were, which have been dust for centuries. The sensation of vanity, uncertainty, and ruin, is equally strong, whether we muse on what has long been prostrate, or gaze cn what is falling now, or will fall so soon.

If every thing which comes under our notice has en dured for so short a time, and in so short a time will be no móre, we cannot say that we receive the least assurance by thinking on ourselves. When they, on whose fate we have been meditating, were engaged in the active scenes of life, as full of health and hope as we are now, what were we? We had no knowledge, no consciousness, no being; there was not a single thing in the wide universe which knew us. And after the same interval shall have elapsed, which now divides their days from ours, what shall we be? What they are now. When a few more friends have left, a few more hopes deceived, and a few more changes mocked us, "we shall be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb: the clods of the valley shall be sweet unto us, and every man shall draw after us, as there are innumerable before us." All power will have forsaken the strongest, and the loftiest will be laid low, and every eye will be closed, and every voice hushed, and every heart will have ceased its beating. And when we have gone ourselves, even our memories will not stay behind us long. A few of the near and dear will bear our likeness in their bosoms, till they too have arrived at the end of their journey, and entered the dark dwelling of unconsciousness. In the thoughts of others we shall live only till the last sound of the bell, which informs them of our departure, has ceased to vibrate in their ears. A stone, perhaps, may tell some wanderer where we lie, when we came here, and when we went away; but even that will 'soon refuse to bear us record: "time's effacing fingers" will be busy on its surface, and at length will wear it smooth; and then the stone itself will sink or crumble, and the wanderer of another age will pass, without a single call upon his sympathy, over our unheeded graves.

Is there nothing to counteract the sinking of the heart, which must be the effect of observations like these? Is there no substance among all these shadows? If all who live and breathe around us are the creatures of yesterday

To

and destined to see destruction to-morrow; if the same condition is our own, and the same sentence is written against us; if the solid forms of inanimate nature and laborious art are fading and falling; if we look in vain for durability to the very roots of mountains, where shall we return, and on what shall we rely? Can no support be offered? can no source of confidence be named? Oh yes! there is one Being, to whom we can look with a perfect conviction of finding that security, which nothing about us can give, and which nothing about us can take away this Being we can lift up our souls, and on him we may rest them, exclaiming, in the language of the monarch of Israel, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment, as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed, but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

The eternity of God is a subject of contemplation, which, at the same time that it overwhelms us with astonishment and awe, affords us an immoveable ground of confidence in the midst of a changing world. All things which sur. round us, all these dying, mouldering inhabitants of time, must have had a Creator, for the plain reason, that they could not have created themselves. And their Creator must have existed from all eternity, for the plain reason, that the first cause must necessarily be uncaused. As we cannot suppose a beginning without a cause of existence, that which is the cause of all existence must be self-existent, and could have had no beginning. And, as it had no beginning, so also, as it is beyond the reach of all influence and control, as it is independent and almighty, it will have no end.

Here then is a support, which will never fail; here is a foundation, which can never be moved the everlasting Creator of countless worlds, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." What a sublime conception! He inhabits eternity, occupies this inconceivable duration, pervades and fills throughout this boundless dwelling.

Ages on ages before even the dust of which we are formed was created, he had existed in infinite majesty, and ages on ages will roll away, after we have all returned to the dust whence we were taken, and still he will exist in infinite majesty, living in the eternity of his own nature, reigning in the plenitude of his own omnipotence, forever sending forth the word, which forms, supports and governs all things, commanding new-created light to shine on new. created worlds, and raising up new-created generations to inhabit them.

The contemplation of these glorious attributes of God is fitted to excite in our minds the most animating and consoling reflections. Standing, as we are, amid the ruins of time, and the wrecks of mortality, where every thing about us is created and dependent, proceeding from nothing, and hastening to destruction, we rejoice that something is presented to our view, which has stood from everlasting, and will remain forever. When we have looked on the pleasures of life, and they have vanished away; when we have looked on the works of nature, and perceived that they were changing; on the monuments of art, and seen that they would not stand; on our friends, and they have fled, while we were gazing; on ourselves, and felt that we were as fleeting as they; when we have looked on every object to which we could turn our anxious eyes, and they have all told us that they could give us no hope nor support, because they were so feeble themselves, we can look to the throne of God: change and decay have never reached that; the revolution of ages has never moved it; the waves of an eternity have been rushing past it, but it has remained unshaken; the waves of another eternity are rushing toward it, but it is fixed, and can never be disturbed.

