Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main,
His wastes of snow are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky,
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home.

O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods,
In California's pathless world of woods;

Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throno
Looks down in scorn upon the Summer zone;

By the

gay borders of Bermuda's isles,

Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles ;.
On pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health;
In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink
'Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink;
On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanished like a dream;
Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves:
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonored vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous isle of Liberty;
Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest!

44. NATURE A HARD CREDITOR.— Thomas Carlyle.

NATURE admits no lie. Most men profess to be aware of this, but few in any measure lay it to heart. Except in the departments of mere material manipulation, it seems to be taken practically as if this grand truth were merely a polite flourish of rhetoric. Nature keeps silently a most exact Savings-bank and official register, correct to the most evanescent item, Debtor and Creditor, in respect to one and all of us; silently marks down, Creditor by such and such an unseen act of veracity and heroism; Debtor to such a loud, blustery blunder, twenty-seven million strong or one unit strong, and to all acts and words and thoughts executed in consequence of that,-Debtor, Debtor, Debtor, day after day, rigorously as Fate (for this is Fate that is writing); and at the end of the account you will have it all to pay, my friend; there is the rub! Not the infinitesimallest fraction of a farthing but will be found marked there, for you and against you; and

with the due rate of interest you will have to pay it, neatly, completely. as sure as you are alive. You will have to pay it even in money, if you live and, poor slave, do you think there is no payment but in money? There is a payment which Nature rigorously exacts of men and also of Nations, and this I think when her wrath is sternest, in the shape of dooming you to possess money :-to possess it; to have your bloated vanities fostered into monstrosity by it; your foul passions blown into explosion by it; your heart, and, perhaps, your very stomach, ruined with intoxication by it; your poor life, and all its manful activities, stunned into frenzy and comatose sleep by it;-in one word, as the old Prophets said, your soul forever lost by it: your soul, so that, through the Eternities, you shall have no soul, or manful trace of ever having had a soul; but only, for certain fleeting moments, shall have had a money-bag, and have given soul and heart, and (frightfuller still) stomach itself, in fatal exchange for the same. You wretched mortal, stumbling about in a God's Temple, and thinking it a brutal Cookeryshop! Nature, when her scorn of a slave is divinest, and blazes like the blinding lightning against his slavehood, often enough flings him a bag of money, silently saying: "That! Away; thy doom is that!'

45. TIME'S MIDNIGHT VOICE.— Edward Young. Born, 1681; died, 1706

CREATION sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse

Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause,
An awful pause' prophetic of her end.

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time,
But from its loss. To give it, then, a tongue,
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,

It is the knell of my departed hours.

Where are they? With the years beyond the flood'
It is the signal that demands despatch :

How much is to be done! My hopes and fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down on what? a fathomless abyss!
A dread eternity! How surely mine!
And can eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

How poor, how rich, how abject, how augus.
How con plicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain'
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorpt'

Though sullied, and dishonored, still divine
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!

A worm! a god! - I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost! At home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wondering at her own: how Reason reels!
O what a miracle to man is man,

Triumphantly distressed! What joy, what dread
Alternately transported, and alarmed!

What can preserve my life, or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there!
Even silent night proclaims my soul immortal!

The rolling seasons, day and night,
Sun, moon and stars, the earth and main,
Erewhile his portion, life and light,

To him exist in vain.

The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye

That once their shades and glory threw.
Have left in yonder silent sky

No vestige where they flew

The annals of the human race,

Their ruins, since the world began,
Of him afford no other trace

Than this, - THERE LIVED A MAN'

47. THE TRUE SOURCE OF REFORM.-. - Rev. E. H. Chapin.

Thx great element of Reform is not born of human wisdom, it does ot draw its life from human organizations. I find it only in CHRISIANITY. "Thy kingdom come!" There is a sublime and pregnant ourden in this Prayer. It is the aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the spirit of Reform. For what is the significance of this Prayer? It is a petition that all holy influences would penetrate and subdue and dwell in the heart of man, until he shall think, and speak, and do good, from the very necessity of his being. So would the institutions of error and wrong crumble and pass away. So would sin die out from the earth; and the human soul living in harmony with the Divine Will, this earth would become like Heaven. It is too late for the Reformers to sneer at Christianity, it is foolishness for them to reject it. In it are enshrined our faith in human progress, confidence in Reform. It is indissolubly connected with all that is hopeful, spiritual, capable, in man. That men have misunderstood it, and perverted it, is true. But it is also true that the noblest efforts for human melioration have come out of it, — have been based upon it. Is it not so? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep the sleep of the Just, who took your conduct from the line of Christian Philosophy, come from your tombs, and answer!

our

Come, Howard, from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar-house, and show us what Philanthropy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man listens to the Word of Life; come, Penn, from thy sweet coun Bel and weaponless victory, and show us what Christian Zeal and Christian Love can accomplish with the rudest barbarians or the fiercest hearts. Come, Raikes, from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor, and show us with what an eye this Faith regards the lowest and Icast of our race; and how diligently it labors, not for the body, not for the rank, but for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of immor. tality. And ye, who are a great number, - ye nameless ones, - who have done good in your narrow spheres, content to forego renown on

arth, and seeking your Reward in the Record on High,— come and tel us how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage the Religion ye professed can breathe into the poor, the humble, and the weak. Go forth, then, Spirit of Christianity, to thy great work of REFORM! The Past bears witness to thee in the blood of thy mar tyrs, and the ashes of thy saints and heroes; the Present is hopeful because of thee: the Future shall acknowledge thy omnipotence.

18. THE BEACON LIGHT.-Miss Pardoe.

-

DARKNESS was deepening o'er the seas, and still the hulk drove on;
No sail to answer to the breeze, her masts and cordage gone;
Gloomy and drear her course of fear,
each looked but for a grave,-
When, full in sight, the beacon light came streaming o'er the wave.
Then wildly rose the gladdening shout of all that hardy crew;
Boldly they put the helm about, and through the surf they flew.
Storm was forgot, toil heeded not, and loud the cheer they gave,
As, full in sight, the beacon light came streaming o'er the wave.
And gayly of the tale they told, when they were safe on shore;
How hearts had sunk and hopes grown cold amid the billow's roar;
When not a star had shone from far, by its pale beam to save;
Then, full in sight, the beacon light came streaming o'er the wave.
Thus, in the night of nature's gloom, when sorrow bows the heart,
When cheering hopes no more illume, and prospects all depart,
Then, from afar, shines Bethleem's star, with cheering light to save,
And, full in sight, its beacon light comes streaming o'er the grave.

49. "CLEON AND I."-Charles Mackay.

CLEON hath a million acres,
Cleon dwelleth in a palace,
Cleon hath a dozen fortunes,
But the poorer of the twain is

- ne'er a one have I;
in a cottage, I;
not a penny, I;
Cleon, and not I.

Cleon, true, possesseth acres, but the landscape, I;
Half the charms to me it yieldeth money cannot buy;
Cleon harbors sloth and dulness, - freshening vigor, I;
He in velvet, I in fustian, - richer man am I.

Cleon is a slave to grandeur,

Cleon fees a score of doctors,

-

free as thought am I;
need of none have I.

Wealth-surrounded care-environed, Cleon fears to die;

Death may come, — he'll find me ready, — happier man am L.

Cleon sees no charms in Nature, in a daisy, I;

Cleon hears no anthems ringing in the sea and sky.
Nature sings to me forever, earnest listener I;

State for state, with all attendants, who would change? Not I