of the individual forbidding it to be less. The habitual passion of his mind was a measure of feeling almost equal to the temporary extremes and paroxysms of common minds: as a great river, in its customary state, is equal to a small or moderate one when swollen to a torrent. The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I wonder what must have been the amount of that bribe in emolument or pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive after their final adjust ment. The law which carries water down a declivity, was not more unconquerable and invariable than the determination of his feelings toward the main object. The importance of this object held his faculties in a state of excitement which was too rigid to be affected by lighter interests, and on which therefore the beauties of nature and of art had no power. He had no leisure feeling which he could spare to be diverted among the innumerable varie ties of the extensive scenes which he traversed; all his subordinate feelings lost their separate existence and operation, by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds to mark this as a fault in his character. But the mere men of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard; he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits who fulfil their commission of philanthropy among mortals do not care about pictures, statues, and sumptuous buildings; and no more did he, when the time in which he must have inspected and admired them would have been taken from the work to which he had conse crated his life. The curiosity which he might feel was reduced to wait till the hour should arrive when its gratification should be presented by conscience, which kept a scrupulous charge of all his time, as the most sacred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge; for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a despotic consciousness of duty as to refuse himself time for surveying the mag nificence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It implied an incon ceivable severity of conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces, as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred everything he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent: and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence. Unless the eternal happiness of mankind be an insignificant concern, and the passion to promote it an inglorious distinction, I may cite George Whitefield as a noble instance of this attribute of the decisive character, this intense necessity of action. The great cause which was so languid a thing in the hands of many of its advocates, assumed in his administrations an unmitigable urgency. Many of the Christian missionaries among the heathens, such as Brainerd, Elliot, and Schwartz, have displayed memorable examples of this dedication of their whole being to their office, this eternal abjuration of all the quiescent feelings. This would be the proper place for introducing (if I did not hesitate to introduce in any connexion with merely human instances) the example of Him who said, "I must be about my Father's business." 'My meat and drink is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." The Dream of Eugene Aram. [THOMAS HOOD, born in London, in 1798, was the son of a respectable publisher, of the firm of Vernor, Hood, & Sharpe. He was brought up an engraver; he became a writer of "Whims and Oddities, "-and he grew into a poet of great and original power. The slight partition which divides humour and pathos was remarkably exemplified in Hood. Misfortune and feeble health made him doubly sensitive to the ills of his fellow-creatures. The sorrows which he has delineated are not unreal things. He died in 1845, his great merits having been previously recognised by Sir Robert Peel, who bestowed on him a pension, to be continued to his wife. That wife soon followed him to the grave.] 'Twas in the prime of summer time, An evening calm and cool, And four-and-twenty happy boys Came bounding out of school: There were some that ran, and some that leapt Like troutlets in a pool. A way they sped with gamesome minds, To a level mead they came, and there Like sportive deer they coursed about, And shouted as they ranTurning to mirth all things of earth, As only boyhood can: But the usher sat remote from all, His hat was off, his vest apart, To catch heaven's blessèd breeze; For a burning thought was in his brow, And his bosom ill at ease; Lo he lean'd his head on his hands and read The book between his knees! Leaf after leaf he turn'd it o'er, Nor ever glanced aside; For the peace of his soul he read that book In the golden eventide : At last he shut the ponderous tome; Then leaping on his feet upright, Some moody turns he took; Now up the mead, then down the mead, And past a shady nook: And lo! he saw a little boy That pored upon a book! "My gentle lad, what is 't you readRomance or fairy fable? Or is it some historic page Of kings and crowns unstable?" The young boy gave an upward glance "It is the death of Abel." The usher took six hasty strides, As smit with sudden pain. Six hasty strides beyond the place, And long since then of bloody men, Whose deeds tradition saves— Of lonely folk cut off unseen, And hid in sudden gravesOf horrid stabs in groves forlorn, And murders done in caves; And how the sprites of injur❜d men, Shriek upward from the sodAy, how the ghostly hand will point To show the burial clod; And unknown facts of guilty acts Are seen in dreams from God! He told how murderers walk'd the earth Beneath the curse of CainWith crimson clouds before their eyes, And flames about their brain : For blood has left upon their souls Its everlasting stain ! "And well," quoth he, "I know for truth Their pangs must be extremeWoe, woe, unutterable woe Who spill life's sacred stream! For why? Methought last night I wrought A murder in a dream! "One that had never done me wrong, A feeble man and old; I led him to a lonely field The moon shone clear and cold: Now here, said I, this man shall die, And I will have his gold! Two sudden blows with a ragged stick, And one with a heavy stone, Dne hurried gash with a hasty knife, And then the deed was done : There was nothing lying at my foot And yet I fear'd him all the more For lying there so still: There was a manhood in his look "And lo! the universal air Seem'd lit with ghastly flameTen thousand thousand dreadful eyes Were looking down in blame: I took the dead man by the hand, And call'd upon his name. "Oh, God! it made me quake to see Such sense within the slain! But when I touch'd the lifeless clay My wretched, wretched soul, I knew, Had never groan'd but twice; "And now from forth the frowning sky, From the heaven's topmost height, I heard a voice-the awful voice Of the blood-avenging sprite : "Thou guilty man! take up thy dead And hide it from my sight!' "I took the dreary body up, And cast it in a stream- "Down went the corpse with a hollow plunge, And vanish'd in the pool; Anon I cleansed my bloody hands, And wash'd my forehead cool, And sat among the urchins young That evening in the school! "Oh, heaven, to think of their white souls, And mine so black and grim! I could not share in childish prayer, "Merrily rose the lark, and shook "With breathless speed, like a soul in chase, I took him up and ran There was no time to dig a grave Before the day began; "And peace went with them one and In a lonesome wood, with heaps of all, And each calm pillow spread; But Guilt was my grim chamberlain That lighted me to bed, And drew my midnight curtains round In anguish dark and deep; From weary chime to chime, That rack'd me all the time-A mighty yearning, like the first Fierce impulse unto crime. "One stern, tyrannic thought, that made All other thoughts its slaves; Stronger and stronger every pulse Did that temptation craveStill urging me to go and see The dead man in his grave! "Heavily I rose up as soon As light was in the skyAnd sought the black accursed pool With a wild misgiving eye; And I saw the dead in the river bed, For the faithless stream was dry! leaves, |