But loose in morals, and in manners vain,
In conversation frivolous, in dress
Extreme, at once rapacious and profuse;
Frequent in park with lady at his side,
Ambling and prattling scandal as he goes;
But rare at home, and never at his books,
Or with a pen, save when he scrawls a card,
Constant at routs, familiar with a round
Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor;
Ambitious of preferment for its gold;
And well prepared, by ignorance and sloth,
By infidelity and love of world,

To make God's work a sinecure; a slave
To his own pleasures and his patron's pride;
From such apostles, O, ye mitered heads,
Preserve the Church! and lay not careless hands
On skulls that can not teach, and will not learn!
FROM COWPER.

LXIII.-EVILS OF INTEMPERANCE.

THE common calamities of life may be endured. Poverty, sickness, and even death, may be met. But there is that which, while it brings all these with it, is worse than all these together. When the husband and father forgets the duties he once delighted to fulfill, and, by slow degrees, becomes the creature of intemperance, there enters into his house the sorrow that rends the spirit, that can not be alleviated, that will not be comforted.

It is here, above all, where she, who has ventured every thing, feels that every thing is lost. Woman, silent, suffering, devoted woman, here bends to her direst affliction. The measure of her woe is, in truth, full, whose husband is a drunkard. Who shall protect her, when he is her insulter, her oppressor? What shall delight her, when she shrinks from the sight of his face, and trembles at the sound of his voice?

The hearth is indeed dark, that he has made desolate. There, through the dull midnight hour, her griefs are whispered to herself. Her bruised heart bleeds in secret.

There, while the cruel author of her distress is drowned in distant revelry, she holds her solitary vigil, waiting, yet dreading his return, that will only wring from her, by his unkindness, tears even more scalding than those she shed over his transgression.

To fling a deeper gloom across the present, memory turns back, and broods upon the past. Like the recollection to the sun-stricken pilgrim, of the cool spring that he drank at in the morning, the joys of other days come over her, as if only to mock her parched and weary spirit. She recalls the ardent lover, whose graces won her from the home of her infancy: the enraptured father, who bent with such delight over his newborn children: and she asks if this can really be he; this sunken being, who has now nothing for her but the sot's disgusting brutality! nothing for those abashed and trembling children, but the sot's disgusting example!

Can we wonder that, amid these agonizing moments, the tender cords of violated affection should snap asunder? that the scorned and deserted wife should confess, "there is no killing like that which kills the heart?" that, though it would have been hard for her to kiss, for the last time, the cold lips of her dead husband, and lay his body forever in the dust, it is harder to behold him so debasing life, that even his death would be greeted in mercy ?

Had he died in the light of his goodness, bequeathing to his family the inheritance of an untarnished name, the example of virtues that should blossom for his sons and daughters from the tomb; though she would have wept bitterly indeed, the tears of grief would not have been also the tears of shame. But to behold him thus fallen away from the station he once adorned, degraded from eminence to ignominy; at home, turning his dwelling to darkness, and its holy endearments to mockery; abroad, thrust from the companionship of the worthy, a selfbranded outlaw; this is the woe that the wife feels, is more dreadful than death; that she mourns over, as worse than widowhood. FROM SPRAGUE.

LXIV.-DANGER OF INTEMPERANCE.

THE sufferings of animal nature occasioned by intemperance, are not to be compared with the moral agonies which convulse the soul. It is an immortal being, who sins and suffers. As his earthly house dissolves, he is approaching the judgment-seat, in anticipation of a miserable eternity. He feels his captivity, and, in anguish of spirit, clanks his chain and cries for help. Conscience thunders, remorse goads, and, as the gulf opens before him, he recoils, and trembles, and weeps, and prays, and resolves, and promises, and reforms, and "seeks it yet again;" again resolves, and weeps, and prays, and "seeks it yet again !"

Wretched man! he has placed himself in the hands of a giant, who never pities, and never relaxes his iron gripe. He may struggle, but he is in chains. He may cry for release, but it comes not. Lost! lost! may be inscribed upon the door-posts of his dwelling. In the meantime, these paroxysms of his dying moral nature decline, and a fearful apathy, the harbinger of spiritual death, comes on.

