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e pay to the useless glare of the meteor, which is ished while it is beheld; while the sentiment we feel steady course of principled virtue, is the admiration hich we regard the majestic path of the sun, as he pursues his way, to give light and life to nature.

3 stability of character is, in another view, the surest tion of happiness. There are, doubtless, many ways ch our happiness is dependent upon the conduct and timents of others; but the great and perennial source ry man's happiness is in his own bosom,-in that fountain of the heart, from which the "waters of joy -itterness" perpetually flow.

from this source, the man of steadfast and persevering derives his peculiar happiness; and the slightest ence to our own experience can tell us both its nature degree. It is pleasing, we all know, to review the at is past, and to think that its duties have been done; k that the purpose, with which we rose, has been olished; that, in the busy scene which surrounds us, e done our part, and that no temptation has been able due our firmness and our resolution. Such are the ents with which, in every year of life, and still more solemn moment when life is drawing to its close, the ' persevering virtue is able to review the time that is It lies before him, as it were, in order and regularity; hile he travels over again the various stages of his 3s, memory restores to him many images to soothe and nate his heart. The days of trial are past; the hardhe has suffered, the labors he has undergone, are bered no more; but his good deeds remain, and from Ive of time seem to rise up again to bless him, and to to him of peace and hope.

ʼn are, then, the consequences of firmness and stability racter; and such the rewards which he may look for, solemnly devoting himself to the discharge of the of that station or condition which Providence has ed him, pursues them with steady and undeviating It is the character which unites all that is valuable le in human life, the tranquillity of conscience, the of wisdom, and the dignity of virtue

LESSON XXII.

The first Wanderer.—MARIA J. JEWSBURY.

CREATION'S HEIR!—the first, the last,
That knew the world his own;—
Yet stood he, mid his kingdom vast,
A fugitive-o'erthrown!

Faded and frail his glorious form,
And changed his soul within,

Whilst Fear and Sorrow, Strife and Storm,
Told the dark secret-Sin!

Unaided and alone on earth,

He bade the heavens give ear;—
But every star that sang his birth,
Kept silence in its sphere:
He saw, round Eden's distant steep,
Angelic legions stray;—

Alas! he knew them sent to keep
His guilty foot away.

Then, reckless, turned he to his own,-
The world before him spread;—
But Nature's was an altered tone,
And breathed rebuke and dread:
Fierce thunder-peal, and rocking gale,
Answered the storm-swept sea,
Whilst crashing forests joined the wail;
And all said-" Cursed for thee."

This, spoke the lion's prowling roar,
And this, the victim's cry;
This, written in defenceless gore,
Forever met his eye:

And not alone each sterner power

Proclaimed just Heaven's decree,— The faded leaf, the dying flower, Alike said "Cursed for thee."

Though mortal, doomed to many a length
Of life's now narrow span,

Sons rose around in pride and strength;—
They, too, proclaimed the ban.

"Twas heard, amid their hostile spears,
Seen, in the murderer's doom,
Breathed, from the widow's silent tears,
Felt, in the infant's tomb.

Ask not the wanderer's after-fate,
His being, birth, or name,—
Enough that all have shared his state,
That man is still the same.

Still brier and thorn his life o'ergrow,
Still strives his soul within;

Whilst Care, and Pain, and Sorrow show
The same dark secret-Sin.

LESSON XXIII.

The Village Grave-Yard.-GREenwood.

he beginning of the fine month of October, I was ng, with a friend, in one of our Northern States, on a recreation and pleasure. We were tired of the city, e, its smoke, and its unmeaning dissipation; and, with ings of emancipated prisoners, we had been breathing, ew weeks, the perfume of the vales, and the elastic here of the uplands. Some minutes before the suna most lovely day, we entered a neat little village, tapering spire we had caught sight of, at intervals, an efore, as our road made an unexpected turn, or led us top of a hill. Having no motive to urge a farther s, and being unwilling to ride in an unknown country ight-fall, we stopped at the inn, and determined to here.

ing my companion to arrange our accommodations e landlord, I strolled on towards the meeting-house.

There was much more
It did not stand, as

Its situation had attracted my notice. taste and beauty in it than is common. I have seen some meeting-houses stand, in the most frequented part of the village, blockaded by wagons and horses, with a court-house before it, an engine-house behind it, a storehouse under it, and a tavern on each side; it stood away from all these things, as it ought, and was placed on a spot of gently rising ground, a short distance from the main road, at the end of a green lane, and so near to a grove of oaks and walnuts, that one of the foremost and largest trees brushed against the pulpit window. On the left, and lower down, there was a fertile meadow, through which a clear brook wound its course, fell over a rock, and then hid itself in the thickest part of the grove. A little to the right of the meeting-house was the grave-yard.

I never shun a grave-yard. The thoughtful melancholy, which it inspires, is grateful, rather than disagreeable to me. It gives me no pain to tread on the green roof of that dark mansion, whose chambers I must occupy so soon; and I often wander, from choice, to a place where there is neither solitude nor society. Something human is there; but the folly, the bustle, the vanities, the pretensions, the competitions, the pride of humanity, are gone. Men are there; but their passions are hushed, and their spirits are still :-malevolence has lost its power of harming; appetite is sated, ambition lies low, and lust is cold; anger has done raving, all disputes are ended, all revelry is over; the fellest animosity is deeply buried, and the most dangerous sins are safely confined by the thickly-piled clods of the valley; vice is dumb and powerless, and virtue is waiting, in silence, for the trump of the archangel, and the voice of God.

I never shun a grave-yard, and I entered this. There were trees growing in it, here and there, though it was not regularly planted; and I thought that it looked better than if it had been. The only paths were those, which had been worn by the slow feet of sorrow and sympathy, as they followed love and friendship to the grave: and this, too, was well; for I dislike a smoothly rolled gravel-walk in a place like this. In a corner of the ground rose a gentle knoll, the top of which was covered by a clump of pines. Here my

ded; I threw myself down on the slippery couch of d pine leaves, which the breath of many winters had from the boughs above, leaned my head upon my nd gave myself up to the feelings, which the place time excited.

sun's edge had just touched the hazy outlines of the hills; it was the signal for the breeze to be hushed, was breathing like an expiring infant, softly, and at intervals, before it died away. The trees before me, wind passed over them, waved to and fro, and trailed ong branches across the tomb-stones, with a low, g sound, which fell upon the ear like the voice of nd seemed to utter the conscious tribute of nature's hy, over the last abode of mortal man. A low, conum came from the village; the brook was murmuring wood behind me; and, lulled by all these soothing I fell asleep.

whether my eyes closed, or not, I am unable to say; same scene appeared to be before them; the same were waving, and not a green mound had changed 1. I was still contemplating the same trophies of the ing victor, the same mementoes of human evanescence. were standing upright; others were inclined to the ; some were sunk so deeply in the earth, that their blue ere just visible above the long grass which surrounded and others were spotted or covered with the thin moss of the grave-yard. I was reading the inscriptions stones which were nearest to me: they recorded the of those who slept beneath them, and told the travelt they hoped for a happy rising.

said I or I dreamed that I said so-this is the ony of wounded hearts-the fond belief of that affechich remembers error and evil no longer; but could ve give up its dead-could they, who have been brought se cold, dark houses, go back again into the land of the and once more number the days which they had there-how differently would they then spend them! Then they came to die, how much firmer would be their and when they were again laid in the ground, how more faithful would be the tales, which these same

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