Terrors shall make him afraid on every side; and the robber shall prevail against him. Brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation. His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street. He shall be driven from light into darkness. They that come after him shall be astonished at his day. He shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

FROM THE BIBLE,

CCXIII.-ADAM.

CREATION'S heir! the first, the last,
That knew the world his own;
Yet stood he, mid his kingdom vast,
A fugitive-o'erthrown!

Faded and frail his glorious form,
And changed his soul within,
While fear and sorrow, strife and storm,
Told the dark secret-Sin!

Unaided and alone on earth,

He bade the heavens give ear;
But every star that sang his birth,
Kept silence in its sphere:
He saw, round Eden's distant steep,
Angelic legions stray;

Alas! he knew them sent to keep
His guilty foot away.

Then, reckless, turned he to his own,
The world before him spread;
But Nature's was an altered tone,

And breathed rebuke and dread:
Fierce thunder-peal, and rocking gale,
Answered the storm-swept sea,
While crashing forests joined the wail;
And all said, "Cursed for thee."

This, spoke the lion's prowling roar,
And this, the victim's cry;
This, written in defenseless gore,
Forever met his eye:

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, oh sovereign Blanc !

The Arvè, and the Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly, while thou, dread mountain form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,

How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the sky and black: transpicuous deep,
An ebon mass! Methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! but when I look again,
It seems thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.

Oh! dread and silent form! I gazed on thee,
Till thou, still present to my bodily eye,

Didst vanish from my thought. Entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone:

Yet thou, methinks, wast working on my soul,
E'en like some deep, enchanting melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it.

Who sank thy sunless pillars in the earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee father of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad,
Who called you forth from night and utter death?
From darkness let you loose, and icy dens,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with lovely flowers
Of living blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! God! the torrents like a shout of nations
Utter; the ice-plain bursts, and answers, God!
God! sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice,
And pine groves with their soft and soul-like sound:
The silent snow-mass, loosening, thunders, God!

Ye dreadless flowers, that fringe the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth God! and fill the hills with praise!

And thou, oh silent form, alone and bare,
Whom, as I lift again my head, bowed low
In silent adoration, I again behold,

And to thy summit upward from thy base
Sweep slowly, with dim eyes, suffused with tears,
Awake, thou mountain form! Rise, like a cloud;
Rise, like a cloud of incense from the earth!

Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills!
Thou dread embassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, calls on God.
FROM COLERIDGE.

CCXV.-PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.

ONE of the most striking characteristics of this age, is the extraordinary progress which it has witnessed in popular knowledge. A new and powerful impulse has been acting in the social system of late, producing this effect in a most remarkable degree.

In morals, in politics, in art, in literature, there is a vast accession to the number of readers, and to the number of proficients. The present state of popular knowledge is not the result of a slow and uniform progress, proceeding through a lapse of years, with the same regular degree of motion. It is evidently the result of some new causes, brought into powerful action, and producing their consequences rapidly and strikingly. What are these

causes?

This is not an occasion for discussing such a question at length. Allow me to say, however, that the improved state of popular knowledge is but the necessary result of the improved condition of the great mass of the people. Knowledge is not one of our merely physical wants. Life may be sustained without it.

But, in order to live, men must be fed, and clothed, and sheltered; and in a state of things in which one's whole labor can do no more than procure clothes, food, and shelter, he can have no time nor means for mental improvement. Knowledge, therefore, is not attained, and can not be attained, till there is some degree of respite from daily manual toil, and never-ending drudgery. But whenever a less degree of labor will produce the absolute necessaries

of life, then there come leisure and means, both to teach and to learn.

But if this great and wonderful extension of popular knowledge be the result of an improved condition, it may well be asked, what are the causes which have thus suddenly produced that great improvement? How is it that the means of food, clothing, and shelter, are now so much more cheaply and abundantly procured than formerly? The main cause I take to be the progress of scientific art, or a new extent of the application of science to art. This it is, which has so much distinguished the last half century in Europe and in America; and its effects are every where visible, and especially among us. Man has found new allies and auxiliaries, in the powers of nature, and in the inventions of mechanism. FROM WEBSTER.

CCXVI. THE PRESENT AGE.

THE Present Age. In these brief words what a world of thought is comprehended! what infinite movements! what joys and sorrows! what hope and despair! what faith and doubt! what silent grief and loud lament! what fierce conflicts and subtle schemes of policy! what private and public revolutions! In the period through which many of us have passed, what thrones have been shaken! what hearts have bled! what millions have been butchered by their fellow-creatures! what hopes of philanthropy have been blighted! and, at the same time, what magnificent enterprises have been achieved! what new provinces won to science and art! what rights and liberties secured to nations!

It is a privilege to have lived in an age so stirring, so pregnant, so eventful. It is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of warning and encouragement is never to die. Its impression on history is indelible. Amid its events, the American revolution, the first distinct, solemn assertion. of the rights of men, and the French revolution, that vol