Even the orphan, wandering by night, lost on dreary moors,

Is sensible of some vague bliss amidst his shapeless terrors;
The buoyancy of instant expectation, spurring on the mind to venture,
Overbeareth, in its energy, the cramp and the chill of apprehension.
There is a solitary pride, when the heart, in new importance,

Writeth gladly on its archives, the secrets none other men have seen:
And there is a caged terror, evermore wrestling with the mind,

When crime hath whispered his confession, and the secrets are written there in blood:

The village maiden is elated at a tenderly confided tale;

The bandit's wife with sickening fear guessed the premeditated murder;
The sage, with triumph on his brow, hideth his deep discovery;
The idlest clown shall delve all day to find a hidden treasure.

For mystery is man's life; we wake to the whisperings of novelty:
And what, though we lie down disappointed? we sleep, to wake in hope.
The letter, or the news, the chances and the changes, matters that may
happen,

Sweeten or embitter daily life with the honey-gall of mystery.

For we walk blindfold,—and a minute may be much,-a step may reach the precipice;

What earthly loss, what heavenly gain, may not this day produce?
Levelled of Alps and Andes, without its valleys and ravines,

How dull the face of earth, unfeatured of both beauty and sublimity :
And so, shorn of mystery, beggared in its hopes and fears,
How flat the prospect of existence, mapped by intuitive foreknowledge?
Praise God, creature of earth, for the mercies linked with secrecy,

That spices of uncertainty enrich thy cup of life:

Praise God, his hosts on high, for the mysteries that make all joy; What were intelligence, with nothing more to learn, or heaven, in eternity of sameness?

To number every mystery were to sum the sum of all things:

None can exhaust a theme, whereof God is example and similitude. Nevertheless, take a garland from the garden, a handful from the harvest, Some scattered drops of spray from the ceaseless mighty cataract. Whence are we,-whither do we tend, how do we feel and reason? How strange a thing is man, a spirit saturating clay!

When doth soul make embryos immortal,-how do they rank hereafter,And will the unconscious idiot be quenched in death as nothing?

In essence immaterial, are these minds, as it were thinking machines?
For, to understand may but rightly be to use a mechanism all possess,
So that in reading or hearing of another, a man shall seem unto himself
To be recollecting images or arguments, native and congenial to his mind:
And yet, what shall we say,-who can aread the riddle?

The brain may be clockwork, and mind its spring, mechanism quickened by a spirit.

Who so shrewd as rightly to divide life, instinct, reason;

Trees, zoophytes, creatures of the plain, and savage man among them?
Hath the mimosa instinct, or the scallop more than life,-

Or the dog less than reason,—or the brute man more than instinct?
What is the cause of health,—and the gendering of disease?
Why should arsenic kill,—and whence is the potency of antidotes?
Behold, a morsel,—eat and die; the term of thy probation is expired:
Behold, a potion-drink and be alive; the limit of thy trial is enlarged.
Who can expound beauty? or explain the character of nations?
Who will furnish a cause for the epidemic force of fashion?
Is there a moral magnetism living in the light of example?
Is practice electricity ?—Yet all these are but names.

Doth normal Art imprison, in its works, spirit translated into substance,
So that the statue, the picture, or the poem, are crystals of the mind?
And doth Philosophy with sublimating skill shred away the matter,
Till rarefied intelligence exudeth even out of stocks and stones?

O mysteries, ye all are one, the mind of an inexplicable Architect
Dwelleth alike in each, quickening and moving in them all.

Fields, and forests, and cities of men, their woes, and wealth, and works,
And customs, and contrivances of life, with all we see and know,

For a little way, a little while, ye hang dependent on each other,

But all are held in one right hand, and by His will ye are.

Here is answer unto mystery, an unintelligible God,

This is the end and the beginning, it is reason that He be not understood.
Therefore it were probable and just, even to a man's weak thinking,
To have one for God who always may be learnt, yet never fully known:
That He, from whom all mysteries spring, in whom they all converge,
Throned in his sublimity beyond the grovellings of lower intellect,
Should claim to be truer than man's truest, the boasted certainty of numbers,
Should baffle his arithmetic, confound his demonstrations, and paralyze the
might of his necessity,

Standing supreme as the mystery of mysteries, every where, yet im

personate,

Essential one in three, essential three in one!

OF GIFTS.

I HAD a seeming friend;-I gave him gifts, and he was gone;

I had an open enemy;—I gave him gifts, and won him ;
Common friendship standeth on equalities, and cannot bear a debt;
But the very heart of hate melteth at a good man's love :
Go to, then, thou that sayest,-I will give and rivet the links:
For pride shall kick at obligation, and push the giver from him.
The covetous spirit may rejoice, revelling in thy largess,
But chilling selfishness will mutter,-I must give again:
The vain heart may be glad, in this new proof of man's esteem,
But the same idolatry of self abhorreth thoughts of thanking.

Nevertheless, give; for it shall be a discriminative test,

Separating honesty from falsehood, weeding insincerity from friendship: Give, it is like God; thou weariest the bad with benefits:

Give, it is like God; thou gladdenest the good by gratitude.

