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They say that he again will rise,

More beautiful than now;
That God will bless him in the skies-
O, mother, tell me how!"
"Daughter, do you remember, dear,
The cold, dark thing you brought,
And laid upon the casement here,-
A withered worm, you thought?
1 told you that Almighty power
Could break that withered shell,
And show you, in a future hour,

Something would please you well.

Look at the chrysalis, my love,—
An empty shell it lies;-

Now raise your wondering glance above,
To where yon insect flies !"

"O, yes, mamma! how very gay
Its wings of starry gold!
And see! it lightly flies away

Beyond my gentle hold.

O, mother, now I know full well
If God that worm can change,
And draw it from this broken cell,
On golden wings to range,-
How beautiful will brother be,

When God shall give him wings,
Above this dying world to flee,
And live with heavenly things!"

OLD HUMBUG.

A CHAPTER FROM THE NEW ROMANCE,

HYPERION, By Professor LONGFELLOW, Author of Outre Mer. WHAT most interested our travellers in the ancient city of Frankfort, was neither the opera nor the Ariadne of Dannecker, but the house in which Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in his childhood, and remembered in his old age. Such for example are the walks around the city, outside the moat; the bridge over the Maine, with the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of the Barefooted Friars, through which he stole with mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit trees and rose bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and the antique leather gloves, which he annually received as Mayor on Pipers-Doomsday, representing a kind of middle personage between Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Genius! are thy foot-prints hallowed; and the star shines for ever over the place of thy nativity!

"Your English critics may rail as they list," said the Baron, while he and Flemming were returning from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the moat; "but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous, headlong;—his romantic manhood, in which pas

sion assumes the form of strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without rest; and his sublime old age,-the age of serene and classic repose, where he stands like Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in the Battle of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his head, the ocean streams hard frozen in his hoary locks."

"A good illustration of what the world calls his indifferentism."

"And do you know I rather like this indifferentism? Did you ever have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very 'storm and pressure period' of his indiscreet enthusiasm ? If you have, I think you will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified attitude which the old philosopher assumes.

"It is a pity that his admirers had not a little of this philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read the various epithets, which they apply to him; The dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man! The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-mind of Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets."

"I confess, he was no saint."

"No; his philosophy is the old ethic philosophy. You will find it all, in a convenient and concentrated, portable form in Horace's beautiful Ode to Thaliarchus. What I most object to in the old gentleman is his sensuality."

"Ŏ nonsense. Nothing can be purer than the Iphigenia; it is as cold and passionless as a marble statue."

"Very true; but you cannot say the same of some of the Roman Elegies and of that monstrous book the Elective Affinities."

"Ah, my friend, Goethe is an artist; and looks upon all things as objects of art merely. Why should he not be allowed to copy in words what painters and sculptors copy in colours and in marble ?"

"The artist shows his character in the choice of his object. Goethe never sculptured an Apollo, nor painted a Madonna. He gives us only sinful Magdalens and rampant Fauns. He does not so much idealize as realize."

"He only copies nature."

"So did the artists who made the bronze lamps of Pompeii. Would you hang one of those in your hall? To say that a man is an artist and copies nature, is not enough. There are two great schools of art; the imitative and the imaginative. The latter is the most noble, and most enduring; and Goethe belonged rather to the former. Have you read Menzel's attack upon him?”

"It is truly ferocious. The Suabian hews into him lustily. I hope you do not side with him."

He

66 'By no means. He goes too far. blames the poet for not being a politician. He might as well blame him for not being a missionary to the Sandwich Islands."

“And what do you think of Eckermann?” "I think he is a toady; a kind of German Boswell. Goethe knew he was drawing his portrait, and attitudinized accordingly. He works very hard to make a Saint Peter out of an old Jupiter, as the Catholics did at Rome." "Well; call him Old Humbug, or Old Heathen, or what you please; I maintain, that, with all his errors and short-comings, he was a glorious specimen of a man.'

