LESSON CXX.

FREAKS OF THE WINTER WIND.

1. What way does the Wind come? What way does he go? He rides o'er the water, and over the snow,

Through wood and through vale; and o'er rocky hight,
Which the goat can not climb, takes his sounding flight.
He tosses about in every
bare tree,

As, if you look up, you plainly may see;

But how he will come, and whither he goes,
And when he'll return, I'm sure nobody knows.

2. He will suddenly stop in a cunning nook,

And ring a sharp 'larum; but, if you should look,
There's nothing to see but a cushion of snow,
As round as a pillow, and whiter than milk,
And softer than if it were covered with silk.
Sometimes he 'll hide in the cave of a rock,
Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock;
Yet seek him, and what will you find in the place?
Nothing but silence and empty space ;

Save, in a corner, a heap of dry leaves,

That he's left, for a bed, to beggars or thieves!

3. As soon as 't is daylight, to-morrow, with me
You shall go to the orchard, and then you will see
That he has been there, and made a great rout,
And cracked the dry branches, and strewn them about ;
O, I hope he will spare that one upright twig,
That looked up at the sky, so proud and so big,
All the long summer days, as you very well know,
Studded thickly with apples, - a beautiful show!

4. Hark! over the roof he seems now to pause,

And growls as if he would fix his strong claws
Right into the slates, and with a huge rattle,
Drive them off from their post, like men in a battle.
But let him rage round; he does us no harm;
We'll build up the fire in our room snug and warm;
Untouched by his breath, see, the lamp now shines bright,
And burns with a cheerful and steady light.

5. Books have we to read,

but that half-stifled knell !

Alas! 't is the sound of the nine o'clock bell.
Come, come, then, to bed! and when we are there,
He
may work his own will; for what need we care?
He may knock at the door, we 'll not let him in;
He may drive at the windows, we'll laugh at his din.

Let him seek his own home, wherever it be,-
Here's a cozy warm bed for Edward and me.

Adapted.

LESSON CXXI.

VOICES OF THE DEAD.

1. We die, but leave an influence behind us that survives. The echoes of our words are evermore repeated, and reflected along the ages. It is what man was that lives and acts after him. What he said sounds along the years like voices amid the mountain gorges; and what he did is repeated after him in ever-multiplying and never-ceasing reverberations. Every man has left behind him influences for good or for evil, that will never exhaust themselves.

2. The sphere in which he acts may be small, or it may be

great. It may be his fireside, or it may be a kingdom, — a village or a great nation; it may be a parish or broad Europe; but act he does, ceaselessly and forever. His friends, his family, his successors in office, his relatives, are all receptive of an influence which he has transmitted and bequeathed to mankind, either a blessing which will repeat itself in showers of benedictions, or a curse which will multiply itself in ever-accumulating evil.

3. Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends and designs it, or not. He may be a blot, radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing, spreading benedictions over the length and breadth of the land; but a blank he can not be. The seed sown in life springs up in harvests of blessings, or harvests of sorrow. Whether our influence be great or small, whether it be good or evil, it lasts, it lives somewhere, within some limit, and is operative wherever it is. The grave buries the dead dust, but the character walks the world, and distributes itself, as a benediction or a curse, among the families of mankind.

4. The sun sets beyond the western hills, but the trail of light he leaves behind him guides the pilgrim to his distant home. The tree falls in the forest; but in the lapse of ages it is turned into coal, and our fires burn now the brighter because it grew and fell. The coral insect dies, but the reef it raised breaks the surge on the shores of great continents, or has formed an isle in the bosom of the ocean, to wave with harvests for the good of man. We live and we die; but the good or evil that we do lives after us, and is not "buried with our bones."

5. The friend with whom we took sweet counsel is removed visibly from the outward eye; but the lessons that he taught, the grand sentiments that he uttered, the holy deeds of generosity by which he was characterized, the moral lineaments

and likeness of the man, still survive, and appear in the silence of eventide, and on the tablets of memory, and in the light of morn and noon and dewy eve; and, being dead, he yet speaks eloquently, and in the midst of us.

6. Mahomet still lives in his practical and disastrous influence in the East. Napoleon still is France, and France is almost Napoleon. Shakespeare, Byron, and Milton, all live in their influence, for good or evil. The apostle from his chair, the minister from his pulpit, the martyr from his flame-shroud, the statesman from his cabinet, the soldier in the field, the sailor on the deck, all of these may have passed away to their graves; but they still live in the deeds which they performed, in the lives they lived, and in the powerful lessons that they left behind them.

7. "None of us liveth to himself," for others are affected by that life; "or dieth to himself," for others are interested in that death. The queen's crown may molder, but she who wore it will act upon the ages which are yet to come. The noble's coronet may be reft in pieces, but the wearer of it is now doing what will be reflected by thousands who will be made and molded by him. Dignity and rank and riches are all corruptible and worthless; but moral character has an immortality that no sword-point can destroy, that ever walks the world and leaves lasting influences behind.

8. What we do is transacted on a stage of which all in the universe are spectators. What we say is transmitted in echoes that will never cease. What we are is influencing and acting on the rest of mankind. Neutral we can not be. Living we act, and dead we speak; and the whole universe is the mighty company forever looking, forever listening, and all nature the tablets forever recording the words, the deeds, the thoughts, the passions of mankind !

9. Monuments and columns and statues, erected to heroes, poets, orators, statesmen, are all influences that extend into the

future ages. “The blind old man of Scio's rocky Isle "* still speaks. The Mantuan bard† still sings in every school. Shakespeare, the bard of Avon, is still translated into every tongue. The philosophy of the Stagirite is still felt in every academy. Whether these influences are beneficent or the reverse, they are influences fraught with power. How blest

must be the recollection of those who, like the setting sun, have left a trail of light behind them by which others may see the way to that rest which remaineth for the people of God!

10. It is only the pure fountain that brings forth pure water. The good tree only will produce the good fruit. If the center from which all proceeds is pure and holy, the radii of influence from it will be pure and holy also. Go forth, then, into the spheres that you occupy, the employments, the trades, the professions of social life; go forth into the high places, or into the lowly places of the land; mix with the roaring cataracts of social convulsions, or mingle amid the eddies and streamlets of quiet and domestic life; whatever sphere you fill, carrying into it a holy heart, you will radiate around you life and power, and leave behind you holy and beneficent influ

ences.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

J. Cumming.

Longfellow.

*Homer, who is supposed by some to have resided in Scio, an island in the Ae' gean Sea, near the western coast of Asia Minor. Scio is also one of the many places that have contended for the honor of being the birth-place of Homer.

† Virgil, so called because he was born in the city of Mantua, in the northern part of Italy.

‡ Aristotle, called the Stă gi rite, because he was born in the island of Stagi' ra, near the coast of Greece.