my life about the time that it commenced its immense career. It has, during several centuries, advanced in the heavens with an astonishing heat and brilliancy, of which you can have no idea, and which assuredly you could not have endured; but now, by its decline, and the sensible diminution of its vigor, I foresee that all nature must shortly terminate, and that this world will be buried in darkness in less than a hundred minutes.

"Alas! my friends, how I flattered myself at one time with the deceitful hope of always living on this earth! How magnificent were the cells I had hollowed out for myself! What confidence did I put in the firmness of my limbs, and in the elasticity of their joints, and in the strength of my wings! But I have lived long enough for nature and for glory, and none of those I leave behind me, will have that same satisfaction in the century of darkness and decay that I see about to begin."

FROM THE FRENCH.

DECREPITUDE; an enfeebled state of the body, produced by decay and the infirmities of age. PRODIGY; any thing out of the ordinary course of nature, and so extraordinary as to excite wonder or astonishment. DIMINUTION; state of becoming or appearing less. ELASTICITY; inherent property in bodies by which they recover their former figure or state after external pressure, tension, or distortion.

MAN'S WANTS NECESSARY TO HIS IMPROVEMENT AND HAPPINESS.

MAN's grand distinction is his intellect, his mental capacity. It is this which renders him highly and peculiarly responsible to his Creator. It is this, on account of which the rule over other animals is established in his hands; and it is this, mainly, which enables him to exercise dominion over the powers of nature, and to subdue them to himself. But it is also true that his own animal organization gives

him superiority, and is among the most wonderful of the works of God on earth. It contributes to cause, as well as prove, his elevated rank in creation. His port is erect, his face towards heaven, and he is furnished with limbs which are at once powerful, flexible, capable of innumerable modes and varieties of action, and terminated by an instrument of wonderful, heavenly workmanship-the human hand.

This marvellous physical conformation gives man the power of acting with great effect upon external objects, in pursuance of the suggestions of his understanding, and of applying the results of his reasoning power to his own purposes. Without this peculiar formation, he would not be man, with whatever sagacity he might be endowed.

No bounteous grant of intellect, were it the pleasure of Heaven to make such grant, could raise any of the brute creation to an equality with the human race. Were it bestowed on the leviathan, he must remain, nevertheless, in the element where he alone could maintain his physical existence. He would still be but the inelegant, misshapen inhabitant of the ocean, "wallowing unwieldy in his gait."

Were the elephant made to possess it, it would but teach him the deformity of his own structure; the unloveliness of his frame, though "the hugest of things;" his disability to act on external matter; and the degrading nature of his own physical wants, which lead him to the deserts, and give him for his favorite home the torrid plains of the tropics. It was placing the king of Babylon sufficiently out of the rank of human beings, though he carried all his reasoning faculties with him, when he was sent away to eat grass, like

the ox.

And this may suggest to our consideration, what is undeniably true, that there is hardly a greater blessing conferred on man than his natural wants. If he had wanted no more than the beasts, who can say how much more than they he would have attained? Does he associate? does he culti

vate? does he build? does he navigate? The original impulse to all these lies in his wants. It proceeds from the necessities of his condition, and from the efforts of unsatisfied desire.

Every want, not of a low kind, physical as well as moral, which the human breast feels, and which brutes do not feel, and cannot feel, raises man by so much in the scale of existence, and is a clear proof, and a direct instance, of the favor of God towards his so much favored human offspring. If man had been so made as to have desired nothing, he would have wanted almost every thing worth possessing.

WEBSTER.

DISTINCTION; that by which one differs from another, superiority, discrimination. CAPACITY; power of holding, ability. RESPONSIBLE; answerable, accountable. ORGANIZATION; regular construction of parts, organical structure. FLEXIBLE; pliant, supple. CONFORMATION; structure. PURSUANCE; prosecution. SAGACITY; penetration, quick discernment. GRANT; thing granted, gift. LEVIATHAN; a great marine animal, mentioned in the book of Job, by some supposed to be the crocodile, by some the whale, and by others an animal now extinct. UNWIELDY; unmanageable, ponderous, clumsy. GAIT; manner of walking, bearing, carriage. TORRID; dried with heat, violently hot. UNDENIA BLY; so plainly as to admit no contradiction.

THE LAST MINSTREL.

AND OLD; sound the d in and, and do not blend the two words. WITHERED; er as in her, not withud. HARP; sound rp. TUNEFUL; long u in tune, not oo. BRETHREN; give e its short sound; do not call it bruthrin.

THE
way was long, the wind was cold;
The minstrel was infirm and old;
His withered cheek and tresses gray
Seemed to have known a better day.

The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.

The last of all the bards was he,
Who sung of Border chivalry.

For, well-a-day! their date was fled;
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them, and at rest.
No more, on prancing palfrey borne,
He carolled light as lark at morn;
No longer courted and caressed,
High-placed in hall, a welcome guest,
He poured to lord and lady gay
The unpremeditated lay.

Old times were changed, old manners gone
A stranger filled the Stuarts' throne.
A wandering harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door;
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.
He passed where Newark's stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower;
The minstrel gazed with wishful eye;
No humbler resting-place was nigh.

With hesitating step, at last,

Th' embattled portal-arch he passed,
Whose ponderous gate and massy bar
Had oft rolled back the tide of war,
But never closed the iron door
Against the desolate and poor.
The duchess marked his weary pace,
His timid mien, and reverend face,
And bade her page the menials tell
That they should tend the old man well;

For she had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb!

When kindness had his wants supplied,
And the old man was gratified,
Began to rise his minstrel pride;
And he began to talk, anon,

Of good Earl Francis, dead and gone,
And how full many a tale he knew
Of the old warriors of Buccleugh;
And, would the noble duchess deign
To listen to an old man's strain,

Though stiff his hand, his voice though weak,
He thought, even yet, the sooth to speak, -

That, if she loved the harp to hear,
He could make music to her ear.

The humble boon was soon obtained;
The aged minstrel audience gained;
But, when he reached the room of state,
Where she, with all her ladies, sate,
Perchance he wished his boon denied;
For, when to tune his harp he tried,
His trembling hand had lost the ease
Which marks security to please;

And scenes, long past, of joy and pain,
Came wildering o'er his aged brain;
He tried to tune his harp in vain.

The pitying duchess praised its chime,
And gave him heart, and gave him time,
Till every string's according glee

Was blended into harmony;