A REMEMBERED SABBATH EVENING OF MY CHILDHOOD.

Oh! let me weave one song to-night,

For the spell is on me now;

And thoughts come thronging thick and bright,

All fresh and rosy with the light

Of childhood's early glow.

They hurry from out the forgotten past,
Through the gather'd mist of years-

From the halls of Memory, dim and vast,
Where they have buried lain in the shadows cast
By recent joy or fears.

Say not mine is a thoughtful brow,
Furrow'd by care and pain;

My childhood's curls seem over it now,
As they lay there years and years ago—
And I am a child again.

And I am again in my childhood's home,

Which looks on the distant sea;

And the loved and lost-they come-they come!
To the old but well-remember'd room,

And I sit by my father's knee.

'Tis the Sabbath evening hour of prayer;
And in the accustom'd place

Is my Father, with calm, benignant air:
Each brother and sister too is there,

And my Mother, with stately grace.

And with the rest comes a dark-eyed child—
The youngest of all is she,

Bringing her friend and playmate wild

In her dimpled arms, and with warnings mild
Checking its sportive glee.

And well could my young heart sympathize

With all I saw her do:

With the thought which danced in those laughing eyes,
Veil'd by a look demure and wise,-

That her kitten should join the service too.

And though glad I came at my father's call,

My thoughts had much to do

With the whispering leaves of the poplar tall,
And the checker'd light on the whitewash'd wall,
And the pigeons' loving coo.

And I watch'd the banish'd kitten's bound,

As it frolick'd to and fro;

And wish'd the spyglass could be found,

That I might see on the distant Sound
The tall ships come and go.

Through the open door my stealthy gaze
Sought the shadows, long and still;
When sudden the sun's departing rays
Set the church windows all a-blaze,
On Greenfield's* distant hill.

But new and wondering thoughts awoke,
Like morning from the night,

As, with deeply reverent voice and look,
My father read from the Holy Book,
By that Sabbath's waning light.

He read of Creation's early birth

This vast and wondrous frame

How "in the beginning" the Heavens and Earth
From the formless void were order'd forth,

And how they obedient came.

* From our windows we could not only see the church spire of Greenfield Hill, but the spires of several other churches in the far distance.

VOL. I.-8

How Darkness lay like a heavy pall

On the face of the silent deep,
Till, answering to the Almighty call,
Light came, and spread, and waken'd all
From that deep and brooding sleep.

Oh! ever as sinks the Sabbath sun
In the glowing summer skies,
My father's voice, my mother's look,
Blent with the words of the Holy Book,
Upon my memory rise.

For then were traced on the mystic scroll

Of deathless imagery,

Deep hidden within my secret soul,
Which eternity only will fully unroll—
Some lines of my destiny!

The impressibility of youth, and the depth and earnestness of its conceptions, are beautifully suggested in the opening passage of the famous Finnish poem, the epic song of Kalewala. The lines are as follows:

"These the words we have received

These, the songs we do inherit,
Are of Wäinämöimen's girdle-

From the forge of Ilmarinen,

Of the sword of Kankomieli,

Of the bow of Youkanhainen,
Of the borders of the North-fields,

Of the plains of Kalewala.

"These my father sang aforetime,
As he chipped the hatchet's handle;
These were taught me by my mother,

As she twirled her flying spindles,
When I on the floor was sporting,
Round her knee was gayly dancing,
As a pitiable weakling―

As a weakling small of stature.
Never failed these wondrous stories,
Told of Sampo, told of Louhi:
Old grew Sampo in the stories;
Louhi vanished with her magic;
In the songs Wiunen perished:
In the play died Lemminkainen.

"There are many other stories,

Magic sayings which I learned,
Which I gathered by the wayside,
Culled amid the heather-blossoms,
Rifled from the bushy copses.

From the bending twigs I pluck'd them,
Plucked them from the tender grasses,

When a shepherd-boy I sauntered,

As a lad upon the pastures,

On the honey-bearing meadows,
On the gold-illumined hillock,
Following black Muurikki

At the side of spotted Kimmo.

"Songs the very coldness gave me,

Music found I in the rain-drops;

Other songs the winds brought to me,

Other songs, the ocean-billows;

Birds, by singing in the branches,

And the tree-top spoke in whispers."

Thus in early life all nature is poetry: childhood and youth are indeed one continuous poem. In most cases this ecstasy of emotion and conception passes

away without our special notice. A large portion of it dies out from the memory, but passages are written upon the heart in lines of light and power, that can not be effaced. These become woven into the texture of the soul, and give character to it for timeperchance for eternity. The whole fountain of the mind, like some mineral spring, reaching to the interior elements of the earth-is imbued with ingredients which make its current sweet or bitter forever.

Pray excuse me for making a few suggestions upon these facts-even if they seem like sermonizing. If early life is thus happy in its general current in its nature and tendency-surely it is well and wise for those who have the care of children, to see in it the design of the Creator, and to follow the lead He has thus given. If God places our offspring in Eden, let us not causeless or carelessly take them out of it. It is certainly a mistake to consider childhood and youth-the first twenty years of life-as only a period of constraint and discipline. This is one-third part of existence-to a majority, it is more than the half of life. It is the only portion which seems made for unalloyed enjoyment. It is the morning, and all is sunshine: the after part of the day is necessarily devoted to toil and care, and that too amid clouds, and at last, beneath the shadows of approaching night. Let us not, then, presume to mar this birthright of bliss.

You will not suspect me to mean that government,