And blessed be God, who has assured us, by a revelation from himself, that the throne of eternity is likewise a throne of mercy and love; who has permitted and invited us to repose ourselves and our hopes on that which alone is everlasting and unchangeable. We shall shortly finish our allotted time on earth, even if it should be unusually prolonged. We shall leave behind us all which is now familiar and beloved, and a world of other days and other

men will be entirely ignorant that once we lived. But the same unalterable Being will still preside over the universe, through all its changes, and from his remembrance we shall never be blotted. We can never be where he is not, nor where he sees and loves and upholds us not. He is our Father and our God forever. He takes us from earth that he may lead us to heaven, that he may refine our nature from all its principles of corruption, share with us his own immortality, admit us to his everlasting habitation, and crown us with his eternity.

Philosophy and Morality of Tacitus.—FRISBIE.

It is not for his style, that we principally admire this author: his profound views of the human heart, his just developement of the principles of action, his delicate touches of nature, his love of liberty and independence, and, above all, the moral sensibility, which mingles, and incorporates itself with all his descriptions, are the qualities, which must ever render him a favourite with the friends of philosophy and of man.

Tacitus has been truly called the philosopher of historians; but his philosophy never arrays itself in the robe of the schools, or enters into a formal investigation of causes and motives. It seems to show itself here and there, in the course of his facts, involuntarily, and from its own fulness, by the manner of narration, by a single word, and sometimes by a general observation. Events, in his hands, have a soul, which is constantly displaying its secret workings by the attitude, into which it throws the body, by a glance of the eye, or an expression of the face, and now and then a sudden utterance of its emotions. It is not the prince, the senator, or the plebeian, that he describes; it is always man, and the general principles of human nature; and this in their nicer and more evanescent, as well as their boldest and most definite expressions. If we were not afraid of giving too violent a shock to classical devotees, we should say, that, in the particulars we have mentioned, Tacitus in history is not unlike Miss Edgeworth in fiction.

There are, indeed, many circumstances, unnecessary to be pointed out, in which they differ; but there is in both the same frequent interspersion in the narrative of short remarks, which lay open a principle of human nature, the same concise developement of character by discrimination and contrast, and the nice selection of some one trait, or apparently trifling circumstance, of conduct, as a key to the whole; traits and circumstances, which, though none but a philosopher would have pointed out, find their way at once to every heart. But the historian has none of the playfulness, the humour, and the mind at ease, which are seen in the novelist. He knew himself the register of facts, and facts, too, in which he took the deepest interest. He records events, not as one curious in political relations, or revolutions in empires, but as marking the moral character and condition of the age; a character and condition, which he felt were exerting a direct and powerful influence upon himself, upon those whom he loved, and with whom he lived.

The moral sensibility of Tacitus is, we think, that particular circumstance, by which he so deeply engages his reader, and is perhaps distinguished from every other writer, in the same department of literature; and the scenes he was to describe peculiarly required this quality. His writings comprise a period the most corrupt within the annals of man. The reigns of the Neros, and of many of their successors, seemed to have brought together the opposite vices of extreme barbarism and excessive luxury; the most ferocious cruelty and slavish submission; voluptuousness the most effeminate, and sensuality worse than brutal. Not only all the general charities of life, but the very ties of nature were annihilated by a selfishness, the most exclusively individual. The minions of power butchered the parent, and the child hurried to thank the emperor for his goodness. The very fountains of abominations seemed to have been broken up, and to have poured over the face of society a deluge of pollution and crimes. How important was it, then, for posterity, that the records of such an era should be transmitted by one in whose personal character there should be a redeeming virtue, who would himself feel, and awaken in his readers, that disgust