Simile.b

20. ("So when an angel, by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
(Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia passed),
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast,
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm.”

a ELYS'IUM (e lizh'i um), in ancient mythology, was the abode of the blessed. In early times the Isles of the Blessed were supposed to be in the Western Ocean, west of Europe. At a later day, as geographical knowledge extended, Elysium was moved down to the lower world, as the place of reward for the good.

b It was at the suggestion of Lord Halifax that Addison was employed to celebrate in verse the battle of Blenheim. When he showed his patrons this splendid simile, he was at once rewarded with the place of Commissioner of Appeals; and from that time Fortune began to smile upon him. • Pronounced Mawl'bro.

LESSON XXXIX.

THE CHILD AND THE DEW-DROPS.

J. E. CARPENTER.

[The Simile. As the dew-drops, glittering in the moonbeams, and sparkling in the sunlight, soon lose their brightness, and pass away from earth to be reset in the beautiful dyes of the rainbow, so the brightness and beauty of youth, that so soon wither on earth, shall bloom the more brightly in heaven.]

1. "O FATHER, dear father, why pass they away,-
The dew-drops that sparkled at dawning of day,-
That glitter'd like stars by the light of the moon,
Oh, why are those dew-drops dissolving so soon13?
Does the sun, in his wrath, chase their brightness away,
As though nothing that's lovely might live for a day'1?
The moonlight has faded-the flowers still remain,
But the dew has dried out of their pětals again."

2. "My child," said the father, “look up to the skies;
Behold yon bright rainbow-those beautiful dyes;
There there are the dew-drops in glory reset;
'Mid the jewels of heaven they are glittering yet.
Then are we not taught, by each beautiful ray,
To mourn not earth's fair things, though fleeting away'1?
For though youth of its brightness and beauty be riven,
All that withers on earth blooms more brightly in heaven."

3. Alas for the father'10 !-how little knew he
The words he had spoken prophetic could be;
That the beautiful child,-the bright star of his day,-
Was e'en then like the dew-drops-dissolving away!
Oh! sad was the father, when lo, in the skies
The rainbow again spread its beauteous dyes;
And then he remember'd the maxims he'd given,
And thought of his child and the dew-drops-in heaven.

LESSON XL.

THE CONVICT SHIP.

T. K. HERVEY.

[JOHN HERVEY, known as Lord Hervey, a distinguished political and poetical writer, born in England in 1696; died in 1743.]

[A ship is represented as seen, first, under full sail, in the morning light, borne gallantly on by a favoring breeze, with every thing bright and beautiful around her. Yet below-in the hold-are human hearts that are breaking,-banished, for their crimes, to a far distant penal colony.]

1. MORN on the waters-and purple and bright,
Burst on the billows the flushings of light;
O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;

Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,

And her pennons stream onward, like hope in the gale;
The winds come around her in murmur and song,
And the surges rejoice as they bear her along.

2. See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gayly aloft in the shrouds;
Onward she glides amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters-away and away!
Bright as the visions of youth, ere they part,
Passing away like a dream of the heart.
Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by--
Music around her, and sunshine on high-
Pauses to think, amid glitter and show,
Oh! there be hearts that are breaking below?

[The convict ship is seen tranquilly gliding over the moonlit waters, like a phantom of beauty. And yet so lovely a thing is bearing away young hearts that sorrow and guilt can not wean from the ties and affections of home.]

F

3. Night on the waves!—and the moon is on high,
Hung like a gem on the brow of the sky,
Treading in depths, in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds as they pass her to light.
Look to the waters! asleep on their breast,
Seems not the ship like an island at rest'3 ?—
Bright and alone on the shadowy main,
Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain'1?

4. Who-as she smiles in the silvery light,
Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,
A phantom of beauty-could deem, with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,
And souls that are smitten lie bursting within'3?
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever13 ?—
Hearts which are parted and broken forever13?
Or deems that he watches, alone on the wave,
The deathbed of hope, or the young spirit's grave'3?

THIRD, THE SIMILE.

[Here the formal comparison is made between the convict ship at sea and the course of human life,—the simile being introduced by such words as thus, like, and a8.]

5. "Tis thus with our life:—while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song,
Gayly we glide in the gaze of the world,
With streamers afloat and with canvas unfurl'd;
All gladness and glory to wandering eyes,
Yet charter'd by sorrow, and freighted with sighs:
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on just to cover our tears;
And the withering thoughts which the world can not

know,

Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;

While the vessel drives on to that desolate shore

Where the dreams of our childhood are vanishedTM and

o'er.

LESSON XLI.

THE LIFE FLEET.

Adapted.-Eclectic Magazine.

[The following instructive lesson, in which human life is compared to a fleet, would be a descriptive allegory, if the comparison were not plainly expressed. See "Allegory," p. 159.]

1. ADDISON, in that beautiful allegory, "The Vision of Mirza," compares Human Life to a bridge with seventy tolerably firm and entire arches, which represent the threescore years and ten of man's earthly pilgrimage. Individuals, indeed, occasionally survive to the term of a century; but it is under manifest infirmities; and hence several broken arches are supposed to be connected, at one extremity of the bridge, with those that are entire, making the total number about a hundred.

2. Modern statistics of Life Insurance now enable us to trace the outflow of human life, and to compute the respective lengths of the current with wonderful exactness, in the instance of great groups of mankind subject to like conditions; so that out of a large promiscuous number who are born at the same time,-or who, in Addison's figure, emerge from the cloud and enter on the bridge simultaneously,—it can be stated with close exactitude to how many the "trapdoors" and "pitfalls" of the first arch will prove treacherous, or how many will die the first year; and so of each succeeding arch in the series.

3. Let us suppose one hundred thousand born at the same date, say January 1, 1870. According to the usual proportion among the sexes, fifty-one thousand two hundred and seventy-four will be boys, and forty-eight thousand seven hundred and twenty-six will be girls. They may be compared to a fleet of one hundred thousand vessels setting sail together, and consisting of two grand divisions, one of males, which may be called the red squadron, and another of females, which we may name the white squadron.

4. At first the white squadron is inferior in number to the other. Owing to disease peculiarly incident to infancy, at