his own brief term of being. He carries back his existence in proud recollection, and he extends it forward in honorable anticipation. He lives with his ancestry, and he lives with his posterity. To both does he consider himself involved in deep responsibilities. As he has received much from those that have gone before, so he feels bound to transmit much to those who are to come after him.

9. His domestic undertakings seem to imply a longer existence than those of ordinary men. None are so apt to build and plant for future centuries, as noble-spirited men who have received their heritages from foregoing ages. I can easily imagine, therefore, the fondness and pride with which I have noticed English gentlemen, of generous temperaments, and high aristocratic feelings, contemplating those magnificent trees, which rise like towers and pyramids from the midst of their paternal lands. There is an affinity between all natures, animate and inanimate. The oak, in the pride and lustihood of its growth, seems to me to take its range with the lion and the eagle, and to assimilate, in the grandeur of its attributes, to heroic and intellectual man.

10. With its mighty pillar rising straight and direct toward heaven; bearing up its leafy honors from the impurities of earth, and supporting them aloft in free air and glorious sunshine, it is an emblem of what a true nobleman should be; a refuge for the weak,—a shelter for the oppressed,- -a defense for the defenseless; warding off from them the peltings of the storm, or the scorching rays of arbitrary power. He who is this, is an ornament and a blessing to his native land. He who is otherwise, abuses his eminent advantages,-abuses the grandeur and prosperity which he has drawn from the bosom of his country. Should tempests arise, and he be laid prostrate by the storm, who would mourn over his fall? Should he be borne down by the oppressive hand of power, who would murmur at his fate? "Why cumbereth he the ground?"

EXERCISE CXXXIX.

ENJOYMENT OF THE PRESENT HOUR RECOMMENDED.

1.

Enjoy the present smiling hour,

And put it out of Fortune's power:

The tide of business, like the running stream,

Is sometimes high and sometimes low,

And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless, gentle course,

It keeps within the middle bed;

Anon it lifts aloft the head,

DRYDEN

And bears down all before it with impetuous force;
And trunks of trees come rolling down;

Sheep and their folds together drown;

Both house and homestead into seas are borne ;
And rocks are from their old foundations torn;

And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered hor.ors

mourn.

2 Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call to-day his own:

He who, secure within, can say,

To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to day.

Be fair or foul, or rain, or shine,

The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power;

But what has been, has been, and I have had
Fortune, that with malicious joy

Does man, her slave, oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless :
Still various, and incor.stant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,

Promotes, degrades, delights in strife,

And makes a lottery of life.

my hour.

3.

I can enjoy her while she 's kind;

But when she dances in the wind,

And shakes her wings, and will not stay,

I puff the prostitute away :

The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned:
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;

And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

Who

What is 't to me,

k;

never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise, and clouds grow black
If the mast split, and threaten wreck?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain;

And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from Fortune's blows,
Secure of what I can not lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail,
Contemning all the blustering roar:
And running with a merry gale,
With friendly stars my safety seek,
Within some little winding creek,
And see the storm ashore.

EXERCISE CXL.

THE RAINBOW.

AMELIA B. WELBY

1. I sometimes have thought, in my loneliest hours,
That lie on my heart like the dew on the flowers,
Of a ramble I took, one bright afternoon,
When my heart was as light as a blossom in June.

The green earth was moist with the late-fallen showers,
The breeze fluttered down and blew open the flowers;
While a single white cloud floated off in the west,
On the white wing of peace, to its haven of rest.

2. As I threw back my tresses to catch the cool breeze,
That scattered the rain-drops and dimpled the seas,
Far up the blue sky a fair rainbow unrolled
Its soft-tinted pinions of purple and gold.
'Twas born in a moment; yet, quick as its birth,

It was stretched to the uttermost ends of the earth ;
And, fair as an angel, it floated as free,

;

With a wing on the earth, and a wing on the sea.

3. How calm was the ocean! how gentle its swell!
Like a woman's soft bosom, it rose and it fell;
While its light sparkling waves, stealing laughingly o'er,
When they saw the fair rainbow knelt down on the shore.
No sweet hymn ascended, no murmur of prayer,
Yet I felt that the spirit of worship was there;
And I bent my young head in devotion and love,
'Neath the form of the angel that floated above.

4. How wide was the sweep of its beautiful wings!
How boundless its circle! how radiant its rings !
If I looked on the sky, 't was suspended in air,
If I looked on the ocean, the rainbow was there;
Thus forming a girdle, as brilliant and whole,
As the thoughts of the rainbow that circled my soul.
Like the wings of the Deity, calmly unfurled,

It bent from the cloud and encircled the world.

5. There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives
Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves;
When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose,
Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose;

And thus, when the rainbow had passed in the sky,
The thoughts it awoke were too deep to pass by;
It left my full heart, like the wing of a dove,
All fluttering with pleasure, and fluttering with love.

6. I know that each moment of rapture or pain,

But shortens the links of life's mystical chain:
I know that my form, like that bow from the wave,
Must pass from the earth, and lie cold in the grave:
Yet O! when Death's shadows my bosom encloud,
When I shrink at the thought of the coffin and shroud,
May hope, like the rainbow, my spirit enfold
In her beautiful pinions of purple and gold!

EXERCISE CXLI.

[The following piece is well adapted for reading in concert.]

THE LIGHT-HOUSE.

THOMAS MOORE,

1. The scene was more beautiful far to my eye
Than if day in its pride had arrayed it;
The land-breeze blew mild, and the azure-arched sky
Looked pure as the Spirit that made it.

The murmur rose soft as I silently gazed

On the shadowy wave's playful motion,

From the dim distant hill, till the Light-house fire blazed, Like a star in the midst of the ocean.

2. No longer the joy in the sailor-boy's breast,
Was heard in his wildly-breathed numbers;
The sea-bird had flown to her wave-girded nest,
The fisherman sunk to his slumbers:

One moment I looked from the hill's gentle slope,
All hushed was the billows' commotion;