620. GOODNESS OF GOD. The light of nature, the works of creation, the general consent of nations, in harmony with divine revelation, attest the being, the perfections, and the providence of God. Whatever cause we have, to lament the frequent inconsistency of human conduct, with this belief, yet an avowed atheist is a monster, that rarely makes his appearance. God's government of the affairs of the universe, an acknowledgment of his active, superintending providence, over that portion of it, which constitutes the globe we inhabit, is rejected, at least theoretically, by very few. That a superior, invisible power, is continually employed in managing and controlling by secret, imperceptible, irresistible means, all the transactions of the world, is so often manifested in the disappointment, as well as in the success of our plans, that blind and depraved must our minds be, to deny, what every day's transactions so fully prove. The excellence of the divine character, especially in the exercise of that goodness towards his creatures, which is seen in the dispensation of their daily benefits, and in overruling occurring events, to the increase of their happiness, is equally obvious. Do we desire evidence of these things? Who is without them, in the experience of his own life? Who has not reason, to thank God for the success, which has attended his exertions in the world? Who has not reason to thank him, for defeating plans, the accomplishment of which, it has been afterwards seen, would have resulted in injury, or ruin? Who has not cause, to present him the unaffected homage of a grateful heart, for the consequences of events, apparently the most unpropitious, and for his unquestionable kindness, in the daily supply of needful mercies? PROGRESS OF LIBERTY. Why muse THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET. For often at noon, when returned from the field, And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well; It is the ancient and undoubted prerogative of this people-to canvass public measures, and the merits of public men. It is a "home bred right," a fireside privilege. It hath ever been enjoyed in every house, cottage, and cabin, in the nation. It is not to be drawn into controversy. It is as undoubted, as the right of breathing the air, or walking on the earth. Belonging to private life, as a it is the last duty which those, whose repreright, it belongs to public life, as a duty; and sentative I am, shall find me to abandon. Aiming, at all times, to be courteous, and temperate in its use, except, when the right it to its extent. I shall place myself on the itself shall be questioned, I shall then carry extreme boundary of my right, and bid defiance to any arm, that would move me from my ground. This high, constitutional privilege, I shall defend, and exercise, within this house, and without this house, and in all places; in time of peace, and in all times. Living, I shall assert it; and, should I leave no other inheritance to my children, by the blessing of God, Of heaven were prisoned in its soundless depths, I will leave them the inheritance of free prin And struggling to be free. As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, What is fame? A fancy'd life in others' breath. ciples, and the example of a manly, inde- 622. PEACE AND WAR CONTRASTED. The morality of peaceful times-is directly opposite to the maxims of war. The fundamental rule of the first is-to do good; of the latter, to inflict injuries. The former-commands us to succor the oppressed; the latter to overwhelm the defenceless. The former teaches men to love their enemies; the latter, to make themselves terrible to strangers. The rules of morality-will not suffer us to promote the dearest interest, by falsehood; the maxims of war applaud it, when employed in the destruction of others. That a familiarity with such maxims, must tend to harden the heart, as well as to pervert the moral sentiments, is too obvious to need illustration. The natural consequence of their prevalence is an unfeeling, and unprincipled ambition, with an idolatry of talents, and a contempt of virtue; whence the esteem of mankind is turned from the humble, the beneficent, and the good, to men who are qualified, by a genius, fertile in expedients, a courage, that is never appalled, and a heart, that never pities, to become the destroyers of the earth. While the philanthropist is devising means to mitigate the evils, and augment the happiness of the world, a fellow-worker together with God, in exploring, and giving effect to the benevolent tendencies of nature; the warrior-is revolving, in the gloomy recesses of his capacious mind, plans of future devastation and ruin. Prisons, crowded with captives; cities, emptied of their inhabitants; fields, desolate and waste, are among his proudest trophies. The fabric of his fame is cemented with tears and blood; and if his name is wafted to the ends of the earth, it is in the shrill cry of suffering humanity; in the curses and imprecations of those whom his sword has reduced to despair. 