His resolution fails, and his mental energy, and his vigorous enterprise. Nervous irritation and depression ensue. The social affections lose their fullness and tenderness, and conscience loses its power, and the heart its sensibility, until all that was lovely and of good report retires, and leaves the wretch abandoned to the appetites of a ruined animal. In this deplorable condition, reputation expires, business falters and becomes perplexed, and temptations to drink multiply, as inclination to do so increases, and the power of resistance declines.

And now the vortex roars, and the struggling victim buffets the fiery wave with feebler stroke, and warning supplication, until despair flashes upon his soul, and, with an outcry that pierces the heavens, he ceases to strive, and disappears.

FROM BEECHER.

LXV.-WATER FOR ME.

O, WATER for me! bright water for me,

And wine for the tremulous debauchee.
Water cooleth the brow, and cooleth the brain,
And maketh the faint one strong again;

It comes o'er the sense like a breeze from the sea,
All freshness, like infant purity;

O, water, bright water, for me, for me!
Give wine, give wine, to the debauchee!
Fill to the brim! fill, fill to the brim;
Let the flowing crystal kiss the rim!
For my hand is steady, my eye is true,

For I, like the flowers, drink nothing but dew.
O, water, bright water's a mine of wealth,

And the ores which it yieldeth are vigor and health.
So water, pure water, for me, for me!
And wine for the tremulous debauchee!

Fill again to the brim, again to the brim!
For water strengtheneth life and limb!
To the days of the a-ged it addeth length,
To the might of the strong it addeth strength;
It freshens the heart, it brightens the sight,
'Tis like quaffing a goblet of morning light!
So, water, I will drink nothing but thee,
Thou parent of health and energy!

When over the hills, like a gladsome bride,
Morning walks forth in her beauty's pride,
And, leading a band of laughing hours,
Brushes the dew from the nodding flowers,
O! cheerily then my voice is heard
Mingling with that of the soaring bird,
Who flingeth abroad his matin loud,

As he freshens his wing in the cold, gray cloud.

But when evening has quitted her sheltering yew, Drowsily flying, and weaving anew

Her dusky meshes o'er land and sea,

How gently, O sleep, fall thy poppies on me!

For I drink water, pure, cold, and bright,

And my dreams are of Heaven the livelong night.
So hurrah for thee, water! hurrah! hurrah!
Thou art silver and gold, thou art ribbon and star ̧
Hurrah for bright water! hurrah! hurrah!

LXVI.-REMORSE OF DE MOOR.

I MUST rest here. My joints are shaken asunder. My tongue cleaves to my mouth. How glorious, how majestic, yonder setting sun! 'Tis thus the hero falls, 'tis thus he dies, in godlike majesty! When I was a boy, a mere child, it was my favorite thought, to live and die like that sun. 'Twas an idle thought, a boy's conceit. There was a time, there was a time, when I could not sleep, if I had forgotten my prayers! Oh that I were a child once more!

What a lovely evening! what a pleasing landscape! That scene is noble! this world is beautiful! the earth is grand! But I am hideous in this world of beauty: a monster on this magnificent earth: the prodigal son! My innocence! Oh my innocence!

All nature expands at the sweet breath of spring: but, oh, this paradise, this heaven is a hell to me! All is happiness around me: all is the sweet spirit of peace: the world is one family but its father there above is not my father! I am an outcast! the prodigal son! the companion of murderers, of viperous fiends! bound down, enchained to guilt and horror!

:

Oh! that I could return once more to peace and innocence that I were once more an infant! that I were born a beggar! the meanest kind! a peasant of the field! I would toil, till the sweat of blood dropt from my brow, to purchase the luxury of one sound sleep, the rapture of a single tear! There was a time when I could weep with ease. Oh, days of bliss! Oh, mansion of my fathers! Scenes of my infant years, enjoyed by fond enthusiasm! Will you no more return? No more exhale your sweets to cool this burning bosom? Oh! never, never shall they return! No more refresh this bosom with the breath of peace! They are gone! gone forever!

FROM SCHILLER.