But thou, O Nymph retired and coy!
In what brown hamlet dost thou joy
To tell thy tender tale?

The lowliest children of the ground,
Moss-rose, and violet blossom round,
And lily of the vale.

O say what soft propitious hour
I best may choose to hail thy power,
And court thy gentle sway?
When Autumn, friendly to the Muse,
Shall thy own modest tints diffuse,
And shed thy milder day;

When Eve, her dewy star beneath,
Thy balmy spirit loves to breathe,
And every storm is laid;

If such an hour was e'er thy choice,
Oft let me hear thy soothing voice
Low whispering through the shade.

TO WISDOM.

O Wisdom! if thy soft control
Can soothe the sickness of the soul,
Can bid the warring passions cease,
And breathe the calm of tender peace;
Wisdom! I bless thy gentle sway,
And ever, ever will obey.

But if thou com'st with frown austere,
To nurse the brood of Care and Fear;
To bid our sweetest passions die,
And leave us in their room a sigh;
O, if thine aspect stern have power
To wither each poor transient flower
That cheers this pilgrimage of woe,

And dry the springs whence hope should flow;
Wisdom! thine empire I disclaim,
Thou empty boast of pompous name!
In gloomy shade of cloisters dwell,
But never haunt my cheerful cell.
Hail to Pleasure's frolic train!
Hail to Fancy's golden reign!
Festive Mirth, and Laughter wild,
Free and sportful as the child!
Hope with eager, sparkling eyes,
And easy faith, and fond surprise!
Let these, in fairy colors drest,
For ever share my careless breast:
Then, though wise I may not be,
The wise themselves shall envy me.

TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.1

Cease, Wilberforce, to urge thy generous aim!
Thy Country knows the sin, and stands the shame!
The Preacher, Poet, Senator in vain

Has rattled in her sight the Negro's chain;

In vain, to thy white standard gathering round,
Wit, Worth, and Parts and Eloquence are found:
In vain, to push to birth thy great design,
Contending chiefs, and hostile virtues join;
All, from conflicting ranks, of power possest
To rouse, to melt, or to inform the breast.
Where seasoned tools of Avarice prevail,
A Nation's eloquence, combined, must fail:
Each flimsy sophistry by turns they try;
The plausive argument, the daring lie,
The artful gloss that moral sense confounds,

The acknowledged thirst of gain that honor wounds:
Bane of ingenuous minds! the unfeeling sneer,
Which sudden turns to stone the falling tear:
They search assiduous, with inverted skill,
For forms of wrong, and precedents of ill;
With impious mockery wrest the sacred page,
And glean up crines from each remoter age:
Wrung Nature's tortures, shuddering, while you tell,
From scoffing fiends bursts forth the laugh of hell;
In Britain's senate, Misery's pangs give birth
To jests unseemly, and to horrid mirth
Forbear! thy virtues but provoke our doom,
And swell the account of vengeance yet to come;
For, not unmarked in Heaven's impartial plan,
Shall man, proud worm, contemn his fellow-man!
For you, whose tempered ardor long has borne
Untired the labor, and unmoved the scorn;
In Virtue's fasti be inscribed your fame,
And uttered yours with Howard's honored name;
Friends of the friendless-Hail, ye generous band!
Whose efforts yet arrest Heaven's lifted hand,
Around whose steady brows, in union bright,
The civic wreath and Christian's palm unite:
Your merit stands, no greater and no less,
Without, or with the varnish of success:
But seek no more to break a nation's fall,
For ye have saved yourselves-and that is all.
Succeeding times your struggles, and their fate,
With mingled shame and triumph shall relate;
While faithful History, in her various page,
Marking the features of this motley age,

On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, 1791.

To shed a glory, and to fix a stain,

Tells how you strove, and that you strove in vain.

YE ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH.

Salt of the earth, ye virtuous few,
Who season human-kind;

Light of the world, whose cheering ray
Illumes the realms of mind:

Where Misery spreads her deepest shade,
Your strong compassion glows:
From your blest lips the balm distils,
That softens mortal woes.

By dying beds, in prison glooms,
Your frequent steps are found;
Angels of love! you hover near,
To bind the stranger's wound.

You wash with tears the bloody page
Which human crimes deform:

When vengeance threats, your prayers ascend,
And break the gathering storm.

As down the summer stream of vice
The thoughtless many glide;
Upward you steer your steady bark,
And stem the rushing tide.

Where guilt her foul contagion breathes,
And golden spoils allure;

Unspotted still your garments shine-
Your hands are ever pure.

