one.

Let us then study the philosophy of the human mind. The man who is master of this science will know what to expect from every From this man, wise advice; from that, cordial sympathy; from another, casual entertainment. The passions and inclinations of others are his tools, which he can use with as much precision as he would the mechanical powers; and he can as readily make allowance for the workings of vanity, or the bias of self-interest in his friends, as for the power of friction, or the irregularities of the needle.

THE MOUSE'S PETITION.1

Oh hear a pensive prisoner's prayer,
For liberty that sighs;

And never let thine heart be shut
Against the wretch's cries!

For here forlorn and sad I sit,
Within the wiry grate;

And tremble at the approaching morn,
Which brings impending fate.

If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain!

Oh do not stain with guiltless blood
Thy hospitable hearth!

Nor triumph that thy wiles betray'd
A prize so little worth.

The scatter'd gleanings of a feast
My frugal meals supply;
But if thine unrelenting heart
That slender boon deny-

The cheerful light, the vital air,
Are blessings widely given;
Let Nature's commoners enjoy
The common gifts of Heaven.

The well-taught, philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;

Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.

If mind as ancient sages taught

A never-dying flame,

Still shifts through matter's varying forms,

In every form the same;

Beware, lest in the worm you crush,

A brother's soul you find;

1 Found in the trap where he had been confined all night by Dr. Priestley, for the sake of

making experiments with different kinds of air.

And tremble lest thy luckless hand
Dislodge a kindred mind.

Or, if this transient gleam of day
Be all of life we share,

Let pity plead within thy breast
That little all to spare.

So may thy hospitable board

With health and peace be crown'd;
And every charm of heartfelt ease
Beneath thy roof be found.

So when destruction lurks unseen,
Which men, like mice, may share,
May some kind angel clear thy path,
And break the hidden snare!

TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.1

Cease, Wilberforce, to urge thy generous aim!
Thy Country knows the sin, and stands the shame!
The Preacher, Poet, Senator in vain

Has rattled in her sight the Negro's chain;

In vain, to thy white standard gathering round,
Wit, Worth, and Parts and Eloquence are found:
In vain, to push to birth thy great design,
Contending chiefs and hostile virtues join;
All, from conflicting ranks, of power possest
To rouse, to melt, or to inform the breast.
Where season'd tools of Avarice prevail,
A Nation's eloquence, combined, must fail:
Each flimsy sophistry by turns they try;
The plausive argument, the daring lie,

The artful gloss that moral sense confounds,

The acknowledged thirst of gain that honor wounds:
Bane of ingenuous minds! the unfeeling sneer,
Which sudden turns to stone the falling tear:
They search assiduous, with inverted skill,
For forms of wrong, and precedents of ill;
With impious mockery wrest the sacred page,
And glean up crimes from each remoter age:

Wrung Nature's tortures, shuddering, while you tell,
From scoffing fiends bursts forth the laugh of hell;
In Britain's senate, Misery's pangs give birth
To jests unseemly, and to horrid mirth-
Forbear! thy virtues but provoke our doom,

And swell the account of vengeance yet to come;

On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, 1791.

3" Mr. Wilberforce is the very model of a reformer: ardent without turbulence, mild without timidity or coldness; neither yielding to difficulties, nor disturbed or exasperated by them; patient and meek, yet intrepid; just and charitable even to his most malignant enemies; unwearied in every experiment to disarm the prejudices of his more rational and disinterested opponents; and supporting the zeal, without dangerously exciting the passions of his adherents."-MACKINTOSH.

For, not unmark'd in Heaven's impartial plan,
Shall man, proud worm, contemn his fellow-man!
For you, whose temper'd ardor long has borne
Untired the labor, and unmoved the scorn;
In Virtue's fasti be inscribed your fame,
And utter'd yours with Howard's honor'd name;
Friends of the friendless-Hail, ye generous band!
Whose efforts yet arrest Heaven's lifted hand,
Around whose steady brows, in union bright,
The civic wreath and Christian's palm unite:
Your merit stands, no greater and no less,
Without, or with the varnish of success:
But seek no more to break a nation's fall,
For ye have saved yourselves-and that is all.
Succeeding times your struggles, and their fate,
With mingled shame and triumph shall relate;
While faithful History, in her various page,
Marking the features of this motley age,
To shed a glory, and to fix a stain,

Tells how you strove, and that you strove in vain.

YE ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH.

Salt of the earth, ye virtuous few,
Who season human-kind;

Light of the world, whose cheering ray
Illumes the realms of mind:

Where Misery spreads her deepest shade,
Your strong compassion glows:
From your blest lips the balm distils,
That softens mortal woes.

By dying beds, in prison glooms,
Your frequent steps are found;
Angels of love! you hover near,
To bind the stranger's wound.

You wash with tears the bloody page
Which human crimes deform:

When vengeance threats, your prayers ascend,
And break the gathering storm.

