All death in nature is birth, and in death appears visibly the advancement of life. There is no killing principle in nature, for nature throughout is life: it is not death that kills, but the higher life, which, concealed behind the other, begins to develop itself. Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself to attain a higher form.—Fichte.

BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS OF LIFE.

What a fine passage is that of Bishop Heber, which is said to have suggested to Cole his justly-famed series of paintings, entitled The Voyage of Life!

Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. Our boat at first glides swiftly down the narrow channel, through the playful murmurings of the little brook and the windings of its grassy borders: the trees shed their blossoms over our young heads, and the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to our young hands; we rejoice in hope, and grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; but the stream hurries us on, and still our hands are empty.

Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, and amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated by the moving picture of enjoyment and industry that is passing before us; we are excited by some short-lived success, or depressed and rendered miserable by some short-lived disappointment. But our energy and dependence are alike in vain. The stream bears us on, and our joys and griefs are left behind us: we may be shipwrecked, but we cannot anchor; our voyage may be hastened, but cannot be delayed; whether rough or smooth, the river hastens toward its home; the roaring of the waves is beneath our keel, the land lessens from our eyes, the floods are lifted up around us, and we take our last leave of earth and its inhabitants, and of our future voyage there is no witness save the Infinite and the Eternal!

THE ROUND OF LIFE.

From the Aphorisms of Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich:—

RULES OF LIVING.

Whosoever would live long and blessedly, let him observe these following rules, by which he shall attain to that which he desireth:—

DR. FRANKLIN’S MORAL CODE.

The great American philosopher and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, drew up the following list of moral virtues, to which he paid constant and earnest attention, and thereby made himself a better and happier man:—

Temperance.—Eat not to fulness; drink not to elevation.

Silence.—Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Order.—Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Resolution.—Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Frugality.—Make no expense, but do good to others as yourself; that is, waste nothing.

Industry.—Lose no time, be always employed in something useful; but avoid all unnecessary actions.

Sincerity.—Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

Justice.—Wrong no one by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

Moderation.—Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries.

Cleanliness.—Suffer no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Tranquillity.—Be not disturbed about trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Humility.—Imitate Jesus Christ.

EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.

The celebrated Lord Coke wrote the subjoined couplet, which he religiously observed in the distribution of time:—

But Sir William Jones, a wiser economist of the fleeting hours of life, amended the sentence in the following lines:—

LIVING LIFE OVER AGAIN.

Good Sir Thomas Browne says, Though I think no man can live well once but he that could live twice, yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past, nor begin again the thread of my days; not upon Cicero’s ground,—because I have lived them well,—but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then, because I was a child, and because I commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the days of dotage, and stand in need of Æson’s bath before threescore.

RHYMING DEFINITIONS.

EARTH.

RHYMING CHARTER.

The following grant of William the Conqueror may be found in Stowe’s Chronicle and in Blount’s Ancient Tenures:—

NICE QUESTIONS FOR LAWYERS.

A gentleman, who died in Paris, left a legacy of $6000 to his niece in Dubuque, Iowa, who it appears also died about the same hour of the same day. The question which died first turns upon the relation of solar to true time, and must be decided by the difference of longitude. If the niece died at four o’clock A.M., and her uncle at ten o’clock A.M., the instants of their death would have been identical. Assuming that to be the hour of the testator’s death, if the niece died at any hour between four and ten, although the legacy would apparently revert to his estate, it would really vest in her and her heirs, since by solar time she would have actually survived her uncle.

Another case where great importance depended upon the precise time of death was that of the late Earl Fitzhardinge, who died “about midnight,” between October 10th and 11th. His rents, amounting to £40,000 a year, were payable on Old Lady-day and Old Michaelmas-day. The latter fell this year (1857) on Sunday, October 11, and the day began at midnight: so that if he died before twelve, the rents belonged to the parties taking the estate; but if after, they belonged to and formed part of his personal estate. The difference of one minute might therefore involve the question as to the title of £20,000.

THE BONE NOT DESCRIBED BY MODERN ANATOMISTS.

