We may wander away and mingle in the "world's fierce strife," and form new associations and friendships, and fancy we have almost forgotten the land of our birth; but at some evening hour, as we listen perchance to the autumn winds, the remembrance of other days comes over the soul, and fancy bears us back to childhood's scenes, and we roam again the old familiar haunts, and press the hands of companions long since cold in the grave-and listen to the voices we shall hear on earth no more. It is then a feeling of melancholy steals over us, which, like Ossian's music, is pleasant, though mournful to the soul.

The African, torn from his willow-braided hut, and borne away to the land of charters and of chains, weeps as he thinks of home, and sighs and pines for the cocoa land beyond the waters of the sea. Years may have passed over him, and strifes and toil may have crushed his spirits-all his kindred may have found graves upon the corals of the ocean; yet were he free, how soon would he seek the shores and skies of his boyhood dreams?

The New-England mariner-amid the icebergs of the Northern seas, or breathing the spicy gales of the ever-green isles, or coasting along the shores of the Pacific, though the hand of time may have blanched his raven locks, and care have plowed deep furrows on his brow, and his heart have been chilled by the storms of ocean, till the fountains of his love had almost ceased to gush with the heavenly current-yet, upon some summer's evening, as he looks out upon the sun sinking behind the western wave, he will think of

home, and his heart will yearn for the loved of other days, and his tears flow like the summer rain.

How does the heart of the wanderer, after long years of absence, beat, and his eyes fill as he catches a glimpse of the hills of his nativity; and when he has pressed the lip of a brother or sister, how soon does he hasten to see if the garden, and the orchard, and the stream look as in days gone by! We may find climes as beautiful, and skies as bright, and friends as devoted; but that will not usurp the place of home.

LESSON XXXIV.

MOUNT MONADNOCK.

Upon the far-off mountain's brow

The angry storm has ceased to beat;
And broken clouds are gathering now
In sullen reverence round his feet;
I saw their dark and crowded bands

In thunder on his breast descending;
But there once more redeem'd he stands
And heaven's clear arch is o'er him bending.

I've seen him when the morning sun

Burn'd like a bale-fire on the height;

I've seen him when the day was done,
Bathed in the evening's crimson light.
I've seen him at the midnight hour,
When all the world was calmly sleeping,
Like some stern sentry in his tower,

His weary watch in silence keeping.

And there, forever firm and clear,
His lofty turret upward springs;
He owns no rival summit near,

No sovereign but the King of king
Thousands of nations have pass'd by,
Thousands of years unknown to story,
And still his aged walls on high
He rears, in melancholy glory.
The proudest works of human hands
Live but an age before they fall,
While that severe and hoary tower
Outlives the mightiest of them all.
And man himself, more frail, by far
Than even the works his hand in raising,
Sinks downward like the falling star
That flashes, and expires in blazing.
And all the treasures of the heart,

Its loves and sorrows, joys and fears,
Its hopes and memories, must depart
To sleep with unremember'd years.
But still that ancient rampart stands
Unchang'd, though years are passing o'er him;
And time withdraws his powerless hands,
While ages melt away before him.

So should it be for no heart beats
Within his cold and silent breast;

To him no gentle voice repeats

The soothing words that make us blest.
And more than this-his deep repose
Is troubled by no thoughts of sorrow;
He hath no weary eyes to close,

No cause to hope, or fear to-morrow.

LESSON XXXV.

EXALTED CHARACTER OF POETRY.

POETRY seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment, which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, power of original and ever-growing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested.

It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it "makes all things new" for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms, and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendors of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colors which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those modes of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful

existence.

We accordingly believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualize our nature. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness and misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with what is good in our nature, bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good. Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of outward nature and of the soul.

It indeed portrays with terrible energy the excesses of the passions, but they are passions which show a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose is, to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary. walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature,