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efforts; all real genius, all true originality, all lofty poetry, all powerful writing and speaking, consist in these, and in nothing else. And the young man,-the professional man, let us say, in particular,-who spends much of his time in reading Reviews and Romances, and abhors every severe task, though he may be a respectable man, can never be much more, be his talents what they may.

LESSON CXXIV.

Horrors of War.-CHALMERS.

THE first great obstacle, to the extinction of war, is the way in which the heart of man is carried off from its barbarities and its horrors, by the splendor of its deceitful accompaniments. There is a feeling of the sublime in contemplating the shock of armies, just as there is in contemplating the devouring energy of a tempest, and this so elevates and engrosses the whole man, that his eye is blind to the tears of bereaved parents, and his ear is deaf to the piteous moan of the dying, and the shriek of their desolated families.

There is a gracefulness in the picture of a youthful warrior burning for distinction on the field, and lured by this generous aspiration to the deepest of the animated throng, where, in the fell work of death, the opposing sons of valor struggle for a remembrance and a name; and this side of the picture is so much the exclusive object of our regard, as to disguise from our view the mangled carcasses of the fallen, and the writhing agonies of the hundreds and the hundreds more, who have been laid on the cold ground, where they are left to languish and to die.

There no eye pities them. No sister is there to weep over them. There no gentle hand is present to ease the dying posture, or bind up the wounds, which, in the maddening fury of the combat, have been given and received by the children of one common father. There death spreads its pale ensigns over every countenance, and when night comes on, and darkness gathers around them, how many a despairing wretch must take up with the bloody field as the untended bed of his last sufferings, without one friend to bear the message of tenderness to his distant home-without one companion to close his eyes.

I avow it. On every side of me I see causes at work, which go to spread a most delusive coloring over war, and to remove its shocking barbarities to the back ground of our contemplations altogether. I see it in the history which tells me of the superb appearance of the troops, and the brilliancy of their successive charges. I see it in the poetry which lends the magic of its numbers to the narrative of blood, and transports its many admirers, as by its images, and its figures, and its nodding plumes of chivalry, it throws its treacherous embellishments over a scene of legalized slaughter.

I see it in the music which represents the progress of the battle; and where, after being inspired by the trumpet-notes of preparation, the whole beauty and tenderness of a drawingroom are seen to bend over the sentimental entertainment; nor do I hear the utterance of a single sigh to interrupt the death-tones of the thickening contest, and the moans of the wounded men as they fade away upon the ear, and sink into lifeless silence.

All, all goes to prove what strange and half-sighted creatures we are. Were it not so, war could never have been seen in any other aspect than that of unmingled hatefulness; and I can look to nothing but to the progress of christian sentiment upon earth, to arrest the strong current of its popular and prevailing partiality for war.

Then only will an imperious sense of duty lay the check of severe principle, on all the subordinate tastes and faculties of our nature. Then will glory be reduced to its right estimate, and the wakeful benevolence of the gospel, chasing away every spell, will be turned by the treachery of no delusion whatever, from its simple but sublime enterprises for the good of the species. Then the reign of truth and quietness will be ushered into the world, and war, cruel, atrocious, unrelenting war, will be stripped of its many and its bewildering fascinations,

LESSON CXXV.

The Effect of Prosperity on the Manners of the Athenians.— GILLIES.

IN the course of a few years, the success of Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles had trebled the revenues, and increased, in a far greater proportion, the dominions of the republic.

While Pericles liberally employed the public treasure to encourage every species of industry, he found it necessary at least to comply with, if not to excite, the extreme passion for pleasure, which then began to distinguish his countrymen. The people of Athens, successful in every enterprise against their foreign as well as domestic enemies, seemed entitled to reap the fruits of their dangers and victories. For the space of at least twelve years preceding the war of Peloponnesus, their city afforded a perpetual scene of triumph and festivity.

Dramatic entertainments, to which they were passionately addicted, were no longer performed in slight unadorned edifices, but in stone or marble theatres, erected at great expense, and embellished with the most precious productions of nature and of art. The treasury was opened not only to supply the decorations of this favorite amusement, but to enable the poorer citizens to enjoy it, without incurring any private expense; and thus, at the cost of the state, or rather of its tributary allies and colonies, to feast and delight their ears and fancy, with the combined charms of music and poetry.

