dews, and gentle showers, and kindly sunshine, shed their sweet influence on the teeming soil; springing verdure clothes the plain; golden wavelets, driven by the west wind, run over the joyous wheat-field; and the tall maize flaunts in her crispy leaves and nodding tassels.

7. While we labor and while we rest, while we wake and while we sleep, God's chemistry, which we can not see, goes on beneath the clods; myriads and myriads of vital cells ferment with elemental life; germ and stalk, and leaf and flower, and silk and tassel, and grain and fruit, grow up from the common earth. The mowing-machine and the reaper-mute rivals of human in'dustry-perform their gladsome task. The well-filled wagon brings home the ripened treasures of the year. The bow of promise fulfilled spans the foreground of the picture, and the gracious covenant is redeemed, that while the earth remainèth, summer and winter, heat and cold, and day and night, and seedtime and harvest, shall not fail.

EVERETT.

EDWARD EVERETT, an American statesman, orator, and man of letters, was born in Dorchester, near Boston, Mass., April 11th, 1791. He entered Harvard College in 1807, where he graduated with the highest honors at the early age of seventeen. He studied theology; was settled as pastor over the Brattle Street Church in Boston; and in 1815, was elected Greek Professor at Harvard College. He now visited Europe, where he devoted four years to study and travel, and made the acquaintance of Scott, Byron, Campbell, Jeffrey, and other noted persons. He was subsequently a member of both houses of Congress, Governor of Massachusetts, Embassador to England, President of Harvard College, and Secretary of State. As a scholar, rhetorician, and orator, he has had but few equals. Through his individual efforts, chiefly as lecturer, the sum of about $90,000 was realized and paid over to the Mount Vernon fund, and sundry charitable associa tions. He died in January, 1865.

But in the still, unbroken air,

Her gentle tone comes stealing by—
And years, and sin, and manhood flee,

And leave me at my mother's knee.
2. The book of nature, and the print
Of beauty on the whispering sea
Give aye to me some lineament

Of what I have been taught to be.
My heart is harder, and perhaps
My manliness hath drank up tears;
And there's a mildew in the lapse
Of a few miserable years-
But nature's book is even yet
With all my mother's lessons writ.
3. I have been out at eventide

Beneath a moonlight sky of spring,
When earth was garnished like a bride,
And night had on her silver wing—
When bursting leaves, and diamond grass,
And waters leaping to the light,

And all that make the pulses pass

With wilder fleetnèss, thronged the night—

When all was beauty-then have I

With friends on whom my love is flung
Like myrrh on wings of Ar'aby,

Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung;

4. And when the beautiful spirit there
Flung over me its golden chain,
My mother's voice came on the air
Like the light dropping of the rain-

And resting on some silver star
The spirit of a bended knee,

I've poured out low and fervent prayer
That our eternity might be

To rise in heaven, like stars at night,
And tread a living path of light.

5. I have been on the dewy hills,

When night was stealing from the dawn,

6.

And mist was on the waking rills,
And tints were delicately drawn
In the gray East-when birds were waking,
With a low murmur in the trees,
And melody by fits was breaking
Upon the whisper of the breeze,
And this when I was forth, perchance
As a worn reveler from the dance-
And when the sun sprang glōriously
And freely up, and hill and river

Were catching upon wave and tree
The arrows from his subtle quiver-

I say a voice has thrilled me then,
Heard on the still and rushing light,
Or, creeping from the silent glen,
Like words from the departing night,
Hath stricken me, and I have pressed
On the wet grass my fevered brow,
And pouring forth the earliëst

First prayer, with which I learned to bow,
Have felt my mother's spirit rush

Upon me as in by-past years,

And, yielding to the blessèd gush

Of my ungovernable tears,

Have risen up-the gay, the wild—

As humble as a věry child.

