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defences of ourselves must soon cease. Death stiffens the smooth tongue of flattery, and blots out, with one stroke, all the ingenious excuses, which we have spent our lives in framing.

At the marriage-supper, the places of those who refused to come, were soon filled by a multitude of delighted guests. The God of heaven needs not our presence to adorn his table, for whether we accept, or whether we reject his gracious invitation, whether those who were bidden taste or not of his supper, his house shall be filled. Though many are called and few chosen, yet Christ has not died in vain, religion is not without its witnesses, or heaven without its inhabitants. Let us then remember, that one thing is needful, and that there is a better part than all the pleasures and selfish pursuits of this world, a part which we are encouraged to secure, and which can never be taken away.

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O THOU Parnassus! whom I now survey,
Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,

-BYRON.

But soaring, snow-clad, through thy native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!

What marvel that I thus essay to sing?

The humblest of thy pilgrims, passing by,

Would gladly woo thine Echoes with his string,

Though from thy heights no more one Muse shall wave her

wing.

*Written in Castri, the ancient Delphi; at the foot of Parnassus, now called Liakura.

Oft have I dreamed of thee! whose glorious name
Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore;
And now I view thee, 't is, alas! with shame

That I, in feeblest accents, must adore.
When I recount thy worshipers of yore,
I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze, beneath thy cloudy canopy,
In silent joy to think at last I look on thee!

Happier in this than mightiest bards have been,
Whose fate to distant homes confined their lot,
Shall I, unmoved, behold the hallowed scene,

Which others rave of, though they know it not? Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot, And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave, Some gentle spirit still pervades the spot,

Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave,
Or glides, with glassy foot, o'er yon melodious wave.

LESSON XLIX.

Mont Blanc: - The Hour before Sunrise.

COLERIDGE

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovereign Blanc !
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly, while thou, dread mountain form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the sky and black; transpicuous deep,
An ĕb'on mass! methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But, when I look again,
It seems thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine
Thy habitation from eternity.

O dread and silent form! I gazed on thee
Till thou, still present to my bodily eye,

Didst vanish from my thought. Entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone,

Yet thou, methinks, wast working on my soul,
E'en like some deep enchanting melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it.

But I awake, and with a busier mind,
And active will, self-conscious, offer now,
Not as before, involuntary prayer

And passive adoration.

Hand and voice

Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake!
Green fields, and icy cliffs! all join my hymn!
And thou, O silent mountain, sole and bare,
O! blacker than the darkness, all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink,
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!

Who sank thy sunless pillars in the earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee father of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad,
Who called you forth from night and utter death?
From darkness let you loose, and icy dens,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded and the silence came,
Here shall the billows stiffen and have rest?"
Ye ice-falls! ye that, from yon dizzy heights,

Adown enormous ravines steeply slope,

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty noise,
And stopped at once amidst their maddest plunge,
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven,
Beneath the keen full moon? Who băde the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with lovely flowers
Of living blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! God! the torrents like a shout of nations
Utter; the ice-plain bursts, and answers, God!—
God! sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice,
And pine-groves with their soft and soul-like sound.

The silent snow-mass, loosening, thunders, God!
Ye dreadless flowers, that fringe the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds,
Ye signs and wonders of the elements,
Utter forth God! and fill the hills with praise!
And thou, O silent form, alone and bare,
Whom, as I lift again my head, bowed low

In adoration, I again behold,

And to thy summit upward from thy base
Sweep slowly, with dim eyes suffused with tears, -
Awake, thou mountain form! Rise like a cloud.
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, calls on GOD.

LESSON L.

The Last Days of Herculaneum.· SCRAP BOOK.

A GREAT city - situated amidst all that nature could create of beauty and of profusion, or art collect of science and magnificence-the growth of many ages- the residence of enlightened multitudes - the scene of splendor, and festivity, and happiness-in one moment withered as by a spell — its palaces, its streets, its temples, its gardens, "glowing with eternal spring," and its inhabitants in the full enjoyment of all life's blessings, obliterated from their very place in creation, not by war or famine, or disease, or any of the natural causes of destruction, to which earth had been accustomed but in a single night, as if by magic, and amid the conflagration, as it were, of nature itself, presented a subject on which the wildest imagination might grow weary without even equalling the grand and terrible reality.

The eruption of Vesuvius, by which Herculaneum and Pompeiit were overwhelmed, has been chiefly described to us in the letters of Pliny the younger to Tacitus, giving an account of his uncle's fate, and the situation of the writer and his mother. The elder Pliny had just returned from the bath, and was retired to his study, when a small speck or cloud, which seemed to ascend from Mount Vesuvius, attracted his attention. This cloud gradually increased, and at length assumed the shape of a pine-tree, the trunk of earth and vapor, and the leaves, "red cinders." Pliny ordered his galley, and, urged by his philosophic spirit, went forward to inspect the phenomenon. In a short time, however, philosophy gave way to humanity, and he zealously and adventurously employed his galley in saving the inhabitants of the various beautiful villas which studded that enchanting coast. Amongst

* Pron, a as in father.

† Pom-på-ye.

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