Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald, wake! O wake! and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggéd 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?

And who commanded, and the silence came,-
"Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest"?
Ye ice-falls! ye, that, from the mountain's brow,
Adown enormous ravines slope amain,

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!-

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers
Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet?
"God!" let the torrents, like a shout of Nations,
Answer: and let the ice-plains echo, "God!"
"God!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And, in their perilous fall, shall thunder, "God!"
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements !

Utter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise.
Thou, too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast
Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain! thou
That- as I raise my head, a while bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me- - rise, O ever rise!

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!

Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,

Thou dread ambassador from earth to Heaven.
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell you rising sun,
"Earth with her thousand voices, praises God.'

11 THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.-Alexander Pope

VITAL spark of heavenly flame,
Quit, O, quit this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying
O, the pain, the bliss, of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

12 LIFE BEYOND THE TOMB. —James Beattie. Born, 1735; died, 1808.

SUCH is the destiny of all on earth:

So flourishes and fades majestic Man;·
Fair is the bud his vernal morn brings forth,
And fostering gales a while the nursling fan.
O smile, ye Heavens, serene! Ye mildews wan,
Ye blighting whirlwinds, spare his balmy prime,
Nor lessen of his life the little span.

Borne on the swift though silent wings of Time,
Old Age comes on apace, to ravage all the clime.

And be it so. Let those deplore their doom,
Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn;
But lofty souls, who look beyond the tomb,

Can smile at Fate, and wonder how they mourn.
Shall Spring to these sad scenes no more return?
Is yonder wave the Sun's eternal bed?
Soon shall the Orient with new lustre burn,

And Spring shall soon her vital influence shed,
Again attune the grove, again adorn the mead.

Shall I be left, forgotten in the dust,

When Fate, relenting, lets the flower revive? Shall Nature's voice, to Man alone unjust,

Bid him, though doomed to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair Virtue oft must strive

With disappointment, penury, and pain?
No! Heaven's immortal Spring shall yet arrive,
And man's majestic beauty bloom again,

Bright through the eternal year of Love's triumphant reign

13. FORGIVENESS.

WHEN on the fragrant sandal-tree
The woodman's axe descends,
And she who bloomed so beauteously
Beneath the keen stroke bends,
E'en on the edge that wrought her death
Dying she breathed her sweetest breath,
As if to token, in her fall,

Peace to her foes, and love to all.

How hardly man this lesson learns,

To smile, and bless the hand that spurns;
To see the blow, to feel the pain,
But render only love again!
This spirit not to earth is given,

ONE had it, but he came from Heaven.
Reviled, rejected and betrayed,

No curse he breathed, no 'plaint he made,
But when in death's deep pang he sighed,
Prayed for his murderers, and died.

14. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. — Philip Doddridge. Born, 1702; died, 175?
"LIVE while you live," the epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day;
"Live while you live," the Christian preacher cries,
"And give to God each moment as it flies "
Lord! in my view, let both united be;-

I live to pleasure, while I live to thee.

PART EIGHTH.

RHETORICAL AND DRAMATIC.

1. ROME AND CARTHAGE.-Victor Hugo. Original Translation.

ROME and Carthage! - behold them drawing near for the struggle that is to shake the world! Carthage, the metropolis of Africa, is the mistress of oceans, of kingdoms, and of Nations; a magnificent city, burthened with opulence, radiant with the strange arts and trophies of the East. She is at the acme of her civilization. She can mount no higher. Any change now must be a decline. Rome is comparatively poor. She has seized all within her grasp, but rather from the lust of conquest than to fill her own coffers. She is demi-barbarous, and has her education and her fortune both to make All is before her, nothing behind. For a time, these two Nations exist in view of each other. The one reposes in the noontide of her splendor; the other waxes strong in the shade. But, little by little, air and space are wanting to each for her development. Rome begins to perplex Carthage, and Carthage is an eyesore to Rome. Seated on opposite banks of the Mediterranean, the two cities look each other in the face. The sea no longer keeps them apart. Europe and Africa weigh upon each other. Like two clouds surcharged with electricity they impend. With their contact must come the thunder-shock.

-

The catastrophe of this stupendous drama is at hand. What actors are met! Two races, - that of merchants and mariners, that of laborers and soldiers; two Nations, the one dominant by gold, other by steel; two Republics, the one theocratic, the other aristocratic. Rome and Carthage! Rome with her army, Carthage with her fleet; Carthage, old, rich and Crafty, Rome, young, poor, and robust; the past and the future; the spirit of discovery, and the spirit of conquest; the genius of commerce, the demon of war; the East and the South on one side, the West and the North on the other; in short, two worlds, the civilization of Africa, and the civilization of Europe. They measure each other from head to foot. They gather all their forces. Gradually the war kindles. The world

takes fire.

These colossal powers are locked in deadly strife. Car thage has crossed the Alps; Rome, the seas. The two Nations, personified in two men, Hannibal and Scipio, close with each other, wrestle, and grow infuriate. The duel is desperate. It is a struggle

for life. Rome wavers.

She utters that cry of anguish - Hannibai at the gates! But she rallies, collects all her strength for one last, appalling effort, throws herself upon Carthage, and sweeps her from the face of the earth!

2. THE DRONES OF. THE COMMUNITY.-Percy Bysshe Shelley.

THOSE gilded flies

That, basking in the sunshine of a Court,
Fatten on its corruption - what are they?
The drones of the community! they feed
On the mechanic's labor; the starved hind
For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield
Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,
Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes
A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,
Drags out in labor a protracted death,

To glut their grandeur. Many faint with toil,
That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.
Whence, think'st thou, kings and parasites arose?
Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap
Toil and unvanquishable penury

On those who build their palaces, and bring

Their daily bread? — From vice, black, loathsome vic
From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
From all that genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,

Revenge, and murder. - And, when Reason's voice-
Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked
The Nations; and mankind perceive that vice.
Is discord, war, and misery,

that virtue

Is peace, and happiness, and harmony;

When man's maturer nature shall disdain

The playthings of its childhood; - kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority

Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable

As that of truth is now.

Where is the fame

Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth
Seek to eternize? O! the faintest sound
From time's light foot-fall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! to-day

Stern is the tyrant's mandate,

red the gaze

That scatters inultitudes. To-morrow comes'