As down the summer stream of vice
The thoughtless many glide;
Upward you steer your steady bark,
And stem the rushing tide.

Where guilt her foul contagion breathes,
And golden spoils allure;
Unspotted still your garments shine-
Your hands are ever pure.

Whene'er you touch the poet's lyre,
A loftier strain is heard;

Each ardent thought is yours alone,
And every burning word.

Yours is the large expansive thought,
The high heroic deed;

Exile and chains to you are dear—
To you 'tis sweet to bleed.

You lift on high the warning voice,
When public ills prevail;
Yours is the writing on the wall
That turns the tyrant pale.

And yours is all through History's rolls
The kindling bosom feels;

And at your tomb, with throbbing heart,
The fond enthusiast kneels.

In every faith, through every clime,
Your pilgrim steps we trace;

And shrines are dress'd, and temples rise,
Each hallow'd spot to grace;

And pans loud, in every tongue,
And choral hymns resound;

And lengthening honors hand your name
To time's remotest bound.

Proceed! your race of glory run,

Your virtuous toils endure!

You come, commission'd from on high,
And your reward is sure.

REGINALD HEBER, 1783-1826.

REGINALD HEBER, the son of the Rev. Reginald Heber, was born at Malpas, in Cheshire, on the 21st of April, 1783. His youth was distinguished by a precocity of talent, docility of temper, a love of reading, and a veneration for religion. The eagerness, indeed, with which he read the Bible in his early years, and the accuracy with which he remembered it, were quite remarkable. After completing the usual course of elementary instruction, he entered the University of Oxford in 1800. In the first year he gained the university prize for Latin verse, and in 1803 he wrote his poem of "Palestine," which was received with distinguished applause. His academical career was brilliant from its commencement to its close. After taking his degree, and gaining the university prize for the best English prose essay, he set out, in 1805, on a continental tour. He returned the following year, and in 1807 "took orders," and was settled in Hodnet, in Shrop

1 "Such a poem, composed at such an age, has indeed some, but not many, parallels in our language. Its copious diction, its perfect numbers, its images so well chosen, diversified so happily, and treated with so much discretion and good taste, and, above all, the ample knowledge of Scripture and of writings illustrative of Scripture displayed in it-all these things might have seemed to bespeak the work of a man who had been long choosing and begun late,' rather than of a stripling of nineteen."-Quarterly Review, xxxv. 451

shire, where for many years he discharged the duties of his large parish with the most exemplary assiduity.'

In 1809 he married, and in the same year published a series of hymns, "appropriate for Sundays and principal holidays of the year." In 1812, he commenced a "Dictionary of the Bible," and published a volume of "Poems and Translations," the translations being chiefly from Pindar. After being advanced to two or three ecclesiastical preferments, in 1822 he received the offer of the bishopric of Calcutta, made vacant by the death of Dr. Middleton. Never, it is believed, did any man accept an office from a higher sense of duty. He was in the possession of affluence-had the fairest prospects before him-and had recently built at Hodnet a parsonage-house, combining every comfort with elegance and beauty. But his exalted piety considered this call as a call from Heaven, from which he might not shrink, and he resolutely determined to obey the summons. Accordingly, in 1823, he embarked for India, where he arrived in safety, "with a field before him that might challenge the labors of an apostle, and, we will venture to say, with as much of the spirit of an apostle in him as has rested on any man in these latter days." Indeed, he was peculiarly well qualified to fill this high and responsible station, as well by his amiable and conciliatory temper as by his talents, learning, and zeal in the cause of Christianity. He entered with great earnestness upon his duties, and had already made many long journeys through his extensive field of labor, when he was suddenly cut off by an apoplectic fit, which seized him while bathing, at Tritchinopoli, on the 3d of April, 1826.

Besides the works of Bishop Heber already mentioned, there was published, after his death, "Parish Sermons at Hodnet," in two volumes, and a "Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay," in two volumes. A number of his sermons, and charges to his diocese, were published during his life; and from these we select the following, from a sermon delivered at the consecration of a church near Benares, upon

NATIONS RESPONSIBLE TO GOD.

If the Israelites were endowed, beyond the nations of mankind, with wise and righteous laws, with a fertile and almost impregnable territory, with a race of valiant and victorious kings, and a God who (while they kept his ways) was a wall of fire against their enemies round about them; if the kings of the wilderness did them homage, and the lion-banner of David and Solomon was reflected at once from the Mediterranean and the Euphrates—it was that the way of the Lord might be made known by their means upon earth, and that the saving health of the Messiah might become conspicuous to all nations.

"While incumbent of Hodnet, Heber had an opportunity of affording the world an illustrious example of the highest intellectual culture and the finest natural taste being made perfectly compatible with the most faithful discharge of the humblest religious and mora duties the instruction of the ignorant, the reproof of the erring. the visitation of the sick, and the consolation of the bereaved; and, in his leisure moments, he there also took delight in pouring out his feelings in suatches of sacred verse."-D. M. MOIR.