babe, and, by analogy, even from the bird and the bee, whose summer life points to no future world for them of song or flower. Action is the element of life, and duty is action-action which, though essentially of our moral nature, involves that of all our powers; and its influence upon soul and mind, is that of healthful exercise upon the functions of our material being. Though it embrace but the tame routine of daily life, its claims are yet sufficient to bring into requisition the holiest attributes that belong to humanity. While a proud and vain theology, like the equally vain and arrogant philosophy of a dark age, busies itself in speculations that have no bearing upon practical life, the soldier of duty is pressing on in the fulfillment of specific action. Whether it be in the low vale, or among the more stormy elevations of life, in such steady pursuit the highest prerogatives of his nature shall be asserted. With this fixed aim, this unity and predominance of purpose, no overmastering passion, such as too often desolate the soul, can obtain the ascendant. Absorbed in an aim commensurate with his term of life, and extending in its results beyond the boundaries of time, in the attainment of which he has a full and free agency, that feverish solicitude so common to man for events beyond his control is necessarily lessened. To the weary sense of the vanity of all things of the poorness, the insufficiency, the mockery of life that presses so heavily upon him who has trodden the rounds of selfish pursuit-to those intense, but vague cravings, attended by a morbid lothing of all things tried-to that sickness of the soul which grows from frequent disappointment and hope deferred, he is no longer subject. He has entered a field of exertion where there are no phantoms to evade, no sensual pleasures to pall, no pageants to excite the imagination for a brief hour, and then, melting upon the gaze, leave the sense of universal blankness. He is in no land of dreams, where, from visions of glittering streams, and bowers of beauty and fragrance, he shall waken to turn a cold, distasteful eye upon vapid and stale realities. He is in a world of unideal influences and objects. He is engaged in a life's conflict, to which his soul is vowed by a pledge far more binding than his who bound on his sword for the holy crusade. If he have put on the right armor, he shall be assuredly victorious. Every hour shall bring him a triumph over the pride, } the uncharitableness, the envy, the slothfulness, the weakness, the infirmities, the passions of his nature. He can be at no loss for a guide; for his eye is turned from the dim mysteries of abstraction and metaphysical science to Him whose whole law is love, and who has defined from the mount the entire range of human duty. If he be poor, neglected, friendless, alone, he shall forget in this service that bitter sense of desolation-of the proud world's disregard, which is the bitterest part of such allotment. Obscure and feeble though he be, he hath a part in

that vast field of labor whose Lord and Superintendent is God. His plan and work are appointed him; and though no human eye take note of it, no voice approve, no smile cheer, yet he knows he

"Is ever in the great Taskmaster's eye;" and his presence shall surely sustain him. If he be one upon whose soul there is still the weight of a lingering remorse for past crime, which, though blotted by penitence from the eternal records, has left its dark stain upon his memory, he learns confidence in the Divine mercy. As under the dispensation of an earlier day the accepted sacrifice was the token of Divine approbation, so the acceptance of this, his daily service, is to him the seal and testimony of his pardon.

In fine, among the many bitternesses of the cup of life, varied as it is, and fearfully mingled, there is none to which the fulfillment of Christian obligation shall not be as the foliage of the tree that sweetened the fountain of Marah. Duty is a perpetual link between the soul's deep musings and that world where trial is not; and to him whose course is directed by it, the sorrows of time must be blent with sustaining visions of eternity. The sacrifice it leads us to make of honor, pleasure, fame, whatever life proffers to dazzle the imagination, or gratify desire, is necessarily blent with hopes that are as the angels that ministered to Him who was tempted even as ourselves. The anguish of alienated friendship, the pang of unrequited affection, or betrayed trust, the agony with which love yields up the heart of answering love to the inexorable grave, are only softened by lifting the eye to that world, to which, though faith only can reveal it to our gaze, duty for ever points with an immovable hand. But for the direction thus preserved, faith itself would afford us but a fitful and uncertain vision. It is the fulfillment of duty that buoys it up to the very throne of the Most High. The soul, never afraid, but always rejoicing to meet its God in the cool of the evening, like the eye accustomed to earthly light, grows strong to sustain more and more of the glory of his presThe faithful believer may thus finally behold Him, even through the dimness of mortality, as did those who were called up into the clouded mount, when there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.

ence.

So let the soul repose in humble trust,

Whose wing immortal, springing from the dust, May upward tend, in steady flight sublime, Beyond the parting glooms and mists of time.