623. IMMORTAL MIND. When coldness-wraps this suffering clay, Ah, whither-strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay, But leaves its darkened dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace, By steps, each planet's heavenly way? A thought unseen, but seeing all, In one broad glance-the soul beholds, Its eye shall roll-through chaos back; Above all love, hope, hate, or fear, Away, away, without a wing, Forgetting-what it was to die.-Byron. GENUINE TASTE. To the eye of taste, each season of the year has its peculiar beauties; nor does the venerable oak, when fringed with the hoary ornaments of winter, afford a pros pect, less various, or delightful, than, when decked in the most luxuriant foliage. Is, then, the winter of life-connected with no associa tions, but those of horror? This can never be the case, until ideas of contempt-are associated with ideas of wisdom, and experience; associations, which the cultivation of trué taste-would effectually prevent. Suppose the person, who wishes to improve on nature's plan, should apply to the artificial florist to deck the bare boughs of his spreading oak with ever-blooming roses; would it not be soon discovered, that, in deserting nature, he had deserted taste! It should be remembered, that the coloring of nature, whether in the ani mate, or inanimate creation, never fails to harmonize with the object; that her most beautiful hues are often transient, and excite a more lively emotion from that very circumstance. 624. GAMBLER'S WIFE. Dark is the night! How dark! No light! No fire! Oh, God! protect my child!" The clock strikes three. Dread silence reign'd around:-the clock struck four!-Coates. Goodness--is only greatness in itself, It rests not on externals, nor its worth Derives-from gorgeous pomp, or glittering pelf, Or chance of arms, or accident of birth; It lays its foundations in the soul, And piles a tower of virtue to the skies, Around whose pinnacle-majestic-roll The clouds of GLORY, starr'd with angel eyes. 625. DARKNESS. I had a dream, which was not all a dream. And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, Of an enormous city did survive, Even of their mutual hideousness they died, The moon, their mistress, had expired before; 626. TRUE PLEASURE DEFINED. We are affected with delightful sensations, when we see the inanimate parts of the creation, the meadows, flowers, and trees, in a flourishing state. There must be some rooted melancholy at the heart, when all nature appears smiling about us, to hinder us from corresponding with the rest of the creation, and joining in the universal chorus of joy. But if meadows and trees, in their cheerful verdure, if flowers, in their bloom, and all the vegetable parts of the creation, in their most advantageous dress, can inspire gladness into the heart, and drive away all sadness but despair; to see the rational creation happy, and flourishing, ought to give us a pleasure as much superior, as the latter is to the former, in the scale of being. But the pleasure is still heightened, if we ourselves have been instrumental, in contributing to the happiness of our fellow-creatures, if we have helped to raise a heart, drooping beneath the weight of grief, and revived that barren and dry land, where no water was, with refreshing showers of love and kindness. THE WILDERNESS OF MIND. There is a wilderness, more dark Than groves of fir-on Huron's shore; And in that cheerless region, hark! How serpents hiss! how monsters roar! 'Tis not among the untrodden isles, Of vast Superior's stormy lake, Where social comfort never smiles, Nor sunbeams-pierce the tangled brake: Nor, is it in the deepest shade, Of India's tiger-haunted wood; By EDUCATION unrefin'd- But constant, he were perfect; that one error- sins; 637. GENIUS. The favorite idea of a genius among us, is of one, who never studies, or who studies nobody can tell when; at midnight, or at odd times, and intervals, and now and then strikes out, "at a heat," as the phrase is, some wonderful production. This is a character that has figured largely in the history of our literature, in the person of our Fieldings, our Savages, and our Steeles: "loose fellows about town, or loungers in the country," who slept in ale-houses, and wrote in bar-rooms; who took up the pen as a magician's wand, to supply their wants, and, when the pressure of necessity was relieved, resorted again to their carousals. Your real genius is an idle, irregular, vagabond sort of personage; who muses in the fields, or dreams by the fireside; whose strong impulses that is the cant of it-must needs hurry him into