A

variety such a scene would display! Here, a storm would be raging, the thunder bursting, the waters boiling, and rain, and foam, and fire, all mingling together; and there, next to this scene of magnificent confusion, we should see the bright blue waves glittering in the sun, and, while the brisk breezes flew over them, clapping their hands for very gladness; for they do clap their hands, and justify, by the life and almost individual animation which they exhibit, that remarkable figure of the Psalmist. Here, again, on this self-same ocean, we should behold large tracts, where there was neither tempest nor breeze, but a dead calm, breathless, noiseless, and, were it not for the swell of the sea, which never rests, motionless. Here, we should see a cluster of green islands, set like jewels in the midst of its bosom; and there, we should see the broad shoals and gray rocks, fretting the billows, and threatening the mariner.

"There go the ships," the white-robed ships; some on this course, and others on the opposite one; some just approaching the shore, and some just leaving it; some in fleets, and others in solitude; some swinging lazily in a calm, and some driven and tossed, and perhaps overwhelmed, by the storm; some for traffic, and some for state; some in peace, and others, alas, in war. Nor are the ships of man the only travelers whom we shall perceive on this mighty map of the ocean. Flocks of sea-birds are passing and repassing, diving for their food, or for pastime, migrating from shore to shore with unwearied wing and undeviating instinct, or wheeling and swarming round the rocks, which they make alive and vocal by their numbers and their clanging cries.

"The sea is his, and he made it." And when he made it, he ordained, that it should be the element and dwelling-place of multitudes of living beings, and the treasury of many riches. How populous, and wealthy, and bounteous are the depths of the sea! How many are the tribes which find in them abundant sustenance, and furnish abundant sustenance to man! In all its life, its variety and beauty, its sublimity and majesty, "the sea is his, and he made it."

GREENWOOD.

LESSON CVI.

(Elliptical.)*

THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE.

Nature.

DEAR Nature is the kindest mother still, Though always changing, in her aspect, mild: From her bare bosom let me take my fill, Her never weaned, though not her favorite ( Oh, she is ( ) in her features wild, Where nothing polished dares pollute her path: To me by day or night she ever smiled, Though I have ( ) her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.

BYRON.

WONDROUS, O, Nature! is thy sovereign power, That gives to horror hours of (. . . ) mirth;

For here might Beauty build her summer bower. Lo! where yon rainbow spans the (...) earth, And, clothed in glory, through a silent shower, The (...) sun comes forth, a godlike birth; While 'neath his loving eye, the gentle lake Lies like a sleeping child, too blest to (

HAIL, (
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam,

Light.

) light! offspring of heaven, first-born,

May I express thee unblamed? Since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate!
Or hearest thou rather? pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell! Before the sun,
Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a (
) didst invest
The rising world of waters, dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.

).

Ocean.

THOU glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed; in breeze, or gale, or storm,
*See Note prefixed to Lesson 82.

).

WILSON.

MILTON.

Icing the pole, or in the torrid (

)

Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime;

The image of Eternity; the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The (...) of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, (. . . ).

BYRON.

Morning.

BUT who the melodies of morn can tell?

The (. . . ) brook babbling down the mountain side;
The lowing herd; the sheep-fold's ( .. ) bell;
The song of early shepherd, dim descried

In the lone valley; echoing far and wide
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above;

The (...) murmur of the ocean-tide:
The hum of bees, and linnet's lay of love,
And the full choir that wakes the universal grove.

BEATTIE.

There was a roaring in the wind all night,

The rain came heavily, and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising (. . . ) and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;

Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters;
And all the world is ( . ) with pleasant noise of waters.

• •

All things that love the sun are out of doors:
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;

The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And, with her feet, she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

WORDSWORTH.

Evening.

Он, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things;
Home to the weary; to the hungry cheer;
To the (...) birds the parent's brooding wings;
The welcome stall to the o'erlabored steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearth-stone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.

BYRON

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad.
Silence accompanied: for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She, all night long, her amorous descant sung.
Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament
With living Sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unvailed her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

LESSON CVII.

MILTON.

THANKS TO GOD FOR MOUNTAINS.

THERE is a charm connected with mountains so powerful, that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features, kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind is filled with their vast solitude! How the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our hearts bound to the music of their solitary cries, to the tinkle of their gushing rills, to the sound of their cataracts! How inspiriting are the odors that breathe from the upland turf, from the rock-hung flower, from the hoary and solemn pine! How beautiful are those lights and shadows thrown abroad, and that fine, transparent haze which is diffused over the valleys and lower slopes as over a vast, inimitable picture!

Whoever has not seen the rich and russet hues of distant slopes and eminences, the livid gashes of ravines and precipices, the white glittering line of falling waters, and the cloud tumultuously whirling round the lofty summit; and then stood panting on that summit, and beheld the clouds alternately gather and break over a thousand giant peaks and ridges of every varied hue, but all silent as images of eternity; and cast his gaze over lakes, and forests, and smoking towns, and wide lands to the very ocean, in all their gleaming and reposing beauty, knows nothing of the treasures of pictorial wealth which his own country possesses.

When we indulge the imagination, and give it free charter to range through the glorious ridges of continental mountains, through Alps, Apennines, or Andes, how is it possessed and absorbed by all the awful magnificence of their scenery and character! The sky-ward and inaccessible pinnacles, the

Palaces where nature thrones
Sublimity in icy halls!

the dark Alpine forests, the savage rocks and precipices, the fearful and unfathomable chasms filled with the sound of everprecipitating waters; the cloud, the silence, the avalanche, the cavernous gloom, the terrible visitations of heaven's concentrated lightning, darkness, and thunder; or the sweeter features of living, rushing streams, spicy odors of flower and shrub, fresh, spirit-elating breezes sounding through the dark pine grove; the ever-varying lights and shadows, and aerial hues; the wide prospects, and, above all, the simple inhabitants!

Thanks be to God for mountains! is often the exclamation of my heart, as I trace the history of the world. From age to age, they have been the last friends of man. In a thousand extremities they have saved him. What great hearts have throbbed in their defiles from the days of Leonidas to those of Andreas Hofer! What lofty souls, what tender hearts, what poor and persecuted creatures have they sheltered in their stony bosoms, from the weapons and tortures of their fellow

men!

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold!

was the burning exclamation of Milton's agonized and indignant spirit, as he beheld those sacred bulwarks of freedom for once violated by the disturbing demons of the earth; and the sound of his fiery and lamenting appeal to heaven, will be echoed in every generous soul to the end of time.

Thanks be to God for mountains! The variety, which they impart to the glorious bosom of our planet, were no small advantage; the beauty which they spread out to our vision in their woods and waters, their crags and slopes, their clouds and atmospheric hues, were a splendid gift; the sublimity which they pour into our deepest souls from their majestic