once been employed in rearing these lofty mementos of human vanity, whose busy hum once enlivened the solitude of the desert, had all been swept from the earth by the irresistible arm of Death; all were mingled with their native dust, all were forgotten! Even the mighty names which these sepulchres were designed to perpetuate, had long since faded from remembrance; history and tradition afforded but vague conjectures, and the pyramids imparted a humiliating lesson to the candidate for immortality. Alas! alas! said I to myself, how slender are the foundations on which our proudest hopes of future fame are built! He who imagines that he has secured to himself the meed of deathless renown, indulges in deluding visions, which only bespeak the vanity of the dreamer. The storied obelisk-the triumphal arch- the swelling dome — shall crumble into dust, and often, before these structures have perished, the names they would preserve from oblivion will have passed away. WASHINGTON IRVING 60. On Life, Death, and Immortality. TIRED Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep! Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes; Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. Silence how dead! and darkness how profound! Nor eye nor listening ear an object finds; An awful pause! prophetic of her end. That column of true majesty in man! Assist me; I will thank you in the grave; The grave your kingdom; there this frame shall fall A victim sacred to your dreary shrine. Thou who didst put to flight Primeval Silence, when the morning stars, Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball O Thou, whose word from solid darkness struck How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, Connection exquisite of different worlds! A beam ethereal, sullied and absorbed ! A worm! a god! I tremble at myself, Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread! What can preserve my life! or what destroy! 'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof; With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain! Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature Of subtiler essence than the trodden clod; Active, aërial, towering, unconfined, Unfettered with her gross companion's fall. · Even silent Night proclaims my soul immortal! Why, then, their loss deplore that are not lost? Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts, YOUNG. 61. Refuge in Divine Love. Mrs. Malcolm. You look with affright on that dreary dwelling, I perceive. Edith. Yes; but Love might transform even that wretched hut into a bower of paradise. Mrs. Malcolm. Do you believe there is such a thing as paradise on earth, Edith? Edith. Once I did. Mrs. Malcolm. And even in that wretched hut? Edith. Ay, any where; even in that wretched hut. Mrs. Malcolm. And you have discovered the fallacy of your expectations? Edith. Alas! yes. Mrs. Malcolm. You are not singular, my love. We all set out in life with the hope of creating for ourselves a paradise on earth; and all, sooner or later, live to mourn the vain, the unhallowed expectation. Edith. Not all. Mrs. Malcolm. All-all;-be assured it is so ordained; and those who have grasped at happiness have found it either a shadow or a shroud. So it has ever been, and so it will ever be. Edith. Are you not happy? Mrs. Malcolm. Resigned, contented, grateful, these, I hope, I am; but happy I am not, according to my ideas of felicity. Edith. Yet you have every thing; while [— Mrs. Malcolm. But every thing here below is imperfect, and, in its nature, fraught with anxiety and sorrow. And shall I own my weakness- my sinfulness? Even in the midst of the many blessings with which you see me surrounded, still, still my heart yearns for my long-lost boy; still a haunting mystery seems to me to hang over his fate; still a false, delusive voice whispers to me, at times, that perhaps he yet lives-lives a captive or a slave! Judge, then, whether I can be what you would call happy. Edith. But he was not your all. Mrs. Malcolm. Ah, Edith, is there any of us whose all centres in one frail, perishable creature? Has God given us affections, and feelings, and capacities of enjoyment, to be all lavished exclusively on one object — and that object not himself? Edith. It be sinful; no doubt it is so; but may cannot help it. - but I Mrs. Malcolm. No, dearest, you cannot help it; but God will help you. Only be assured he loves you with a love inconceivably beyond that which any creature has ever felt, or ever can feel, for you, and your heart will no longer remain closed against the consolations he offers you. Ah, Edith, it was when the doors were shut, that He who came to succor and to save, stood in the midst of his disciples; and it is when the heart is closed against all earthly consolation, that divine love still finds entrance. MISS FERRIER. Fraught, laden, loaded, charged, filled, stored, full. - Delusive, apt to deceive, tending to mislead the mind: ive, 103.- Exclusively, without admission of others to participation, with the exclusion of all others. ex, 26; ly, 110. |