wild irregularities, or foolish eccentricity; who abhors order, and can bear no restraint, and eschews all labor; such a one as Newton or Milton! What! they must have been irregular, else they were no geniuses. "The young man, it is often said, "has genius enough, if he would only study." Now, the truth is, as I shall take the liberty to state it, that the genius will study; it is that in the mind which does study: that is the very nature of it. I care not to say, that it will always use books. All study is not reading, any more than all reading is study. Attention it is, though other qualities belong to this transcendent power,-attention it is, that is the very soul of genius; not the fixed eye, not the poring over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in fact, an action of the mind, which is steadily concentrated upon one idea, or one series of ideas, which collects, in one point, the rays of the soul, till they search, penetrate, and fire the whole train of its thoughts. And while the fire burns within, the outside may be indeed cold, indifferent, negligent, absent in appearance; he may be an idler, or a wanderer, apparently without aim, or intent; but still the fire burns within. And what though "it bursts forth," at length, as has been said, "like volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force?" It only shows the intense action of the elements beneath. What though it breaks forth-like lightning from the cloud? The electric fire had been collecting in the firmament, through many a silent, clear, and calm day. What though the might of genius appears in one decisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the crisis of a nation's peril! That mighty energy, though it may have heaved in the breast of Demosthenes, was once a feeble infant thought. A mother's eye watched over its dawnings. A father's care guarded its early youth. It soon trod, with youthful steps, the halls of learning, and found other fathers to wake, and to watch for it, even as it finds them here. It went on; but silence was upon its path, and the deep strugglings of the inward soul silently ministered to it. The elements around breathed upon it, and "touched it to finer issues." The golden ray of heaven fell upon it, and ripened its expanding faculties. The slow revolutions of years slowly added to its collected energies and treasures; till, in its hour of glory, it stood forth imbodied in the form of living, commanding, irresistible eloquence. The world wonders at the manifestation, and says, "Strange, strange, that it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, unprepar'd!" But the truth is, there is no more a miracle in it, than there is in the towering of the preeminent forest-tree, or in the flowing of the mighty, and irresistible river, or in the wealth, and waving of the boundless harvest.-Dewey. 628. THE THREE BLACK CROWS. Two honest tradesmen-meeting in the Strand, 66 [faet, Sir, did you tell "-relating the affair"Yes, sir, I did; and if its worth your care, Ask Mr. Such-a-one, he told it me; But, by the by, 'twas two black crows, not three." Resolved to trace so wondrous an event, "Sir," and so forth-"Why, yes; the thing's a Whip to the third, the virtuoso went. Though, in regard to number, not exact; It was not two black crows, 'twas only one; The truth of that, you may depend upon, The gentleman himself told me the case. [place." "Where may I find him?" Away he goes, and, having found him out,— "Why, in such a "Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt." Then, to his last informant, he referred, And begged to know if true, what he had heard. "Did you, sir, throw up a black crow?" "Not I!" "Bless me! how people propagate a lie! Black crows have been thrown up, three, two, and [one, And here I find, at last, all comes to none! Did you say nothing of a crow at all?" "Crow-crow-perhaps I might, now I recall The matter over." "And pray, sir, what was 't?" "Why, I was horrid sick, and, at the last, I did throw up, and told my neighbor so, Something that was as black, sir, as a crow.", diffuse useful information, to farther intellec tual refinement, sure forerunners of moral improvement, to hasten the coming of that bright day, when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase away the lazy, lingering mists, even from the base of the great social pyramid; this, indeed, is a high calling, in which the most well press onward, eager to bear a part. splendid talents and consummate virtue may THE HIGHEST OCCUPATION OF GENIUS. To How soon-time-flies away! yet, as I watch it, Methinks, by the slow progress of this hand, I should have liv'd an age-since yesterday; And have an age to live. Still, on it creeps, Each little moment at another's heels, Of such small parts as these, and men look back, Worn and bewilder'd, wondering-how