The Emperor Adrian—the skeptic whose epigrammatic address to his soul in prospect of death,

is well known—asked Rabbi Joshua Ben Hananiah, in the course of an interview following the successful siege of Bitter, “How doth a man revive again in the world to come?” He answered and said, “From Luz, in the back-bone.” Saith he to him, “Demonstrate this to me.” Then he took Luz, a little bone out of the back-bone, and put it in water, and it was not steeped; he put it into the fire, and it was not burned; he brought it to the mill, and that could not grind it; he laid it on the anvil and knocked it with a hammer, but the anvil was cleft, and the hammer broken.

The name Luz is probably derived from Genesis xlviii. 3, where, however, it refers to a place, not to a bone. The bone alluded to is the sacrum, the terminal wedge of the vertebral column. Butler, in his Hudibras, erroneously traces to the Rabbinic belief the modern name os sacrum, its origin really being due to the custom of placing it upon the altar in ancient sacrifices.

DYING WORDS OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.

Napoleon.—TÊte d’ArmÉe!

Sir Walter Raleigh.—It matters little how the head lieth.

Goethe.—Let the light enter.

Tasso.—Into thy hands, O Lord.

Alfieri.—Clasp my hand, my dear friend: I die.

Martin Luther.—Father in Heaven, though this body is breaking away from me, and I am departing this life, yet I know that I shall forever be with thee, for no one can pluck me out of thy hand.

Mozart.—You spoke of refreshment, my Emilie: take my last notes, sit down at the piano, sing them with the hymn of your sainted mother; let me hear once more those notes which have so long been my solace and delight.

Haydn.—God preserve the Emperor!

Haller.—The artery ceases to beat.

Grotius.—Be serious.

Erasmus.—Lord, make an end.

Cardinal Beaufort.—What! is there no bribing death?

Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers.—Soul, thou hast served Christ these seventy years, and art thou afraid to die? Go out, soul, go out.

Queen Elizabeth.—All my possessions for a moment of time!

Charles II.—Let not poor Nelly starve.

Anne Boleyn.—It is small, very small indeed (clasping her neck).

Sir Thomas More.—I pray you see me safe up; and as for my coming down, let me shift for myself (ascending the scaffold).

John Hampden.—O Lord, save my country! O Lord, be merciful to——

Chancellor Thurlow.—I’m shot if I don’t believe I’m dying.

Addison.—See with what peace a Christian can die.

Julius CÆsar.—Et tu, Brute.

Nero.—Is this your fidelity?

Herder.—Refresh me with a great thought.

Frederick V., of Denmark.—There is not a drop of blood on my hands.

Mirabeau.—Let me die amid the sound of delicious music and the fragrance of flowers.

Madame de StaËl.—I have loved God, my father, and liberty.

Lord Nelson.—Kiss me, Hardy.

Lord Chesterfield.—Give Dayrolles a chair.

Hobbes.—I am taking a fearful leap in the dark.

Byron.—I must sleep now.

Sir Walter Scott.—I feel as if I were to be myself again.

Keats.—I feel the daisies growing over me.

Robert Burns.—Don’t let that awkward squad fire over my grave.

Lawrence.—Don’t give up the ship.

Washington.—It is well.

Franklin.—A dying man can do nothing easy.

Wolfe.—Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.

Marion.—Thank God, I can lay my hand upon my heart and say that since I came to man’s estate I have never intentionally done wrong to any one.

Adams.—Independence forever!

Jefferson.—I resign my soul to God, and my daughter to my country.

J. Q. Adams.—This is the last of earth. I am content.

Harrison.—I wish you to understand the true principles of the Government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.

Taylor.—I have endeavored to do my duty.

Daniel Webster.—I still live.

THE LAST PRAYER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.

REMARKABLE TRANCE.

At the siege of Rouen, the body of FranÇois de Civille, a French captain who was supposed to have been killed, was thrown with others into the ditch, where it remained from eleven o’clock in the morning to half-past six in the evening, when his servant, observing some latent heat, carried the body into the house. During the ensuing five days and nights not the slightest sign of life was exhibited, although the body gradually recovered its warmth. At the expiration of this time the town was carried by assault, and the servants of an officer belonging to the besiegers, having found the supposed corpse of Civille, threw it out of a window, with no other covering than his shirt. Fortunately for the captain, he fell upon a heap of straw, where he remained senseless three days longer, when he was taken up by his relations for sepulture and ultimately brought to life. What was still more strange, Civille, like Macduff, had been “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” having been brought into the world by a CÆsarian operation which his mother did not survive. After his last escape he used to add to his signature, “three times born, three times buried, and three times risen from the dead by the grace of God.”

