versity? Who knows not, that in the midst of joy and peace, the billows of affliction may all at once rise up, and roll in upon the soul?

There is nothing among the earthly works of God, which brings the feeling of eternity so powerfully to the soul, as does the 'wide, wide sea.' We look upon its waves, succeeding each other continually, one rising up as another vanishes, and we think of the generations of men, which lift up their heads for awhile, and then pass away, one after another, for all the noise and show they make, even as those restless and momentary waves. Thus ages and the waves come and go, appear and disappear, and the ocean and eternity remain the same, undecaying and unaffected, abiding in the unchanging integrity of their solemn existence.

We stand upon the solitary shore, and we hear the surges beat, uttering such grand, inimitable symphonies, as are fit for the audience of cliffs and skies; but our minds fly back through years and years, and ask, where are the myriads of men who have preceded us, in treading thereon? Alas, they are passed away! Scarcely a trace of them is left behind! And, where are the old kingdoms which were once washed by its waves? They have been changed and changed again, till a few ruins only tell where they stood. But the sea is all the same! Man can place no monuments upon it, with all his ambition and pride. It suffers not even a ruin to speak of his triumph or his existence.

EXERCISE CXLVII.

PEACE.-Thomson.

O, first of human blessings, and supreme!
Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou!
By whose wide tie, the kindred sons of men
Like brothers live, in amity combined,
And unsuspicious faith; while honest toil
Gives every joy, and to those joys a right
Which idle, barbarous rapine but usurps.
Pure is thy reign; when, unaccursed by blood,

Nought, save the sweetness of indulgent showers,
Trickling distils into the vernant glebe.

O Peace! thou source and soul of social life!
Beneath whose calm inspiring influence
Science his views enlarges, art refines,
And swelling commerce opens all her ports;
Blest be the man divine, who gives us thee!
Who bids the trumpet hush his horrid clang,
Nor blow the giddy nations into rage;

Who sheathes the murderous blade; the deadly gun
Into the well piled armory returns;

And, every vigor from the work of death,
To grateful industry converting, makes
The country flourish, and the city smile.
Of him the shepherd, in the peaceful dale,
Chants; and, the treasures of his labor sure,
The husbandman of him, as at the plough,
Or team, he toils. With him the sailor soothes,
Beneath the trembling moon, the midnight wave
And the full city, warm, from street to street,
And shop to shop, responsive, sings of him.
Nor joys one land alone; his praise extends
Far as the sun rolls his diffusive day;
Far as the breeze can bear the gifts of peace,
Till all the happy nations catch the song.

EXERCISE CXLVIII.

THE USE OF KNOWLEDGE.- Translated by Elizur Wrigh.

Between two citizens

A controversy grew.

The one was poor, but much he knew:
The other, rich, with little sense,
Claimed that, in point of excellence,
The merely wise should bow the knee
To all such monied men as he:

The merely fools, he should have said;
For why should wealth hold up its head,

When merit from its side hath fled?

6

My friend,' quoth Bloated-purse
To his reverse,

"You think yourself considerable.
Pray, tell me, do you keep a table?
What comes of this incessant reading,
In point of lodging, clothing, feeding?
It gives one, true, the highest chamber,
One coat for June and for December,
His shadow for his sole attendant,
And hunger always in the ascendant.

What profits he his country, too,
Who scarcely ever spends a sou,
Will, haply, be a public charge?
Who profits more the state at large,
Than he whose luxuries dispense
Among the people wealth immense?
We set the streams of life a-flowing;
We set all sorts of trades a-going.
The spinner, weaver, sewer, vender,
And many a wearer, fair and tender,
All live and flourish on the spender,
As do, indeed, the reverend rooks,
Who waste their time in making books.'
These words, so full of impudence,
Received their proper recompense.

The man of letters held his peace,
Though much he might have said with ease.
A war avenged him soon and well:
In it their common city fell.
Both fled abroad: the ignorant,
By fortune thus brought down to want,
Was treated everywhere with scorn,
And roamed about, a wretch, forlorn ;
Whereas the scholar, everywhere,
Was nourished by the public care.

Let fools the studious youth despise ;-
There's nothing lost by being wise.

EXERCISE CXLIX.

THE STUDY OF ASTRONOMY.-J. Q. Adams.

Man is a curious and inquisitive being; and the exercise of his reason, the immortal part of his nature, consists of inqui- ries into the relations between the effects which fall within the sphere of his observation, and their causes which are unseen. The earth beneath his feet, and the vault of heaven over his head, are the first objects in physical nature which force themselves upon his observation, and invite him to contemplation.

The earth and the sky, elements so different in their nature, yet indissolubly united by the mysterious mandate of Almighty Power, indicate to his perceptions, and foreshadow to his reason, the condition of his own existence, compounded of body and soul,—of matter and mind. The earth ministers, to each and all of his senses, the knowledge of its physical properties. He sees, hears, feels, inhales, and tastes of earth and its productions, adapted to his subsistence, and to the necessities of his life on earth. The sky is accessible only to his sight; and, although peopled with splendors, dazzling in brightness, and infinite in numbers, still presents to his bewildered imagination only the lights of the firmament, like a halo of glory surrounding the universe, but glowing at distances too remote to come within the reach of any other of his senses.

He soon discovers, that distant as the great luminary of heaven may be from the earth, yet the earth could not exist without his generative beams; and that 'the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy-work.' He turns to the heavens his eyes, and inquires, What are these innumerable spangles glowing on the brow of night, and extending into the regions of infinite space, till the visional orbs of man can no longer follow or discern them? Still he looks and searches for causes, as a new celestial phenomenon daily and nightly discloses itself to his view, till the observation of the stars ripens into an art, and the germ of astronomical science has taken root in his memory.

So peculiarly adapted to the nature of man is the study of the heavens, that, of all animated nature, his bodily frame is constructed as if the observation of the stars were the special

purpose of his creation. This peculiar adaptation of the mechanism of the human body, has not escaped the notice of the most ingenious Roman Poet, who, in his fabulous account of the creation, concluding with the production of man, — says that, while other animals were formed to look downwards to the earth, the Creator gave man a heavenward-looking face, to gaze at the sky,- and commanded him to raise his head and turn his eyes toward the stars.'

The various difficult, and, in many respects, opposite motives which have impelled mankind to the study of the stars, have had a singular effect in complicating and confounding the recommendation of the science. Religion, idolatry, superstition, curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the passion for penetrating the secrets of nature, the warfare of the huntsman, by night and by day, against the beasts of the forest and of the field, - the meditations of the shepherd in the custody and wanderings of his flocks, the influence of the revolving seasons of the year, and the successive garniture of the firmament upon the labors of the husbandman, upon the seed-time and the harvest, the blooming of flowers, the ripening of the vintage, the polar pilot of the navigator, and the mysterious magnet of the mariner, all in harmonious action stimulate the child of earth and of heaven to interrogate the dazzling splendors of the sky, to reveal to him the laws of their own existence.

He has his own comforts, his own happiness, his own existence identified with theirs. He sees the Creator in creation, and calls upon creation to declare the glory of the Creator.

EXERCISE CL.

EVENING OF OCTOBER 23, 1844.- Luther Hamilton.

How bright, how glorious, how serene

Yon azure sky, when stars and moon,
Unveiled, display night's radiant scene!
How much more fair, than flaming noon!

It is as if this milder light

Came from more near the throne of God,
So sweet it falls on human sight,

So much it spreads of heaven abroad.