it is. Thou travel'st-like a ship, in the wide ocean, Which hath no bounding shore to mark its progress. O TIME! ere long, I shall have done with thee. And fain all would have shunned him, at the day 629. PERRY'S VICTORY. Were anything | And those, forsaken of God, and to themselves givwanting, to perpetuate the fame of this vic-The prudent shunned him, and his house, [en up. tory, it would be sufficiently memorable, from As one, who had a deadly moral plague ; the scene where it was fought. This war has been distinguished, by new and peculiar characteristics. Naval warfare has been carried into the exterior of a continent, and navies, as if by magic, launched from among the depths of the forest! The bosom of peaceful lakes, which, but a short time since, were scarcely navigated by man, except to be skimmed by the light canoe of the savage, have all at once been ploughed by hostile 630. TRUE FRIENDSHIP. Damon and Py. ships. The vast silence, that had reigned, thias, of the Pythagorean sect in philosophy, for ages, on these mighty waters, was broken lived in the time of Dionysius, the tyrant of by the thunder of artillery, and the affrighted Sicily. Their mutual friendship was savage-stared, with amazement, from his strong, that they were ready to die for one covert, at the sudden apparition of a seaanother. One of the two, (for it is not known fight, amid the solitudes of the wilderness. which,) being condemned to death, by the tyThe peal of war has once sounded on that rant, obtained leave to go into his own counlake, but probably, will never sound again. try, to settle his affairs, on condition, that the The last roar of cannon, that died along her other should consent to be imprisoned in his shores, was the expiring note of British dom- stead, and put to death for him, if he did not ination. Those vast, eternal seas will, per- return, before the day of execution. The athaps, never again be the separating space, tention of every one, and especially of the tybetween contending nations; but will be em-rant himself, was excited to the highest pitch, bosomed-within a mighty empire; and this victory, which decided their fate, will stand unrivalled, and alone, deriving lustre, and perpetuity, from its singleness. as every body was curious, to see what would be the event of so strange an affair. When the time was almost elapsed, and he who was gone did not appear; the rashness of the other, whose sanguine friendship had put him upon running so seemingly desperate a haz ard, was universally blamed. But he still declared, that he had not the least shadow of doubt in his mind, of his friend's fidelity. The event showed how well he knew him. He came in due time, and surrendered himself to that fate, which he had no reason to think he should escape; and which he did not desire to escape, by leaving his friend to suffer in his place. Such fidelity softened, even the savage heart of Dionysius himself. He pardoned the condemned; he gave the two friends to one another, and begged that they would take himself in for a third. In future times, when the shores of Erie shall hum with a busy population; when towns, and cities, shall brighten, where now, extend the dark tangled forest; when ports shall spread their arms, and lofty barks shall ride, where now the canoe is fastened to the stake; when the present age shall have grown into venerable antiquity, and the mists of fable begin to gather round its history, then, will the inhabitants of Canada look back to this battle we record, as one of the romantic achievements of the days of yore. It will stand first on the page of their local legends, and in the marvellous tales of the borders. The fisherman, as he loiters along the beach, will point to some half-buried cannon, corroded with the rust of time, and will speak of Deep-in the wave, is a coral grove, ocean warriors, that came from the shores of Where the purple mullet, and gold-fish rove, the Atlantic; while the boatman, as he trims Where the sea-flower-spreads its leaves of blue, his sail to the breeze, will chant, in rude dit-That never are wet, with fallen dew, ties, the name of Perry, the early hero of Lake Erie.-Irving. THE SLANDERER. 'Twas Slander, filled her mouth, with lying words, THE CORAL GROVE. But in bright and changeful beauty shine, And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow; Their bows, where the tides and billows flow; The water is calm and still below, For the winds and the waves are absent there, In the motionless fields of upper air: The sea-flag streams through the silent water, To blush, like a banner, bathed in slaughter: There, with a light and easy motion, The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea; Are bending like corn, on the upland lea: Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, Pride goeth before destruction. |