He reads the stars, and grasps the flame SPRAGUE He moves in greatness and in grace ; His power, subduing space and time, Links realm to realm, and race to race. CHARLES SPRAGUE was born in Boston, on the 26th day of October, 1791. He was educated in the schools of his native city, which he left at an early period to acquire a practical knowledge of trade. At twenty-one years of age, he commenced the business of merchant on his own account, and continued in it until 1820, when he was elected cashier of the Globe Bank. He is still connected with that institution. In this period he has found leisure to study the works of the greatest authors, particularly those of the masters of English poetry, and to write the admirable poems on which is based his own reputation. Mr. Sprague's first productions that attracted much attention, were a series of brilliant prologues, the first of which was written for the Park Theater, in New York, in 1821. "Shakspeare Ode," delivered in Boston Theater, in 1823, at the exhibition of a pageant in honor of Shakspeare, is one of the most vigorous and exquisite lyrics in the English language. "Curiosity," the longest and best of his poems, was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, in August, 1829. Beveral of his short poems evince great skill in the use of language, and show him to be a master of the poetic art. TE II. 51. WORK. HERE is a perennial' nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish,' mean, is in communication with Nature: the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations which are truth. 2. Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessèdnèss. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it. How, as a free flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows!draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream. How 1 1 Per ĕn' ni al, literally, through or beyond a year; hence, enduring; lasting perpetually. 'Mǎm' mon ish, relating to Mammon, the Syrian god of riches; mercenary, or procured by money. blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! 3. Labor is life; from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence, breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, "self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as work fitly begins. Knowledge! the knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly, thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis' of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic vor'ticès' till we try it and fix it. "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone." 5 6 4. Older than all preached gospels' was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable,* for-ever-enduring gospel: work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active method, a force for work :—and burns like a painfully smoldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent facts around thee! What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable,' obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findèst disorder, there is thy eternal enemy: attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered. 5. But, above all, where thou findèst ignorance, stupidity, brute-mindedness-attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livèst and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his unspoken voice, is fuller than any Sīnā¿1 thunders, or syllabled speech of whirlwinds; for the SILENCE of deep eternities, of worlds from beyond the morning stars, does it not speak to thee? The unborn ages; the old graves, with their long-moldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry-do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all space and all time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work. 6. All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true hand-labor, there is something of divinenèss. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler' calculations, Newton' meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroism, martyrdoms-up to that " agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not "worship," then I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. 7. Who art thou that complainèst of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow-workmen there, in God's eternity; surviving there, they ălōne surviving: sacred band of the immortals, celestial body-guard of the empire of mind. Even in the weak human memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving : 1Sĩ nãi, a mountain of Arabia Petræa, famous in Scripture. Height above the sea, 7,497 feet. 'John Kepler, a distinguished mathematician and astronomer, was born at Wiel, in Wirtemberg, on the 21st of December, 1571, and died November 5th, o. s., 1631. 'Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest of philosophers and mathematicians, was born in Lincolnshire, England, December 25, 1642. His investigations have completely revolutionized modern science. His three great discoveries, of fluxions, the nature of light and colors, and the laws of gravitation, have given him a name which will last as long as civilization exists. His "Principia" unfolds the theory of the universe. Hedied in 1727. peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of Time! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind-as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, "WITH IT, MY SON, OR UPON IT!" Thou, too, shalt return home, in honor to thy far-distant home, in honor; doubt it not—if in the battle thou keep thy shield! Thou, in the eternities and deepest death-kingdoms, art not an alien ;1 thou everywhere art a děnʼizen!' Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain. CARLYLE. THOMAS CARLYLE, the eminent essayist, reviewer, and historian, was born at Middlebie, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1796. He received the rudiments of a classical education at a school in Annan, a town about sixty miles south of Edinburgh. At the University of Edinburgh, which he entered at the age of seventeen, he was distinguished for his attainments in mathematics. For some years after leaving the university, he supported himself by teaching, and writing for booksellers. He is the author of various works and translations-"Life of Schiller," ," "Sartor Resartus," 1836; "The French Revolution," a history in three volumes, 1837; "Chartism," 1839; "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays," from reviews and magazines, in 5 vols., 1839; "Hero Worship," a series of lectures, 1841; "Past and Present," 1843; "Life of Oliver Cromwell," "Latter-day Pamphlets," "Life of John Sterling," &c., &c. The peculiar style and diction of Mr. Carlyle have with some retarded, and with others advanced his popularity. It is more German than English, angular, objective, and unidiomatic: at times, however, highly graphic, and swelling out into periods of fine imagery and eloquence. He is an original and subtle thinker, and combines with his powers of analysis and reasoning a vivid and brilliant imagination. His opinions and writings tend to enlarge our sympathies and feelings-to stir the heart with benevolence and affection-to unite man to man-and to build upon this love of our fellow-beings a system of mental energy and purity far removed from the operations of sense, and pregnant with high hopes and aspirations. III. 52. ADDRESS TO THE INDOLENT. S not the field with lively culture green And fanned by sprightly zephyrs, far surpass · Alien, (ål ́yen), a foreigner who has not been naturalized; a stranger. eigner. 2. It was not by vile loitering in ease That Greece obtained the brighter palm of art, And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart! But in loose joy their time to wear away,— With brother-brutes the human race had grazed; 4. But should your hearts to fame unfeeling be, When drooping health and spirits go amiss? And exercise of health. In proof of this, Behold the wretch who slugs his life away, Soon swallowed in disease's sad abyss, While he whom toil has braced, or manly play, Has light as air each limb, each thought as clear as day. 6. O, who can speak the vigorous joy of health, Unclogged the body, unobscured the mind? The morning rises gay, with pleasing stealth, |