THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE.
FROM THE FRENCH OF HERRODOLLÉ.

I.

SHE is gone; and her life is past away,
In the blooming morn of her youthful day,
To whom all hearts had their homage given,

A lady rich in the gifts of heaven.

II.

She is gone; and youth, which had seem'd to spread A shield of safety round her head,

And riches, and beauty, and children's charms, Could not keep her from Death's relentless arms.

III.

Ah! and is this so short-lived bloom,

A young and a tender mother's doom?
And is the loss to Nature so light,

That nothing is changed where we turn the sight.

IV.

I look as before on the garden-bowers,

And see them gemm'd with the self-same flowers, As when, on that eve of summer-dews,

Her eye was bent on their delicate hues.

V.

The song-birds, with pure harmonious trill,
From the copses and arbours are warbling still;
And the tulip-tree flaunts to the breath of May
The delicious cones of its flowering spray.

VI.

"Tis thus then that Nature will ever remain,
Unfeeling and cold to human pain ;

She is callous to grief; nor sees nor hears,
Nor pities our death, nor is touch'd with tears.

VII.

What to her is the youthful urn?

That genius and beauty have no return?
She leans on the laws of a fate austere,
And runs for ever her fix'd career.

CONSCIENCE is too great a power in the nature of man to be altogether subdued. It may for a time be repressed, and kept dormant; but conjunctures there are in human life which awaken it, and when once re-awakened, it flashes on the sinner's mind with all the horrors of an invisible Ruler, and a future judgment.

BLAIR.

-THE garland of memory new beauty discloses, When chasten'd by sadness and mellowed by years, And though thorns but too frequently mix with the

roses,

Whose stems have been watered and rear'd by our

tears;

Let them circle the brow ;-sure the pain is surpass'd By the gladness we gather from thoughts of the past.

A. A. WATTS.

A MAN'S opinion of danger varies at different times, in consequence of an irregular tide of animal spirits; and he is actuated by considerations which he dares not avow.

SMOLLET.

Ex

MERE parsimony is not economy. It is separable in theory from it; and in fact it may, or may not, be a part of economy, according to circumstances. pence, and great expence, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is however another and an higher economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. The other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity, only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but meritorious service or real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted, and this nation will not want, the means of rewarding all the service it ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever will produce. No State, since the foundation of society, has been impoverished by that species of profusion.

BURKE.

CARELESS AND FAITHFUL LOVE.

To sigh-yet feel no pain,
To weep-yet scarce know why,
To sport awhile with Beauty's chain,
Then throw it idly by:

To kneel at many a shrine,

Yet lay the heart on none:

To think all other charms divine,
But those we just have won :-
This is Love-careless Love,
Such as kindleth hearts that rove.

To keep one sacred flame

Through life, unchill'd, unmov'd ;
To love in wintry age the same
That first in youth we lov'd:

To feel that we adore

With such refined excess,

That though the heart would break with more,

We could not live with less :

This is Love-faithful Love,

Such as saints might feel above.

If it be dangerous to be too early initiated into the ways of the world, it is perhaps equally so to live too long secluded from it.

THOUGH the plant vigorous, and though rich the soil, The fruit is worthless unimproved by toil.

Hard, hard indeed, is woman's ceaseless task!
Even from the cradle all her cares we ask ;
Cares that a mother only will bestow,

A task that only love can undergo !

All must we learn, and most 'tis hers to teach;
The foot to step, the lip to move in speech.
See! how disdainful of her proffer'd hand,
The ambitious boy in vain essays to stand;
And hear the little mimic lisp her name,
Vain of success, and failing, tinged with shame!
With thoughts and feelings, mind and heart, she sows,
And plucks each weed that still unbidden blows;
Beyond this world too, she extends her care,
And, on her knee, unites his hands in prayer.

THERE is something in the contemplation of general laws, which powerfully persuades us to merge individual feeling, and to commit ourselves unreservedly to their disposal: while the observation of the calm, energetic regularity of nature, the immense scale of her operations, and the certainty with which her ends are attained, tends irresistibly to tranquillize and re-assure the mind, and render it less accessible to repining, selfish, and turbulent emotions.

HERSCHEL.