Fly, Misraim, fly!' -The ravenous floods they see And, fiercer than the floods, the Deity. 'Fly, Misraim, fly!'-From Edom's coral strand Again the prophet stretched his dreadful wand:With one wild crash the thundering waters sweep, And all is waves-a dark and lonely deepYet o'er these lonely waves such murmurs past, As mortal wailing swelled the nightly blast: And strange and sad the whispering breezes bore The groans of Egypt to Arabia's shore. LESSON XXXV. Belshazzar.-CROLY. HOUR of an empire's overthrow! The princes from the feast were gone― The idle flame was burning low— "T was midnight upon Babylon. That night the feast was wild and high; The last deep cup of wrath was drained. 'Mid jewelled roof and silken pall, "King of the east! the trumpet calls, 'A surge is in Euphrates bed, 'Behold a tide of Persian steel- Belshazzar gazed-the voice was past- The rushing of a mighty plume. He listened-all again was still; He slept;-in sleep wild murmurs came— 'Sleep, Sultan! 't is thy final sleep; He started:-'mid the battle's yell, LESSON XXXVI. Christ in the Tempest.-WHITTIER. STORM On the midnight waters! The vast sky Shook by some warning spirit from the high And desolate bosom. Lo-they mingle now- And it is very terrible! The roar Ascendeth unto Heaven, and thunders back As the rent bark one moment rides to view, He stood upon the reeling deck-His form Told of a triumph man may never know— The great waves heard him, and the storm's loud tone Went moaning into silence at his will: And the thick clouds, where yet the lightning shone, And slept the latent thunder, rolled away Until no trace of tempest lurked behind, Dread Ruler of the tempest! Thou, before The storm and darkness of man's soul, the same LESSON XXXVII. Great Effects result from Little Causes.-PORTER. THE same connexion between small things and great, runs through all the concerns of our world. The ignorance of a physician, or the carelessness of an apothecary, may spread death through a family or a town. How often has the sickness of one man, become the sickness of thousands? How often has the error of one man, become the error of thousands? A fly or an atom, may set in motion a train of intermediate causes, which shall produce a revolution in a kingdom. Any one of a thousand incidents, might have cut off Alexander of Greece, in his cradle. But if Alexander had died in infancy, or had lived a single day longer than he did, it might have put another face on all the following history of the world. A spectacle-maker's boy, amusing himself in his father's shop, by holding two glasses between his finger and his thumb, and varying their distance, perceived the weathercock of the church spire, opposite to him, much larger than ordinary, and apparently much nearer, and turned upside down. This excited the wonder of the father, and led him to additional experiments; and these resulted in that astonishing instrument, the Telescope, as invented by Galileo, and perfected by Herschell. On the same optical principles was constructed the Microscope, by which we perceive that a drop of stagnant water is a world teeming with inhabitants. By one of these instruments, the experimental philosopher measures the ponderous globes, that the omnipotent hand has ranged in majestic order through the skies; by the other, he sees the same hand employed in rounding and polishing five thousand minute, transparent globes in the eye of a fly. Yet all these discoveries of modern science, exhibiting the intelligence, dominion, and agency of God, we owe to the transient amusement of a child. It is a fact, commonly known, that, the laws of gravitation, which guide the thousands of rolling worlds in the planetary system, were suggested at first, to the mind of Newton, by the falling of an apple. The art of printing, shows from what casual incidents, t1 most magnificent events in the scheme of Providence may result. Time was, when princes were scarcely rich enough to purchase a copy of the Bible. Now every cottager in Christendom, is rich enough to possess this treasure. 'Who would have thought, that the simple circumstance of a man, amusing himself by cutting a few letters on the bark of a tree, and impressing them on paper, was intimately connected with the mental illumination of the world.' LESSON XXXVIII. Mount Etna.-LON. ENCYCLOPÆDIA. THE man who treads Mount Etna seems like a man above the world. He generally is advised to ascend before day-break; the stars now brighten, shining like so many gems of flames; others appear which were invisible below. The milky-way seems like a pure flake of light lying across the firmament, and it is the opinion of some that the satellites of Jupiter might be discovered by the naked eye. But when the sun arises, the prospect from the summit of Etna is beyond comparison the finest in nature. The eye rolls over it with astonishment and is lost. The diversity of objects; the extent of the horizon; the immense height; the country like a map at our feet; the ocean around; the heavens above; all conspire to overwhelm the mind, and affect it with sensations of astonishment and grandeur. We must be allowed to extract Mr. Brydone's description of this scene. There is not,' he says, 'on the surface of the globe, any one point that unites so many awful and sublime objects. The immense elevation from the surface of the earth, drawn as it were to a single point, without any neighboring mountain for the senses and imagination to rest upon and recover from their astonishment, in their way down to the world. This point or pinnacle, raised on the brink of a bottomless gulf, as old as the world, often discharging rivers of fire, and throwing out burning rocks, with a noise that shakes the whole island. Add to this the unbounded extent of the prospect, comprehending the greatest diversity, and the most beautiful scenery in nature, with the rising sun adyancing in the east, to illuminate the wondrous scene, |