LESSON CXIV.

Advantages of Adversity to our Forefathers.-E. EVERETT.

Ir is sad, indeed, to reflect on the disasters which the little band of pilgrims encountered; sad to see a portion of them, the prey of unrelenting cupidity, treacherously embarked in an unsound, unseaworthy ship, which they are soon obliged to abandon, and crowd themselves into one vessel; one hundred persons, besides the ship's company, in a vessel of one hundred and sixty tons. One is touched at the story of the long, cold, and weary autumnal passage; of the landing on the inhospitable rocks at this dismal season; where they are deserted, before long, by the ship which had brought them, and which seemed their only hold upon the world of fellow men, a prey to the elements and to want, and fearfully ignorant. of the numbers, the power, and the temper of the savage tribes, that filled the unexplored continent, upon whose verge they had ventured.

But all this wrought together for good. These trials of wandering and exile, of the ocean, the winter, the wilderness, and the savage foe, were the final assurances of success. It was these that put far away from our fathers' cause all patrician softness, all hereditary claims to preeminence. No effeminate nobility crowded into the dark and austere ranks of the pilgrims. No Carr nor Villiers would lead on the ill-provided band of despised Puritans. No well endowed clergy were on the alert to quit their cathedrals, and set up a pompous hierarchy in the frozen wilderness.

No craving governours were anxious to be sent over to our cheerless El Dorados of ice and of snow. No; they could not say they had encouraged, patronised, or helped the pilgrims; their own cares, their own labours, their own councils, their own blood, contrived all, achieved all, bore all, sealed all. They could not afterwards fairly pretend to reap where they had not strewn; and, as our fathers reared this broad and solid fabric with pains and watchfulness, unaided, barely tolerated, it did not fall when the favour, which had always been withholden,

was changed into wrath; when the arm, which had never supported, was raised to destroy.

Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now scantily supplied with provisions; crowded almost to suffocation in their illstored prison; delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route, and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves.

The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The labouring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats, with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth,-weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their ship-master for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore,-without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast ? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventurers of other times, and find the parallel of this.

Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children; was it hard labour and spare meals; was it disease; was it the tomahawk; was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise,

and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left beyond the sea; was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible, that, from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?

LESSON CXV.

Miseries of Book-Lending.-ANONYMOUS.

THE miseries of book-making, and of book-selling, and sometimes of book-buying, are well known, and frequently lamented; but those of book-lending are a source of sufferings perhaps equally severe; and the lamentations excited by them, though not loud, are deep. I will trespass upon the time and patience of you and your readers, to attend to a few only of the miseries endured upon this interesting subject.

Your friend begs the favour just to borrow a small volume, which you have, and he does not wish to buy himself. After having expected the return of it, at due intervals, for a space of time, which, without calculation, you know to be much beyond a year; and after feeling considerable terrours, least your emigrated duodecimo should have been naturalized in the library, or family school-room, where it has so long resided; to be reduced, at length, to the delicate and formidable task of constructing a hint at once so gentle as not to offend, and yet so broad as to bring back your book.-The foregoing hint given, but not taken.

An acquaintance, not remarkable for the powers of reminiscence, keeps your book time enough to alarm or incommode you. By not merely broad hints, but by explicit and repeated expositions of the state of the case, and of your wishes, you oblige him to recollect that he has in his possession a book which belongs, not to him, but to you; he

accordingly returns it, with many apologies for its having slipped his memory. You lend again, and it slips his memory again.

After many inquiries for a book which you had lent, you at last find, that it is lost. The person who borrowed it of you lent it to somebody else, he forgets who.

A set of books lent, and returned; one volume missing, for which the borrower apologizes most pathetically; he hopes, however, to find it. His hope is your

despair.

Your friend loves reading in bed; and your book, besides the various dislocations which it experiences in such an awkward situation, stands an enviable chance of receiving, and at length has the good fortune actually to receive, the whole overcharged contents of the snuffers; and although they are discharged, with the puff of an Eolus, from the open page to the bedside carpet, a wreck is left behind, which upon the reclosure of the volume, is ground to an impalpable powder; and, by some efforts of the finger to remove it, expanded into a jetty surface of considerable extent.

Another friend, who is likewise a borrower, is fond of accompanying his breakfast with reading, and your book comes in for that honour. A piece of hot roll, saturated with liquid butter, makes its transit in a line directly vertical to the expanded pages; and the reader, or eater, or rather both, meaning perhaps to give the book that unction which it does not itself possess, by a gentle pressure causes a few soft drops to distil in the passage; or the alternate apprehension of the oleaginous nutriment, and the necessary evolution of the leaves, produce a beautiful specimen of mottled transparency.

Your book, which is embellished with a variety of exquisite plates, is lent to a friend, who has a large family of children. A morning is appointed for viewing the pictures, and the mother with her family is placed in a semicircle round the table. As the object, in such a state of things, cannot be seen from precisely the same point of view by all, a little urchin, just big enough to do mischief, and not big enough to be under discipline, situated at one of the terminating points of the crescent, and eager to have under his own immediate inspection what all the rest are admiring, caring as little as he understands about the laws

of mechanics, makes a vigorous snatch at the unfolded plate, and attains his object, by getting it just in the situation he wished; but the ponderous quarto is left behind.

A set of splendid volumes, full of beautiful coloured engravings, and bound in morocco, sent by the coach to a friend; but packed with such strength and compactness, that they might be thrown over a house without injury; sent back again, by the same conveyance, with a slight, careless covering of brown paper, having travelled in very intimate neighbourhood with a parcel of red herrings, upon whose yielding substance they have been pressed by the superincumbent weight of a lid, well loaded with passengers, that would just shut. The saline moisture has communicated to the precious volumes a hue and a fragrance which they will never lose.

I would address myself to the borrowers, and earnestly recommend it to them, as they value the interests of learning, and their own credit, to inculeate upon themselves, with redoubled diligence, the duties of care and honesty ; and particularly to cultivate the faculty of memory; which they will find to be useful in many instances. It were likewise much to be wished, that they would employ one particular day in the year in a careful scrutiny of their library, that they may satisfy themselves whether or not there be any stray volume detained prisoner, for the return of which the owner is sighing or groaning, in hopeless despair. In that case, let it be instantly restored.

LESSON CXVI.

Dialogue on keeping Promises.-JUVENILE MISCELLANY.

Eliza. I do not wish to go out this morning, mother, it is so cold; would you not like to have me read to you? Mother. I should indeed like to hear you read; you know that always gives me pleasure. But, why do you think of going out?

Eliza. I promised Sarah Lee, that I would call for her to go and see widow Harris, who is quite ill and Sarah's mother told her she would send some nice things to her, if she would carry them. I suppose Sarah will