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION.

Whether,—as in the case of the AbbÉ Prevost in the forest of Chantilly,—if a supposed cadaver, while subjected to the investigating knife of the anatomist, should awake from a trance only to be conscious of his horrible condition and to expire from the immediate effect of the dissection, it is any thing more than homicide per infortuniam, or not.

Whether, in the case of Lazarus, who was restored to life by the Saviour after decomposition had commenced, he could have reclaimed property already in the possession and occupancy of the heirs to whom he had willed it before death.

PRESERVED BODIES.

There is an arched vault, or burying-ground, under the church at Kilsyth, in Scotland, which was the burying-place of the family of Kilsyth until the estate was forfeited and the title became extinct in the year 1715, since which it has never been used for that purpose except once. The last earl fled with his family to Flanders, and, according to tradition, was smothered to death about the year 1717, along with his lady and an infant child, and a number of other unfortunate Scottish exiles, by the falling in of the roof of a house in which they were assembled. What became of the body of the earl is not known; but the bodies of Lady Kilsyth and her infant were disembowelled and embalmed, and soon afterwards sent over to Scotland. They were landed, and lay at Leith for some time, whence they were afterwards carried to Kilsyth, and buried with great pomp, in the vault above mentioned.

In the spring of 1796, some reckless young men, having paid a visit to this ancient cemetery, tore open the coffin of Lady Kilsyth and her infant. With astonishment and consternation they saw the bodies of Lady Kilsyth and her child as perfect as they had been the hour they were entombed. For some weeks this circumstance was kept secret; but at last it began to be whispered in several companies, and soon excited great and general curiosity. “On the 12th of June,” wrote the minister of the parish of Kilsyth, in a letter to Dr. Garnet, “when I was from home, great crowds assembled, and would not be denied admission. At all hours of the night, as well as the day, they afterwards persisted in gratifying their curiosity. I saw the body of Lady Kilsyth soon after the coffin was opened. It was quite entire. Every feature and every limb was as full, nay, the very shroud was as clear and fresh and the colors of the ribands as bright, as the day they were lodged in the tomb. What rendered this scene more striking and truly interesting was that the body of her son and only child, the natural heir of the title and estates of Kilsyth, lay at her knee. His features were as composed as if he had been only asleep. His color was as fresh, and his flesh as plump and full, as in the perfect glow of health; the smile of infancy and innocence sat on his lips. His shroud was not only entire, but perfectly clean, without a particle of dust upon it. He seems to have been only a few months old. The body of Lady Kilsyth was equally well preserved; and at a little distance, from the feeble light of a taper, it would not have been easy to distinguish whether she was dead or alive. The features, nay, the very expression of her countenance, were marked and distinct; and it was only in a certain light that you could distinguish any thing like the agonizing traits of a violent death. Not a single fold of her shroud was decayed, nor a single member impaired. Neither of the bodies appear to have undergone the slightest decomposition or disorganization. Several medical gentlemen made incisions into the arm of the infant, and found the substance of the body quite firm, and in its original state.”

The writer states, among other interesting points that attracted his attention, that the bodies appeared to have been saturated in some aromatic liquid, of the color of dark brandy, with which the coffin had been filled, but which had nearly all evaporated.

Other instances of the artificial preservation of bodies might be mentioned, still more remarkable, though perhaps less interesting, than the preceding. The tomb of Edward the First, who died on the 7th of July, 1307, was opened on the 2d of January, 1770, and after the lapse of four hundred and sixty-three years the body was found undecayed: the flesh on the face was a little wasted, but not decomposed. The body of Canute the Dane, who obtained possession of England in the year 1017, was found quite fresh in the year 1766, by the workmen repairing Winchester Cathedral. In the year 1522, the body of William the Conqueror was found as entire as when first buried, in the Abbey Church of St. Stephen at Caen; and the body of Matilda his queen was found entire in 1502, in the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity in the same city.

