thenism, as the only place where nature has ever had a fair trial-as the only place where it may be fairly seen what nature, left to itself, can do. Its hopeless cries in the gloom are the true voice of nature. Its desires point out the true wants of the heart. Its need is the true need of the race!

This is the mighty argument which the great Apostle uses in Romans. Nature is helpless! See heathenism, he cries: Behold how it has exhausted its resources, and how with its devotees it lies in its own misery and revels in its own shame.

We see from this representation that the religion of Jesus is just what sinners need. As He is the desire of all nations, so He is the true desire of all hearts. As He is what the heathen needed, so He is what all need. Deep in the hearts of sinners, now around us, there is this same unconscious desire and want, struggling and sighing.

In the case of the heathen, there may have been a traditionary light shining upon their spirits, which stirred them; but chiefly these wants were a projection of their own nature. So the deep earnest concern, which gnaws like a restless worm in the hearts of unregenerate men, may be, to some extent, the result of their connection outwardly with christianity but in a deep sense also is it the cry of their own nature, lifting an imploring voice out of the deeps, which will not be silent till it rests in sweet reconciliation upon the bosom of Him who alone can calm the restless heart as He once did the storm-tossed Galilee.

:

Sinners themselves constantly betray that this restless want and wo is consuming their peace, and stirring their desires.

Why do men see to dissipate their own serious thoughts; avoid those places and means which confront them with the sad truth of their own spiritual helplessness and misery; regard the approaches of grace as fiend-enemies to their peace, come to torment them before their time; cry out of the very depths and darkness to which sin has chased them, to every ray from heaven that falls on their gloom: "Depart out of our coasts!" Ah, like Adam in the garden, their own hidings from the Lord, before ever His voice is heard, betray that they have sinned, and would hide in their misery.

Why do others resort to theoretic infidelity? Why seek earnestly by science to baptize a lie, and consecrate it as their comforter? Why do some even seek rest in the dreadful and dreary hope of personal annihilation at death? Why thus choose as a refuge and rest for an uneasy heart the strangling of the spirit that cries within them?

Why do others still fall upon the idea of universalism-rejecting Jesus as their Saviour, and yet hoping in him as the Saviour of all— flying to the general mercy of God, and repelling the very incarnation of that mercy, putting God against Christ, and trusting to a salvation which does not save them, and by which they are not willing to be saved; acting like a condemned criminal, who should refuse to hear the messenger who comes with authority to pardon, and say, "I trust in the general goodness of him who holds the pardoning power!" Why this hope of absurdities?-why this mad, maniac grasp at an empty consolation? Why but to quiet the harrowing fears of the heart, unblest and unsaved?

And others still: Why do they, remaining in their sin, promise them

selves a future acceptance of the offers of Christ ?-deferring what they feel to be just what they need?

O, in all these ways do they betray a restless heart. They mislead the yearning of their spirits. These are the efforts of the blind, stumbling in a way they know not, to seek Christ—and rest!

PROPHECIES.

BY NELLY RAY.

THE Cold North winds in wildness drift
The snow in loose fantastic heaps,
Which th' kisses of the setting sun
In wine-red radiance steeps.

Just such deep burning crimson gleams
Will flush the lint-white crocus buds,
(Ere all the snow-wreaths melt away,)
When over all the spring warmth floods.
Lightly and quietly they'll weave

Pale fairy rings, all through the moss;
Some from the gray rock's heart will spring,
Some, dim, wet, ferney dells emboss.

From out the west the red light dies;
Night closes o'er the waste of snow,
And, gathering forces from their realms,
The cold North winds still louder blow.

The wild, grand music surges by,

As though a mighty harp did stand

'Twixt heaven and earth, with rich-toned strings,
Swept by a great soul-bidden hand.

From out the bosom of the south,

Breathings will come, as soft as sighs,

Fanning the slopes, where violets

Open in bliss their dew-wet eyes.

