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your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels.

4. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smoke-stained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of com passion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him corn."

5. O, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiseled from marble or wrought out on canvas; speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.

6. This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness of young maternity,—Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct.

7. And their pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven, how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony,

"Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-ordered law,"

do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance?

8. "I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace sat brooding." In that simple and beau

tiful record of a holy life, the Journal of John Woolman, there is a passage of which I have been more than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: "Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a divine harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance."

9. Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil” the evil and ungentle passions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely, unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories; they are beautiful through their associations; nor are they any the less welcome that with my admiration of them "the stranger intermeddleth not."

J. G. WHI TIER.

66

XII. THE THREE BLACK CROWS.

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I.

WO honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand,
One took the other briskly by the hand:-

'Hark ye," said he, "'t is an odd story this,

About the crows!"-"I don't know what it is,"
Replied his friend.

II.

"No! I'm surprised at that;
Where I come from it is the common chat.
But you shall hear,-an odd affair indeed!
-And that it happened, they are all agreed.
Not to detain you from a thing so strange,―
A gentleman that lives not far from 'Change,
This week, in short (as all the alley knows),
Taking a dose, has thrown up three black crows!"

III.

"Impossible!"-"Nay, but it's really true; I have it from good hands, and so may you." "From whose, I pray?" So, having named the man, Straight to inquire, his curious comrade ran.

IV.

"Sir, did you tell?" relating the affair:

"Yes, sir, I did; and, if it's worth your care,

Ask Mr. Such-a-one; he told it me;—

But, by-the-by, 't was two black crows, not three."
Resolved to trace so wondrous an event,
Whip to the third, the virtuoso went.

V.

"Sir," and so forth,-"Why, yes, the thing is fact,
Though in regard to number, not exact;

It was not two black crows,-'t was only one;―
The truth of that you may depend upon:

The gentleman himself told me the case.”

"Where may I find him?”—“Why,—in such a place.”

VI.

Away he goes, and having found him out,-

"Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt.”

Then to his last informant he referred,

And begged to know if true what he had heard.
"Did you, sir, throw up a black crow?"-"Not I!"

"Bless me! how people propagate a lie!

Black crows have been thrown up, three, two, and one, And here I find, at last, all comes to none!

VII.

"Did you say nothing of a crow at all?"
"Crow?-crow?-perhaps I might, now I recall
The matter over."-" And pray, sir, what was 't?"
"Why, I was horrid sick, and, at the last,

I did throw up (and told my neighbor so),
Something that was as black, sir, as a crow."

JOHN BYROM.

I

XIII.--THE GLORIES OF MORNING.

HAD occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's nightthe sky was without a cloud-the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; the steady pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign.

2. Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of dawn.

3. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state.

4. I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who in the morning of the world went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and, ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of his hand. But I am filled with amazement, when I am told, that, in this enlightened age and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and yet say in their hearts, "There is no God."

EDWARD EVERETT.

XIV. THE KING OF GLORY.

FIRST VOICE.

HE earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof,

THE

The world and they that dwell therein;

For he hath founded it upon the seas,

And established it upon the floods.

SECOND VOICE.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
Or who shall stand in his holy place?

THIRD VOICE.

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart,
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.

ALL.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates!

And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in.

FOURTH VOICE.

Who is this King of Glory?

FIFTH VOICE.

The Lord strong and mighty;

The Lord mighty in battle.

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