Whene'er you touch the poet's lyre,
A loftier strain is heard;

Each ardent thought is yours alone,
And every burning word.

Yours is the large expansive thought,

The high heroic deed;

Exile and chains to you are dear

To you 'tis sweet to bleed.

You lift on high the warning voice,
When public ills prevail;

Yours is the writing on the wall
That turns the tyrant pale.

And yours is all through History's rolls
The kindling bosom feels;

And at your tomb, with throbbing heart,

The fond enthusiast kneels.

In every faith, through every clime,
Your pilgrim steps we trace;

And shrines are dressed, and temples rise,
Each hallowed spot to grace;

And pæans loud, in every tongue,
And choral hymns resound;

And lengthening honors hand your name
To time's remotest bound.

Proceed! your race of glory run,
Your virtuous toils endure!

You come, commissioned from on high,
And your reward is sure.

REGINALD HEBER, 1783-1826.

REGINALD HEBER, the son of the Rev. Reginald Heber, was born at Malpas, in Cheshire, on the 21st of April, 1783. His youth was distinguished by a precocity of talent, docility of temper, a love of reading, and a veneration for religion. The eagerness, indeed, with which he read the Bible in his early years, and the accuracy with which he remembered it, were quite remarkable. After completing the usual course of elementary instruction, he entered the University of Oxford in 1800. In the first year he gained the university prize for Latin verse, and in 1813 he wrote his poem of "Palestine," which was received with distinguished applause.' His academical career was brilliant from its commencement to its close. After taking his degree, and gaining the university prize for the best English prose essay, he set out, in 1805, on a continental tour. He returned the following year, and in 1807 "took orders," and was settled in Hodnet, in Shropshire, where for many years he discharged the duties of his large parish with the most exemplary assiduity.

In 1809, he married, and in the same year published a series of hymns, appropriate for Sundays and principal holidays of the year." In 1812, he commenced a Dictionary of the Bible," and published a volume entitled "Poems and Translations," the translations being chiefly from Pindar. After being advanced to two or three ecclesiastical preferments,

"Such a poem, composed at such an age, has indeed some, but not many, parallels in our language. Its copious diction, its perfect numbers, its images so well chosen, diversified so happily, and treated with so much discretion and good taste, and, above all, the ample knowledge of Scripture and of writings illustrative of Scripture displayed in it-all these things might have seemed to bespeak the work of a man who had been long choosing and begun late,' rather than of a stripling of nineteen."

Quarterly Review, vol. xxxv. p. 451.

in 1822 he received the offer of the bishopric of Calcutta, made vacant by the death of Dr. Middleton. This, after much hesitation, he accepted, and about the same time published a life of Jeremy Taylor, with a review of his writings. In 1823, he took his degree of D.D., and embarked for India, where he arrived in safety, "with a field before him that might challenge the labors of an apostle, and, we will venture to say, with as much of the spirit of an apostle in him as has rested on any man in these latter days." Indeed, he was peculiarly well qualified to fill this high and responsible station, as well by his amiable and conciliatory temper as by his talents and zeal in the cause of Christianity. He entered with great zeal upon his duties, and had already made many long journeys through his extensive field of labor, when he was suddenly cut off by an apoplectic fit, which seized him while bathing, at Trichinopoly, on the 3d of April, 1826. Besides the works of Bishop Heber already mentioned, there was published, after his death, a “Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay," in two volumes. A number of his sermons, and charges to his diocese, were published during his life; and from these we select the following, from a sermon delivered at the consecration of a church near Benares, upon

NATIONS RESPONSIBLE TO GOD.

If the Israelites were endowed, beyond the nations of mankind, with wise and righteous laws, with a fertile and almost impreg nable territory, with a race of valiant and victorious kings, and a God who (while they kept his ways) was a wall of fire against their enemies round about them; if the kings of the wilderness did them homage, and the lion-banner of David and Solomon was reflected at once from the Mediterranean and the Euphrates-it was that the way of the Lord might be made known by their means upon earth, and that the saving health of the Messiah might become conspicuous to all nations.

My brethren, it has pleased the Almighty that the nation to which we ourselves belong is a great, a valiant, and an understanding nation; it has pleased Him to give us an empire on which the sun never sets-a commerce by which the remotest nations of the earth are become our allies, our tributaries, I had almost said our neighbors; and by means (when regarded as human means, and distinct from his mysterious providence), so inadequate, as to excite our alarm as well as wonder-the sovereignty over these wide and populous heathen lands. But is it for our sakes that he has given us these good gifts and wrought these great marvels in our favor? Are we not rather set up on high in the earth, that we may show forth the light by which we