No device of art, however, for the preservation of the remains of the dead, appears equal to the simple process of plunging them into peat-moss.

In a manuscript by one Abraham Grey, who lived about the middle of the sixteenth century, now in the possession of his representative Mr. Goodbehere Grey, of Old Mills, near Aberdeen, it is stated that, in 1569, three Roman soldiers, in the dress of their country, fully equipped with warlike instruments, were dug out of a moss of great extent, called Kazey Moss. When found, after the lapse of probably about fifteen hundred years, they were still fresh and plump!

Modern chemistry teaches us that in these cases there is a conversion of the tissues of the body into adipocere, a substance closely resembling spermaceti, and composed, according to Chevreul, of margaric and oleic acids, with a slight addition of the alkalies. It is generally formed from bodies buried in moist earth, and especially when they have accumulated in great numbers. On the removal of the CimetiÈre des Innocens in Paris, in 1787, where thousands of bodies had been buried annually for several centuries, it was found that those bodies which had been placed in great numbers in the trenches were, without having lost their shapes, converted into this substance.

FOLLY OF EMBALMING CORPSES.

Professor Johnston, in alluding to the custom of converting the human body into a frightful-looking mummy, or of attempting by various artificial processes to arrest its natural course of decomposition into kindred elements, remarks, as beautifully as truly:—

Embalm the loved bodies, and swathe them, as the old Egyptians did, in resinous cerements, and you but preserve them a little longer, that some wretched, plundering Arab may desecrate and scatter to the winds the residual dust. Or jealously, in regal tombs and pyramids, preserve the forms of venerated emperors or beauteous queens, still, some future conqueror, or more humble Belzoni, will rifle the most secure resting-place. Or bury them in most sacred places, beneath high altars, a new reign shall dig them up and mingle them again with the common earth. Or, more careful still, conceal your last resting-place where local history keeps no record and even tradition cannot betray you: then accident shall stumble at length upon your unknown tomb and liberate your still remaining ashes.

How touching to behold the vain result of even the most successful attempts at preserving apart, and in their relative places, the solid materials of the individual form! The tomb, after a lapse of time, is found and opened. The ghastly tenant reclines, it may be, in full form and stature. The very features are preserved,—impressed, and impressing the spectator, with the calm dignity of their long repose. But some curious hand touches the seemingly solid form, or a breath of air disturbs the sleeping air around the full-proportioned body,—when, lo! it crumbles instantly away into an almost insensible quantity of impalpable dust!

Who has not read with mingled wonder and awe of the opening, in our own day, of the almost magical sepulchre of an ancient Etruscan king? The antiquarian dilettanti, in their under-ground researches, unexpectedly stumbled upon the unknown vault. Undisturbed through Roman and barbaric times, accident revealed it to modern eyes. A small aperture, made by chance in the outer wall, showed to the astonished gazers a crowned king within, sitting on his chair of state, with robes and sceptre all entire, and golden ornaments of ancient device bestowed here and there around his person. Eager to secure the precious spoil, a way is forced with hammer and mattock into the mysterious chamber. But the long spell is now broken; the magical image is now gone. Slowly, as the vault first shook beneath the blows, the whole pageant crumbled away. A light, smoky dust filled the air; and, where the image so lately sat, only the tinselled fragments of thin gold remained, to show that the vision and the ornaments had been real, though the entire substance of the once noble form had utterly vanished.

