has since burst, with one accord, from the twelve millions of freemen who people these states, there is a moral sublimity which overwhelms the mind, and hushes all its powers into silent amazement.

The European, who should have heard the sound without apprehending the cause, would be apt to inquire,—' What is the meaning of all this? what have these men done to elicit this unanimous and splendid acclamation? Why has the whole American nation risen up, as one man, to do them honor, and offer to them this enthusiastic homage of the heart? Were they mighty warriors, and was the peal that we have heard, the shout of victory?

Were they great commanders, returning from their distant conquests, surrounded with the spoils of war, and was this the sound of their triumphal procession? Were they covered with martial glory in any form, and was this 'the noisy wave of the multitude, rolling back at their approach? Nothing of all this: No; they were peaceful and aged patriots, who, having served their country together, through their long and useful lives, had now sunk together to the tomb.

They had not fought battles; but they had formed and moved the great machinery, of which battles were only a small, and, comparatively, trivial consequence. They had not commanded armies; but they had commanded the master springs of the nation, on which all its great political, as well as military movements, depended. By the wisdom and energy of their counsels, and by the potent mastery of their spirits, they had contributed preeminently to produce a mighty revolution, which has changed the aspect of the world.

A revolution which, in one-half of that world, has already restored man to his long lost liberty;' and government to its only legitimate object, the happiness of the people: and, on the other hemisphere, has thrown a light so strong, that even the darkness of despotism is beginning to recede.

Compared with the solid glory of an achievement like this, what are battles, and what the pomp of war, but the poor and fleeting pageants of a theatre? What were the selfish and petty strides of Alexander, to conquer a little section of a savage world, compared with this generous, this magnificent advance towards the emancipation of the entire world!

And this, be it remembered, has been the fruit of intel

lectual exertion! the triumph of mind! What a proud testimony does it bear to the character of our nation, that it is able to make a proper estimate of services like these! That while, in other countries, the senseless mob fall down in stupid admiration, before the bloody wheels of the conqueror-even of the conqueror by accident-in this, our people rise, with one accord, to pay their homage to intellect and virtue!

What a cheering pledge does it give of the stability of our institutions, that while abroad, the yet benighted multitude are prostrating themselves before the idols, which their own hands have fashioned into kings, here, in this land of the free, our people are every where starting up, with one impulse, to follow with their acclamations the ascending spirits of the great fathers of the republic!

This is a spectacle of which we may be permitted to be proud. It honors our country no less than the illustrious dead. And could these great patriots speak to us from the tomb, they would tell us that they have more pleasure in the testimony, which these honors bear to the character of their country, than in that, which they bear to their individual services.

They now see as they were seen, while in the body, and know the nature of the feeling from which these honors flow. It is love for love. It is the gratitude of an enlightened nation to the noblest order of benefactors. It is the only glory worth the aspiration of a generous spirit. Who would not prefer this living tomb in the hearts of his countrymen, to the proudest mausoleum that the genius of sculpture could erect! Jefferson and Adams were great men by nature. great and eccentric minds, 'shot madly from their spheres,' to affright the world and scatter pestilence in their course, but minds whose strong and steady lights, restrained within their proper orbits by the happy poise of their characters, came to cheer and gladden a world that had been buried for ages in political night.

Not

They were heaven-called avengers of degraded man. They came to lift him to the station for which God had formed him, and to put to flight those idiot superstitions, with which tyrants had contrived to inthral his reason and his liberty. And that Being, who had sent them upon this mission, had fitted them, preeminently, for his glorious work. He filled their hearts with a love of country which burned strong within them, even in death. He gave them a power

of understanding which no sophistry could baffle, no art elude; and a moral heroism which no dangers could appal. Careless of themselves, reckless of all personal consequences, trampling under foot that petty ambition of office and honor, which constitutes the master-passion of little minds, they bent all their mighty powers to the task for which they had been delegated the freedom of their beloved country, and the restoration of fallen man. They felt that they were apostles of human liberty; and well did they fulfil their high commission. They rested not till they had accomplished their work at home, and given such an impulse to the great ocean of mind, that they saw the waves rolling on the farthest shore, before they were called to their reward. And then left the world, hand in hand, exulting, as they rose, in the success of their labors.

LESSON CVII.

