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worship at some other shrine than their own, make the husband the guilty party? Is it that every man wants the beau ideal of Lord Byron, and is determined to have no other? A glance at the

inner life of bonded genius is sufficient to awaken this suspicion; or, at least, to set it into frightful dreams. Gentlemen claim unbounded affection and devotion as due them from woman; and, ergo, the impiety of dedicating these to literature, science, philanthropy, or any thing else but themselves.

If there is a lady on earth who is capable of appreciating genuine talent and worth in the other sex, it is she whose mind has been refined and elevated by the alchemy of knowledge, whose acquisitions have inspired her with the "farther reaching hope." Such a woman is capable of noble and lofty sentiments; and by a law of nature, is the instinctive and legitimate mother of them. Her soul is open to every generous impulse, and has a working sympathy for the woes of others. In her, true humanity will find a kindred spirit; man, a being worthy of sterling confidence and affection, who will reciprocate his kindness and reward his love.

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A WELL digested plan of life is a matter of great mportance to a young man in the pursuit of knowl

edge. One might as well embark in a paper skiff for Europe, as set out upon the broad sea of life without a plan, a chart to regulate his course. Efforts put forth at a venture seldom achieve great objects; or if they do, it is only a dice-stroke at best. Moderate talents, well cultivated and well directed, produce greater results than genius operating without a definite and fixed object. A farm of fifty acres in Ontario county is worth more than the whole desert of Sahara. A single gun, well aimed, may do more execution than a thousand cannon discharged at random.

XIV. CHARMS OF NATURE.

(May, 1844.)

MAY! There is a balmy softness in the very word. May comes to us, blushing through flowers, and playing with zephyrs. She smiles with the sunshine, and spreads over the earth the beauty of her presence.

I am happy; and who could be otherwise, when everything in nature thrills with pleasure? The birds sing, the breezes flow, the trees wave, the grass shoots, and the fields breathe around, with the flocks and herds frolicking about them like carefree children.

Art thou unhappy? Go back, misanthrope, and

search into the secrets of thy bosom, and thou shalt find the light of life extinguished there, and in its stead a pitchy pool of bitter and poisonous waters.

I love nature in all her moods-through all her domains; from the ocean, with its coral groves, to the firmament, with its teeming worlds; because from all I learn my own insignificance and helplessness; and looking "through nature up to nature's God," acquire a calm and joyful confidence in his all-pervading providence and love.

XV. MORNING AND MIDNIGHT.

(September, 1844.)

WHILE I sit by my window, and look abroad upon nature, I see the rich drapery of autumn, spreading out its folds upon the forest, brightening like the dying dolphin at the moment of its dissolution. Every barn, like an African palace, is surrounded by a village of stacks. The wind sweeps by “on wings of Araby," so laden is it with fragrance. The doves are careering in the sky, or cooing upon the roofs. The martins fly twittering from the eaves, or assemble in gleeful conclave upon the sheds. Master chanticleer crows until barn echoes to barn, like the concert of a dozen voices. Chick is peeping most lamentably because "mistress hen" has left it behind in the weeds. Ah, there is noise, if not poetry, in this scene!

Last night I arose to see midnight. O, the pulseful stillness of the hour! Silence pervaded nature, and worlds swept on in harmony. Man had suspended his insect efforts, and no sound broke in upon the breathless quiet of the scene, save the chirp of the cricket. Why needed the Macedonian Philip an hireling voice to remind him of his mortality? Did not the cricket sing in his court, and did not its song cease? O the sublimity of midnight! It is the dark pavilion in which we commune with Deity, in which the soul forgets its clogs, and from which it flies up to the embrace of Him who said, "Let there be light, and there was light!"

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I HEARD this morning such a sermon as I have seldom heard. It was beautiful, thrilling, majestic. Indeed, I have no words to describe its excellence, or pencil its effects. What glorious apparitions went trooping through my fancy! What tides of emotion swept the soul of the assembly!

Strange that words should have such power! Passing strange that any man should be able to produce a common pulse throughout a thousand hearts! Yet such is eloquence; a mysterious and

*Written after hearing the Rev. Dr. Bascom.

heavenly impulse; a flash which few ean impart, but all must feel. It is not the logic, nor the philosophy; it is not the rhetoric, nor the elocution; it is nature, pouring itself up through the depths of thought and passion, as the subterranean fire heaves and rends the superincumbent mountain.

There are various styles of eloquence. There is the learned; evoking the spirit of buried generations, and exploring its way to the heart through the tombs of antiquity. There is the logical; taking every out-post, before it assails the citadel; and then sapping the walls, rather than attempt to scale them. There is the picturesque, like that of Jeremy Taylor, or Thomas H. Stockton; in which, as in Prospero's Island, beauty after beauty bodies itself forth, to teach by charming. There is the persuasive; like that of Fenelon or Summerfield; whose voice falls like flute-tones upon the ear, and whose doctrine distills into the soul as gently as starlight dews. There is the plain, pointed, earnest; like that of Wesley, Baxter, or Whitefield; leaping the ramparts of prejudice; and rushing, torch in hand, into the magazine. There is the bold, striking, majestic, original; like that of Chalmers, Irving, or Bascom; startling by its novelty and grandeur of thought; electrifying by its sudden transitions, and vivid imagery; as if the footsteps of a descending angel jarred the firmament, or "the trump of God" woke the echoes of the stars. Such was that to which I listened this morning.

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