For a few thousand years some apparently fortunate kings and princes may arrest the natural circulation of a handful of dust. But in what are they better than Cromwell, whose remains were pitilessly disturbed,—than Wyckliffe, whose ashes were sprinkled on the sea,—than St. Genevieve, whose remains were burned in the Place de GrÈve and her ashes scattered to the wind,—than Mausolus, whose dust was swallowed by his wife Artemisia,—than the King of Edom, whose bones were burned for lime,—or than St. Pepin and all the royal line of Bourbon, whose tombs were emptied by a Parisian mob? Lamartine tells us, in his History of the Girondists, that a decree of the Convention had commanded the destruction of the tombs of the kings at St. Denis. The Commune changed this decree into an attack against the dead. **** The axe broke the gates of bronze presented by Charlemagne to the Basilica of St. Denis. *** They raised the stones, ransacked the vaults, violated the resting-places of the departed, sought out, beneath the swathings and shrouds, embalmed corpses, crumbled flesh, calcined bones, empty skulls of kings, queens, princes, ministers, bishops. Pepin, the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty and father of Charlemagne, was now but a pinch of gray ash, which was in a moment scattered by the wind. The mutilated heads of Turenne, Duguesclin, Louis XII., Francis I., were rolled on the pavement. **** Beneath the choir were buried the princes and princesses of the first race, and some of the third,—Hugh Capet, Philip the Bold, Philip the Handsome. They rent away their rags of silk and threw them on a bed of quicklime. **** They threw the carcass of Henry IV. into the common fosse. His son and grandson, Louis XIII. and XIV., followed. Louis XIII. was but a mummy; Louis XIV. a black, indistinguishable mass of aromatics. Louis XV. came last out of his tomb. The vault of the Bourbons rendered up its dead; queens, dauphinesses, princesses, were carried away in armfuls by the workmen and cast into the trench. A brief interval of proud separation, and they were mingled with the common dust! Their ashes dissipated, nothing but their empty tombs remain,—the houses of the dead, like the houses of the living, long surviving, as melancholy mementos of the tenants for whom they were erected.

M. de Saulcy, in his Journey Round the Dead Sea, remarks of the rock-tombs of the valley of Hinnom, “The immense necropolis, traces of which are to be met with at every step in the valley, dates from the period when the Jebusites were masters of the country. After them the Israelites deposited the remains of their fathers in the same grottoes; and the same tombs, after having become at a still later period those of the Christians who had obtained possession of the Holy City, have, since the destruction of the Latin kingdoms of Jerusalem, ceased to change both masters and occupants. Even the scattered bones are no more found in them; and from the city of the dead the dead alone have disappeared, while the abodes are still entire.”

There is a barbaric philosophy, therefore, as well as an apparent knowledge of the course of nature, in the treatment of the dead which prevails in Thibet and on the slopes of the Himalaya. In the former country the dead body is cut in pieces, and either thrown into the lakes to feed the fishes, or exposed on the hill-tops to the eagles and birds of prey. On the Himalayan slopes the Sikkim burn the body and scatter the ashes on the ground. The end is the same among these tribes of men as among us. They briefly anticipate the usual course of time,—a little sooner verifying the inspired words, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

By William Hunnis, Chapel-master to Queen Elizabeth:—

THE TRIPOD.

According to the Babylonian Talmud, Beracoth, p. 8, and in Jalkud Schimoni on Ps. lxviii, 20, “Nine hundred and three axe the kinds of death made in this world.” Physiologists drop the nine hundred, declare that life stands on a tripod, and assert that we die by the lungs, the heart, or the brain.

IMPRECATORY EPITAPH.

The Shakspearean imprecation, “Curst be he that moves my bones,” is paralleled in an epitaph in Runic characters at Greniadarstad church, in Iceland, which according to Finn Magnussen’s interpretation, concludes thus:—

THE FLEUR-DE-LIS.

Nothing, says an old writer, could be more simple than the lily, which was the distinctive badge of the French monarchy; nor, at the same time, could anything be more symbolic of the state of the nobility and gentry, exempted from the necessity of working for a livelihood or for dress, than lilies, of which it is said: “They toil not neither do they spin,” neque laborant neque nent,—which was the motto of the royal arms of France.

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.

The long time ago of which I mean to tell, says Jean Ingelow, was a wild night in March, during which, in a fisherman’s hut ashore, sat a young girl at her spinning-wheel, and looked out on the dark driving clouds, and listened, trembling, to the winds and the seas. The morning light dawned at last. One boat that should have been riding on the troubled waves was missing—her father’s boat! and half a mile from the cottage her father’s body was washed upon the shore.

This happened fifty years ago, and fifty years is a long time in the life of a human being; fifty years is a long time to go on in such a course as the woman did of whom I am speaking. She watched her father’s body, according to the custom of her people, till he was laid in the grave. Then she laid down on her bed and slept, and by night got up and set a candle in her casement, as a beacon to the fishermen and a guide. She sat by the candle all night, and trimmed it, and spun; then when the day dawned she went to bed and slept in the sunshine. So many hanks as she spun before for her daily bread, she spun still, and one over, to buy her nightly candle; and from that time to this, for fifty years, through youth, maturity, and old age, she turned night into day, and in the snow-storms of Winter, through driving mists, deceptive moonlight, and solemn darkness, that northern harbor has never once been without the light of her candle.

