Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world.

4. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them.

5. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles! by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

6. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged; on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest; who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away.

7. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe.

8. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for

1 Rule XII.

him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. * * * *

9. The Puritans brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were, in fact, the necessary effects of it.

10. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its charms.

11. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, raised them above the influence or danger of corruption.

DESCRIPTION OF A STORM.-[THOMSON.]

Behold, slow settling o'er the lurid grove
Unusual darkness broods, and growing gains
The full possession of the sky, surcharged
With wrathful vapor, from the secret beds,
Where sleep the mineral generations, drawn.
Thence nitre, sulphur, and the fiery spume
Of fat bitumen, steaming on the day,
With various tinctured trains of latent flame
Pollute the sky, and in yon baleful cloud,

and

5

A reddening gloom, a magazine of fate,
Ferment; till, by the touch ethereal roused,

10

The dash of clouds, or irritating war

Of fighting winds, while all is calm below,
They furious spring. A boding silence reigns,

Dread through the dun expanse; save the dull sound 15
That from the mountain, previous to the storm,

Rolls o'er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood,
And shakes the forest-leaf without a breath.
Prone, to the lowest vale, the aërial tribes
Descend: the tempest-loving raven scarce
Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze
The cattle stand, and on the scowling heavens
Cast a deploring eye, by man forsook,

Who to the crowded cottage hies him fast,
Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave.
'Tis listening fear, and dumb amazement all.
When to the startled eye the sudden glance
Appears far south,' eruptive through the cloud;
And following slower, in explosion vast
The Thunder raises his tremendous voice.
At first, heard solemn, o'er the verge of Heaven,
The tempest growls; but, as it nearer comes,
And rolls its awful burden on the wind,
The lightnings flash a larger curve, and more
The noise astounds: till over head a sheet
Of livid flame discloses wide; then shuts,
And opens wider; shuts, and opens still
Expansive, wrapping ether in a blaze.
Follows the loosened aggravated roar,
Enlarging, deepening, mingling; peal on peal
Crushed horrible, convulsing heaven and earth.
Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail,
Or prone-descending rain. Wide rent, the clouds
Pour a whole flood; and yet, its flame unquench'd,
The unconquerable lightning struggles through,

[blocks in formation]

Rugged and fierce, or in red whirling balls,
And fires the mountains with redoubled rage.
Black from the stroke, above, the smouldering pine
Stands a sad shattered trunk; and, stretch'd below,
A lifeless group the blasted cattle lie:

50

1 Rule XI.

Here the soft flocks, with that same harmless look
They wore alive, and ruminating still

In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull,
And ox half raised. Struck on the castled cliff,
The venerable tower and spiry fane

Resign their aged pride. The gloomy woods
Start at the flash, and from their deep recess,
Wide flaming out, their trembling inmates shake.

USE OF LABOR.-[BURKE.]

55

1. Providence has so ordered it, that a state of rest and inaction, however it may flatter our indolence, should be productive of many inconveniences; that it should generate such disorders as may force us to have recourse to some labor, as a thing absolutely requisite to make us pass our lives with tolerable satisfaction; for the nature of rest is to suffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation, that not only disables the members from performing their functions, but takes away the vigorous tone of fibre which is requisite for carrying on the natural and necessary secretions.

2. At the same time, that,' in this languid inactive state the nerves are more liable to the most horrid convulsions than when they are sufficiently braced and strengthened. Melancholy, dejection, and despair, and often self-murder, is2 the consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state of the body.

3. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise or labor; and labor is a surmounting of difficulties, an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles; and as such, resembles pain, which consists in tension or contraction, in every thing but degree.

4. Labor is not only requisite to preserve the coarser

1 Providence has so ordered it is understood.

The subject-nominative follows.

organs in a state fit for their functions; but it is equally necessary to those finer and more delicate organs, on which, and by which, the imagination and perhaps the other mental powers act.

5. Now, as a due exercise is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the constitution, and that without this rousing they would become languid and diseased, the very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, they must be shaken and worked to a proper degree.

THE FUGITIVES.-[COLLINS.]

In fair Circassia, where to love inclined
Each swain was blest, for every maid was kind;
At that still hour when awful midnight reigns,
And none but wretches haunt the twilight plains,
What time the moon had hung her lamp on high,
And past in radiance through the cloudless sky;
Sad, o'er the dews, two brother shepherds fled,
Where wildering fear and desperate sorrow led.
Fast as they prest their flight, behind them lay
Wide ravaged plains, and valleys stole away:
Along the mountain's bending sides they ran,
Till, faint and weak. Secander thus began:—

Secander.1

Oh! stay thee, Agib, for my feet deny,

No longer friendly to my life, to fly.

Friend of my heart, oh! turn thee and survey !
Trace our sad flight through all its length of way;
And first review that long extended plain,

And

yon wide groves already past with pain! Yon ragged cliff, whose dangerous path we tried! And, last, this lofty mountain's weary side!

1 Rule XIV., Rem. 1.

[blocks in formation]
« ElőzőTovább »