WILLIS.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, an American poet, essayist, and journalist, was born in Portland, Me., Jan. 20, 1807. He was prepared for college at the Boston Latin School, and at the Phillips Academy, Andover. He graduated from Yale College in 1827. While in college he distinguished himself by a series of Scripture Sketches in verse, and gained a prize of $50 for the best poem. In 1828 he commenced the American Monthly Magazine," which, after two and a half years he merged in the "New York Mirror," and thus became the partner of George P. Morris. Immediately after he sailed for an extensive tour in Europe, and commenced his numerous and brilliant periodical communications, the first series of which, "Pencilings by the Way," appeared in the Mirror. In 1835 he married Mary Leighton Stacy, the daughter of a distinguished English officer, and two years later returned to his native land. In 1844, upon the death of his wife, he again visited Europe for the improvement of his health. Soon after, he established with Gen. Morris the "Home Journal." In 1846 he married Cornelia, only daughter of Hon. Joseph Grinnell of Massachusetts, after which he established himself at Idlewild, a delightful country seat near Newburgh on the Hudson, where he died, Jan. 20, 1867. His poems have been published in an elegant octavo volume, richly illustrated, and a uniform collection of his prose writings, in 12 vols., has also come from the press.

Τ

II.

51. MOTHER AND SON.

PART FIRST.

HERE is no virtue without a characteristic beauty to render it particularly loved of the good, and to make the bad ashamed of their neglect of it. To do what is right argues superior taste, as well as morals; and those whose practice is evil have a certain feeling of inferiority in intellectual power and enjoyment, even where they take no concern for a principle. 2. Doing well has something more in it than the mere fulfilling of a duty. It is a cause of a just sense of elevation of character; it clears and strengthens the spirits; it gives higher reaches of thought; it widens our benevolence, and makes the current of our peculiar affections strong and deep.

3. Never yět was a sacrifice offered to a principle, that was not more than made up to us by self-approval, and the consideration of what our degradation would have been had we done otherwise. Certainly it is a pleasant and a wise thing, then, to follow what is right, even when we only go along with our affections, and take the easy way of the better propensities of our nature.

4. The world is sensible of these truths, let it act as it may. It is not because of his integrity ălōne that it relies on an honest man. It has more confidence in his judgment and wise conduct, in the long run, than in the schemes of those of greater intellect, who go at large without any landmarks of principle; so that virtue seems of a double nature, and to stand oftentimes in the place of what we call talents.

5. This reasoning, or rather feeling, of the world is right; for the honest and good man only falls in with the order of nature, which is grounded in truth, and will endure along with it. And such a hold upon the world has a man of this character even where he has not been called upon to make a sacrifice to a principle, or to take a stand against wrong, but has merely avoided running into vices, and suffered himself to be borne ǎlong by the delightful and kind affections of private life, and has found his pleasures in the duties of home-that he is looked up to with respect, as well as regarded with kindness.

6. We attach certain notions of refinement to his thoughts,

and of depth to his sentiment; and the impression he makes on us is beautiful and peculiar. Although we may have nothing in particular to object to in other men, and though they may be věry well in their way, still, while in his presence, they strike us as lacking something, we can hardly say what-a certain sensitive delicacy of character and manner, wanting which, they affect us as more or less insensible, and even coarse.

7. No creature in the world has this character so finely marked in him as a respectful and affectionate son-particularly in his relation to his mother. Every little attention he pays her is not only an expression of filial attachment, and a grateful acknowledgment of past cares, but is an evidence, also, of a těndernèss of disposition, which moves us the more, because not so much looked on as an essential property in a man's character as it is in the light of an added grace which is bestowed only upon a few.

8. His regards do not appear like mere habits of duty, nor does his watchfulness of his mother's wishes seem like taught submission to her will. They are the native courtesies of a feeling mind, showing themselves amid stern virtues and măsculine energies, like gleams of light on points of rocks. They are delightful as evidences of power yielding voluntary homage to the delicacy of the soul. The armed knee is bent, and the heart of the mailed man laid bare. 9. Feelings that would seem to be at variance with each other, meet together and harmonize in the breast of a son. Every call of the mother which he answers to, and every act of submission which he performs, are not only so many acknowledgments of her authority, but so many instances, also, of kindness, and marks of protecting regard. The servant and defender, the child and guardian, are mingled in him. The world looks on him in this way; and to draw upon a man the confidence, the respect, and the love of the world, it is enough to say of him, "He is a good son."

"THE

III.

52. MOTHER AND SON.

PART SECOND.

HE sun not set yět, Thomas?"-"Not quite, sir. It blazes through the trees on the hill yonder as if their branches were all on fire."-Arthur raised himself heavily forward, and,