How many lives she saved by this candle, or how many meals she won for the starving families of the boatmen, it is impossible to say; how many a dark night the fishermen, depending on it, went fearlessly forth, cannot now be told. There it stood, regular as a light-house, and steady as constant care could make it. Always brighter when daylight waned, they had only to keep it constantly in view and they were safe; there was but one thing that could intercept it, and that was the rock. However far they might have stretched out to sea, they had only to bear down straight for that lighted window, and they were sure of a safe entrance into the harbor.

Fifty years of life and labor—fifty years of sleeping in the sunshine—fifty years of watching and self-denial, and all to feed the flame and trim the wick of that one candle! But if we look upon the recorded lives of great men and just men and wise men, few of them can show fifty years of worthier, certainly not of more successful labor. Little, indeed, of the “midnight oil” consumed during the last half century so worthily deserved trimming. Happy woman—and but for the dreaded rock her great charity might never have been called into exercise.

But what do the boatmen and the boatmen’s wives think of this? Do they pay the woman? No, they are very poor; but poor or rich they know better than that. Do they thank her? No. Perhaps they feel that thanks of theirs would be inadequate to express their obligations, or, perhaps long years have made the lighted casement so familiar that it is looked upon as a matter of course. Sometimes the fishermen lay fish on her threshold, and set a child to watch it for her till she wakes; sometimes their wives steal into her cottage, now she is getting old, and spin a hank or two of thread for her while she slumbers; and they teach their children to pass her hut quietly, and not to sing and shout before her door, lest they should disturb her. That is all. Their thanks are not looked for—scarcely supposed to be due. Their grateful deeds are more than she expects and much as she desires.

How often in the far distance of my English home, I have awoke in a wild Winter night, and while the wind and storm were arising, have thought of that northern bay, with the waves dashing against the rock, and have pictured to myself the casement, and the candle nursed by that bending, aged figure! How delighted to know that through her untiring charity the rock has long since lost more than half its terror, and to consider that, curse though it may be to all besides, it has most surely proved a blessing to her.

You, too, may perhaps think with advantage on the character of this woman, and contrast it with the mission of the rock. There are many degrees between them. Few, like the rock, stand up wholly to work ruin and destruction; few, like the woman, “let their light shine” so brightly for good. But to one of the many degrees between them we must all most certainly belong—we all lean towards the woman or the rock. On such characters you do well to speculate with me, for you have not been cheated into sympathy with ideal shipwreck or imaginary kindness. There is many a rock elsewhere as perilous as the one I told you of—perhaps there are many such women; but for this one, whose story is before you, pray that her candle may burn a little longer, since this record of her charity is true.

THIS IS NOT OUR HOME.

Among the beautiful thoughts which dropped like pearls from the pen of that brilliant and talented journalist, George D. Prentice, the following sublime extract upon man’s higher destiny is perhaps the best known and most universally admitted. Coming from such a source we can well appreciate it, for that distinguished man had attained a position among his fellows which would have satisfied almost any earthly ambition. Yet all this could not recompense him for the toils and ills of life, and in the eloquent passage subjoined he portrays, most beautifully, the restless longings of the human heart for something higher and nobler than earth can afford.

“It cannot be that earth is man’s only abiding place. It cannot be that our life is a bubble cast up by the ocean of eternity to float a moment upon its waves and sink into nothingness. Else, why these high and glorious aspirations which leap like angels from the temple of our hearts, forever wandering unsatisfied? Why is it that the rainbow and cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass off to leave us to muse on their loveliness? Why is it the stars which hold their festival around the midnight throne, are set above the grasp of our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their unapproachable glory? And, finally, why is it that the bright forms of human beauty are presented to our view and taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of our affections to flow back in Alpine torrents upon our hearts? We were born for a higher destiny than earth. There is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread out before us like the islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beautiful beings that pass before us like shadows, will stay forever in our presence.”

