they still speak to nations, and awaken intellect, sensibility, and genius in both hemispheres; who can think of such men and not feel the immense inferiority of the most gifted warrior, whose elements of thought are physical forces and physical obstructions, and whose employment is the combination of the lowest class of objects, on which a powerful mind can be employed. All despotism, whether usurped or hereditary, is our abhor rence. We regard it as the most grievous wrong and insult to the human race. But towards the hereditary despot we have more of compassion than indignation. Nursed and brought up in delusion, worshipped from his cradle, never spoken to in the tone of fearless truth, taught to look on the great mass of his fellow beings as an inferior race, and to regard despotism as a law of nature and a necessary element of social life; such a prince, whose education and condition almost deny him the possibility of acquiring healthy moral feeling and manly virtue, must not be judged severely. Still, in absolving the despot from much of the guilt which seems at first to attach to his unlawful and abused power, we do not the less account despotism a wrong and a curse. The time for its fall, we trust, is coming. It cannot fall too soon. has long enough wrung from the laborer his hard earnings; long enough squandered a nation's wealth on its parasites and minions; long enough warred against the freedom of the mind, and arrested the progress of truth. It has filled dungeons enough with the brave and good, and shed enough of the blood of patriots. Let its end come. It cannot come too soon. It APOSTROPHE TO EDUCATION. NURSE of my country's infancy, her stay She owes her mountain-breath of Liberty; Before thy frown the traitor's heart shall quail; A patriot mask, to compass what they dare, But thou shalt rend the virtuous-seeming guise, SUNRISE FROM MOUNT WASHINGTON. THE laughing hours have chased away the night, And see! the foolish Moon, but now so vain I stand upon thy lofty pinnacle, Temple of Nature! and look down with awe Their hoary patriarch, emulously watching The sun comes up! away the shadows fling, The many beauteous mountain-streams leap down, There is an awful stillness in this place, SOURCES OF RELIGION. THERE is religion in every thing around us; a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of nature, which man would do well to imitate. It is a meek and blessed influence, stealing in as it were, unawares upon the heart. It comes quietly and without excitement. It has no terror; no gloom in its approaches. It does not rouse up the passions; it is untrammelled by the creeds and unshadowed by the superstitions of man, It is fresh from the hands of its author, and glowing from the immediate presence of the Great Spirit which pervades and quickens it. It is written on the arched sky. It looks out from every star. It is on the sailing cloud, and in the invisible wind. It is among the hills and valleys of the earth—where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter-or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage. It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of the unsleeping ocean. It is the poetry of nature. It is this which uplifts the spirit within us, until it is strong enough to overlook the shadows of our place of probation:—which breaks, link after link, the chains that bind us to materiality; and which opens to our imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness. RELIGION. RELIGION has planted itself, in all the purity of its image and sufficiency of its strength, at the threshold of human misery; and is empowed to recall the wanderers from their pilgrimage of wo, and direct them in the path of heaven. It has diffused a sacred joy in the abodes of poverty and wretchedness; it has illuminated the dungeon of the captive; it has effaced the wrinkles from the brow of care, shed a gleam of sacred joy to the chamber of death, gladdened the countenance of the dying with a triumphant enthusiasm, and diffused throughout the earth a faint foretaste of the blessings of futurity. It is as benign as the light of heaven, and comprehensive as its span. And it is in the eye of the christian, that it quickens perseverance with the promises of reward, reanimates the drooping spirit, invigorates the decrepitude of age and directs with a prophetic ken to the regions of eternal felicity. Like the sun, it gilds every object with its rays, without being diminished in its lustre, or shorn of its power. THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER. FATHER of all! in every age, By saint, by savage, or by sage, Thou great first cause! least understood; What conscience dictates to be done, This teach me, more than hell, to shun, What blessings thy free bounty gives For God is paid when man receives; Yet not to earth's contracted span If I am right, thy grace impart Save me alike from foolish pride Teach me to feel another's wo, |