nearly to perfection, in proportion as it becomes a perfectly transparent medium.

Mr. Coleridge, who is considered, we suppose, one of the most eminent disciples of the spiritual school, says: We do not reverence what we comprehend thoroughly; and thereby betrays, we think, that he cultivated the mystical both in thought and expression. His illustration, in this instance, is particularly unfortunate, viz: that if we could comprehend the Deity as perfectly as we do a tree, we should not reverence him.' Hence it follows, that in the future life, when, as is supposed, we shall comprehend him more and more, we shall reverence him less; an idea which the spiritualists, we think, would be the last to admit.

S.

THE LOVER-STUDENT.

WITH a burning brow and weary limb,
From the parting glance of day,
The student sits in his study dim,

Till the east with dawn is gray;

But what are those musty tomes to him?
His spirit is far away.

He seeks, in fancy, the halls of light
Where his lady leads the dance,

Where the festal bowers are gleaming bright,

Lit up by her sunny glance;

And he thinks of her the live-long night

She thinketh of him- perchance!

Yet many a gallant knight is by,
To dwell on each gushing tone,

To drink the smile of that love-lit eye,
Which should beam on him alone;
To woo with the vow, the glance, and sigh,
The heart that he claims his own.

The student bends o'er the snowy page,
And he grasps his well-worn pen,
That he may write him a lesson sage,
To read to the sons of men;

But softer lessons his thoughts engage,
And he flings it down again.

The student's orisons must arise
At the vesper's solemn peal,
So he gazeth up to the tranquil skies
Which no angel forms reveal,
But an earthly seraph's laughing eyes
Mid his whispered prayers will steal.

In vain his spirit would now recur
To his little study dim,

In vain the notes of the vesper stir

In the cloister cold and grim;

Through the live-long night he thinks of her

Doth his lady think of him?

Then up he looks to the clear cold moon,

But no calm to him she brings;

His troubled spirit is out of tune,
And loosened its countless strings;

Yet in the quiet of night's still noon
To his lady love he sings:

"Thou in thy bower,
And I in my cell,
Through each festal hour
Divided must dwell;
Yet we're united

Though forms are apart,
Since Love's vows plighted
Have bound us in heart.

'Proud sons of Fashion

Now murmur to thee
Accents of passion,
All treason to me;
Others are gazing

On that glance divine;
Others are praising -

Are their words like mine?

'Heed not the wooer

With soft vows exprest;
One heart beats truer -

Thou knowst in whose breast.

New-York, January, 1836.

"To him thou hast spoken
Words not lightly told;
His heart would be broken,
If thine should grow cold!

'The stars faintly glimmer
And fade into day,
This taper burns dimmer
With vanishing ray;
Oh never thus fading,
May Fortune grow pale
With sorrow-clouds' shading,
Or plighted faith fail!

'Hush my wild numbers!
Dawn breaketh above-

Soft be thy slumbers,
Adieu to thee, love!
Sad vigils keeping,

I think upon thee,

And dream of thee sleeping
My own Melanie!'

B. D. W.

A PHILOSOPHER.

BY J. G. PERCIVAL

In

I HAD travelled several hours in a stage, on a cold winter's day, with an individual who had observed an entire silence. Wrapped in his cloak, nothing was visible but a large eye, and a high forehead. the evening, as we stopped for the night, I had an opportunity of observing him more definitely. With a person rather tall and slender, were combined thin and attenuated features, and an expression at once sensitive, thoughtful, and benevolent. The whole, however, seemed to be shrouded by an abiding feeling of melancholy and regret; not that which arises from mere personal disappointment or unhappiness, but rather the sadness of a philosopher, who has formed an ideal scheme of general well-being, and has at last found, by too convincing experience, that, in this bad world, it is utterly impracticable. During the evening, he observed the same silence, and seemed carefully to avoid engaging in the different subjects of conversation, that were just started and then abandoned. If his tongue was silent, his eye was not inactive. With deep and rapid glances, he ran over the individuals before him, and seemed instantly to read their characters. All the other members of the party had retired, and left us alone at a very comfortable fire-side. Still he did not address me. Unwilling to part with one who seemed so peculiar, I ventured to remark, that 'the weather was unusually severe for the season.'

Yes, but it will be succeeded by weather as unusually mild. The principle of compensation is at work with our climate. Å turn of very cold weather is quite sure to be followed by the reverse. The long steady winters of old times are at an end.'

And what cause would you assign for the change?' 'Our business, as men of science, is not first with causes. We must observe and collect facts, compare and arrange them, and then perhaps

we may discover causes. If we do not, a body of facts, methodically arranged, is a science, and as such, capable of the most useful application. But our philosophers and men of science, so called, are continually hastening back to first causes. They mistake hypotheses for conclusions, and so involve themselves, and all who follow their dicta, in a false light, which is but darkness.'

But these remarks rather apply to physical investigations than to moral.'

'Equally to all. Impatience of prolonged research, incapacity for far extended views, and an eagerness to arrive at some final conclusion, however hasty or insufficient, are the prevailing characteristics of minds that pretend to investigate. Men will act, and act according to their immediate views; and hence the true philosopher, who extends his plans through all space and time, is met at every turn by obstacles, small indeed in themselves, but all combined, like the cords of the Lilliputians, completely fettering his purposes. It is in vain to do more than palliate, and that slightly, the evils of society.'

But would you, therefore, because you cannot eradicate the disease, refuse all assistance?'

. Certainly not. The great principle of existence is action; and this action, in sentient creatures, will always be directed to the attainment of well-being-with the unreflecting or the unprincipled, to the momentary and the selfish with more enlarged, more considerate, and better balanced natures, to the common and the enduring. But act we must, or we shall be annihilated among the forces that act around and against us. And here is one great source of the accumulation of evil. Wrong action has brought evil to a head, and induced an overwhelming calamity. A pause, reflection, combination, and then renewed action, in a truer and better direction, would not only prevent the recurrence of calamity, but tend to a positive accumulation of good; yet the necessity of immediate action urges on to commence at once the old career in the old way, and we arrive at the point before gained, or far transcend it, and so prepare for a more fatal catastrophe.'

'But does not all this tend to increased activity? Is not the very necessity of remedying evil in itself a good?'

If we were made only to overcome difficulties and obstacles by exertion, then a life of storms and disasters, might be the most desirable, as most conducive to activity. But we are formed with natures, at least some of us are so formed, which can use and enjoy positive goodintellectual and moral good; and how painful, to one imbued with the feeling of such good, to see human effort all wasted in a region below it.' 'But are all capable of realizing or enjoying such good?'

-

'Perhaps not, certainly not all equally; but the attachment of the great body to other good, and their perverted activity in pursuit of it, thwart and render almost inefficient the efforts of higher natures to secure the good they desire. Still the mind is a kingdom to itself, and it is better to stand aloof on the cold and bare rocks, in the sunshine, than to descend to the plain, and mingle in the smoke and dust of the rushing conflict, though the prize may be an empire.'

Is it not better to follow in the train, and extend relief to the sufferers left behind in the strife?'

Here we come again to the hopeless task of palliating evil — blowing with a fan against the blast of a whirlwind. We may so procure to ourselves the highest moral good, in the consciousness of having done our best to relieve the sufferings of others; but when we think how little good we have imparted how easily and instantaneously the immense flood of evil may annihilate it the light that dawned in our hearts is darkened, and we sink beneath the feeling of our inefficiency. Not in the train, should be the place of him who aims at the accomplishment of great and real good, but in the van, as a herald of peace between the contending forces. Evil must be prevented in its causes, not palliated in its effects.'

Here he raised himself up, with the air of an inspired prophet, and while his eye glowed, and his features were as if radiant with inward brightness, he gave utterance, in a voice of fittest intonation, to his pure and high emotions.

True, we were born to act, but still more were we born to think and feel. Only from the bright and holy fountain of certain thought and elevated feeling, flows the stream of just and beneficent action. Flowing ever the same, from a perennial spring, it diffuses life and beauty along its borders. But action, proceeding from other source, is like the wasting flood that bursts in the midnight darkness, and blindly sweeps away the wrecks of the valley, to accumulate them in the unwholesome marsh. We have a higher nature within us, governed by its own peculiar laws, fixed and immutable as the laws that control the spheres. If these laws are not counteracted by the lower principles of our being, if in harmonious accordance all our better powers move on in their proper orbit, then there results inward calm and strength, outward dignity and power. The ruling principles here prevail-Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And although these have each its peculiar character, and are directed to peculiar corresponding points in our own being, yet they proceed from one common source-emphatically the One. Hence they are throughout harmonious, and no mind is brought to a due celestial temper, in which they are not equally combined and active. As well might wings rise without dome, or dome without wings, to form a complete edifice, as a mind exist in perfect panoply, without the sense of good, or the feeling of beauty; and however intense either might be, without that full perception of the true, that embraces and thus forms a whole, action would only deviate into error. But I speak according to the manner of men, for the three are in fact immutable and inseparable. If not equally combined into a symmetric whole, then a counterfeit has assumed their sacred names, and under the garb of sanctity, an impostor walks forth. Are these merely abstract words, or living, applicable realities? Has not the world been long deceived by these counterfeits, which, under the sacred names of Philosophy, Religion, and Poetry, have claimed the admiration, or controlled the conduct, of society, and that to extremest evil, rejecting each the other, as false or inane? But the Philosophy that scouts the good, or despises the fair, is not the herald of the true it is but a charlatan, that retails the poor dogmas of a temporary expediency, not the sage that propounds laws of eternal duration. Nor is the religion that discards the light of Reason, the holy light that irradiates the divine temple, as goodness is the altar-fire that warms it, and beauty the incense clouds that embellish it, or that

rejects the gentle and lovely, as too soft for its sternness is such Religion other than a hypocrite that under a solemn mask conceals darkness and deformity. Poetry, in which beauty is not wedded to the good and the true, is but a dangerous and deceitful syren. In the stillness of the night, listen not to its enticing but effeminate strains, as they float over smooth, silvery waters, or through flowery thickets, or groves of gloom! Look up to the open sky, and the unchanging stars, and through them to the one great light that shines in the zenith of all, and you will hear a music, sweeter even than that of the spheres, as evolving from the Power that rules the spheres, proclaiming in tones of fullest and completest harmony, the one great principle of our intellectual and moral existence: Philosophy, Religion and Poetry sit enthroned, as a Spiritual Trinity, in the shrine of man's highest nature. The perfect vision of all-embracing Truth, the vital feeling of all-blessing Good, and the living sense of all-gracing Beauty, they form, united, the Divinity of Pure Reason.'

Suddenly he retired, and left me uncertain whether he had read Richter, or been struck by lunar influence.

'MY GOD DIRECTS THE STORM.'

THE Spirit of the Tempest shook
His wing of raven hue
Above the sea, and hollow winds
Howled o'er the waters blue.

Uprose the mountain billows high,
And swept a stormy path;
Darkness and Terror mingled there
Their ministry of wrath.

A lonely bark, by bounding seas
Tost wildly to and fro,
Dashed o'er the billows foaming brow
To fearful depths below.

Crash echoed crash!- the quivering spars
Broke o'er the leaning side,
And left the bark a shattered wreck,
The stormy waves to ride.

The sturdy seamen struggled hard
To hold the yielding helm,
And keep the ship's prow to the surge,
That threatened to o'erwhelm.

And when the plunging ruin spurned
Their impotent control,
They flew to drown their gloomy fears
In the accursed bowl.

Upon the raging ocean then,

Helpless was left the bark
To the wild mercy of the waves,
Amid the tempest dark.

Upon the deck, alone, there stood,
A man of courage high;
Baltimore, January, 1836.

A hero, from whose bosom fear
Had never drawn a sigh.

With folded arms, erect he stood,
His countenance was mild,
And, calmly gazing on the scene,
He bowed his head and smiled.

A wild shriek from the cabin rose,
Up rushed his beauteous bride;
With locks dishevelled, and in tears,
She trembled at his side.

'O why, my love, upon thy lip'

She cried, doth play that smile,
When all is gloom and terror here,
And I must weep the while?'

No word the warrior spake, —but he
Drew from beneath his vest

A poniard bright, and placed its point
Against her heaving breast.

She started not, nor shrieked in dread,
As she had shrieked before;

But stood astonished, and surveyed
His tranquil features o'er.

'Now why,' he asked, 'dost thou not start?
May not thy blood be spilt ?'
With sweet composure she replied,
'My husband holds the hill!

Dost wonder, then, that I am calm,
That fear shakes not my form?
I ne'er can tremble while I know
'My God directs the storm!

J. N. M.