THE BEAUTY OF NATURE.

"And, this our life, exempt from public haunts,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

We all of us, in a great measure, create our own happiness, which is not half so much dependent upon scenes and circumstances as most people are apt to imagine. And so it is with beauty! Nature does little more than furnish us with materials of both, leaving us to work them out for ourselves. "Stars, flowers, hills, woods, and streams, are letters, words, voices, vehicles and missionaries;" but they need to be interpreted in the right spirit. We must read and listen for them, and endeavour to understand and profit by them. And when we look around us upon earth, we must not forget to look upward to heaven. "Those who can see God in every thing," writes a popular author, "are sure to be good in every thing." We may add with truth, that they are also sure to see beauty in every thing and every where. When we are at peace with ourselves and the world, it is as though we gazed upon outward things through a golden-tinted glass, and saw a glory resting upon them all. We know that it cannot be long thus: sin and sorrow, and blinding tears will dim the mirror of our inmost thoughts; but we must pray and look again, and by and by the cloud will pass away. There is beauty everywhere; but it requires to be sought, and the seeker after it is sure to find it: it may be in some out-of-the-way place, where no one else would think of looking. Beauty is a fairy; sometimes she hides herself in a flower-cup, or under a leaf, or creeps into the old ivy, and plays hide-and-seek with the sunbeams, or haunts some ruined spot, or laughs out of a bright young face. Sometimes she takes the form of a white cloud, and goes dancing over the green fields, or the deep blue sea, where her misty form, marked out in a momentary darkness, looks like the passing shadow of an angel's wings. It is hard to say which is the most becoming of all the attitudes and shades she is wont to assume, as she traces her lineaments on the broad canvass of nature.-Blackwood's Magazine.

NATURAL BEAUTY ENHANCED BY DISTANCE.

"Distance lends enchantment to the view."

Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling. They were meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for a place high above your head;

approach them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapour. Look at the crest of the Alps from the distant plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by myriads. The child looks up to it in the dawn, the husbandman in the burden and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun; and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon, dyed with the depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it set for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the far-off sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its foundation, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the vast ærial shore, is at last met by the eternal "Here shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks; its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow; the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.

RUSKIN.

HEALTH IN THE FIELDS.

We do our nature wrong,

Neglecting far too long

Such simple joys as ever make us wise;

The rambles up the slope

Of the high mountain cope;

The sweet morning's walk, and manly exercise;
The cool, refreshing bath,

Down the stream's gurgling path,

Or 'mid the ocean waves that dash with ceaseless roar
Against the rugged cliffs, or on the sandy shore.

Welcome ye fresh green meads,

Ye streams and sighing reeds!

n-fields, waving like a sea!

Welcome ye corn-1

Welcome the leafy bowers,

And children gathering flowers!

And farewell awhile, all life's drudgery!
What though we're growing old,

Our blood is not yet cold.

Come with me to the fields, thou man of many ills,
And give thy limbs a chase among the daffodils!

Come with me to the woods,

And let their solitudes

Re-echo to our voices as we go.
Upon thy weary brain

Let childhood come again,

Spite of thy cares, thy labours, or thy woe!
Stretch forth thy limbs and leap;

Thy life has been asleep;

And though night-study deep may wrinkle thy pale brow,
Commit thy jaded mind to healing Nature now.

THE MORNING WALK.

"Now Morn, with rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearls."

Walk in the fields in one of the mornings of May, and if you carry with you a mind calm and pure, watch how it is impressed. You are delighted with the variety of colours; are not those colours beautiful? You breathe vegetable fragrance; is not that fragrance grateful? You see the sun rising from behind a mountain, and the heavens painted with light; is not that renewal of the light of the morning sublime? You reject all obvious reasons, and say that these things are beautiful and sublime because the accidents of life have made them so ;-I say they are beautiful and sublime, BECAUSE GOD HAS MADE THEM SO! that it is the original indelible character impressed upon them by Him, who has opened these sources of simple pleasure, to calm, perhaps, the perturbations of sense, and to make us love that joy which is purchased without giving pain to another man's heart, and without entailing reproach upon our own.-SIDNEY SMITH.

A single dew drop, however small, furnishes in turn gems of all imaginable colours. In one light it is a sapphire, shifting the eye a little it becomes an emerald: next a topaz, then a ruby: and lastly, when viewed so as to reflect the light without refracting it, it has all the splendour of the diamond ;-but to obtain this beautiful display of natural colours, it is necessary to take advantage of the morning, when the beams of the newly risen sun are nearly on a level with the surface of the earth, and this is the time when the morning birds are in their finest song, and when the airs of the earth are in their greatest freshness, and when all nature mingles in one common morning song of gratitude.-MUDIE.

O how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votaries yields?
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,

And all that echoes to the song of even:

All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven,

O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven?

BEATTIE.

GOODNESS IS THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL!

"The soul and nature are attuned together. Something within answers to all we witness without. When I look on the ocean in its might and tumult, my spirit is stirred, swelled. When it spreads out in peaceful blue waves, under a bright sky, it is dilated, yet composed. I enter into the spirit of the earth, and this is always good. Nature breathes nothing unkind. It expands, or ealms, or softens us. Let us open our souls to its influences."-CHANNING.

There's music, music everywhere—

Within the sea-shell's lip,

And in the sweet blue harebell, where

The bees and hum-birds sip;

There's music in the bursting buds,

The sunny buds of spring,

When rising sap beneath the bark
New life seems gathering;
And when the bending, waving grass
Sounds like the distant sea,
As gentle breezes o'er it pass,
Sighing half noiselessly;
And in the bounding rivulet
Which rushes from the hill;
Or when it winds beneath the sod,
And mortals hear it still;

There's music in the wild wave's roar,
The mighty sounding deep;

And music when the storm is o'er,
And ocean sinks to sleep;
Music, sweet music with the birds,
The happy living things;
And sportive insects fluttering,
Shake music from their wings.
There's music, unheard music,
In the falling of the snow,
Each silent thing in nature
Doth some sweet music know;
There's music, music everywhere,-
Above, below, around;

In earth, air, water, day and night,
Its heaven-born strains abound.
Beauty is music to the eye,

As love is to the heart;
Listen! is there no music for
Our holier, better part?
Oh tune your souls to goodness-
And while ages o'er them roll,
Still gathering beauty shall enrich
That music of the soul.

"Tis the music sounding sweetly
In our Heavenly Father's ear,
In his children's joyful gladness
When true love hath cast out fear.

ADAM'S MORNING HYMN.

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty! Thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak, ye who best can tell, ye sons of light-
Angels; for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing:-ye in Heaven.
On Earth join all ye Creatures to extol

Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.
Fairest of Stars, last in the train of night,

If better thou belong not to the dawn,

Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere,
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.
Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st,
And when high noon hast gain'd, and when thou fall'st.
Moon, that now meet'st the orient sun, now fly'st,
With the fix'd Stars, fix'd in their orb that flies.
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's Great Author rise;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncolour'd sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling still advance his praise.

His praise, ye Winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and, wave your tops, ye Pines,
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices, all ye living Souls: Ye Birds,
That singing up to Heaven-gate ascend,

Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep;
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,

To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade,

Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.

Hail, Universal Lord, be bounteous still

To give us only good; and if the night

Have gather'd aught of evil, or conceal'd,

Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark! MILTON.-Abr.