H.

WHERE We see a character addicted to "excesses," it is a fair inference, in the absence of discretion, to believe that some "short-comings" balance the

account.

THE BROKEN-HEARTED.

A SCENE FROM REAL LIFE.

I SAW her in her youth, when beauty's smile
Played artlessly, and with bewitching power,
Around her lips-when health glowed in her cheek
With hue more delicate than bursting bloom
Which decorates the peach tree twigs, when spring
Awakes all nature from her death-like trance-
When life, and love, and highest mental worth
Shone in her full moist eye, with lustre mild
As evening twilight of a summer's day;
And when upon her beamed a mother's eye
With fondest admiration, and a look

Of tenderness which knows no other source
Than deepest fountain of a mother's heart;
And when a father, too, beheld with pride
That earliest bud upon the household tree,
Expanding with a loveliness surpassed

By none equaled by few; while childhood's voice
Was heard exulting, as, with gentle hand,

Two brothers stroked those blooming cheeks, and seemed

To vie in ardor of their love and joy.

I saw her, and, admiring, felt the glow,
Within my soul, which beauteous innocence,
Blended with highest worth, must always cause
In those who have a heart to feel, and eyes
Undimmed by earth's bright sordidness.

*

Again I saw her; but how changed! That eye
Still shone with mild effulgence; but its cast
Was pensive-sad-betokening inward grief
Not yet subdued. And oft anon a tear,
Unbidden, dimm'd its light, or traced its course,
Unheeded, down her pallid cheek, and fell,
Unnoticed, on her heaving breast. The rich,
Yet delicate and matchless glow, that erst
Adorned her cheeks, as if the evening sun
Had dipped his pencil in the rainbow tints,
And left its tracery on her lovely face,
Had fled; and in its place the hectic flush,
With its deep hue and fitfulness, appeared,
Contending with a death-like pallidness,
And told of sleepless nights, and feverish days,
And wasting strength, and hopes cut short, and fears
Unrealized as yet, perhaps, but sure.

Her countenance-once lit with joyous smiles-
Now wore Depression's mark; and Languor fixed,
Inwrought his impress there; and Sadness loved
To revel mid her features wan.

Her dress

Accorded well with these insignia

Of grief, deep seated in the heart. She wore
The sable robe and black habiliments

Which mark bereavement, when to death's dark bourn

VOL. VI.-23

The loved are carried, never to return; And desolation fills their place.

The cause

177

Of all was quickly sought, and found as soon:
That mother, whom she loved so dotingly,
Now slept, in peacefulness, the sleep of death!
A grief excessive on her spirits preyed,
Each day consuming life's remaining strength,
And fitting her, too, for the grave. This truth,
So thrillingly revealed, and in a way
So natural, the heart of sympathy
Touched deep. It was a MOTHER'S loss she mourned.
That eye, whose speaking lustre ever told

A mother's depth and tenderness of love-
That eye was dimmed in death. A mother's heart,
Which beat with such intensity for one

So lovely, now was stilled. The king of dread
His ne'er revoked decree had issued forth,
And bade its beatings cease-its throbs be still.
No longer may that gentle tenderness
Speak in the fond caress, which, night and morn,
And often through the livelong day, had sealed
Its impress on her glowing cheek. No more
That gentle hand may lead in paths of truth-
No more that voice in admonitions kind
Be heard. In sickness, and in sorrow's night,
Her soothing words are listened for in vain;
And when the startling dream, or midnight fear,
Finds utterance in a groan-a sob-a sigh-
No gentle accents lull again to rest-
"My daughter, all is safe-repose in peace!"

Such loss she mourns; and in her deep distress,
And agony of grief, all other sounds,
Than those which issued from maternal lips,
Seem harsh: all other hearts beat sluggishly:
All love seems cold: all sympathy devoid
Of depth, and wanting just intensity,
And ofttimes feigned-the child of fell deceit;
Or, if sincere, remits a chilling power
O'er all the soul, and wounds the heart afresh,
Awakening contrasts which but sink the mind
In deeper sorrow, and invest with gloom
More sable than before. At times, perhaps,
A real harshness mingles in the scene,
Proceeding forth from those who cannot feel
Such depth of woe, or sympathize with those
Whose heart-strings yield beneath such load of grief-
From those who, smothering o'er the glowing brands,
Deem such wild wilderness of grief but feigned,
Or meant to excite a livelier sympathy
In all around, and pettishly reprove,
As weakness, every tear wrung from the heart
By sense of utter loneliness in woe,
And drearest desolation.