ILL SUCCESS IN LIFE.

One of our best American writers, Geo. S. Hillard, forcibly and truly says:—

I confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect for men who do not succeed in life, as those words are commonly used. Heaven is said to be a place for those who have not succeeded on earth; and it is sure that celestial grace does not thrive and bloom in the hot blaze of worldly prosperity. Ill success sometimes arises from a superabundance of qualities in themselves good—from a conscience too sensitive, a taste too fastidious, a self-forgetfulness too romantic, and modesty too retiring. I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, “that the world knows nothing of its great men,” but there are forms of greatness, or at least excellence, which “die and make no sign;” there are martyrs that miss the palm but not the stake, heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.

FUTURITY.

“Life is sweet,” said Sir Anthony Kingston to Bishop Hooper at the stake, “and death bitter.” “True, friend,” he replied, “but consider that the death to come is more bitter, and the life to come is more sweet.”

In his charming Hyperion, Mr. Longfellow says:—

The little I have seen of the world, and know of the history of mankind, teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed,—the brief pulsations of joy,—the feverish inquietude of hope and fear,—the tears of regret,—the feebleness of purpose,—the pressure of want,—the desertion of friends,—the scorn of a world that has little charity,—the desolation of the soul’s sanctuary,—threatening voices within,—health gone,—happiness gone,—even hope, that remains the longest, gone,—I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands it came,

EVENING PRAYER.

BEAUTIFUL THOUGHT.

On the shores of the Adriatic sea the wives of the fishermen, whose husbands have gone far off upon the deep, are in the habit, at even-tide, of going down to the sea-shore, and singing, as female voices only can, the first stanza of a beautiful hymn; after they have sung it they will listen till they hear, borne by the wind across the desert sea, the second stanza sung by their gallant husbands, as they are tossed by the gale upon the waves, and both are happy. Perhaps, if we listen, we, too, might hear on this desert world of ours some whisper borne from afar to remind us that there is a heaven and a home; and when we sing the hymn upon earth, perhaps we shall hear its echo breaking in the music upon the sands of time, and cheering the hearts of those that are pilgrims and strangers, and look for a city that hath foundation.

LIFE’S PARTING.

Wordsworth read less and praised less the writings of other poets, than any one of his contemporaries. This gives an especial interest to the following stanza by Mrs. Barbauld, which he learned by heart, and which he used to ask his sister to repeat to him. Once, while walking in his sitting-room at Rydal, with his hands behind him, his friend, Henry Crabb Robinson heard him say: “I am not in the habit of grudging people their good things; but I wish I had written those lines:—

DESTINY.

Talfourd says in his Ion:—

AFTER.

[Among the poetic legacies that will “never grow old, nor change, nor pass away,” is the noble dirge of Shirley, in his Contention of Ajax and Ulysses. Doubtless it was by the fall, if not by the death, of Charles I., that the mind of the royalist poet was solemnized to the creation of these imperishable stanzas. Oliver Cromwell is said, on the recital of them, to have been seized with great terror and agitation of mind.]

THE COMMON HERITAGE.

There is—says the author of Euthanasy—no universal night in this earth, and for us in the universe there is no death. What to us here is night coming on, is, on the other side of the earth, night ending, and day begun. And so what we call death, the angels may regard as immortal birth.

We are born—says another writer—with the principles of dissolution in our frame, which continue to operate from our birth to our death; so that in this sense we may be said to “die daily.” Death is not so much a laying aside our old bodies (for this we have been doing all our lives) as ceasing to assume new ones.

“Say,” said one who was about entering the Dark Valley, to his amanuensis, “that I am still in the land of the living, but expect soon to be numbered with the dead.” But, after a moment’s reflection, he added, “Stop! say that I am still in the land of the dying, but expect to be soon in the land of the living.”

Says old Jeremy Collier, The more we sink into the infirmities of age, the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden, to be decrepit one minute, and all spirit and activity the next, must be an entertaining change. To call this dying is an abuse of language.

The day of our decease—says Mountford—will be that of our coming of age; and with our last breath we shall become free of the universe. And in some region of infinity, and from among its splendors, this earth will be looked back upon like a lowly home, and this life of ours be remembered like a short apprenticeship to Duty.