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"He certainly was. Did it ever occur to you that he was in some points like Ben Franklin? a kind of rhymed Ben Franklin? The practical tendency of his mind was the same; his love of science was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit was the same; and a vast number of his little poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing more than the worldly wisdom of Poor Richard, versified."

"What most offends me is, that now every German jackass must have a kick at the dead lion."

66

'And every one who passes through Weimar must throw a book upon his grave, as travellers did of old a stone upon the grave of Manfredi, at Benevento. But, of all that has been said or sung, what most pleases me is Heine's Apologetic, if I may so call it; in which he says, that the minor poets, who flourish under the imperial reign of Goethe resemble a young forest, where the trees first show their own magnitude after the oak of a hundred years, whose branches had towered above and overshadowed them, has fallen. There was not wanting an opposition, that strove against Goethe, this majestic tree. Men of the most warring opinions united themselves for the contest. The adherents of the old faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads of paganism were permitted to play their witchery there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would they have imitated the holy Boniface, and levelled the enchanted oak to the ground. The followers of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were vexed on the other hand, that the tree could not serve as the Tree of Liberty, or, at any rate, as a barricade. In fact the tree was too high; no one could plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance the Carmagnole beneath its branches. The multitude, however, venerated this tree for the very reason, that it reared itself with such independent grandeur, and so graciously filled the world with its odour, while its branches, streaming magnificently toward

heaven, made it appear, as if the stars were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.' Don't you think that beautiful?"

"Yes, very beautiful. And I am glad to see, that you can find something to admire in my favourite author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to use an old German saying, that you can drive the hens out of the garden without trampling down the beds."

"Here is the old gentleman himself!" exclaimed Flemming.

"Where?" cried the Baron, as if for the moment he expected to see the living figure of the poet walking before them.

"Here at the window,-that full-length cast. Excellent, is it not! He is dressed, as usual, in his long yellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat crossed in front. What a magnificent head! and what a posture! He stands like a tower of strength. And, by Heavens ! he was nearly eighty years old, when that was made."

"How do you know?"

"You can see by the date on the pedestal." "You are right. And yet how erect he stands, with his square shoulders braced back, and his hands behind him. He looks as if he were standing before the fire. I feel tempted to put a live coal into his hand, it lies so invitingly half open. Gleim's description of him, soon after he went to Weimar, is very different from this. Do you recollect it?" "No, I do not."

"It is a story, which good old father Gleim used to tell with great delight. He was one evening reading the Gottingen Musen-Almanach in a select society at Weimar, when a young man came in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket, booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant, black, Italian eyes. He in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. That is either Goethe or the Devil,' said good old father Gleim to Weiland, who sat near him. To which the 'Great I of Osmannstadt' replied; 'It is both, for he has the Devil in him to-night; and at such times he is like a wanton colt, that flings out before and behind, and you will do well not to get near him!""

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"And now that noble figure is but mould. Only a few months ago, those majestic eyes looked for the last time on the light of a pleasant spring morning. Calm, like a god, the old man sat; and with a smile seemed to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty years. Books were near him, and the pen which had just dropped, as it were, from his dying fingers. Open the shutters, and let in more light!'

were the last words that came from those lips. Slowly stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write in the air; and, as it sank down again and was motionless, the spirit of the old man departed."

"And yet the world goes on. It is strange how soon, when a great man dies, his place is filled; and so completely, that he seems no longer wanted. But let us step in here. I wish to buy that cast; and send it home to a friend."

THE CONSEQUENCES OF

ATHEISM.

