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12. The next Sunday I was at the village church; when, to my surprise, I saw the poor old woman tottering down the ais.e to her accustomed seat on the steps of the altar. She had made an effort to put on something like mourning for her son; and nothing could be more touching than this struggle between pious affection and utter poverty: a black ribbon or so—a faded black handkerchief-and one or two more such humble attempts to express by outward signs that grief which passes show. When I looked round upon the storied monuments, the stately hatchments, the cold marble pomp, with which grandeur mourned magnificently over departed pride; and turned to this poor widow, bowed down by age and sorrow at the altar of her God, and offering up the prayers and praises of a pious, though a broken heart, I felt that this living monument of real grief was worth them all.

13. I related her story to some of the wealthy members of the congregation, and they were moved at it. They exerted themselves to render her situation more comfortable, and to lighten her afflictions. It was, however, but smoothing a few steps to the grave. In the course of a Sunday or two after, she was missed from her usual seat at church, and before I left the neighborhood, I heard, with a feeling of satisfaction, that she had quietly breathed her last, and gone to rejoin those she loved, in that world where sorrōw is never known, and friends are never parted. WASHINGTON IRVING.'

1.

W

76. PASSING AWAY.

AS it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,
Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell,

That he winds on the beach so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the moon and the fairy' are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,

And he his notes as silvery quite,

'See Biographical Sketch, p. 114.- Fairy (får′ I).

While the boatman listens and ships his oar,

To catch the music that comes from the shore?-
Hark! the notes on my car that play,

Are set to words: as they float, they say,
"PASSING AWAY! PASSING AWAY!"

2. But, no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear: Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell

Striking the hours, that fell on my car, As I lay in my dream: yet was it a chime That told of the flow of the stream of Time; For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung; (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring That hangs in his cage, a canary bird swing;) And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet; And as she enjoy'd it, she seem'd to say, "PASSING AWAY! PASSING AWAY!"

3. Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow!
And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold,
Seem'd to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed;-in a few short hours,
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretch'd hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fullness of grace and womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride;

Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
"PASSING AWAY! PASSING AWAY!"

4. While I gazed on that fair one's cheek, a shade Of thought, or care, stole softly over,

Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,

Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.

'Påss' ing. Girl (gerl). Bouquet (bỏ kå').—' Dânc' ing.-' Care

The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, That march'd so calmly round above her,

Was a little dimm'd-as when evening steals

Upon noon's hot face:-yet one couldn't but love her;
For she look'd like a mother whose first' babe lay
Rock'd on her breast, as she swung all day;

And she seem'd in the same silver tone to say,
"PASSING AWAY! PASSING AWAY!"

5. While yet I look'd, what a change there came!
Her eye was quench'd, and her cheek was wan;
Stooping and staff'd was her wither'd frame,
Yet just as busily swung she on:

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;
The hands, that over the dial swept,
Grew crook'd and tarnish'd, but on they kept;
And still there came that silver tone
From the shrivel'd lips of the toothless crone,
(Let me never forget, to my dying day,
The tone or the burden of that lay)—

"PASSING AWAY! PASSING AWAY!"

J. PIERPONT.

REV. JOHN PIERPONT, author of the "Airs of Palestine," was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, April 6, 1785. He entered Yale College when fifteen years old, graduated in 1804, and passed the four subsequent years as a private tutor in the family of Col. Wm. Allston, of South Carolina. He then returned home, studied law in the celebrated school of his native town, and was admitted to practice in 1812. About the same period he delivered his poem entitled "The Portrait," before the Washington Benevolent Society, of Newburyport, to which place he had removed. Impaired health, and the unsettled state of affairs produced by the war, induced him soon after to relinquish his profession. He became a merchant, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore. The "Airs of Palestine," which he published in Baltimore, in 1816, was well received, and twice reprinted in the course of the following year. In 1819 he was ordained minister of the Hollis-street Unitarian Church, in Boston. He passed a portion of the years 1835-6 in Europe, and in 1840 published a choice edition of his poems. At different periods, he also published several very able discourses. In 1851 he delivered a poem of considerable length at the centennial celebration in Litchfield. He has written in almost every meter, and many of his poems are remarkably elevated, spirited, and melodious.

First (forst). Staffed (ståft).

