majesty "in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning." We feel that there is a God; and from the tempestuous sea of life, we hail that polar star of nature, to which a sacred instinct had directed our eyes, and which burns with undecaying ray to lighten us among all the darkness of the deep.

From this great conviction, there is another sentiment which succeeds. Nature, indeed, yearly perishes; but it is yearly renewed. Amid all its changes, the immortal spirit of Him that made it remains; and the same sun which now marks with his receding ray the autumn of the year, will again arise in his brightness, and bring along with him the promise of the spring and all the magnificence of summer.

Under such convictions, hope dawns upon the sadness of the heart. The melancholy of decay becomes the very herald of renewal;-the magnificent circle of nature opens upon our view;-we anticipate the analogous resurrection of our being;-we see beyond the grave a greater spring, and we people it with those who have given joy to that which is passed. With such final impressions, we submit ourselves gladly to the destiny of our being. While the sun of mortality sinks, we hail the rising of the Sun of Righteousness, and, in hours when all the honors of nature are perishing around us, we prostrate ourselves in deeper adoration before Him who "sitteth upon its throne."

Let, then, the young go out, in these hours, under the descending sun of the year into the fields of nature. Their hearts are now ardent with hope, with the hopes of fame, of honor, or of happiness; and in the long perspective which is before them, their imagination creates a world where all may be enjoyed. Let the scenes which they now may witness, moderate, but not extinguish their ambition-while they see the yearly desolation of nature, let them see it as the emblem of mortal hope;-while they feel the disproportion between the powers they possess, and the time they are to be employed, let them carry their ambitious eye beyond the world;-and while, in these sacred solitudes, a voice in their own bosom corresponds to the voice of decaying nature, let them take that high decision which becomes those who feel themselves the inhabitants of a greater world, and who look to a being incapable of decay.

15

LESSON LXXII.

Moss Side.-WILSON.*

GILBERT AINSLIE was a poor man; and he had been a poor man all the days of his life, which were not few, for his thin hair was now waxing gray. He had been born and bred on the small moorland farm which he now occupied; and he hoped to die there, as his father and grandfather had done before him, leaving a family just above the more bitter wants of this world. Labor, hard and unremitting, had been his lot in life; but although sometimes severely tried, he had never repined; and through all the mist, and gloom, and even the storms that had assailed him, he had lived on, from year to year, in that calm and resigned contentment, which unconsciously cheers the hearth-stone of the blameless poor.

With his own hands he had ploughed, sowed, and reaped his often scanty harvest, assisted, as they grew up, by three sons, who, even in boyhood, were happy to work along with their father in the fields. Out of doors or in, Gilbert Ainslie was never idle. The spade, the shears, the plough-shaft, the sickle, and the flail, all came readily to hands that grasped them well; and not a morsel of food was eaten under his roof, or a garment worn there, that was not honestly, severely, nobly earned. Gilbert Ainslie was a slave, but it was for them he loved with a sober and deep affection. The thraldom under which he lived God had imposed, and it only served to give his character a shade of silent gravity, but not austere; to make his smiles fewer, but more heartfelt; to calm his soul at grace before and after meals; and to kindle it in morning and evening prayer.

There is no need to tell the character of the wife of such a man. Meek and thoughtful, yet gladsome and gay withal, her heaven was in her house; and her gentler and weaker hands helped to bar the door against want. Of ten children that had been born to them, they had lost three; and as they had fed, clothed, and educated them respectably, so did they give them who died a respectable funeral. The living did not grudge to give up, for a while, some of their

*The volume of beautiful and affecting tales, entitled "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," from which this piece and some others in this Selection are taken, is attributed to John Wilson, Esq. upon the authority of M'Diarmid, Editor of The Scrap Book.

Kythe* like the passing meteor of the deep:
Yet ere to-morrow shall those sunny waves,
That wanton round her, as they were in love,
Turn dark and fierce, and swell, and swallow her:
So is he girt by death on every side,

As heedless of it.-Thus he perishes.
Such were my thoughts upon a summer eve,
As forth I walked to quaff the cooling breeze
The setting sun was curtaining the west
With purple and with gold, so fiercely bright,
That eye of mortal might not look on it—
Pavilion fitting for an angel's home.

The sun's last ray fell slanting on a thorn
With blossoms white, and there a blackbird sat
Bidding the sun adieu, in tones so sweet
As fancy might awake around his throne.
My heart was full, yet found no utterance,
Save in a half-breathed sigh and moistening tear.
I wandered on, scarce knowing where I went,
Till I was seated on an infant's grave.
Alas! I knew the little tenant well:
She was one of a lovely family,

That oft had clung around me like a wreath
Of flowers, the fairest of the maiden spring-
It was a new-made grave, and the green sod
Lay loosely on it; yet affection there
Had reared the stone, her monument of fame.
I read the name-I loved to hear her lisp-
'Twas not alone, but every name was there
That lately echoed through that happy dome.
I had been three weeks absent; in that time
The merciless destroyer was at work,
And spared not one of all the infant group.
The last of all I read the grandsire's name,
On whose white locks I oft had seen her cheek
Like a bright sunbeam on a fleecy cloud,
Rekindling in his eye the fading lustre,
Breathing into his heart the glow of youth.
He died at eighty of a broken heart,

Bereft of all for whom he wished to live.

* Kythe or kithe; Show, used here as a neuter verb: The oldest English poets use it actively. "Ne kithe hire jalousie."-Chaucer.

1

LESSON LXXV.

Stanzas written at Midnight.-D. MOIR. 'Tis night-and in darkness the visions of youth Flit solemn and slow in the eye of the mind; The hope they excited hath perished, and truth Laments o'er the wrecks they are leaving behind. "Tis midnight-and wide o'er the regions of riot

Are spread, deep in silence, the wings of repose;
And man, soothed from revel, and lulled into quiet,
Forgets in his slumbers the weight of his woes.
How gloomy and dim is the scowl of the heaven,
Whose azure the clouds with their darkness invest;
Not a star o'er the shadowy concave is given,

To omen a something like hope to the breast.
Hark! how the lone night-wind uptosses the forest!
A downcast regret through the mind slowly steals:
But ah! 'tis the tempest of fortune that sorest

The bosom of man in his solitude feels!

Where, where are the spirits in whom was my trust,
Whose bosoms with mutual affection did burn?
Alas! they have gone to their homes in the dust,
The grass rustles drearily over their urn:
While I, in a populous solitude, languish,

'Mid foes that beset me, and friends that are cold;
Ah! the pilgrim of earth oft has felt in his anguish,
That the heart may be widowed before it is old!
Affection can sooth but its votaries an hour,

Doomed soon in the flames, that it raised to depart;
And ah! disappointment has poison and power
To ruffle and sour the most patient of heart.
Too oft, 'neath the barb-pointed arrows of malice,
Has merit been destined to bear and to bleed ;
And they, who of pleasure have emptied the chalice,
Have found that the dregs were full bitter indeed.

Let the storms of adversity lower; 'tis in vain

Tho' friends should forsake me, and foes should combine--
Such may kindle the breasts of the weak to complain,
They only can teach resignation to mine:

For far o'er the regions of doubt and of dreaming,
The spirit beholds a less perishing span;

And bright through the tempest the rainbow is streaming,
The sign of forgiveness from Heaven to man!

LESSON LXXVI.

Slavery.-Cowper.

O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire....
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not colored like his own; and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith

Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,

Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earn'd.
No dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;