Thou art directing, guiding all, thou art! I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth, On the last verge of mortal being stand, Close to the realms where angels have their birth, Just on the boundaries of the spirit land! The chain of being is complete in me; I can command the lightning, and am dust! This clod Creator, yes: thy wisdom and thy word Thy light, thy love, in their bright plenitude, Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere, O thoughts ineffable! O visions blessed! Though worthless our conceptions all of thee, God, thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar, LESSON CXLII. On Legal Reform.-G. C. VERplanck. In each and every step of legal reformation, I would keep one great principle ever before my eyes. It is to do nothing from mere theory or mere guess; to be guided at every step by an enlightened public opinion, by experience and evidence of the defects of our law at home, or of the advantages of any alteration or modification of the same system in use elsewhere. Above all, as one not blind to the imperfections of our ancient law, not unwilling to amend its errors or defects, yet loving and honouring its spirit of freedom, its publicity, the republican character of its jury trial, its arbitrations and references, its jealous restriction of courts to the province of judges of the law alone, its confining the arbitrary decision of judges even on the law by the authority of precedent, its numerous guards for the protection of life and liberty-and why should I not also add, its magnificent and instructive learning, quaint and strange, though some of it may be-above all, knowing this law to be, in its main and substantial parts, consonant to the usages and habits of the mass of our people and wrought into our Constitution, statutes, customs, usages, opinions, and very language-I would carefully and zealously preserve it as the ground-work of all improvements. This was the law of our forefathers; under this we ourselves were born and bred. It is susceptible of indefinite improvement without losing its substantial excellencies. Let us then prune off its deformities; let us remedy its defects, whilst we reverently guard its substance. The wisest and the most efficient reformers, and those whose works last the longest, are they, who, like the framers of our General and State Constitutions, build on the old foundations. Their works have not the systematical beauty of the wholesale reformer, but they prove far more convenient for all the varied uses of society. A great German poet, (Schiller,) has embodied this truth in noble and philosophical imagery. The path of mere power, to its object, says he, is that of the cannon ball, di rect and rapid, but destroying everything in its course, and destructive even to the end it reaches. Not so the road of human usages, which is beaten by the old intercourse of life; that path winds this way and that, along the river or around the orchard, and securely though slowly, arrives at last at its destined end. That," says he, "is the road on which blessings travel." 66 The same general truth may be often seen exemplified in our republican legislation. There is a legislation, altering, reforming, innovating; but all upon deliberate investigation, slow and cautious inquiry, and consultation in every quarter where light and knowledge may be gained. There is also the legislation of mere theory-sometimes the theory of the closet speculative reasoner-much oftener that of another sort of theorist, who calls himself a practical man, because he infers his hasty general rules from his own narrow single experience (narrow, because single)—as a judge, a lawyer, or a legislator. Such legislation, when it prescribes great and permanent rules of action, resembles the rail road of the half learned engineer, who runs it straight to its ultimate end over mountain and valley, through forest and morass. Disregarding alike the impediments of nature and the usages and the wants of human dealings, he attains his end by the shortest way, but at an immense expense, with an utter disregard of private rights and public convenience. A wiser and a better way is that which, in adopting the improvements of inodern science, applies them skilfully in the direction that experience has found to be the most easy, or which time, or custom, or even accident has made familiar, and therefore convenient. That road winds round the mountain and skirts the morass, turns off to the village or the landing-place, respects the homestead and the garden, and even the old hereditary trees of the neighbourgood, and all the sacred rights of property. This is the oad on which human life moves easily and happily-upou which "blessings come and go." Such may we make that road on which justice shall take ts regular and beneficent circuit throughout our landsuch is the character we may give to our jurisprudence, if we approach the hallowed task of legal reform in the right spirit--if we approach it, not rashly but reverently-with เว out pride or prejudice-free alike from the prejudice that clings to every thing that is old, and turns away from a!! improvement; and from the pride of opinion, that, wrapped in fancied wisdom, disdains to profit either by the experience of our own times or the recorded knowledge of past generations. LESSON CXLIII. Capabilities of Humanity.-S. S RANDALL. Ir is a beautiful provision of our nature, fraught alike with intimations of its immortality, its native grandeur and upward tendency, that visions of greater excellence than any we can realize in our every-day life; aspirations for a higher and nobler sphere of action than we find attainable within the confined limits which encompass us on every hand; and a faint appreciation of ideal beauty and sublimity, which, yet, with our limited faculties, we cannot hope except in imagination, to comprehend or realize-often hover around us in our better moments, and seem as with the whispering of angels' voices to bring us the intelligence and the foretaste of a brighter and purer world. There are depths in the mind of every intelligent human being, to which the shafts of philosophy have never yet penetrated; wells of living water, whose sources lie concealed far beneath the visible surface of character or emotion, which nevertheless are accessible to him who faithfully explores the deep mysteries of his being, and which, when touched by the magic wand of truth and nature, can cause the "wilderness and the solitary places" of passion, of error and of guilt, to "bud and blossom as the rose." "There is," says Coleridge, “a one heart for the whole mighty mass of humanity, and every pulse in each particular vessel, strives to beat in concert with it.” That millions of the race pass through the world, in ignorance of the capabilities of their nature, of its innumerable chords of harmony, and its myriad sources of enjoyment-and that millions, perhaps, in all coming time will overlook the flowers of happiness scattered in bounteous profusion around their daily path, in the vain pursuit of unattainable and imaginary sweets, militates in no respect against the truth of this sentiment; and while the reflection that this is, and will be the wayward fortune of humanity, should induce deep humility in view of the errors, frailties and weaknesses of our common nature, the expanding circle of light, increasing by little and little, with every revolution of the wheels or time, may hopefully be deemed the harbinger of a brighter and better day. "The Eden of human nature has indeed long been trampled down and desolated, and storms waste it continually; nevertheless, the soil is still rich with the gems of its pristine beauty; the colors of Paradise are sleeping in the clods—and a little favor, a little protection, shall show what once was there!" LESSON CXLIV. The Poet of Solitude.-SHELLEY. There was a poet, whose untimely tomb By solemn vision, and bright silver dream And sound, from the vast earth and ambient air, The fountains of divine philosophy In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. When carly youth had pass'd, he left To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Has loved his fearful steps; and he has bought |