The unchained murmurous streams will flow
Under the budding vines and trees;

And in the purple clover meads,

Will gather swarms of yellow bees.

Dream-dream while winter's drifts of snow
Glint under winter's fiery stars,

Of Spring's sweet blooms, as lone hearts dream
When fragrance floats through prison bars.

MAN'S FALL.

(From Lalla Rookh.)

"Poor race of Men!" said the pitying Spirit,
"Dearly ye pay for your primal fall-

Some flow'rets of Eden ye still inherit,

But the trail of the Serpent is over them all!"

LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON.

BY R.

LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON was born at Plattsburg, in the State of New York, on the 27th of September, 1808. Her father was a lover of science, and her mother a woman of great refinement of feeling. At a very early age her genius became manifest, and was carefully and judiciously fostered by maternal love. Possessing a soul of exquisite sensibility, she ardently devoted her newly awakened powers to the pursuit of knowledge, and, before other children are conscious of mental existence, had drunk largely and deeply from the sacred fount of Poesie. Pure, heaven-born thoughts, springing into life from her virgin intellect, were long allowed to flow forth in silence and in secret, for such was her extreme modesty, that even to her mother they were unknown for years. Not only did she possess such an angel-like spirit, "such a shrinking from the incense of praise," although sanctified by love, and such an elegant and truly classic taste, but her affections were of the highest order. She loved her friends with a tenderness rarely equaled, and her attachment to them bore more resemblance to that of the blest above, than anything to be found on earth. But what sets the seal of perfection upon her character is, that early the fire of true religion was kindled upon the vestal altar of her heart, and continued to burn brighter and brighter, undimmed and unquenched, until she was translated to a holier and a happer clime. Short and brilliant was her career; for this damp, cold, cheerless world could not long contain a spirit so ethereal. She died on the 27th of August, 1825, just a month before her seventeenth birth-day. The clay tabernacle had been gradually dissolving by the fires of genius within, and she might well have said with the most gifted poetess of the age

"And who will think when the strain is sung

Till a thousand hearts are stirred,

That life-drops, from the minstrel rung,
Have gushed with every word?
None, none!"

To show in what esteem our author's productions are held, we will quote a passage from her life as contained in the American Biography, which every one who has the least relish for the beautiful ought to peruse. "The genius of Lucretia Davidson has had the meed of far more authoritative praise than ours. The following tribute is from the London Quarterly Review-a source whence praise of American productions is as rare as springs in the desert. The notice is by Mr. Southey, and is written with the earnest feeling that characterizes that author, as generous as he is discriminating: 'In these poems [Amir Klan, &c.,] there is enough of originality, enough of aspiration, enough of conscious energy, enough of growing power, to warrant any expectations, however sanguine, which the patron, and the friends, and the parents of the deceased could have formed.""

As a specimen of her abilities, take the following extract from a poem on

Spring:"

"As I knelt by the sepulchre, dreary and lone,

Lay the beautiful form in its temple of stone;

I looked for its coming-the warm wind passed by

I looked for its coming on earth and on high.

The young leaves gleamed brightly around the cold spot;
I looked for the spirit, yet still it came not,

Shall the flower of the valley burst forth to the light,
And man in his beauty be buried in night?

A voice on the waters-a voice in the sky,

A voice from beneath, and a voice from on high,
Proclaims that he shall not; the Spring, in her light,
Shall waken the spirit from darkness and night.'

These were singular speculations for a beautiful girl of sixteen. Were there not spirits ministering to her from that world to which she was hastening?

The purity, excellence and simplicity of her poetry disarms criticism. None read it but to praise.

Miss Davidson is, and will ever continue to be, as long as beauty and taste are appreciated, a bright star in our literary hemisphere.

HOMELY WOMEN.