Incomprehensibility of God.-MISS TOWNSEND. WHERE art thou?-THOU! Source and Support of all That is or seen or felt; Thyself unseen,

Unfelt, unknown,-alas! unknowable!

I look abroad among thy works—the sky,
Vast, distant, glorious with its world of suns,-
Life-giving earth, and ever-moving main,-
And speaking winds,—and ask if these are Thee!
The stars that twinkle on, the eternal hills,
The restless tide's outgoing and return,
The omnipresent and deep-breathing air-
Though hailed as gods of old, and only less-
Are not the Power I seek; are thine, not Thee!

I ask Thee from the past; if in the

years,

Since first intelligence could search its source,

Or in some former unremembered being,

(If such, perchance, were mine) did they behold Thee? And next interrogate futurity

So fondly tenanted with better things

Than e'er experience owned-but both are mute;

And past and future, vocal on all else,

So full of memories and phantasies,

Are deaf and speechless here! Fatigued, I turn
From all vain parley with the elements;

And close mine eyes, and bid the thought turn inward From each material thing, its anxious guest,

If, in the stillness of the waiting soul,

He may vouchsafe himself—Spirit to spirit!
O Thou, at once most dreaded and desired,
Pavilioned still in darkness, wilt thou hide thee?
What though the rash request be fraught with fate,
Nor human eye may look on thine and live!
Welcome the penalty! let that come now,

Which soon or late must come.

Who would not dare to die?

For light like this

Peace, my proud aim,

And hush the wish that knows not what it asks.

Await His will, who hath appointed this,

With every other trial. Be that will

Done now, as ever.

For thy curious search,

And unprepared solicitude to gaze

On Him-the Unrevealed-learn hence, instead,
To temper highest hope with humbleness.
Pass thy novitiate in these outer courts,
Till rent the veil, no longer separating
The Holiest of all-as erst, discloses
A brighter dispensation; whose results
Ineffable, interminable, tend

E'en to the perfecting thyself-thy kind-
Till meet for that sublime beatitude,
By the firm promise of a voice from heaven
Pledged to the pure in heart!

LESSON CVIII.

The Ruins of Babylon.-HUSENBETH.
THE desert was my dwelling,-and I stood
Where once in pride of power stood Babylon,
Ay, fallen Babylon!...that pompous Queen
Of nations, ruler of the universe;

She of the brazen gates and loftiest towers
Rear'd on her mighty walls; she that o'erlooked
Cities and tribes of men, and warrior bands,
Vassals and tributaries, countless stores
Of wealth, the springs of glory and dominion
Flowing beneath her feet,-and call'd them hers!

Here was her throne:-Alas! how desert now,
How silent is the scene! Still as the grave,
And rightly still,-for 't is a deep wide grave,
Holding the relics of fallen majesty!

Come and contemplate! come and read the fate Of fallen Babel, on her sepulchre!

Here are a thousand hillocks, where there stood,
Long years ago, a thousand palaces;

Here are long mounds of ruin, stretching on
Where once extended Babel's busy streets,
Thronged in their day with wealthy citizens,
Merchants from other lands, captives and free,
Lords of the east, and princely visitors,
Who came to gaze on mighty Babylon.
There are the shapeless ruins, rising high,
And sadly showing where in other days
The far-famed gardens of great Babel rose,
To claim the wonder of the universe.

The strong huge walls, that once defied her foes,
Long levelled, and their fragments deeply sunk,
Are now but faintly traced 'mid broken mounds,
And scattered masses spared as yet by Time.
Amid these ruins, and above them, still
Stands one stupendous pile, though but a wreck,
A mouldering monument of what it was—
And this was once the temple of great Bel,
The idol of Chaldea; broken now,
Confounded, and forever overthrown.

Such now is Babylon! A dwelling-place
For beasts and monsters, as the prophets said;
A desert where the owl and ostrich meet,
The lion stalks in gloomy sovereignty,
The bittern finds a marsh, a stagnant pool,
Left by the floods within her cavities:

Serpents, and creeping things, and reptiles, now
Dwell in the caves of mouldering Babylon!

But still, amid these lone and awful wrecks,
These poor remains of glory all gone by,
In solitude and silence wanders on

The great Euphrates-monarch of the streams,
Majestic, sole survivor, still the same,

Unhurt, unchanged by all the woes poured out
On guilty Babylon:-he lives like one
Left of a mighty race, alone and sad.