are deaf and speechless here! Fatigued, I turn And close mine eyes, and bid the thought turn inward From each material thing, its anxious guest, If, in the stillness of the waiting soul, He may vouchsafe himself-Spirit to spirit! Which soon or late must come. Who would not dare to die? For light like this Peace, my proud aim, And hush the wish that knows not what it asks. Await His will, who hath appointed this, With every other trial. Be that will Done now, as ever. For thy curious search, And unprepared solicitude to gaze On Him-the Unrevealed-learn hence, instead, E'en to the perfecting thyself-thy kind- LESSON CVIII. The Ruins of Babylon.-HUSENbeth. She of the brazen gates and loftiest towers Here was her throne:-Alas! how desert now, Come and contemplate! come and read the fate Of fallen Babel, on her sepulchre! Here are a thousand hillocks, where there stood, Here are long mounds of ruin, stretching on The strong huge walls, that once defied her foes, Such now is Babylon! A dwelling-place Serpents, and creeping things, and reptiles, now But still, amid these lone and awful wrecks, The great Euphrates-monarch of the streams, Unhurt, unchanged by all the woes poured out His banks are hoary with the whistling reeds, And these are all that tell of Babylon! The foot of man hath rarely trodden there, Of her, whose crimes had mounted up to heaven, Shall the Arabian's tent be fastened there: They that pass by shall hiss at all her plagues, Among the nations!"...None shall build her up; LESSON CIX. Darkness-A Dream.-BYRON. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came, and went-and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread |