Still lies where he laid his houseless head ;-
But the Pilgrim,-where is he?

The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest;

When summer's throned on high,

And the world's warm breast is in verdure dress'd, Go, stand on the hill where they lie.

The earliest ray of the golden day

On that hallow'd spot is cast;

And the evening sun, as he leaves the world,
Looks kindly on that spot last.

The Pilgrim spirit has not fled;
It walks in noon's broad light;

And it watches the bed of the glorious dead,
With their holy stars, by night.

It watches the bed of the brave who have bled,
And shall guard this ice-bound shore,

Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay,
Shall foam and freeze no more.

LESSON CXXXVI.

Order of Nature.-POPE.

SEE, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being, which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,

Beast, bird, fish, insect-what no eye can see,
No glass can reach-from infinite to thec-
From thee to nothing-On superior powers
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:

From nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

And if each system in gradation roll,
Alike essential to the amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole, must fall.
Let earth, unbalanced, from her orbit fly,
Planets and suns rush lawless through the sky;
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,
Being on being wrecked, and world on world,
Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And nature trembles to the throne of God!

All this dread order break? For whom? For thee,
Vile worm !-O madness! pride! impiety!

What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,

Or hand to toil, aspires to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear, repined
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another in this general frame,—
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
The great directing MIND of all ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That changed through all, and yet in all the same.
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent,
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns :
To him, no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

Cease, then, nor Order Imperfection name: Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.

Submit!—in this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blessed as thou can'st bear;
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
Or in the natal, in the mortal hour;
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou can'st not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear-" Whatever is, is right."

LESSON CXXXVII.

Edmund Burke.—BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

THE loss of his son had broken the heart of Burke, and in the midst of his thoughts of patriotism, fame and honour, he reverts perpetually to the melancholy recollection. Like some shade of the departed, the image of his dead son starts up before him wheresoever he turns his step. No matter in what great affairs he may be occupied; no matter whether his foot be in the palace or in the field; whether he give counsel to the disturbed and anxious minds of the nation, or confound with indignant eloquence and prophetic rebuke the multitude and their profligate teachers, the form of his son always moves before his sight, and he always acknowledges it, as reminding him that the world is closed upon his hopes and beckoning him to the grave. To others, this perpetual grief might be unmanly, because it would unman. To Burke's powerful and philosophic mind it diminished nothing of power, of generous zeal, of lofty perseverance. It solemnized and sanctified. It palpably mingled the elevation of sacred feeling with the energies of his original genius.

The bold partizan, the vigorous actor in public life, has disappeared. His views are more general, less concerned for triumph than for truth; and, disposed as he was, by nature, to this expansion of view, and making obvious advan

ces towards it in every successive period of his public career, it was now that he attained the full dignity and purity of his powers. The same blow which had lain his son in the too, severed the last link which bound him to public life. The fetter fell away from his wing, and he at once sprang up above all the mists and obstacles which had before narrowed the circle of his vision.

"Had it pleased God," he says with pathetic pride, "to continue to me the hope of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family. I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in honour, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the most distinguished nobles of the land. He had in himself a silent, living spring, of generous and manly action. Every day he lived, he would have repurchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of some duty. At this moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied."

Then follows the passage which has been so often panegyrized, and which, like some triumphal arch of Rome, at once a trophy and an emblem of mortality, will sustain, by the richness of its workmanship, all the admiration that can be lavished on its architect to the end of time:-" But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and-whatever my querulous weakness might suggest a far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie, like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours-I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth. There, and prostrate there, I must unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice. But, while I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate man. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending those ill-natured neighbours of his, who vi

sited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone, I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me, have gone before me. They who should have been to me a posterity, are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation—which ever must subsist in memory-that act of piety, which he would have performed for me. I owe to him to show that he was not descended from an unworthy parent."

LESSON CXXXVIII.

Character of Lord Bacon.-T. B. MACAULAY.

ONE of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of Bacon's mind, is the order in which its powers expanded themselves. With him the fruit came first and remained till the last; the blossoms did not appear till late. In general the development of the fancy is to the development of the judgment, what the growth of a girl is to the growth of a boy. The fancy attains at an earlier period to the perfection of its beauty, its power, and its fruitfulness; and, as it is first to ripen, it is also first to fade. It has generally lost something of its bloom and freshness before the sterner faculties have reached maturity: and is commonly withered and barren while those faculties still retain all their energy.

It rarely happens that the fancy and the judgment grow together. It happens still more rarely that the judgment grows faster than the fancy. This seems, however, to have been the case with Bacon. His boyhood and youth appear to have been singularly sedate. His gigantic scheme of philosophical reform is said by some writers to have been planned before he was fifteen; and was undoubtedly planned while he was still young. He observed as vigilantly, meditated as deeply, and judged as temperately, when he gave his first work to the world, as at the close of his long career. But in eloquence, in sweetness, and variety o expression, and in richness of illustration, his later writings are far superior to those of his youth,