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And when I saw her kindling eye
Beam upwards in her native sky,

My soul should catch the flame.

Thus nothing should our hearts divide,
But on our years serenely glide,
And all to love be given;

And, when life's little scene was o'er,
We'd part to meet and part no more,
But live and love in heaven.

JOSEPH STEVENS BUCKMINSTER.

1784-1812.

Mr. Buckminster was born in Portsmouth, N. H. At five years of age, he began to study Greek and Latin, and at twelve, was ready to enter college. After finishing his collegiate course, he taught a while in Exeter Academy, but made the ministry his profession, and was settled in Boston while yet very young. Here he was a most devoted pastor, and an eloquent preacher; his people were bound to him by the most ardent affection. Successive attacks of epilepsy filled him with apprehensions that he would lose his powers of mind, and become useless to the world; but a fatal attack of this disease secured him from that fearful result, and set his blessed spirit free from all the impediments of the body. His life, together with that of his father, recently published by his sister, Mrs. Lee, affords the particulars of his interesting character.

[From "Sermons."]

FAITH TO THE DYING.

COME now, and follow me to the bed of the dying believer. Would you see in what peace a Christian can die? Watch the last gleams of thought which stream from his dying eyes. Do you see anything like apprehension? The world, it is true, begins to shut in. The shadows of evening collect around his senses. A dark mist thickens, and rests upon the objects which have hitherto engaged his observation. The countenances of his friends become more and more indistinct. The sweet expressions of love and friendship are no longer intelligible. His ear wakes no more at the well-known voice of his children, and the soothing accents of tender affection die away unheard, upon his decaying senses. To him the spectacle of human life is draw ing to its close, and the curtain is descending, which shuts out

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this earth, its actors and its scenes. He is no longer interested in all that is done under the sun. O! that I could now open to you the recesses of his soul—that I could reveal to you light which darts into the chambers of his understanding! He approaches that world which he has so long seen in faith. The imagination now collects its diminished strength, and the eye of faith opens wide. Friends, do not stand, thus fixed in sorrow, around this bed of death! Why are you so still and silent? Fear not to move you cannot disturb the last visions which enchant this holy spirit. Your lamentations break not in upon the songs of seraphs, which inwrap his hearing in ecstasy. Crowd, if you choose, around his couch; he heeds you notalready he sees the spirits of the just advancing together to receive a kindred soul. Press him not with importunities; urge him not with alleviations. Think you he wants now these tones of mortal voices - these material, these gross consolations? No! he is going to add another to the myriads of the just, that are every moment crowding into the portals of heaven! He is entering on a nobler life. He leaves you, he leaves you, weeping children of mortality, to grope about a little longer among the miseries and sensualities of a worldly life. Already he cries to you from the regions of bliss. Will you not join him there? Will you not taste the sublime joys of faith? There are your predecessors in virtue; there, too, are places left for your contemporaries. There are seats for you in the assembly of the just made perfect, in the innumerable company of angels, where is Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and God, the Judge of all!

JOHN PIER PONT. 1785—.

Mr. Pierpont is a native of Connecticut; was educated at Yale College was private tutor some time in South Carolina-practised law a while in Newburyport — studied theology, and was settled in the ministry in Boston, in which profession he still continues. He has written Airs of Palestine, Hymns, Odes, and other poems, distinguished for melody of verse, energy of thought, and for the author's love of right, of freedom and of humanity..

PASSING AWAY.

WAS it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell,

That he winds on the beach so mellow and clear, When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep, She dispensing her silvery light,

And he, his notes as silvery quite,

While the boatman listens, and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore ?
Hark! the notes on my ear that play

Are set to words; as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

But no! it was not a fairy's shell

Blown on the beach so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,
Striking the hour, that filled my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl for a pendulum swung;
(As you 've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing ;)
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,
Passing away! passing away!"

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O, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow! And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold,

Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed ; — in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she dancing swung

In the fulness of grace and womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride:
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels,
That marched so calmly round above her,

Was a little dimmed, as when evening steals

Upon noon's hot face;

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- yet one could n't but love her, For she looked like a mother, whose first babe lay, Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day; And she seemed, in the same.silver tone, to say, "Passing away! passing away!"

While yet I looked, what a change there came!

Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan:
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,

Yet just as busily swung she on;

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;
The hands, that over the dial swept,
Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept,
And still there came that silver tone

From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone,
(Let me never forget till my dying day
The tone or the burden of her lay!)

"Passing away! passing away!".

RICHARD H. DANA. 1787-.

Mr. Dana is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was educated at Harvard. He spent a considerable part of his boyhood in

Newport, Rhode Island, where, "an inspired boy, he wandered on the rocky coast, listening to the roar and dashing of the waters of that ocean, which he was to describe with such effect in his noble poetry." He became a member of the bar; but feeble health and delicate sensibilities rendered the practice of law disagreeable to him, and it was not long continued. From some discouragements in his early publications, Mr. Dana has not given so many works to the world as could be wished; but by those best fitted to appreciate his writings, whether in prose or poetry, they are ranked among the first productions of the age. He has recently repeated, to full houses, a course of lectures upon Shakspeare, which he first delivered about ten years since.

[From "Paul Felton."]

THE MURDER.

PAUL drew near the house, and watched till the last light was put out. "The innocent and guilty both sleep-all but Paul! Not even the grave will be a resting-place for me! They hunt and drive me to the deed; and when 't is done, will snatch the abhorred soul to fires and tortures! Why should I rest more? The bosom I slept sweetly on,- blissful dreams stealing over me, the bosom that to my delighted soul seemed all fond and faithful, why, what harbored in it? Lust and deceit, and sly, plotting thoughts, showing love where they most loathed. They stung me,—ay, in my sleep, crept out upon me, and stung me, poisoned my very soul, hot, burning poisons! - Peace, peace, your promptings, ye that put me to this deed!-drive me not mad! Am I not about it?"

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He walked up cautiously to the door, and taking a key from his pocket, unlocked it, and went in. There was now a suspense of all feeling in him. He entered the parlor. His wife's shawl was hanging on the back of a chair; books, in which he had read to her, were lying on the table, and her work-table near it open. His eye passed over them, but there was no emotion. He left the room, and ascended the stairs with a slow, soft step, stealing through his own house cautiously as a thief. He unlocked the door of his dressing-room, and passed on without noticing any part of it. His hand shook as he partly opened his wife's chamber door. He listened ; — all was still. He cast his eye round; then entered, and shut the door after him. He walked up by the side of her bed without turning his eyes towards it, and seated himself down upon it by her.

Then it

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