use.

That appended is one of the latest specimens of the school. It was said to have been written by the Hon. John Custis, of Arlington, Northampton Co., Va., ob. 1770, who was so solicitous that his peculiar views should go down to posterity that he expressly enjoined upon his administrators to see it duly engraven upon his tombstone. It is thus given from recollection, by Hon. Geo. P. W. Custis.

"Here lies the body of JOHN CUSTIS, who died aged 77 years, and yet lived but 7, being the time of his keeping a Bachelor's house at Arlington on the eastern shore of Virginia."

VIII.

Eloquence on the Dead.

THE OTHER WORLD.

WE see through a glass darkly, and dim shapes are moving there over the deep ocean of the other world.

From distant darkness, see! even from that vast and shoreless sea, white hands are lifted, beckoning; yes, after all, 't is only a barrier of frailest glass that separates the present from the other world. Against that frail barrier for ages the waves have been breaking, and their murmurs have been to us whis.pers of eternal truth.

We stand in cold and darkness-our hearts

bowed, our feet weary, our eyes heavy with much watching-while before us stretches that dim and awful glass, the only barrier that divides us from eternity.

Now and then lifting our eyes, we gaze through the darkened glass and feel some glimpses of the fathomless sea that rolls beyond it.

We listen, even in weariness and despair, and hear some murmurs from that sounding sea, and many a white form glides by us, and many a word, spoken in some well-remembered tone, floats to us, and then the dark ocean, no longer dark, is set with islands of living light.

A sad, yet beautiful, contrast.

Here, all cold, all weariness, all despair; there, opening deep after deep, groups of happy homes swarming with happy faces bathed in eternal light, and only a glass barrier is between. Here, wandering children seeking with blind eagerness some glimpses of the Father's face; there, the wandering child is home again. There, ranged in countless circles that spread deep after deep through the abysses of Eternity, is seen nothing but children gazing in the Father's face.

Not vague, nor vain, nor transitory is the life of the other world. It is no dream, but a reality-a reality so beautiful that our hearts, sick with suffering, are freightened at its very beauty. New duties are there, and new life for all of us; and always a brighter future-always golden steps to mount.

Sometimes the glass barrier becomes transparent

in dreams, in sleep, in visions, which for a little while free the soul from its casement of clay, and sometimes in those thoughts which imperceptibly and voicelessly sink into our souls. And in these times we gain a vision-rather a clear sight-not so much of the gorgeous complete of Eternity as of some single home of the other world; some home where live as in our world men and women and children, but men and women and children redeemed and purified by sacrifice, and with their faces glowing with the highest, deepest thought which God ever implanted in the breast of an immortal nature.

Then in our dreams let us a little while alight upon the shores of one of these happy islands which are strewn along the deep clear sea of Eternity. Let us enter a little while one of these homes.

Listen! There are voices sounding now which we heard in old times when we were of the lower earth; our hands are grasped by hands that we thought long ago were chilled by Death, forgetting that in God's universe there is no such thing as death, but in its place only a transition from one life or state of life to another.

And dwelling thus a little while in a home like this, we will be very silent, for the faces that we once knew are again gathering around us, and the voices that we once heard-hark!—are in our ears, and in every step a form uprises, white and beautiful, that long ago we had given to the dust. And surveying this one home, we find that here are repeated

all those affections which made supportable our dreary way in yonder earth-affections, stripped of all that clogged their brightness, and made eternal.

But when leaving this one home we raise our eyes to the brighter mysteries of Eternity, we fall back dazzled and bewildered with excess of beauty, conscious, however, that throughout the eternal world, alike in every sphere, however different in intellect and in gradations of intellect, this law prevails-the heart in every sphere is one; one, and one fathomless chain of love binds the humblest intelligence and the greatest to the heart of Divinity.

Thoughts like these are but a part of the mysterious murmurs which now, as in all ages, break against the darkened glass. And let us not, although dazzled and won by the brightness of the prospect yonder, forget that here on this earth we have a way to walk and a work to do.

Here the darkened glass shall not oftentimes for us be lifted, but always; always-always when our hearts are saddest, and the cloud of life hangs heaviest, let us bend our ears and listen to the murmurs of the Eternal Sea, for those murmurs after all are but dim or faint echoes of the voice of the Father. And when faith is dim and cold, and doubt is on us, and we cannot hear the voices of that sea; when the darkened glass grows yet darker; let us then, in childlike gentleness, retreat within ourselves and look into our own hearts.

The eternal sea is always sounding there.

LIPPARD.

TOMB OF WASHINGTON.

[An address delivered in the Senate of New York, on a resolution calling on Congress to purchase Mount Vernon.]

I earnestly hope that this resolution will be adopted by the House without a dissenting vote. The subject is one of deep interest to every man who first drew his breath on American soil. Sir, it was beautifully said of Washington, that "God made him childless that the nation might call him Father." Mount Vernon was his home; it is now his grave. How fitting then, sir, it is that we, his children, should be the owners of the homestead, and of our father's sepulchre. No stranger's money should buy it, and no stranger's hand should drive the plough-share over ashes sacred to every American. No mere individual is worthy to be the owner of a spot enriched with such hallowed memories. The mortal remains of the nation's idol should not be subject to the whim, caprice, or cupidity of These memorials are national, and to the any man. nation they should belong; and it is the duty of every citizen to guard them from violence and dishonor. Sir, no monument has ever been erected over the grave of Washington. He needs none but that which rises in majestic grandeur before the gaze of the world, in the existence of this great Republic, with its millions of people rejoicing in the light and liberty of a free government. While the tars and stripes waving above every capital,