The ocean may roll its waves, the warring winds may join their forces, the thunders may shake the skies,* and the lightnings pass, swiftly, from cloud to cloud: but not the forces of the elements, combined, not the sounds of thunders, nor of many seas, though they were united into one peal, and directed to one point, can shake the security of the tomb.

The dead hear nothing† of the tumult; they sleep soundly; they rest from their calamities upon beds of peace. Conducted to silent mansions, they cannot be troubled by the rudest assaults, nor awakened by the loudest clamour. The unfortunate, the oppressed, the broken-hearted, with those that have languished on beds of sickness, rest here together: they have forgot their distresses; every sorrow is hushed, and every pang extinguished.

Hence, in all nations, a set of names have arisen to convey the idea of death, congenial with these sentiments, and all of them expressive of supreme felicity and consolation. How does the human mind, pressed by real or imagined calamities, delight to dwell upon that, awful event which leads to deliverance, and to describe and solicit it with the fairest flowers of fancy!

It is called the harbour of rest, in whose deep bosom the disastered mariner, who had long sustained the assaults of adverse storms, moors his wearied vessel, never more to return to the tossings of the wasteful ocean. It is called the

land of peace, whither the friendless exile retires, beyond the reach of malice and injustice, and the cruelest arrows of fortune. It is called the hospitable house, where the weather-beaten traveller, faint with traversing pathless de. serts, finds a welcome and secure repose.

There no cares molest, no passions distract, no enemies defame; there agonizing pain, and wounding infamy, and ruthless revenge, are no more; but profound peace, and calm passions, and security which is immoveable. "There the wicked cease from troubling; there the weary are at rest! There the prisoners rest together! they hear not the voice of the oppressor! The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master!"

* Pron. skeiz.

+ Pron. nuth-ing.

LESSON XXIV.

On the custom of planting flowers on the graves of departed friends.-BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

To 'scape from chill misfortune's gloom,
From helpless age and joyless years;
To sleep where flowerets round us bloom;-
Can such a fate deserve our tears?

Since, in the tomb, our cares, our woes,
In dark oblivion buried lie,
Why paint that scene of calm repose
In figures painful to the eye?

To die!-what is in death to fear?
'Twill decompose my lifeless frame!
A Power, unseen, still watches near,
To light it with a purer flame.

And, when anew that flame shall burn,
Perhaps the dust, that lies enshrined,
May rise, a woodbine, o'er my urn,
With verdant tendrils round it twined.

power,

How would the gentle bosom beat,
That sighs at death's resistless
A faithful friend again to meet
Fresh blooming in a fragrant flower!

The love, that in my bosom glows,
Will live when I shall long be dead,
And, haply, tinge some budding rose
That blushes o'er my grassy bed.

O, thou who hast so long been dear,
When I shall cease to smile on thee,
I know that thou wilt linger here,
With pensive soul, to sigh for me.

Thy gentle hand will sweets bestow,
Transcending Eden's boasted bloom;
Each flower with brighter tints shall glow
When Love and Beauty seek my tomb

And, when the rose-bud's virgin breath
With fragrance fills the morning air,
Imagine me released from death,
And all my soul reviving there.

LESSON XXV.

Thoughts of a young man in the prospect of death.HENRY K. WHITE.

SAD, solitary Thought, who keep'st thy vigils,
Thy solemn vigils, in the sick man's mind,
Communing lonely with his sinking soul,
And musing on the dubious glooms that lie
In dim obscurity before him, thee,
Wrapped in thy dark magnificence, I call
At this still, midnight hour, this awful season,
When, on my bed, in wakeful restlessness,
I turn me, wearisome. While all, around,
All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness,
I only wake to watch the sickly taper
Which lights me to my tomb.-Yes, 'tis the hand
Of death I feel press heavy on my vitals,
Slow-sapping the warm current of existence.
My moments now are few.-The sand of life
Ebbs fastly to its finish.-Yet a little,
And the last fleeting particle will fall,
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented.
Come, then, sad Thought, and let us meditate,
While meditate we may.-There's left us now
But a small portion of what men call time,
To hold communion; for, even now, the knife,
The separating knife, I feel divide

The tender bond that binds my soul to earth.
Yes, I must die—I feel that I must die ;

And though, to me, life has been dark and dreary,
Though hope, for me, has smiled but to deceive,
And disappointment marked me as her victina,
Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me,
As I contemplate the dim gulf of death,

The shuddering void, the awful blank-futurity.

Ay, I had planned full many a sanguine scheme
Of earthly happiness-romantic schemes,
And fraught with loveliness :-and it is hard
To feel the hand of death arrest one's steps,
Throw a chill blight o'er all one's budding hopes,
And hurl one's soul untimely to the shades,
Lost in the gaping gulf of blank oblivion.

Fifty years hence, and who will hear of Henry?
O, none:-another busy brood of beings
Will shoot up in the interim, and none
Will hold him in remembrance. I shall sink
As sinks a stranger in the crowded streets
Of busy London:-some short bustle's caused,
A few inquiries, and the crowds close in,
And all's forgotten. On my grassy grave
The men of future times will careless tread,
And read my name upon the sculptured stone;
Nor will the sound, familiar to their ears,
Recall my vanished memory. I did hope
For better things:-I hoped I should not leave
The earth without a vestige. Fate decrees
It shall be otherwise, and I submit.

Henceforth, O world, no more of thy desires!
No more of hope!—the wanton, vagrant hope!
I abjure all. Now other cares engross me,
And my tired soul, with emulative haste,
Looks to its God, and plumes its wings for heaven.

LESSON XXVI.

The Grave.- BERNARD BARTON.

I LOVE to muse, when none are nigh,
Where yew tree branches wave,
And hear the winds, with softest sigh,
Sweep o'er the grassy grave.

It seems a mournful music, meet
To soothe a lonely hour;

Sad though it be, it is more sweet
Than that from Pleasure's bower.

I know not why it should be sad
Or seem a mournful tone,
Unless by man the spot be clad
With terrors not its own.

To nature it seems just as dear
As earth's most cheerful site;
The dew-drops glitter there as clear,
The sun-beams shine as bright.

The showers descend as softly there
As on the loveliest flowers;
Nor does the moon-light seem more fair
On Beauty's sweetest bowers.

"Ay! but within-within, there sleeps
One, o'er whose mouldering clay
The loathsome earth-worm winds and creeps
And wastes that form away."

And what of that? The frame that feeds

The reptile tribe below,

As little of their banquet heeds,

As of the winds that blow.

LESSON XXVII.

The Fall of the Leaf.-MILONOV.*

THE autumnal winds had stripped the field Of all its foliage, all its green;

The winter's harbinger had stilled

That soul of song which cheered the scene

With visage pale, and tottering gait,

As one who hears his parting knell,

I saw a youth disconsolate :-
:-

He came to breathe his last farewell.

"Thou grove! how dark thy gloom to me! Thy glories riven by autumn's breath!

* From Bowring's Russian Anthology, Vol. II