Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength and grace,
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak-
By whose immovable stem I stand, and seem
Almost annihilated-not a prince,

In all the proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he

Wears the green coronal of leaves, with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare

Of the broad sun.
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,

That delicate forest flower,

A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me, when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me-the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works, I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die: but see, again,
How, on the faltering footsteps of decay,
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth-
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh! there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death; yea, seats himself
Upon the sepulchre, and blooms and smiles,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.
There have been holy men, who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed

than the hoary trees and rocks
em; and there have been holy men,
ed it were not well to pass life thus.
often to these solitudes

1, in thy presence, reässure
virtue. Here, its enemies,

ns, at thy plainer footsteps, shrink, le, and are still.

O God! when thou

the world with tempests, set on fire ns with falling thunderbolts, or fill, he waters of the firmament,

dark whirlwind, that uproots the woods, is the villages; when, at thy call, è great deep, and throws himself continent, and overwhelms -who forgets not, at the sight remendous tokens of thy power, and lays his strifes and follies by! these sterner aspects of thy face and mine; nor let us need the wrath d, unchained elements, to teach

them. Be it ours to meditate, alm shades, thy milder majesty, e beautiful order of thy works conform the order of our lives.

LESSON XLVI.

Morning Hymn.-MILTON.

E are thy glorious works, Parent of good,

ty thine this universal frame,

ondrous fair! Thyself how wondrous, then!

kable! who sitt'st above these heavens,

nvisible, or dimly seen

thy lowest works: yet these declare

odness beyond thought, and power divine.

Speak ye, who best can tell, ye sons of light,
Angels! for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing. Ye in heaven:
On earth, join, all ye creatures, to extol,
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end!

Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,

Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere,
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.
Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st,
And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fall'st
Moon, that now meet'st the orient sun, now fliest
With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb, that flies;
And ye
five other wandering fires, that move
In mystic dance, not without song; resound
His praise, who out of darkness called up light.

Air, and ye elements, the eldest birth
Of nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix,

And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honor to the world's great Author rise,
Whether to deck with clouds the uncolored sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers;
Rising or falling, still advance his praise.

His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.

ices, all ye living souls! ye birds inging, up to heaven's gate ascend,

a your wings and in your notes his praise.

hat in waters glide, and ye that walk
_rth, and stately tread, or lowly creep,
-s if I be silent, morn or even,
or valley, fountain or fresh shade,
vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
niversal Lord! be bounteous still
e us only good: and if the night
gathered aught of evil, or concealed,
se it, as now light dispels the dark!

LESSON XLVII.

tion of the Custom of Whitewashing.—-HOPKINSON.

a young couple are about to enter into the matritate, a never-failing article in the marriage treaty is, lady shall have and enjoy the free and unmolested of the rights of whitewashing, with all its ceremonileges and appurtenances. A young woman would e most advantageous connexion, and even disappoint nest wish of her heart, rather than resign the invalght. You would wonder what this privilege of shing is :-I will endeavor to give you some idea of mony, as I have seen it performed.

is no season of the year, in which the lady may not r privilege, if she pleases; but the latter end of May generally fixed upon for the purpose. The attentive may judge, by certain prognostics, when the storm at hand. When the lady is unusually fretful, finds h the servants, is discontented with the children, and ns much of the filthiness of every thing about her— e signs which ought not to be neglected; yet thev decisive, as they sometimes come on and go off again, producing any farther effect.

But if, when the husband rises in the morning, he should observe in the yard a wheelbarrow, with a quantity of lime in it, or should see certain buckets with lime dissolved in water, there is then no time to be lost; he immediately locks up the apartinent or closet, where his papers or his private property are kept, and, putting the key in his pocket, betakes himself to flight; for a husband, however beloved, becomes a perfect nuisance during this season of female rage; his authority is superseded, his commission is suspended, and the very scullion, who cleans the brasses in the kitchen, becomes of more consideration and importance than he. He has nothing for it but to abdicate, and run from an evil, which he can neither prevent nor mollify.

The husband gone, the ceremony begins. The walls are, in a few minutes, stripped of their furniture; paintings, prints and looking-glasses lie in a huddled heap about the floors; the curtains are torn from the testers, the beds crammed into the windows; chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles, crowd the yard; and the garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats and ragged breeches.

Here, may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass; for the foreground of the picture, gridirons and frying-pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, spits and pots, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs. There, a closet has disgorged its contents-cracked tumblers, broken wine-glasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, handfuls of old corks, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters;-from the rag-hole in the garret to the rat-hole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged.

This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is, to smear the walls and ceilings of every room and closet with brushes dipped in a solution of lime, called whitewash; to pour buckets of water over every floor, and scratch all the partitions and wainscots with rough brushes wet with soap-suds, and dipped in stone-cutter's sand. The windows by no means escape the general deluge. A servant scrambles out upon the penthouse, at the risk of her neck, and, with a mug in her hand and a bucket within