diffuses its light and warmth over the world; and dark would be the world, if it should ever be extinguished and lost.

THATCHER.

LESSON CIV.

MY MOTHER'S PICTURE.

O THAT those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine; thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me:
Voice only fails; else, how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child; chase all thy fears away!"
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim
To quench it!) here shines on me still the same.
My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?
Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unfelt, a kiss ;
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss;
Ah, that maternal smile! it answers, "Yes.'

I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,
And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu !
But was it such? It was. Where thou art gone,
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
The parting word shall pass my lips no more.
Thy maidens grieved themselves at my concern,
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return.
What ardently I wished, I long believed,
And disappointed still, was still deceived;
By expectation every day beguiled,
Dupe of to-morrow even from a child.
Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,
Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,
I learned at last submission to my lot:
But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot.

Where once we dwelt, our name is heard no more;
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;
And where the gardener, Robin, day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,
Delighted with my bauble-coach, and wrapped
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet-capped,
'Tis now become a history little known,
That once we called the pastoral house our own.
Short-lived possession! but the record fair,
That memory keeps of all thy kindness there,
Still outlives many a storm that has effaced
A thousand other themes less deeply traced.

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,
That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid;
Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,
The biscuit or confectionery plum;

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed

By thine own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed;
All this, and, more endearing still than all,
Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall,
Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks,
That humor interposed too often makes;
All this, still legible in memory's page,
And still to be so to my latest age,
Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay
Such honors to thee as my numbers may;
Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,
Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here.

Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours, When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, The violet, the pink, and jessamine,

I pricked them into paper with a pin,

(And thou wast happier than myself the while,
Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head, and smile ;)
Could those few pleasant days again appear,
Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here?

I would not trust my heart; the dear delight
Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might;
But no! What here we call our life is such,
So little to be loved, and thou so much,
That I should ill requite thee to constrain
Thy unbound spirit into bonds again.

Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast
(The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed)
Shoots into port at some well-havened isle,
Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile,
There sits quiescent on the floods, that show
Her beauteous form reflected clear below,
While airs impregnated with incense play
Around her, fanning light her streamers gay ;-
So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore
"Where tempests never beat nor billows roar."
And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide
Of life long since has anchored by thy side.
But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest,
Always from port withheld, always distressed;
Me, howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed,
Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost;
And, day by day, some current's thwarting force
Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.
Yet O, the thought that thou art safe, and he!
That thought is joy, arrive what may to me.

My boast is not that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth:
But higher far my proud pretensions rise;
The son of parents passed into the skies.
And now, farewell! Time unrevoked has run
His wonted course, yet what I wished is done.
By contemplation's help, not sought in vain,
I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again;
To have renewed the joys that once were mine,
Without the sin of violating thine;

And, while the wings of Fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,
Time has but half succeeded in his theft;
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.

COWPER.

LESSON CV.

THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT. "THE sea is his, and he made it," cries the Psalmist of Israel, in one of those bursts of devotion, in which he so often expresses the whole of a vast subject by a few simple words.

Whose else, indeed, could it be, and by whom else could it have been made? Who else can heave its tides, and appoint its bounds? Who else can urge its mighty waves to madness with the breath and the wings of the tempest, and then speak to it again with a master's accents, and bid it be still?

Who else could havé poured out its magnificent fullness round the solid land, and

"Laid, as in a storehouse safe, its watery treasures by ?"

Who else could have peopled it with its countless inhabitants, and caused it to bring forth its various productions, and filled it from its deepest bed to its expanded surface; filled it from its center to its remotest shores; filled it to the brim, with beauty, and mystery, and power? Majestic ocean! Glorious sea! No created being rules thee, or made thee. Thou hearest but one voice, and that is the Lord's; thou obeyest but one arm, and that is the Almighty's. The ownership and the workmanship are God's; thou art his, and he made thee.

The sea is his, and he made it." Its majesty is of God. What is there more sublime than the trackless, desert, all-surrounding, unfathomable sea? What is there more peacefully sublime than the calm, gently-heaving, silent sea? What is there more terribly sublime than the angry, dashing, foaming sea? Power, resistless, overwhelming power, is its attribute and its expression, whether in the careless, conscious grandeur of its deep rest, or the wild tumult of its excited wrath. It is awful, when its crested waves rise up to make a compact with the black clouds, and the howling winds, and the thunder, and the thunder-bolt, and they sweep on in the joy of their dread alliance, to do the Almighty's bidding. And it is awful, too, when it stretches its broad level out, to meet in quiet union the bended sky, and show, in the line of meeting, the vast rotundity of the world.

There is majesty in its wide expanse, separating and in closing the great continents of the earth, occupying two thirds of the whole surface of the globe, penetrating the land with its bays and secondary seas, and receiving the constantly pouring tribute of every river, of every shore. There is majesty in its fullness, never diminishing, and never increasing. There is majesty in its integrity, for its whole vast substance is uni

form; in its local unity, for there is but one ocean, and the inhabitants of any one maritime spot may visit the inhabitants of any other in the wide world. Its depth is sublime; who can sound it? Its strength is sublime; what fabric of man can resist it? Its voice is sublime, whether in the prolonged song of its ripple, or the stern music of its roar; whether it utters its hollow and melancholy tones, within a labyrinth of wave-worn caves; or thunders at the base of some huge promontory; or beats against a toiling vessel's sides, lulling the voyager to rest with the strains of its wild monotony; or dies away, with the calm and dying twilight, in gentle murmurs on some sheltered shore.

"The sea is his, and he made it." Its beauty is of God. It possesses it, in richness of its own; it borrows it of earth, and air, and heaven. The clouds lend it the various dyes of their wardrobe, and throw down upon it the broad masses of their shadows, as they go sailing and sweeping by. The rainbow laves in it its many-colored feet; the sun loves to visit it, and the moon, and the glittering brotherhood of planets and stars; for they delight themselves in its beauty. The sunbeams return from it in showers of diamonds and glances of fire; the moonbeams find in it a pathway of silver, where they dance to and fro, with the breeze and the waves, through the livelong night. It has a light, too, of its own, a soft and sparkling light, rivaling the stars; and often does the ship, which cuts its surface, leave streaming behind a milky way of dim and uncertain luster, like that which is shining dimly above.

What landscape is so beautiful as one upon the borders of the sea? The spirit of its loveliness is from the waters, where it dwells and rests, singing its spells, and scattering its charms on all the coast. What rocks and cliffs are so glorious, as those which are washed by the chafing sea? What groves, and fields, and dwellings are so enchanting, as those which stand by the reflecting sea?

If we could see the great ocean as it can be seen by no mortal eye, beholding at one view what we are now obliged to visit in detail, and spot by spot; if we could, from a flight far higher than the sea-eagle's, and with a sight more keen and comprehensive than his, view the immense surface of the deep, all spread out beneath us like a universal chart, what an infinite