dangling over that fearful abyss; but when a sturdy Virginian reaches down and draws up the lad, and holds him up in his arms before the tearful, breathless multitude-such shouting! and such leaping and weeping for joy, never greeted a human being so recovered from the yawning gulf of eternity. Elihu Burrit.

Ex. 55.

The Song of Steam.

Harness me down with your iron bands-
Be sure of your curb and rein;

For I scorn the power of your puny hands
As the tempest scorns a chain.

How I laughed, as I lay concealed from sight
For many a countless hour,

At the childish boast of human might,
And the pride of human power!

When I saw an army upon the land,
A navy upon the seas,

Creeping along, a snail-like band,

Or waiting the wayward breeze;
When I marked the peasant faintly reel
With the toil which he daily bore,
As he feebly turn'd at the tardy wheel,
Or tugg'd at the weary oar.

When I measured the panting courser's speed,
The flight of the carrier dove,

As they bore the law a king decreed,

Or the lines of impatient love;

I could not but think how the world would feel,
As these were outstripped afar

When I should be bound to the rushing keel,
Or chained to the flying car.

In the darksome depths of the fathomless mine
My tireless arm doth play,

Where the rock never saw the sun decline,
Or the dawn of a glorious day.

I bring earth's glittering jewels up
From the hidden cave below,

And I make the fountain's granite cup
With a crystal gush overflow.

I blow the bellows, I forge the steel,
In all the shops of trade;

I hammer the ore and turn the wheel
Where my arms of strength are made :
I manage the furnace, the mill, the mint,
I carry, I spin, I weave;

And all my doings I put into print
On every Saturday eve.

I've no muscle to weary, no breast to decay,
No bones to be 'laid on the shelf;'

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And soon I intend you may go and play,'
While I manage the world by myself.
But harness me down with your iron bands-
Be sure of your curb and rein;

For I scorn the strength of your puny hands
As the tempest scorns a chain.

G. W. Cutler.

Ex. 56.

The Schoolmaster and the Conqueror.

But there is nothing which the adversaries of improvement are more wont to make themselves merry with than what is termed the 'march of intellect;' and here I will confess, that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect expression. It is little calculated to describe the operation in question. It does not picture an image at all resembling the proceedings of the true friends of mankind. It much more resembles the progress of the enemy to all improvement. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the 'pride, pomp, and circumstance of war'-banners flying-shouts rending the air-guns thundering-and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamentations for the slain. Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution--he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, labouring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. is a progress not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable, than the destroyer of his species, the Scourge of the world, ever won. Such men-men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind-I have found.

His

labouring conscientiously, though perhaps obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them and shared their fellowship, among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomitably active French; I have found them among the persevering, resolute, industrious Swiss; I have found them among the laborious, the warmhearted, the enthusiastic Germans; I have found them among the highminded, but enslaved Italians; and in our own country, God be thanked, their number everywhere abound, and are every day increasing. Their calling is high and holy; their fame is the property of nations; their renown will fill the earth in after ages, in proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each one of those great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course; awaits in patience the fulfilment of the promises; and, resting from his labours, bequeaths his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, commemorating 'one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy.' Brougham.

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power, whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—
The desert and illimitable air,-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end:

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest
And scream among thy fellows: reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone! the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

Bryant.

Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point-not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means apparently a much-cared-for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven; and a little pale hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes or good for foodstately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine-there be any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green. It seems to me not to have been without a peculiar significance that our Lord, when about to work the miracle, which of all that He showed, appears to have been felt by the multitude as the most impressive—the miracle of the loaves -commanded the people to sit down by companies upon the green grass. He was about to feed them with the principal produce of the earth and sea, the simplest representations of the food of mankind. He gave them the seed of the herb he bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which was as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its perfect fruit for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and act, when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and

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sustenance of man, to the simplest and most despised of all the leafy families of the earth. And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and peaceful spears. The fields! Follow but forth for a little time the thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in those words. All spring and summer is in them—the walks by silent, scented paths the rests in noonday heat-the joy of herds and flocks-the power of all shepherd life and meditation— the life of sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and in soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the bare, dark mould, or scorching dust-pastures beside the pacing brooks-soft banks and knolls of lowly hills-thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea-crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices: all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, would open on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom,-paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness-look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, 'He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.'

There are also several lessons symbolically connected with this subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe, the peculiar characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for the service of man, are its apparent humility, and cheerfulness. Its humility, in that it seems created only for lowest service,-appointed to be trodden on, and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult under all kinds of violence and suffering. You roll it, and it is stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if it