watchful lark had left her nest, and was mounting on high to salute the opening day. 2. Elevated in the air, she seemed to call the laborious husbandman to his toil, and all her fellow-songsters to their Sintes. Earliest of birds, companion of the dawn, may I always rise at thy voice! rise to offer the matin-song, and adore that beneficent Being, who maketh the outgoing of the morning and evening to rejoice. How charming is it to ove abroad at this sweet hour of prime! to enjoy the calm of nature, to tread the dewy lawns, and taste the unruffled freshness of the air! Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds! 3. What a pleasure do the sons of sloth lose! Little is the sluggard sensible how delicious an entertainment he forgoes for the poorest of all animal gratifications? Shall man be lost in luxurious ease? Shall man waste those precious hours in idle slumbers, while the vigorous sun is up, and go ing on his Maker's errand, and all the feathered choir are hymning the Creator, and paying their homage in harmony? No let him highten the melody of the tuneful tribes by adding the rational strains of devotion. Let him improve the fragrant oblations of nature, by mingling with the rising odors the refined breath of praise. It is natural for man to look upward, to throw his first glance upon the objects that are above him. Straight toward heav'n my wandering eyes I turn'd, 4. Prodigious theater! where lightnings dart their fire, and thunders utter their voice; where tempests spend their rage, and worlds unnumber'd roll at large." Here hath God set a tabernacle for the sun." Behold him coming forth from the chambers of the east. See the clouds, like floating curtains are thrown back at his approach. With what refulgent majesty does he walk abroad! How transcendently bright is his countenance, shedding day and inexhaustible light through the universe! 5. Methinks I discern a thousand admirable properties in the sun. It is certainly the best material emblem of the Creator. There is more of God in its luster, energy, and usefulness, than in any other visible being. To worship it as a deity was the most excusable of all the heathen idolatries. QUESTIONS.-1. Are the questions in the 3d paragraph direct or in direct? 2. With what inflection, then, should they be read? EXERCISE XII. 1. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, an eminent English poet, was born in Sussex county, in 1792. He was the author of several poetical works, displaying genius of the highest order. He was drowned by the wreck of his own sailing-boat in a violent storm, on his return from Leghorn to his house, on the gulf of Lerici, July 8th, 1822. THE TRUE DIGNITY OF LABOR. WILLIAM HOWITT. 1. From the foundation of the world there has been a tendency to look down upon labor, and upon those who live by it, with contempt, as though it were something mean and ignoble. This is one of those vulgar prejudices which have arisen from considering everything vulgar that was peculiar to the multitude. Because the multitude have been suffered to remain too long rude and ignorant, everything associated with their condition has been confounded with the circumstances of this condition. 2. The multitude were, in their rudeness and ignorance, mean in the public estimation, and the labor of their hands was held to be mean too. Nay, it has been said that labor is the result of God's primary curse, pronounced on man for his disobedience. But that is a great mistake. God told Adam that the ground was cursed for his sake, but not that his labor was cursed. He told him that in the sweat of his face he should eat his bread till he returned to the ground. The 3. But, so far from labor partaking of the curse, it was given him as the means of triumphing over the curse. ground was to produce thorns and thistles, but labor was to extirpate these thorns and thistles, and to cover the face of the earth with fruit-trees and bounteous harvests. And labor has done this; labor has already converted the earth, so far as the surface is concerned, from a wilderness into a paradise Man eats his bread in the sweat of his face, but is there any bread so sweet as that, when he has only nature to contend with, and not the false arrangements of his fellow men? 4. So far is labor from being a curse, so far is it from being a disgrace; it is the very principle which, like the winds of the air, or the agitation of the sea, keeps the world in health. It is the very life-blood of society, stirring in all its veins, and diffusing vigor and enjoyment through the whole system. Without man's labor, God had created the world in vain! Without our labor, all life, except that of the rudest and most savage kind, must perish. Arts, civilization, refinement, and religion must perish. Labor is the grand pedestal of God's blessings upon earth; it is more-like man and the world itself—it is the offspring and the work of God. 5. So then, labor, instead of being the slave and the drudge, is really the prince and the demigod. It is no mean species of action, but it is, in truth, a divine principle of the universe, issuing from the bosom of the Creator, and for the achievement of his most glorious purpose, the happiness of all his creatures. Who was and is the first great laborer? It is God himself! In the far depths of the unexplored eternity of the past, God began his labors. He formed world after world, and poised them in infinite space, in the beautiful language of Shelley,' like "Islands in the ocean of the world." 6. From that time to the present, there is every rational cause to believe that he has gone on laboring. He is the great Laborer of eternity; and it is the highest of possible honors to be admitted to labor with him. There is no patent of nobility, which can confer a glory like this. When he had finished his labor on our planet, his last and noblest work being man, he conferred on him a partnership in his labors. He handed down to him the great chain of labor, and bade him encircl the world with it. 7. He elected us as his successors here; and, from that time to this, the great family of man has gone on laboring with head and hand in a myriad of ways, carrying out, by the unceasing operations of intellect and mechanic skill, by invention and construction, the designs of the Almighty for the good of his creatures. Can there positively be a sight more delightful to the great unseen, but watchful Father of the Universe, than that of all his countless rational creatures busy at the benificent scheme of boundless labors, out of which springs, the gladness of all life? 8. After the lapse of thousands of years, and when the cunning and the proud had cast a base stigma on that which God had created good and the medium of good, Christ caine, and what were his remarkable words? 66 My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Thus again, the revelation of the Gospel was also a grand revelation of the dignity of labor. It was acknowledged to be a principle exercised by the Divinity itself. Every one who labored was made to appear, not the slave of man, but the fellow-laborer of God. Where, then, is the meanness of labor? If God himself does not disdain to use it, shall we? If God seems even to glory in his labors, shall we be ashamed of ours? No! Labor is, as we have asserted, a divine principle of the universe; it is the most honorable thing on the earth, and, next to God himself, it is the most ancient in heaven. 9. All honor then to labor, the offspring of Deity; the most ancient of ancients, sent forth by the Almighty into these nether worlds; the most noble (f nobles Honor to that divine principle which has filled the earth with all the comforts, and joys, and affluence that it possesses, and is undoubtedly the instrument of happiness wherever life is found. Without labor, what is there? Without it, there were no world itself. 10. Whatever we see or perceive-in heaven or on the earth-is the product of labor. The sky above us, the ground beneath us, the air we breathe, the sun, the moon, the starswhat are they? The product of labor. They are the labors of the Omnipotent, and all our labors are but a continuance of His. Our work is a divine work. We carry on what God began. We build up, each in his own vocation, the grand fabric of human honor and human happiness, exercising all our faculties and powers, physical and intellectual, and the result is-What? 11. The scene of all our glories, the sum of all our achievements as a race, every thing which history can tell, which art has accomplished, which science has exhumed from the depths of oblivious darkness, which embellishes our abodes, and animates us to still greater victories in the cause of man and mind. 12. What a glorious spectacle is that of the labor of man upon the earth! It includes every thing in it that is glorious. Look round, my friends, and tell me what you see that is worth seeing that is not the work of your hands, and of the hands of your fellows-the multitude of all ages? 13. What is it that felled the ancient forests, and cleared vast morasses of other ages? That makes green fields smile in the sun, and corn, rustling in the breezes of heaven, whisper of plenty and domestic joy? What raised first the hut, and then the cottage, and then the palace? What filled all these with food and furniture-with food simple and also costly; with furniture of infinite variety, from the three-legged stool to the most magnificent cabinet and the regal throne? What made glass, and dyed it with all the hues of rainbows, or of summer sunsets? What constructed presses, and books, and |