77. GLORY.

THE crumbling tombstone and the gorgeous mausoleum,' the

sculptured marble, and the venerable cathedral, all bear witness to the instinctive desire within us to be remembered by coming generations. But how short-lived is the immortality which the works of our hands can confer! The noblest monuments of art that the world has ever seen are covered with the soil of twenty centuries. The works of the age of Pericles' lie at the foot of the Acropolis3 in indiscriminate ruin. The plowshare turns up the marble which the hand of Phidias had chiseled into beauty, and the Mussulman has folded his flock beneath the falling columns of the temple of Minerva.

2. But even the works of our hands too frequently survive the memory of those who have created them. And were it otherwise, could we thus carry down to distant ages the recollection of our existence, it were surely childish to waste the energies of an immortal spirit in the effort to make it known to other times, that a being whose name was written with certain letters of the alphabet, once lived, and flourished, and died. Neither sculptured marble, nor stately column, can reveal to other ages the lineäments of the spirit; and these alone can embalm our memory in the hearts of a grateful posterity.

3. As the stranger stands beneath the dome of St. Paul's, or

1 Mâu so le' um, a magnificent tomb or monument.- PERICLES, the greatest of Athenian statesmer, was born soon after the beginning of the fifth century в. C. Though an able warrior, and constantly ready for action, he preferred cultivating the arts of peace. The public funds, which he had greatly increased by his management, were expended in erecting magnificent temples and public buildings, which rendered Athens the wonder and admiration of Greece. During his administration architecture and sculpture attained a degree of perfection that has not since been equaled, and poetry reached the highest excellence. He died, B. c. 429. A crop' o lis, the citadel of Athens, built on a rock, and accessible only on one side.- PHIDIAS, a Greek sculptor, and the most celebrated of antiquity, was born at Athens about 490 B. C., and died 432 B. C.- MINERVA, called ATHENA by the Greeks, was usually regarded, in heathen mythology, as the goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and art. St. Paul's, a celebrated church in London, of great size. It was begun in 1675, and finish ́d by Sir Christopher Wren in 1718.

treads, with religious awe, the silent aisles of Westminster Abbey,' the sentiment, which is breathed from every object around him, is, the utter emptiness of sublunary glory. The fine arts obedient to private affection or public gratitude, have here embodied, in every form, the finest conceptions of which their age was capable. Each one of these monuments has been watered by the tears of the widow, the orphan, or the patriot.

4. But generations have passed away, and mourners and mourned have sunk together into forgetfulness. The aged crone, or the smooth-tongued beadle, as now he hurries you through aisles and chapel, utters, with measured cadence and unmeaning tone, for the thousandth time, the name and lineage of the once honored dead; and then gladly dismisses you, to repeat again his well-conned lesson to another group of idle passers-by.

5. Such, in its most august form, is all the immortality that matter can confer. It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered by after ages. It is by thought that has aroused my intellect from its slumbers, which has "given luster to virtue, and dignity to truth," or by those examples which have inflamed my soul with the love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that I hold communion with Shakspeare' and Milton, with Johnson' and Burke, with Howard' and Wilberforce.

DR. WAYLAND.

1 Westminster Abbey, a church in Westminster, built by Edward the Confessor, in 1050. Henry III. made additions and rebuilt a part between 1220 and 1269. Many of the most distinguished statesman, warriors, scholars, and artists of England lie buried here. Westminster is always spoken of as a part of London, although it is under a different municipal authority.- Sub' lu na ry, being under the moon; terrestrial; earthly.- SHAKSPEARE, see Biographical Sketch, p. 348.- MILTON, see Biographical Sketch, p. 528.- JOHNSON, see Biographical Sketch, p. 230.- BURKE, see note 1, p. 214.-JOHN HOWARD, the celebrated Christian philanthropist, was born at Hackney, London, in 1726. With a view to the amelioration of prisoners, in 1777 he visited all the prisons of the United Kingdom; and in 1778, and the four following years, he inspected the principal public prisons of Europe. On a second tour of inquiry, he was seized with a malignant fever, of which he died, at Kherson, a fortified town of South Russia, and was buried in a spot marked by himself, about eight miles from that place. A rude obelisk, erected over his grave, bears the Latin inscription, "VIXIT PROPTER

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