Nor is thy goodness less than being proved,
Goodness by noblest angels most beloved;
Thy laws with silent influence wide extend,
The bad afflicting and the good befriend;
In every region, brightened by the sun,
The outlines of thy kingdom are begun;
Unchanging Wisdom shall complete the plan,
And all be perfect in immortal man.

When wretched man on ruin's waves was tossed,
When innocence and Eden both were lost;
When, exiled from his God, he wandered round,
Where thorns and thistles sprinkled all the ground:
In pity to a wretch, by choice undone,
Thou sendest deliverance by thy sacred Son.

Then, if thou findest Religion's path obscure,
If passions blind thee, or if vice allure;
If angel-voices call in vain to save,
And all thy visions darken o'er the grave;
Still one sweet truth unshaken must remain-
-Ask thine own heart and nothing is so plain.*

O precious system! blessed, bleeding tree!
Red with the balm compassion shed for me!
In mercy to an animated clod,

God sinks to man, that man may soar to God.
Guilt wears the robe of innocence; the tear,
Once wholly hopeless, turns to rapture here;
The wretched share a part; and round the bed,
Where life retires, immortal hopes are shed;

* Pope.

Life's disappointments, agonies and stings,
But add new feathers to Religion's 'wings.

So, in the cell, where stern afflictions' prey, The prisoner weeps his lingering nights away; Through the dark grate, whose iron chords so fast, Have been the lyre to many a midnight blast; Through that dark grate, the evening sun may shine, And gild his walls with crimson light divine; Some mournful melody may soothe his pain; Some radiant beam may sparkle round his chain; Some wandering wind in mercy may repair, And waft the spirit of the blossoms there.

THE PURITAN.

No. 14.

Oh! then the longest Summer's day

Seemed too, too much in haste; still the full heart
Had not imparted half; 'twas happiness

Too exquisite to last. Of joys departed,
Not to return, how painful the remembrance!

The Grave.

GREAT and manifold is the grief, which I have been compelled to feel, O candid reader, in being obliged to spend so much time in talking on paper concerning myself and family. How distressing this must be to a modest man, thou canst better conceive than I describe. It is an act of self-denial to which I have submitted for thy advantage. Pride, I abjure; egotism, I detest; and the very sin I have committed, I have been witness against and lament. And thus, having used no less than seven great I's in this very paragraph, and groaned over my own sin with a hearty sorrow; like other offenders, I now return to it again, and proceed to tell thee more about my family and myself.

My uncle Gideon was a little spindle-shanked man, whom the wind might have blown away. In his early youth, he was supposed to be in a consumption, and spent most of his time in visits to a certain botanical doctor, in a town about ten miles off, who kept him along between wind and water, never permitting him to be well, and never to die, until my grandfather's purse, as well as patience, was almost exhausted; for he held that neither to kill or cure was the great reproach of medicine. Some of the prescriptions of this famous doctor, I remember; and will here record them for the benefit of all my readers, who happen to be in a consumption. They are such as these:-the last strippings of a red cow's milk, taken morning and night, (the cow must be red;) the root of elecampane, coddled in sugar-baker's molasses, to be taken at night whenever you wake up and cough; ground-ivy tea, sweetened with loaf-sugar, to be drank any time whenever your imagination is thirsty, (much better than brandy;) and a conserve made of red roses, very healing to the stomach, when overloaded with repletion; especially if accompanied with fasting. These prescriptions I have heard my uncle Gideon praise so much, that I thought it my duty to preserve them; and who knows, but my book may be famous for medicine, as well as morality; so that if I fail in one object, I may succeed in another. No man need to starve in New England, who has abilities enough to become a botanical doctor.

These diseases and medicine kept my uncle from active life; so that he grew up a home-bred youth, with a powerful imagination, a decent mind, but as ignorant of the ways of the world, as an oyster in his shell. He was a great reader, a great eater, a great physic-taker; but not a great man, for I before told you he was a very little one. I can seem to see him now, a mannikin about four feet two inches high; his hat cocked on his head; his crooked elbows swinging as he walked, until they almost touched behind his back, his blue serge small clothes, fastened by oval knee-buckles, his double-breasted waistcoat and his long chocolate-colored coat, three quarters as long as himself, and reaching down to the place where the calves of his legs should have been, if he had had any. Such was the man whose life was one long dream ; and who sometimes infused his visions with my youthful brains.

In my grandfather's house, my uncle kept a room somewhat between a study and shop, where he used to read his books, and sometimes pursue such handicrafts as his leisure or health were supposed to admit of. He had a lapstone, and could mend a pair of shoes; he was sometimes seen repairing an old saddle, putting in a rake handle, or puttying the glass of a broken window. He was one of those people, who are always busy, and never bring much to pass. On the negative side he shone immensely; never doing intentional harm to a single creature; no, not