FEW men suspect, perhaps no man comprehends, the extent of the support given by religion to every virtue. No man, perhaps, is aware how much our moral and social sentiments are fed from this fountain; how powerless conscience would become without the belief of a God; how palsied would be human benevolence, were there not the sense of a higher benevolence to quicken and sustain it; how suddenly the whole social fabric would quake, and with what a fearful crash it would sink into hopeless ruins, were the ideas of a Supreme Being, of accountableness, and of a future life, to be utterly erased from every mind. Once let men thoroughly believe, that they are the work and sport of chance; that no Superior Intelligence concerns itself with human affairs; that all their improvements perish for ever at death; that the weak have no guardian, and the injured no avenger; that there is no recompense for sacrifices to uprightness and the public good; that an oath is unheard in heaven; that secret crimes have no witness but the perpetrator; that human existence has no purpose, and human virtue no unfailing friend; that this brief life is every thing to us, and death is total, everlasting extinction-once let men thoroughly abandon religion, and who can conceive or describe the extent of the desolation which would follow?

We hope, perhaps, that human laws and natural sympathy would hold society together. As reasonably might we believe, that, were the sun quenched in the heavens, our torches could illuminate, and our fires quicken and fertilize the creation. What is there in human nature to awaken respect and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of a day? and what is he more, if atheism be true? Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, and poverty and suffering, having no solace or hope, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws. Virtue, duty, principle, would be mocked and spurned as unmeaning sounds. A sordid self-interest would supplant every other feeling, and man would become in fact, what the theory of atheism declares him to be, a companion for brutes !CHANNING.

FRANKLIN'S FIRST ENTRANCE

INTO PHILADELPHIA.

I HAVE entered into the particulars of my voyage, and shall, in like manner, describe my first entrance into this city, that you may be able to compare beginnings so little auspicious with the figure I have since made.

Fa

On my arrival at Philadelphia, I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come by sea. I was covered with dirt; my pockets were filled with shirts and stockings; I was unacquainted with a single soul in the place, and knew not where to seek a lodging. tigued with walking, rowing, and having passed the night without sleep, I was extremely hungry, and all my money consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling's worth of coppers, which I gave to the boatmen for my passage. had assisted them in rowing, they refused it at first; but I insisted on their taking it. A man is sometimes more generous when he has little than when he has much money; probably because, in the first case, he is desirous of concealing his poverty.

As I

I walked towards the top of the street, looking eagerly on both sides, till I came to Market Street, where I met with a child with a loaf of bread. Often had I made my dinner on dry bread. I inquired where he had bought it, and went straight to the baker's shop, which he pointed out to me. I asked for some biscuits, expecting to find such as we had at Boston; but they made, it seems, none of that sort at Philadelphia. I then asked for a threepenny loaf. They made no loaves of that price. Finding myself ignorant of the prices, as well as of the different kinds of bread, I desired him to let me have threepenny-worth of bread of some kind or other. He gave me three large rolls. I was surprised at receiving so much I took them, however, and, having no room in my pockets, I walked on with a roll under each arm, eating a third. In this manner I went through Market Street to Fourth Street, and passed the house of Mr. Read, the father of my future wife. She was standing at the door, observed me, and thought, with reason, that I made a very singular and grotesque appearance.

I then turned the corner, and went through Chestnut Street, eating my roll all the way; and, having made this round, I found myself again on Market Street wharf, near the boat in which I arrived. I stepped into it to take a draught of the river water; and, finding myself satisfied with my first roll, I gave the other two to a woman and her child, who had come down with us in the boat, and was waiting to continue her journey. Thus refreshed, I regained the street, which was now full of well-dressed people, all going the same way. I joined them, and was thus led to a large Quaker's meeting-house near the market place. I sat down with the rest, and, after looking

round me for some time, hearing nothing said, and being drowsy from my last night's labour and want of rest, I fell into a sound sleep. In this state I continued till the assembly dispersed, when one of the congregation had the goodness to wake me. This was consequently the first house I entered, or in which I slept, at Philadelphia. -FRANKLIN.

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?
THY neighbour? It is he whom thou
Hast power to aid and bless,
Whose aching heart or burning brow
Thy soothing hand may press.
Thy neighbour? 'Tis the fainting poor,
Whose eye with want is dim,
Whom hunger sends from door to door,-
Go thou, and succour him.

Thy neighbour? 'Tis that weary man,
Whose years are at their brim,
Bent low with sickness, cares and pain :-
Go thou and comfort him.

Thy neighbour? 'Tis the heart bereft
Of every earthly gem;
Widow and orphan, helpless left:-
Go thou and shelter them.

Thy neighbour? Yonder toiling slave,
Fettered in thought and limb,
Whose hopes are all beyond the grave,-
Go thou and ransom him.

Whene'er thou meet'st a human form

Less favoured than thine own,
Remember 'tis thy neighbour worm,
Thy brother, or thy son.

Oh, pass not, pass not heedless by;
Perhaps thou canst redeem
The breaking heart from misery :-
Go, share thy lot with him.

PRODUCTION OF SILK IN
AMERICA.

THOSE Who Content themselves with looking on, and listening to what they hear in relation to silk, as well as those less passive, who go so far as to ridicule the business, fall into the unreasonable error of expecting too much to be done at once. The enterprise itself, of converting the United States into a silk productive country, is too gigantic to be grappled with and overcome by the effort of a single year. But that less than twenty years will be sufficient to effect it, no one, conversant with our facilities for doing so, entertains a single doubt. We possess materials within ourselves abundantly competent to the task, enterprise, talent, capital, and skill. Time alone, the great teacher, is the single additional requisite. The mistake has heretofore been made of relying too exclusively on foreign culturists, while there was a system entirely American. That system, by the practice of a few late years, has assumed a form and consistency distinct enough to be comprehended and practised by every class of our population. Our

success in feeding worms the present year will no doubt be signally encouraging. Many will commence feeding to whom the business is new, and many such will fail; but it is they who fail, and not the business. Some experience is necessary, which all cannot be expected to acquire at the same moment. One failure is sufficient for one man-his second effort will disappoint him only; that is his own neglect. Cotton growing and cotton spinning, as well as manufacturing, each had a beginning, and has had its triumph.

A few years will behold our country abounding with cocooneries, affording profitable employment to the most interesting classes of society, females, children, and those too feeble to pursue a laborious calling. It is remarkable, that none who have yet embarked in it have pronounced it impracticable or unprofitable. Of what other enterprise can as much be said? Millions have been sustained by this employment in China, for thousands of years; and silk has been for ages as great a staple of China, as cotton is of the United States now. Yet our climate is as genial as that of China, our skill to produce immensely superior, and the same markets are open to us at home and abroad, as those in which the silks of China have been so largely consumed. Our home demand alone will absorb all that we can make for years to come.

The high price of labour in this country is of itself a powerful argument in favour of our successful competition with all countries where labour is cheap. Strange as this doctrine may sound in some modern ears, it is fortified by facts, against which all argument is fallacious. The cheap labour of Europe is held by many to be an obstacle which cannot be surmounted. Now it is held by high authorities in political economy, that in all important branches of manufactures, of any kind whatever, a decided superiority has been secured by those people with whom labour bears the highest price. Look at the cotton manufactures of England, which are sold cheaper, and are better in quality, than any other country in Europe. Yet the price of labour is notoriously dearer in England than in any other country in the eastern world. Look at the manufacture of woollens in France, in which the French surpass and undersell the people of Spain, although the price of labour is higher in France than it is in Spain. Labour is dearer in the United States than in any other country in the world, yet look at our ability to supply ourselves with every cotton fabric, better and cheaper than any foreign country is able to. ships are navigated cheaper, and abundantly better, than those of any other country, yet the wages of seamen are notoriously higher than any other mercantile nation. The simple fact that gives this great result is thisthat in those countries where labour is dearest,

Our

more ingenuity, more talent, more skill and industry are brought into action, and they are therefore enabled to undersell those countries where labour is cheapest. Thus the spindles in France revolve 400 times in a minute, those in England 2 to 3000 times, yet in Massachusetts, the cotton spindles at Newton actually revolve 5000 times in a minute. Such are the results which dear labour accomplishes in our country, in opposition to the cheap labour of other countries.-Silk Farmer, Aug. 1839.

