Thou lookest on the earth, and then it smiles;

Thy light is hid, and all things droop and mourn; Laughs the wide sea around her budding isles,

When through their heaven thy changing car is borne ; Thou wheel'st away thy flight, the woods are shorn Of all their waving locks, and storms awake;

All, that was once so beautiful, is torn

By the wild winds which plough the lonely lake,
And in their maddening rush the crested mountains shake.

The earth lies buried in a shroud of snow;
Life lingers, and would die, but thy return
Gives to their gladdened hearts an overflow
Of all the power, that brooded in the urn

Of their chilled frames, and then they proudly spurn All bands that would confine, and give to air

Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty, till they burn, When, on a dewy morn, thou dartest there

Rich waves of gold to wreath with fairer light the fair.

The vales are thine :—and when the touch of Spring
Thrills them, and gives them gladness, in thy light
They glitter, as the glancing swallow's wing
Dashes the water in his winding flight,

And leaves behind a wave, that crinkles bright,
And widens outward to the pebbled shore ;-

The vales are thine; and when they wake from night,
The dews that bend the grass tips, twinkling o'er
Their soft and oozy beds, look upward and adore.

The hills are thine :-they catch thy newest beam,
And gladden in thy parting, where the wood
Flames out in every leaf, and drinks the stream,
That flows from out thy fulness, as a flood
Bursts from an unknown land, and rolls the food
Of nations in its waters; so thy rays

Flow and give brighter tints, than ever bud,
When a clear sheet of ice reflects a blaze

Of many twinkling gems, as every glossed bough plays.

Thine are the mountains,-where they purely lift
Snows that have never wasted, in a sky
Which hath no stain; below the storm may drift
Its darkness, and the thunder-gust roar by ;-
Aloft in thy eternal smile they lie

Dazzling but cold;-thy farewell glance looks there,

And when below thy hues of beauty die, Girt round them, as a rosy belt, they bear

Into the high dark vault, a brow that still is fair.

The clouds are thine; and all their magic hues
Are pencilled by thee; when thou bendest low,
Or comest in thy strength, thy hand imbues
Their waving folds with such a perfect glow
Of all pure tints, the fairy pictures throw
Shame on the proudest art;

These are thy trophies, and thou bend'st thy arch,
The sign of triumph, in a seven-fold twine,
Where the spent storm is hasting on its march;
And there the glories of thy light combine,
And form, with perfect curve, a lifted line
Striding the earth and air;-man looks and tells
How Peace and Mercy in its beauty shine,
And how the heavenly messenger impels

Her glad wings on the path, that thus in ether swells.

The ocean is thy vassal ;-thou dost sway
His waves to thy dominion, and they go

Where thou, in heaven, dost guide them on their way,
Rising and falling in eternal flow:

Thou lookest on the waters, and they glow,

And take them wings and spring aloft in air,

And change to clouds, and then, dissolving, throw Their treasures back to earth, and, rushing, tear The mountain and the vale, as proudly on they bear.

In thee, first light, the bounding ocean smiles,
When the quick winds uprear it in a swell,
That rolls in glittering green around the isles,
Where ever-springing fruits and blossoms dwell.
Oh! with a joy no gifted tongue can tell,

I hurry o'er the waters when the sail

Swells tensely, and the light keel glances well Over the curling billow, and the gale

Comes off from spicy groves to tell its winning tale.

LESSON CXXXI,

Apostrophe to the Ocean.-BYRON.

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain,
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore:-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yěst of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage,-what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:—not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' playTime writes no wrinkles on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee-thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward ;-from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror,-'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid

my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

LESSON CXXXII.

On the use and abuse of amusements.—ALISON.

IT were unjust and ungrateful to conceive that the amusements of life are altogether forbid by its beneficent Author. They serve, on the contrary, important purposes in the economy of human life, and are destined to produce important effects, both upon our happiness and character. They are, in the first place, in the language of the Psalmist, "the wells of the desert;" the kind resting-places in which toil may relax, in which the weary spirit may recover its tone, and where the desponding mind may resume its strength and its hopes.

They are, in another view, of some importance to the dignity of individual character. In every thing we call amusement, there is generally some display of taste and imagination, some elevation of the mind from mere animal indulgence, or the baseness of sensual desire. Even in the scenes of relaxation, therefore, they have a tendency to preserve the dignity of human character, and to fill up the vacant and unguarded hours of life with occupations innoeent, at least, if not virtuous. But their principal effect,

perhaps, is upon the social character of man. Whatever amusement is sought, it is in the society of our brethren; and whenever it is found, it is in our sympathy with the happiness of those around us. It bespeaks the disposition of benevolence, and it creates it.

When men assemble, accordingly, for the purpose of general happiness or joy, they exhibit to the thoughtful eye, one of the most pleasing appearances of their original characters. They leave behind them, for a time, the faults of their station and the asperities of their temper ;-they forget the secret views, and selfish purposes of their ordinary life, and mingle with the crowd around them with no other view than to receive and to communicate happiness. It is a spectacle which it is impossible to observe without emotion; and, while the virtuous man rejoices at the evidence which it affords of the benevolent constitution of his nature, the pious man is apt to bless the benevolence of that God, who thus makes the wilderness and the solitary place be glad, and whose wisdom renders even the hours of amusement subservient to the cause of virtue.

It is not, therefore, the use of the innocent amusements of life which is dangerous, but the abuse of them ;—it is not when they are occasionally, but when they are constantly pursued; when the love of amusement degenerates into a passion, and when, from being an occasional indulgence, it becomes an habitual desire. What the consequences of this inordinate love of amusement are, I shall now endeavor very briefly to show you.

When we look, in a moral view, to the consequences of human pursuits, we are not to stop at the precise and immediate effects which they may seem to have upon character. It is chiefly by the general frame of mind they produce, and the habitual dispositions they create, that we are to determine whether their influence is fortunate or unfortunate on those who are engaged in them. In every pursuit, whatever gives strength and energy to the mind of man, experience teaches to be favorable to the interests of piety, of knowledge, and of virtue ;-in every pursuit, on the contrary, whatever enfeebles or limits the powers of mind, the same experience every where shows to be hostile to the best interests of human nature.

If it is in this view we consider the effects of the habitual love even of the most innocent amusement, we shall find that it produces necessarily, for the hour in which it is in