WE like homely women. We have always liked them. We do not carry the peculiarity far enough to include the hideous ugly, for since beauty and money are the only capital the world will recognize in women, they are the more to be pitied than admired; but we have a chivalric, enthusiastic regard for plain women. We never saw one who

was not modest, unassuming and sweet tempered, and have seldom come across one who was not virtuous and had not a good heart. Made aware in early life of their want of beauty by the slighted attentions of the opposite sex, vanity and affectation never take root in their hearts; and in the hope of supplying attractions which a capricious nature has denied, they cultivate the graces of the heart instead of the person, and give to the mind those accomplishments which the world so rarely appreciates in women, but which are more lasting, and in the eyes of men of sense more highly prized than personal beauty. See them in the street, at home, or in church, and they are always the same, and the smile which ever lives upon the face is not forced there to fascinate, but is the spontaneous sunshine reflected from a kind heart-a flower which takes root in the soul and blooms upon the lips, inspiring respect instead of passion, emotions of admiration instead of feelings of sensual regard. Plain women make good wives, good mothers, cheerful homes, and happy husbands, and we never see one but we thank heaven that it has kindly created women of sense as well as beauty, for it is indeed seldom a female is found possessing both.

THE ALPS.

"Look on the white Alps round!

If yet they gird a land

Where freedom's voice and steps are found."

HEMANS.

THE mind of man is so constituted that it unconsciously imbibes from the objects of nature, with which it is familiar, a portion of their character. Hence we find that the dwellers in mountains generally possess souls as noble as that of the eagle, which soars on wide sweeping wing far above the highest summits of the ice-capped peaks-energetic as the wild-dashing torrent, fearless as the chamois, bounding from the dizzy brink of one precipice to that of another; and in all their characteristics grand, lofty, and sublime. Hence, these giant monuments of creation have ever been the refuge of the oppressed, and the nurses of tyrant-quellers. Witness Suli, and thou, Republic of San Marino! perched on thy rock-built citadel, which, amidst the thousand desolations and changes that have swept over Italy, hast remained, during fourteen centuries, firm and unmoved; whilst Genoa, with all her wealth and splendor-Venice, the queen of cities, sitting upon the waters—and even proud Rome, whose mandates made the nations tremble, are numbered with Tyre, Carthage, and Babylon, the glory of Assyria! The voice of Liberty has cried from the fastnesses of Caledonia, where has been her home from time immemorial; it has called from the crags of Asturias, the heights of Tyrol, and may now be heard rolling in thunder from the jagged cliffs of Caucasus; but no where has it declared to the world her hatred of despotism in such emphatic terms as from amid the everlasting Alps. There never has been a time in which the bold spirits were wanting to stand upon their summits and say, "We are free, and who can chain us?" Although leaguered by the mail-clad busts of many a victorious chief, still have its peasants and its shepherds, in the true dignity of human nature, uttered defiance to their enemies, and fought like heroes in defence of their hamlet-hearths, their wives, and their beloved children. Every age has seen them struggling with their titled foes, and in every age the echo of the mountain horn has roused their lion hearts to battle; yet never was there a more glorious triumph than that accomplished by William Tell and his immortal compeers. Albert of Austria, the proud and cruel, had poured down upon her his numerous legions of bearded ruffians, who possessed themselves of every stronghold, and were rejoicing over the conquest of a country hitherto deemed unconquerable, when the resistless storm-cloud, which had been silently gathering above, burst in wild fury, and swept them like chaff before it, to the utter dismay and confusion of their haughty sovereign. The Switzers, sent forth and encouraged by their wives, whose bosoms throbbed with feelings the most heroic and patriotic, felt for what they fought, and Morgarten stands to this day, and will forever stand, an imperishable mountain pillar to tell the deeds of valor wrought by champions of liberty. Since then, the most powerful monarchs of Europe have repeatedly endeavored to subjugate the cantons of Switzerland; but as long as the Alps remain as the bulwarks of freedom, the Helvetians will be Helvetians still.

J.