The July number of the Journal of the American Silk Society, a Work published in Baltimore by Gideon B. Smith, Esq., contains an article, which thus replies to the objection You are doing nothing but raising and selling trees, we want to see you making silk, if you can :—

:

The

"This is the effervescence of the go-ahead spirit of our people noticed above. They cannot wait for the end, as in the natural progress of things, but must have the effect before the cause be fairly in operation. The only obstacle the writer of these commentaries fears at this time, as likely to impede the silk business, is the beginning to make silk too soon. country is not supplied with mulberry treesnot a hundredth part of the number wanted to supply the country will be produced this year. The consequence will be, the prices of trees will induce people to sell, and thus to defer planting permanent orchards. Hence, all the worms raised this year, or the major part at least, must be fed on the native mulberry from the woods, at a cost more than equal to the value of the silk produced. will, or at least may serve to disappoint many, and to disgust others. But, when the country shall be well supplied with trees, and the price of them consequently reduced so that there will be no object in selling, then may the culture of silk be expected to go ahead.' We have elsewhere, however, made a condensed statement of the cocooneries now in operation in the country, with the number of worms now feeding in many. The facts there set forth, we feel assured, will satisfy any reasonable person that we are making silk even now, to an extent that very few have heretofore supposed possible.

This

"Another reason why we can succeed, though our predecessors failed, and one, too, greater than all others, is to be found in the advantages we possess in the morus multicaulis. They had not this invaluable tree. They were obliged to wait five to eight years for their white mulberry trees to grow large enough to afford leaves for their worms. It is not much to be wondered at that our peculiar people were discouraged by the very distant prospect this afforded them of profit. We can plant our morus multicaulis trees one year and make more silk from an acre of them the next, than can generally be made from an acre of white

mulberry trees eight years old. Besides, it is less labour and expense to produce ten acres of morus multicaulis trees than one of white mulberry. These facts, which every one acquainted with the business knows full well, have caused the trees to bear comparatively and apparently very high prices. A tree costs say one dollar; well, the purchaser cuts it up, and in six months he will have at least ten and not improbably thirty trees, equal every way to the one he had purchased. Thus for one dollar, and not two hours labour, he has obtained, say fifteen first rate trees. Now apply the same test to the white mulberry, the tree used in Europe for silk worms, and with which we have heretofore failed. Suppose you only have to pay ten cents for it, you must plant it and cultivate it five or six years before you can use it; and even then it will be only one tree still; for you cannot multiply it as you can the morus multicaulis. But suppose you sow an ounce of white mulberry seed, that will cost one dollar, and you obtain 5,000 trees from it; still it will be six or eight years before they are fit to afford leaves; and in that same time you might have produced 100,000 trees from the single morus multicaulis tree that cost one dollar. Therefore, in the morus multicaulis we have a great and powerful influence, that will, even though all other advantages were absent, insure success to the great cause."

Silk-worms.- -We have at our office a sample of the silk made by one and the same worm, while feeding on the leaves of the morus multicaulis and the morus alba. The silk of the worm feeding on the alba is yellowish and of inferior quality to that of the same worm feeding on the multicaulis, which is of a light straw colour, and a really beautiful article.American Beacon.

"AS THY DAY, SO SHALL THY STRENGTH BE.”

BY MRS. SIGOURNEY.
WHEN adverse winds and waves arise,
And in my heart despondence sighs,-
When life her throng of care reveals,
And weakness o'er my spirit steals,--
Grateful I hear the kind decree,
That" as my day, my strength shall be."

When, with sad footstep, memory roves
'Mid smitten joys, and buried loves,-
When sleep my tearful pillow flies,
And dewy morning drinks my sighs,—
Still to thy promise, Lord, I flee,
That "as my day my strength shall be."

One trial more must yet be past,
One pang,-the keenest, and the last;
And when with brow convulsed and pale,
My feeble, quivering heart-strings fail,
Redeemer, grant my soul to see
That "as her day, her strength shall be."

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