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love; 'tis part of our religion. Nature has set the mother upon such a pinnacle, that our infant eyes and arms are first uplifted to it; we cling to it in manhood; we almost worship it in old age. He who can enter an apartment, and behold the tender babe feeding on its mother's beautynourished by the tide of life which flows through her generous veins, without a panting bosom and a grateful eye, is no man, but a monster.

5. He who can approach the cradle of sleeping innocence, without thinking that "Of such is the kingdom of heaven!" or see the fond parent hang over its beauties, and half retain her breath least she should break its slumbers, without a veneration beyond all common feeling, is to be avoided in every intercourse of life, and is fit only for the shadow of darkness and the solitude of the desert.

SCRAP BOOK.

LESSON XXVIII.

The Deluge.

1. All nations own this occurrence as indisputable; and a thousand venerable traditions testify of the deluge of waters, along with the water marks which are abundantly found in the highest mountains, and may be identified in the geological structure of the continents and the islands.

2. No element, perhaps, excepting that of fire, could have wrought such changes for, when the shoreless waters subsided, the fragments of the broken up world were tossing to and fro and rounding themselves into a dry orb, under. far other than antediluvian features and combinations, the retiring waves sported with the ancient mountain tops as with pebbles, and surge after surge laid up on high the immense ridges of new modelled hills with deep and lengthened vales between.

3. It is not our purpose to spread the glorious or the gloomy colours of fancy, in mingled drapery, over the deluge scenery. More true sublimity lurks in the account of this event given in the sacred records, than may be found in the most laboured, minute, or graphic displays of inventive probability. We follow the words of God; and, like the pioneer raven, sent out from the window of the ark, hover

a moment longer over this stormy resting place between the world's creation and its end.

4. The warning was long by the voice of Noah-and longer still by his unremitted labours in building the ark of safety for himself, his family, and those beasts of the field and fowls of the air, who might be destined to propagate their kind throughout the solitudes of the new world. Threatened judgment comes on tardy wing-for God is merciful beyond earthly conception of the most merciful.

5. Arrived at last, it is sudden—as if the kind Creator of humanity, was unwilling to hang out his protracted, unavailing terrors over those whose incorrigible obstinacy in sin had brought down destruction upon them. Many graphic writers and the pencil of the artist, have united in presenting a picture of long continued struggle the black agony of horrid death-the arduous ascent to the mountain summit the wild shout of pursuing waters-the cutting off of every hope the sight of the buoyant ark outriding the storm-and the wild, unutterable wrestlings of the spirit of despair, tormenting the drowning millions in their death. struggle. But we cannot follow the path of such.

6. The painter, whose heaving canvas discloses an enormous serpent winding himself around the topmost rock of the highest mountain, while all around rolls the seething waters, reveals a strong probability of nature-or when he paints a cataract near a summit, where the laws of nature would forbid a river to flow-or when he defies the doctrine of gravitation, and shows the angry, foaming masses of water stretching upward, like reversed waterfalls, he may be sustained by the solemn evidence of recorded causes, if not effects.

7. But let him people the last, the highest visible elevations with drenched, miserable, living beings, he gives needless and uncalled-for severity to a judgment too tremendous to exaggerate. Long before the highest hills were topped with foam, all earthly life, except that afloat in the ark and that whose breath is the deep sea itself, had probably become extinct. When man punishes man, he sustains the poor, shivering form of his brother in slow torments, taking life in excruciating measures, inch by inch-but the judgments of God, slow in their approach, ate sudden in their transaction.

8. The calamity comes. The public mind seems stu

pified; and, in a moment, the Red Sea envelopes a host; the earth swallows thousands; fires from heaven wrap cities in flames; earthquake sinks them in dust, or the howling currents of the broken up seas, and the dreary descent of floods from the opened windows of heaven, finish the catastrophe of the world before the deluge. THE CABINET.

LESSON XXIX.

Extract from the Earl of Moira's Speech, on the subject of the Excellency of the English Language.

1. Regard it, (the English language,) not, I beseech you, as the mere medium of ordinary intercourse. It is a mine, whence you may extract the means of enchanting, instructing, and improving communities yet nameless, and generations yet unborn. Our English language has never had adequate tribute paid to it.

2. Among the languages of modern Europe, specious, but subordinate pretensions have been advanced to cadence, terseness, or dextrous ambiguity of insinuation; while the sober majesty of the English tongue stood aloof, and disdained a competition on the ground of such inferior particularities.

