"Forlorn!"-The very sound is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades- Was it a vision, or a waking dream? LXXII. MY GRAVE.-Thomas Davis. SHALL they bury me in the deep, Or on the wild heath, Where the wilder breath Of the storm doth blow? Shall they bury me in the Palace Tombs, Yet not there-nor in Greece, though I love it more. Oh, no! oh, no! No! on an Irish green hill-side, MISCELLANEOUS READINGS IN PROSE. I. THE OPERATIONS OF NATURE.-Sir H. Davy. NATURE never deceives us the rocks, the mountains, the streams, always speak the same language: a shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a thunder-storm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these effects are rare and transient ;-in a few hours, or at least days, all the sources of beauty are renovated. And Nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full of life, beauty, and promise, taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet: she affords none of those blighted ones so common in the life of man, and so like the fabled apples of the Dead-Sea fresh and beautiful to the sight, but, when tasted, full of bitterness and ashes. The operations of Nature, though slow, are sure: however Man may for a time usurp dominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire. He converts her rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, and ships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth as instruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute its surface, as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water, and tortures water by fire, to change, to modify, or destroy the natural forms of things. But, in some lustrums, his works begin to change, and, in a few centuries, they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples, framed, as it were, for immortal and divine purposes; and his bridges, formed of granite, and ribbed with iron; and his walls for defence, and the splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity even to his perishable remains,-are gradually destroyed and these structures, which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempests of the sky, and the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews of heaven, of frost, rain, vapour, and perceptible atmospheric influences: and as the worm devours the lineaments of man's mortal beauty, so the lichens, and the moss, and the most insignificant plants, shall feed upon his columns and his pyramids; and the most humble and insignificant insects shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces, and the falling seats of his earthly glory. Time is almost a human word, and Change entirely a human idea: in the system of Nature we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures: even when they are destroyed so as to produce only dust, Nature asserts her empire over them; and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, in a period of annual successions,-by the labours of man, providing food, vitality, and beauty, upon the wrecks of monuments which were raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility. II. THE PLANETARY AND TERRESTRIAL WORLDS.—Addison. - To us, who dwell on its surface, the earth is by far the most extensive orb that our eyes can anywhere behold: it is also clothed with verdure, distinguished by trees, and adorned with a variety of beautiful decorations; whereas, to a spectator placed on one of the planets, it wears a uniform aspect, looks all luminous, and no larger than a spot. To beings who dwell at still greater distances, it entirely disappears. That which we call alternately the Morning and the Evening Star-as, in one part of the orbit, she rides foremost in the procession of night; in the other, ushers in and anticipates the dawn—is a planetary world; which, with those others that so wonderfully vary their mystic dance, are in themselves dark bodies, and shine only by reflection; have fields, and seas, and skies of their own; are furnished with all accommodations for animal subsistence, and are supposed to be the abodes of intellectual life: all which, together with our earthly habitation, are dependent on that grand dispenser of divine munificence, the sun; receive their light from the distribution of his rays, and derive their comfort from his benign agency. The sun, which seems to perform its daily stages through the sky, is, in this respect, fixed and immovable: it is the great axle of heaven, about which the globe we inhabit, and other more spacious orbs, wheel their stated courses. The sun, though seemingly smaller than the dial it illuminates, is abundantly larger than this whole earth-on which so many lofty mountains rise, and such vast oceans roll. A line ex tending from side to side through the centre of that resplen dent orb, would measure more than eight hundred thousand miles: a girdle formed to go round its circumference, would require a length of millions. Were its solid contents to be estimated, the account would overwhelm our understanding, and be almost beyond the power of language to express. Are we startled at these reports of philosophy? Are we ready to cry out, in a transport of surprise, "How mighty is the Being who kindled such a prodigious fire; and keeps alive, from age to age, such an enormous mass of flame!" Let us attend our philosophic guides, and we shall be brought acquainted with speculations more enlarged and more inflaming. This sun, with all its attendant planets, is but a very little part of the grand machine of the universe: every star, though in appearance no bigger than the diamond that glitters upon a lady's ring, is really a vast globe, like the sun in size and in glory; no less spacious, no less luminous, than the radiant source of day. So that every star is not barely a world, but the centre of a magnificent system; has a retinue of worlds, irradiated by its beams, and revolving round its attractive influence; all which are lost to our sight, in immeasurable wilds of ether. That the stars appear like so many diminutive and scarcely-distinguishable points, is owing to their immense and inconceivable distance. Immense and inconceivable indeed it is; since a ball, shot from the loaded cannon, and flying with unabated rapidity, must travel, at this impetuous rate, almost seven hundred thousand years, before it could reach the nearest of these twinkling luminaries! While beholding this vast expanse, I learn my own extreme meanness, I would also discover the abject littleness of all terrestrial things. What is the earth with all her ostentatious scenes, compared with this astonishingly grand furniture of the skies? What, but a dim speck, hardly perceivable in the map of the universe! It is observed by a very judicious writer, that, if the sun himself, which enlightens this part of the creation, were extinguished, and all the host of planetary worlds, which move about him, were annihilated, they would not be missed by an eye that can take-in the whole compass of nature, any more than a grain of sand upon the sea-shore. The bulk of which they consist, and the space which they occupy, are so exceedingly little in comparison of the whole, that their loss would scarcely leave a blank in the immensity of God's works. If then, not our globe only, but this whole system, be so very diminutive, what is a kingdom or a country? What are a few lordships, or the so-much-admired patrimonies of those who are styled wealthy? When I measure them with my own little pittance, they swell into proud and bloated. dimensions; but, when I take the universe for my standard, how scanty is their size! how contemptible their figure! They shrink into pompous nothings. III.—ON THE APPROACH OF EVENING.-Hervey. glared with light; but now, The animals harmonise with Should EVERY object, a little while ago, all appear with softened lustre. the insensible creation; and what was gay in those, as well as glittering in this, gives place to a universal gravity. I, at such a season, be vain and trifling, the heavens and the earth would rebuke my unseasonable levity. Therefore, be this moment devoted to thoughts, solemn as the close of day, sedate as the face of things. However my social hours are enlivened with innocent pleasantry, let the Evening, in her sober habit, toll the bell to serious consideration. Every meddling and intrusive avocation is excluded. Silence holds the door against the strife of tongues, and all the impertinences of idle conversation. The busy swarm of vain images and cajoling temptations, which beset us, with a buzzing importunity, amid the gayeties of life, are chased by these thickening shades. Here I may, without disturbance, commune with my own heart, and learn that best of sciences-TO KNOW MYSELF. IV. SORROW FOR THE DEAD.-Washington Irving. THE sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to healevery other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open-this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved; when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal;-who would accept of consolation that |