Fiercely these prey

Upon her mind. By night she feels their power,
When darkness veils the sight to all without,
And bids the mind commune with its own thoughts-

In the still hour of evening's twilight beam,

A stranger, mid a city's crowded walls,
Tarrying to spend the hours of holy time,

I wandered forth and sought the place of tombs-
The city of the silent. Here, my mind,
Drawn forth by the investing scene-so fit,
Amid the hours which mark the finished week,
To call up all its powers of feeling-thought,
In retrospection traced mortality

Through all its course, from infancy to age.
Around me slept, in holy calm, the young-
The beautiful-the man of years mature-
The infant in its mother's arms-the old,
Whose silvered locks long waited for the tomb-
The wise-the ignorant-the good-the bad-
Friend-and unknown-all slept in quiet peace,
'Like undisturbing-undisturbed. My thoughts
Mused in this scene in silent pensiveness-
My footsteps wandering as I mused. At length
My course was checked. I stood before a tomb
Whose tablet waked within, anew, a train
Of melancholy thought. The lovely one
I erst had gazed upon with such delight,
Was sleeping 'neath the willow boughs which drooped
Above my head. That heart the longed-for boon
At length obtained; and once again her head
Was pillowed by her mother's side. That heart
Which oft had sunk in utter desolation,
Had found, at last, repose. Grief, too severe,
Had snapt its cords, and bade the spirit join,
In mansions of the blest, the one it loved-
Next to its God-with its most ardent love.
Consumption seemed to do the work of death;
And so her tombstone told to passers by;
But bitter grief the ruin wrought, and laid
The loving-lovely-the beloved-to rest,
Where most she longed to be-close by the side
Of her who gave her being, and whose hand
Had trained her soul for immortality.

In that blest world of peace and love-their hearts
Again united, and their voices joined-

In sweetest harmony their spirits beat
Before the throne of God. Unknown, unfeared
Are partings there. One wishful thought alone
Now swells her happy soul-the safe arrive
Of those she loved on earth.

EUSEBIA.

EARTH'S proudest titles end in, "Here he lies," And "dust to dust" concludes her noblest song.

RETROSPECTION.

How oft the mind, with retrospective eye,

Reviews what Time-mute chronicler-has traced, Of days, and scenes, and thoughts, long since passed by,

Which from the heart can never be effaced! And as each circumstance is then replaced, Which in the mind had long neglected lain,

And e'en from memory's tablet seemed erased, Each one a link in life's full varied chain, We live again the scenes gone by of bliss or pain. The blissful then appears more full of bliss, Than when the hours that bore it glided by, As moments wafted from a brighter world than thisThe world of perfect joy beyond the sky. For then the tear which often dimmed the eye, E'en mid the brightest scenes of real life

The shade of sadness and the rising sighThe rueful tokens of some latent griefThen enter not the scene to give or ask relief. The painful, less acute full oft appears,

When Time has thrown o'er all his shading wing, And Grief herself a half-formed smile then wears, Which from her woe-worn face she fain would fling: And, though at best a sad and sombre thing, She sorrow often tints with rainbow hues,

By rays that from the Empyrean spring, Which, e'en mid tears, those purer joys disclose, Existing in that world where all is sweet repose. Thus retrospection oft may lend new joys,

Life's wildering maze and thorny path to cheer; And while with brighter scenes the mind employs, Point upward whence alone flows pleasure pure, And by such glimpses seek the heart t' allure From all the sordid, fleeting scenes of earth,

To those bright worlds where every good's secureWhere every joy is of invalued worth, Not sprung from fleeting toys, but of immortal birth. G. W.

THE HAPPY HOME. WOULDST keep thy home a holy shrine, And still fresh wreaths around it twine? Wouldst thou that there, with each new hour, Love still unfold some precious flower, Diffusing through its gentle calm Soft odorous breath and dropping balm? O, guard it with a sleepless care, From stormy gust or chilling air. Wouldst thou its holy altar flame Should burn still on-through life the sameThat its soft, wreathing incense still Should all home's sanctuary fill? O, guard thou, as the priest of eld, The sacred fire with vigils held,

So watch the flame thou wouldst keep bright, And trembling feed the wasting light.