very effort to make them clear to another. Our social rank too, depends a good deal on our power of utter

ance.

The principal distinction between what are called gentlemen and the vulgar, lies in this, that the latter are awkward in manners, and are essentially wanting in propriety, clearness, grace, and force of utterance. A man who cannot open his lips without breaking a rule of grammar, without showing in his dialect, or brogue, or uncouth tones, his want of cultivation, or without darkening his meaning by a confused, unskillful mode of communication, cannot take the place to which perhaps his native good sense entitles him. To have intercourse with respectable people, we must speak their language.

LESSON XXII.

SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.

THE Spirit of Beauty unfurls her light,
And wheels her course in a joyous flight,
I know her track through the balmy air,
By the blossoms that cluster and whiten there;
She leaves the tops of the mountains green,
And gems the valley with crystal sheen.

At morn, I know where she rested at night,
For the roses are gushing with dewy delight;
Then she mounts again, and around her flings
A shower of light from her purple wings.

At noon, she hies to a cool retreat,

Where bowering elms over waters meet;

She dimples the wave, where the green leaves dip;
That smiles, as it curls, like a maiden's lip.

At eve, she hangs o'er the western sky
Dark clouds for a glorious canopy;

And round the skirts of each sweeping fold,
She paints a border of crimson and gold,
Where the lingering sunbeams love to stay,
When their god in his glory has passed away.

She hovers around us at twilight hour,

When her presence is felt with the deepest power;
She mellows the landscape, and crowds the stream
With shadows that flit like a fairy dream :—
Still wheeling her flight through the gladsome air,
The Spirit of Beauty is every where!

LESSON XXIII.

THE BEREAVED SISTER.

In the spring of 1824, I contracted an acquaintance in one of the cities of the south, with a gentleman who had removed from England to this country with two small children, the one a boy of ten years, the other a girl of nine years of age. These children were the most lovely beings I ever saw. beauty, their deep and artless affection,

Their extreme and their fre

quent bursts of childish and innocent mirth, made them as dear to me as if I had been the companion of their infancy.

They were happy in themselves, happy in each other, and in the whole world of life and nature around them. I had known the family but a few months, when my friend was compelled to make a sudden and unexpected voyage to South America. His feelings were imbittered by the thoughts of leaving his motherless children behind him; and as I was on the point of embarking for Liverpool, I promised to take them to their friends and relations.

My departure was delayed two weeks. During that period, I lived under the same roof with the little ones that had been consigned to my charge. For a few days they were pensive, and made frequent inquiries for their absent father; but their sorrows were easily assuaged, and regret for his absence changed into pleasant anticipation of his return. The ordinary sorrows of childhood are but dews upon the eagle's plumage, which vanish at the moment the proud bird springs upwards into the air to woo the beautiful flashes of the morning.

The day of our departure at last arrived, and we set sail on a quiet afternoon of summer. The distant hills bent their pale blue tops to the waters, and as the great sun, like the image of his Creator, sunk down in the west, successive shadows of gold, and crimson, and purple came floating over the waves, like barks from a fairy land. My young companions gazed on those scenes steadily and silently, and when the last tints of the dim shore were melting into shadow, they took

each other's hand, and a few natural tears gushed for 1: as an adieu to the land they had loved.

Soon after sunset, I persuaded my little friends to let me lead them to the cabin, and then returned again to look out upon the ocean. In about half an hour, as I was standing musingly apart, I felt my hand gently pressed, and on turning around, saw that the girl had stolen alone to my side. In a few moments, the evening star began to twinkle from the edging of a violet cloud. At first, it gleamed faintly and at intervals, but anon it came brightly out, and shone like a holy thing upon the brow of the evening.

The girl at my side gazed upon it, and hailed it with a tone which told that a thought of rapture was at her heart. She inquired with simplicity and eagerness, whether, in the fair land to which we were going, that same bright star would be visible; and seemed to regard it as another friend, that was to be with her in her long ana lonely journey.

The first week of our voyage was unattended by any important incident. The sea was, at times, wild and stormy, but again it would sink to repose, and spread itself out in beauty to the verge of the horizon. On the eighth day the boy arose pale and dejected, and complained of indisposition. On the following morning he was confined by a fever to his bed, and much doubt was expressed as to his fate by the physician of the vessel.

I can never forget the look of agony, the look of utter wo, that appeared upon the face of the little girl, when the conviction of her brother's danger came slowly home upon her thoughts. She wept not; she

complained not; but hour after hour she sat by the bed of the young sufferer—an image of grief and beautiful affection. The boy became daily more feeble and emaciated. He could not return the long and burning caresses of his sister; and at last a faint heaving of his breast, and the eloquence of his half closed eye, and a flush, at intervals, upon his wasted cheek, like the first violet tint of a morning cloud, were all that told he had not yet passed "the dark day of nothingness."

The twelfth evening of our absence from land was the most beautiful I had ever known, and I persuaded the girl to go for a short time upon deck, that her own fevered brow might be fanned by the twilight breeze. The sun had gone down in glory, and the traces of his blood red setting, were still visible upon the western waters. Slowly, but brilliantly, the many stars were gathering themselves together above, and another sky swelled out in softened beauty beneath, and the foam upon the crests of the waves were lighted up like wreaths of snow. There was music in every wave, and its wild sweet tones came floating down from the fluttering pennon above us, like the sound of a gentle wind amid a cypress grove.

But neither music nor beauty had a spell for the heart of my little friend. I talked to her of the glories of the sky and sea-I pointed to her the star on which she had always loved to look-but her only answer was a sigh-and I returned with her to the bed-side of her brother. I perceived instantly that he was dying. There was no visible struggle-but the film was creeping over his eye, and the hectic flush of