Upon this untried scene, young friends, you are to enter, and well will it be for you if you have a guide within, which will aid you in every issue, which will arm you in every temptation, and comfort you in every sorrow.

Consult, then, that VOLUME whose precepts will never fail you. Consult it with a deep aspiration after the true and good, and it shall illuminate your understanding with divine realities. Open your soul—and it shall breathe into it a holy influence, and fill all its wants.

Bind it close to your heart—it will be a shield against all the assaults of evil. Read it in the lonely hour of desertion it will be the best of companions. Open it when the voyage of life is troubled - it is a sure chart. Study it in poverty it will unhoard to you inexhaustible riches. Commune with it in sickness it contains the medicine of the soul. Clasp it when dying-it is the charter of immortality.

In whatever pursuits you may engage, you must not forget that the lawful objects of human efforts are but means to higher results and nobler ends. Start not forward in life with the idea of becoming mere seekers of pleasure — sportive butterflies searching for gaudy flowers.

Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of your life touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity. These thoughts and motives within you stir the pulses of a deathless spirit.

Act not then as mere creatures of this life, who for a little while are to walk the valleys and the hills, to enjoy the sunshine and breathe the air, and then pass away and be no more; but act as immortals, with an aim and a purpose worthy of your high nature. Set before you, as the chief object to be obtained, an end that is superior to any on earth- a desirable

Labor to accomplish a work which shall survive unchanged and beautiful when time shall have withered the garland of

youth, when thrones of power and monuments of art shall have crumbled into ashes; and, finally, aim to achieve something which, when these our mutable and perishing voices are hushed forever, shall live amid the songs and triumphs of

IMMORTALITY.

CHAPIN

RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.

FORMS; sound rmz. HAUNTS; Sound nts. NOTHING; o sounds like short u. SILENT; ent, not unt. COVERT; er as in her. RUDEST; est, not ist. LANDSCAPE; sound nd. REFINEMENT; ment, not munt. SUMMER; er as in her, not muh. INFLUENCE; long u, not oo. WINDOW; long o, not der.

THE taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is called landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied Nature intently, and exhibit an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms, which in other countries she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive glances, and spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes.

Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park scenery - vast lawns, that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of foliage; the solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them; the hare, bounding away to the covert, or the pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing; the brook, taught to wind in the most natural meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake; the sequestered pool, reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters; while some rustic temple or sylvan statue, grown green and

dark with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion.

These are but a few of the features of park scenery; but what most delights me is the creative talent with which the English decorate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its capabilities, and pictures in his mind the future landscape.

The sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand; and yet the operations of art which produce the effect, are scarcely to be perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the cautious pruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a silver gleam of water, all these are managed with a delicate tact, a prevailing yet quiet assiduity, like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes up a favorite picture.

The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge; the grass-plot before the door; the little flower-bed bordered with snug box; the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly, providentially planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside, - all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant.

e 327.

t gy 169-200.

The fondness for rural life among the higher classes of the English has had a great and salutary effect upon the national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterize the men of rank in most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, a robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, and pursuing so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the country. These hardy exercises produce also a healthful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness and simplicity of manners, which even the follies and dissipations of the town cannot easily pervert, and can never entirely destroy.

In the country, too, the different orders of society seem to approach more freely, to be more disposed to blend and operate favorably upon each other. The distinctions between them do not appear to be so marked and impassable as in the cities. The manner in which property has been distributed into small estates and farms, has established a regular gradation from the nobleman, through the classes of gentry, small landed proprietors, and substantial farmers, down to the laboring peasantry; and, while it has thus banded the extremes of society together, has infused into each intermediate rank a spirit of independence. This, it must be confessed, is not so universally the case at present as it was formerly; the larger estates having, in late years of distress, absorbed the smaller, and, in some parts of the country, almost annihilated the sturdy race of small farmers. These, however, I believe, are but casual breaks in the general system I have mentioned.

THE SAME, CONTINUED.

IN rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders of rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into the honest, heartfelt enjoyments of common life.

Indeed, the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together, and the sounds of hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more popular among the inferior orders in England, than they are in any other country; and why the latter have endured so many excessive pressures and extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution of fortune and privilege.

To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life; those incomparable descriptions of nature which abound in the British poets, that have continued down from "The Flower and the Leaf" of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape.

The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and revelled with her they have wooed her in her most n y 302. l d 169, 180.