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WHEN WE HAVE CROSSED THE CRYSTAL SEA.

SWEET must it be to dwell secure

From sinful stain, from thought impure,
No wandering footstep to retrace,
No mourning for the Saviour's face;
And this our happy lot shall be
When we have crossed the crystal sea.

How oft the struggling spirit tries
For blest communion with the skies;
How oft we pray that we may bear
Christ's perfect image, even here,
And oh, like Jesus we shall be
When we have crossed the crystal sea.

They who have safely gone before,
Whose feet grow weary never more,
Receive in that dear land of bliss
All their souls panted for in this;
And their enjoyment ours shall be
When we have crossed the crystal sea.

I see them now in spotless white,
I hear their song of sweet delight;
Beside the living stream they rest,
And Jesus makes them truly blest;
With that bright throng we too shall be
When we have crossed the crystal sea.

NOT NOW.

BY ALICE CARY.

THE path of duty I clearly trace,

I stand with conscience face to face,
And all her plans allow ;

Calling and crying the while for grace,
"Some other time, and some other place-
Oh, not to-day-not now!"'

I know 'tis a demon boding ill,

I know I have power to do if I will,
And I put my hand to th' plough;

I have fair, sweet seeds in my barn, and lo!
When all the furrows are ready to sow,

The voice says, 66 Oh, not now!"

My peace I sell at the price of woe-
In heart and in spirit I suffer so,

The anguish wrings my brow,
But still I linger and cry for grace--
"Some other time, and some other place-
Oh, not to-day-not now!"

I talk to my stubborn heart, and say,
The work I must do I will do to-day;
I will make to the Lord a vow:
And I will not rest and I will not sleep
Till the vow I have vowed I rise and keep,
And the demon cries, "not now! "

And so the days and the years go by,
And so I register lie upon lie,

And break with Heaven my vow:
For when I would boldly take my stand,
This terrible demon stays my hand-
"Oh, not to-day-not now!"

-New York Ledger.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

THE PYRAMIDS - WHO BUILT THEM?

AND WHEN?

that we are now concerned with. In the preceding year, on the other side of the many sounding sea, the Attic tribes held their feast MANY and grievous, beyond question, were of Panathenæa. Pericles was hurling his the ills endured of mortal men before the last thunders at Thucydides-not the histoinvention of printing. Think of the months rian, but an older man, the son of Milesias, without MAGA! Think of every author- and the last of the old nobles who ventured happily there were not so many of them-to oppose the magnificent democrat. The having literally to blow his own trumpet. An epic poet obliged to hawk about his stately lay like a ballad-monger; the tragic muse ever in search of a cart and a company; even the ponderous historian waiting at the door of the Common Council for a chance of being heard on the deeds of his country!

future historian was there too-if Professor Dahlmann will allow us to believe the pleasant story-and hearkening greedily to what was going on; but it was neither Pericles nor Thucydides that carried off the palm that day. A young gentleman-he was thought so at Athens, though in his forty-fourth year, It was an age of voice as our own is of like our own young men of the Bar and the paper. A gentleman who wished to publish Senate-had returned from his travels, and in those days had to look well to his lungs offered to read his observations for the amuseand his larynx. It was not enough to possess ment of the company. It was a bold offer to a heart and brain: a big throat was the first make to an Attic audience, for he was a Dorequisite, and a pleasant tongue the best rian-a sort of Yorkshireman whom the Cepuff. The author mounted his platform-as cropians were fond of laughing at as barbaa speaker takes the floor of the American rians. The traveller, however, had learned Senate for five or six days in succession, and the audience, instead of an hour of popular science, sat deliberately down to several pounds of avoirdupois of "copy."

As for ladies, there was nothing to be attempted but lyrical poetry sung to the tabor and pipe, like Miriam and Deborah and Sappho. What a noisy time it must have

been!

The two most remarkable of those ancient

"readings" occurred in two successive years, on different sides of the Mediterranean. One was the publication of the law by Ezra, B. c. 444; and a very noble sight it must have been when the fourteen priests ascended their pulpit together-not a modern preaching tub, but a good spacious, open-air platform -and began to read by turns, in the old Hebrew language, while as many Levites, in a lower rank, interpreted sentence by sentence in the vernacular Chaldee. "So they read in the book the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading "-(Nehemiah, viii. 8.) That reading lasted a fortnight or three weeks, day after day; inaugurating the custom which is still observed by all disciples of THE BOOK as a sacred rite. Would that we could always add of our Church-readers that they give the sense, and cause us to understand the reading!

to put his remarks irto good Ionic, and he managed to read them so well that he was voted ten talents on the spot, or pretty near the respectable sum of two thousand pounds. Nor was this all, for these same travels were honored through all Greece with the names of the Nine Muses, and their author enjoys to this day the style and title of "Father of History."

The reader was Herodotus of Halicarnas

sus, and what he read comprised the first that had been heard in Europe of the Pyramids of Egypt. What China is in our age, Egypt was in that:-the strangest, least comprehended, queerest country imaginable, with everything exactly contrary to what it was everywhere else. Amongst them the women attend markets, but the men stay at home and weave. Other nations in weaving throw the wool upwards, the Egyptians downwards. The men carry burdens on their

66

The Gottingen Professor has certainly demolished Lucian's story (so often repeated) of Herodotus reciting his history at the Olympic games, while monly assigned to the year 456 B.C., when the histoThucydides wept for joy. This recitation is comrian, being at most thirty-two years old, could hardly have completed his travels. But Marcellinus, the biographer of Thucydides, says nothing about Olympia, and Thucydides may well have been at Athens when the reading, recorded by Eusebius

(Chron. Ol. 83)-took place eleven years later. This was the year before Herodotus removed to Thurium, and when he must have finished, at least,

It is not that Sacred publication, however, the first edition of his history.

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