The pleasure of the eye was peculiarly consulted and gratified, in the architecture of the theatres and other ornamental buildings; for as Themistocles had strengthened, Pericles adorned, his native city; and unless we had the concurring testimony of antiquity, as well as the immortal remains of the Parthenon, or temple of Minerva, which still excite the admiration of travellers, it would be difficult to believe that, in the space of a few years, there could have been created those inestimable wonders of art, those innumerable temples, theatres, statues, altars, baths, and porticos, which, in the language of ancient panegyric, rendered Athens the eye and light of Greece.

Pericles was blamed for thus decking one favorite city, at the expense of plundered provinces; but it would have been fortunate for the Athenians, if their extorted wealth had not been employed in more perishing, as well as more criminal, luxury. The pomp of religious solemnities, which were twice as numerous and as costly in Athens as in any other city of Greece: the extravagance of entertainments and banquets, which on such occasions always followed the sacrifices; the increase of private luxury, which naturally accompanied this public profusion, exhausted the resources, without augmenting the glory, of the republic.

Instead of the bread, herbs, and simple fare recommended by the laws of Solon, the Athenians, soon after the eightieth Olympiad, availed themselves of their extensive commerce, to import the delicacies of distant countries, which were prepared with all the refinements of cookery. The wines of Cyprus were cooled with snow in summer; in winter the most delightful flowers adorned the tables and persons of the wealthy Athenians. Nor was it sufficient to be crowned with roses, unless they were likewise anointed with the most precious perfumes. Parasites, dancers, and buffoons, were an usual appendage of every entertainment.

Among the softer sex, the passion for delicate birds, distinguished by their voice or plumage, was carried to such excess as merited the name of madness. It is unnecessary to crowd the picture, since it may be observed, in one word, that the vices and extravagances, which are supposed to characterize the declining ages of Greece and Rome, took root in Athens, during the administration of Pericles, the most splendid and most prosperous in the Grecian annals.

This paradox, for such it must appear, may be explained by considering the singular combination of circumstances, which, in the time of that statesman, gave every poison its antidote, and rendered the partial evils already described, only the thorn that ever accompanies the rose. The Grecian history of those times affords a more striking contrast than ever appeared in any other age or country, of wisdom and folly, of magnanimity and meanness, of liberty and tyranny, of simplicity and refinement, of austerity and voluptuousness.

The sublime philosophy of Anaxagoras and Socrates was accompanied, as with a shadow, by the dark unprincipled captiousness of the Sophists; the pathetic and moral strains of Sophocles and Euripides were parodied by the licentious buffoonery of Aristophanes; painting and sculpture, which, under geniuses of the first order, like Phidias, served as handmaids to religion and virtue, degenerated, under inferior artists, into mean hirelings of vice and disorder; and the simple frugality of manners, which commonly prevailed in private families, even of the first distinction, was contrasted with the extravagant dissipation of public entertainments and festivals.

LESSON CXXVI.

Time.-WHITE.

WHERE are the heroes of the ages past?
Where the brave chieftains, where the mighty ones
Who flourished in the infancy of days?
All to the grave gone down.

On their fallen fame

Exultant, mocking at the pride of man,

Sits grim Forgetfulness. The warrior's arm
Lies nerveless on the pillow of its shame;

Hushed is the stormy voice, and quenched the blaze
Of his red eyeball.-Yesterday his name

Was mighty on the earth. To-day—'t is what?
The meteor of the night of distant years,
That flashed unnoticed, save by wrinkled eld,
Musing at midnight upon prophecies,
Who at her lonely lattice saw the gleam
Point to the mist-poised shroud, then quietly
Closed her pale lips, and locked the secret up,
Safe in the charnel's treasures.

O how weak
Is mortal man! how trifling-how confined
His scope of vision! Puffed with confidence,
His phrase grows big with immortality,
And he, poor insect of a summer's day!
Dreams of eternal honors to his name;
Of endless glory and perennial bays.
He idly reasons of eternity,

As of the train of ages,-when, alas!
Ten thousand thousand of his centuries
Are, in comparison, a little point

Too trivial for account.-O, it is strange,
'Tis passing strange, to mark his fallacies;
Behold him proudly view some pompous pile,
Whose high dome swells to emulate the skies,
And smile, and say, My name shall live with this
Till Time shall be no more; while at his feet,
Yea, at his very feet, the crumbling dust,
Of the fallen fabric of the other day

Preaches the solemn lesson.-He should know
That Time must conquer; that the loudest blast

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