3. Every language can furnish to genius, casually, a forcible expression; and a thousand turns of neatness and delicacy may be found in most of them: but I will confidently assert, that, in that which should be the first object in all language, precision, the English tongue surpasses them all; while in richness of colouring, and extent of power, it is exceeded by none, if equalled by any.

4. What subject is there within the boundless range of imagination, which some English author has not clothed in English phrase, with a nicety of definition, an accuracy of portraiture, a brilliancy of tint, a delicacy of discrimination, and a force of expression, which must be sterling, because every other nation of Europe, as well as our own, admits their perfection with enthusiasm!

5. Are the fibres of the heart to be made to tremble with anxiety, to glow with animation,-to thrill with horror, to startle with amaze,-to shrink with awe,-to throb with pity, or to vibrate in sympathy with the tone

of pictured love;-know ye not the mighty magicians of our country, whose potent spell has commanded, and continues irresistibly to command, these varied impulses?

6. Was it a puny engine, a feeble art, that achieved such wondrous workings? What was the sorcery? Justly conceived collocation of words, is the whole secret of this witchery; a charm within the reach of any of you. Possess yourselves of the necessary energies, and be assured you will find the language exuberant beyond the demand of your intensest thought.

7. How many positions are there which form the basis of every day's reflection; the matter for the ordinary operation of our minds, which were toiled after perhaps for ages, before they were seized and rendered comprehensible!

8. How many subjects are there which we ourselves have grasped at, as if we saw them floating in an atmosphere just above us, and found the arm of our intellect but just too short to reach them; and then comes a happier genius, who, in a fortunate moment, and from some vantage ground, arrests the meteor in its flight; and grasps the floating phantom; drags it from the skies to the earth; condenses that which was but an impalpable coruscation of spirit; fetters that which was but the lightning glance of thought; and having so mastered it, bestows it as a perpetual possession and heritage on mankind!

LESSON XXX.

Devotion of Lafayette to the Cause of America, 1. While we bring our offerings for the mighty of our own land, shall we not remember the chivalrous spirits of other shores, who shared with them the hour of weakness and wo? Pile to the clouds the majestic columns of glory, let the lips of those who can speak well, hallow each spot where the bones of your bold repose; but forget not those who with your bold went out to battle.

2. Among these men of noble daring, there was ONE, a young and gallant stranger, who left the blushing vine-hills of his delightful France. The people whom he came to succour, were not his people; he knew them only in the wicked story of their wrongs. He was no mercenary

wretch, striving for the spoil of the vanquished; the palace acknowledged him for its lord, and the valley yielded him its increase.

3. He was no nameless man, staking life for reputation; he ranked among nobles, and looked unawed upon kings. He was no friendless outcast, seeking for a grave to hide his cold heart; he was girdled by the companions of his childhood, his kinsmen were about him, his wife was before him.

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4. Yet from all these he turned away, and came. a lofty tree, that shakes down its green glories, to battle with the winter storm, he flung aside the trappings of place and pride, to crusade for freedom, in freedom's holy land. He came but not in the day of successful rebellion, not when the new-risen sun of independence had burst the cloud of time, and careered to its place in the heavens.

5. He came when darkness curtained the hills, and the tempest was abroad in its anger; when the plough stood still in the field of promise, and briers cumbered the garden of beauty; when fathers were dying, and mothers were weeping over them; when the wife was binding up the gashed bosom of her husband, and the maiden was wiping away the death-damp from the brow of her lover. He came when the brave began to fear the power of man, and the pious to doubt the favour of God.

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6. It was then, that this ONE joined the ranks of a revolted people. Freedom's little phalanx bade him a grateful welcome. With them he courted the battle's rage, with theirs his arm was lifted; with theirs his blood was shed. Long and doubtful was the conflict. At length kind Heaven smiled on the good cause, and the beaten invaders fled. The profane were driven from the temple of liberty, and at her pure shrine the pilgrim warrior, with his adored CoмMANDER, knelt and worshipped. Leaving there his offering, the incense of an uncorrupted spirit, he at length rose up, and crowned with benedictions, turned his happy feet towards his long deserted home.

7. After nearly fifty years, that ONE has come again. Can mortal tongue tell, can mortal heart feel, the sublimity of that coming? Exulting millions rejoice in it, and their loud, long, transporting shout, like the mingling of many winds, rolls on, undying, to freedom's farthest mountains. A congregated nation comes round him. Old men bless

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