Give to thy near of kin, for Providence hath stationed thee his helper:
Yet see that he claim not as his right, thy freewill offering of duty.
Give to the young, they love it; neither hath the poison of suspicion
Spoilt the flavour of their thanks, to look for latent motives.
Give to merit, largely give; his conscious heart will bless thee:
It is not flattery, but love,—the sympathy of men his brethren.
Give, for encouragement in good; the weak desponding mind
Hath many foes, and much to do, and leaneth on its friends.
Yet heed thou wisely these; give seldom to thy better;
For such obtrusive boon shall savour of presumption;
Or, if his courteous bearing greet thy proffered kindness,

Shall not thine independent honesty be vexed at the semblance of a bribe?
Moreover, heed thou this; give to thine equal charily,

The occasion fair and fitting, the gift well chosen and desired:

Hath he been prosperous and blest? a flower may show thy gladness;
Is he in need? with liberal love, tender him the well-filled purse:
Disease shall welcome friendly care in grapes and precious unguents;
And where a darling child hath died, give praise, and hope, and sympathy;
Yet once more, heed thou this; give to the poor discreetly,

Nor suffer idle sloth to lean upon thy charitable arm :

To diligence give, as to an equal, on just and fit occasion;

Or he bartereth his hard-earned self-reliance for the casual lottery of gifts; The timely loan hath added nerve, where easy liberality would palsy ; Work and wages make a light heart: but the mendicant asketh with

heavy spirit.

A man's own self respect is worth unto him more than money,
And evil is the charity that humbleth, and maketh man less happy.

There are who sow liberalities, to reap the like again;
But men accept his boon, scorning the shallow usurer ;

I have known many such a fisherman lose his golden baits;
And oftentimes the tame decoy escapeth with the flock.

Yea, there are who give unto the poor, to gain large interest of God:
Fool,-to think His wealth is money, and not mind:

And haply after thine alms, thy calculated givings,

The hurricane shall blast thy crops, and sink the homeward ́snip;
Then shall thy worldly soul murmur that the balances were false,
Thy trader's mind shall think of God,-He stood not to his bargain!

Give, saith the preacher, be large in liberality, yield to the holy impulse,
Tarry not for cold consideration, but cheerfully and freely scatter;
So, for complacency of conscience, in a gush of counterfeited charity,
He that hath not wherewith to be just, selfishly presumeth to be generous;
The debtor, and the rich by wrong, are known among the band of the be-
nevolent;

And men extol the noble hearts, who rob that they may give.

Receivers are but little prone to challenge rights of giving,

Nor stop to test, for conscience-sake, the righteousness of mammon:
And the zealot in a cause is a receiver, at the hand which bettereth his

cause;

And thus an unsuspected bribe shall blind the good man's judgment:

It is easy to excuse greatness, and the rich are readily forgiven:

What, if his gains were evil, sanctified by using them aright? 7*

O shallow flatterer, self-interest is thy thought,

Hopeless of partaking in the like, thou too wouldest scorn the giver.

Money hath its value; and the scatterer thereof his thanks:
Few men, drinking at a rivulet, stop to consider its source.
The hand that closeth on an alm, be it for necessities or zeal,
Hath small scruple whence it came: Vespasian rejoiceth in his tribute;
Therefore have colleges and hospitals risen upon orphans' wrongs,
Chapels and cathedrals have thriven on the welcome wages of iniquity,
And fraud, in evil compensation, hath salved his guilty conscience,
Not by restoring to the cheated, but by ostentatious giving to the grateful.

So, those who reap rejoice; and reaping, bless the sower:
No one is eager to discover, where discovery tendeth unto loss;
Yet, if knowledge of a theft make gainers thereby guilty,
Can he be altogether innocent who never asked the honesty of gain?
Therefore, O preacher, zealous for charity, temper thy warm appeal,—
Warning the debtor and unjustly rich, they may not dare to give:
To do good is a privilege and guerdon: how shouldest thou rejoice
If ill-got gifts of presumptuous fraud be offered on the altar?
The question is not of degrees; unhallowed alms are evil :
Discourage and reject alike the obolus or talent of iniquity.,

Yet more, be careful that, unworthily, thou gain not an advantage over weakness,

Unstable souls, fervent and profuse, fluttered by the feeling of the moment:
For eloquence swayeth to its will the feeble and the conscious of defect:
Rashly give they, and afterwards are sad,—a gift that doubly erred.

It was the worldliness of priestcraft that accounted almsgiving for charity;
And many a father's penitence hath steeped his son in penury:
Yet, considered he lightly the guilt of a deathbed selfishness
That strove to take with him, for gain, the gold no longer his;

So he died in a false peace, and dying robbed his kindred;

The cunning friar at his side having cheated both the living and the dead:

Charity sitteth on a fair hill-top, blessing far and near,

But her garments drop ambrosia, chiefly on the violets around her: She gladdeneth indeed the maplike scene, stretching to the verge of the horizon,