FELIX NEFF. O BRIGHTER conquests in a better cause, So blessing man, though meanest ?-witness, Alps, Witness it, earth!-Henceforth, my harp, be still. To the successful warrior by land or by sea, our debt as patriots and members of society is doubtless very great, but to him who leads the van in the army of good against spiritual and moral evil, our obligations may truly be considered infinite. Such an one was Felix Neff, a modern name now worthily associated with all that Protestants venerate in the ancient church of the Waldenses. Full of zeal for religion, and burning with the sacred fire of philanthropy, careless of health, wealth, or personal comforts, the noble youth devoted his life to an exile more honourable than a throne: among the poorest, meanest, and most uncivilized of Europeans clothed in sheepskins and living in mud hovels, in the midst of scenes whose mountain grandeur is forgotten in their desolate sterility, where the brightest sun melts not the snow, and the storm, or torrent, or avalanche threatens continual death, toiled, for many years of self-inflicted penury and disease, this generous martyr in the cause of humanity. To their young pastor those primitive Alpines owed every thing; from "la culture des pommes-de-terre," to the rustic bridge, from the humblest menial instruction to cottage architecture, from the formation of a mountain road, to the removal of those yet rockier stumbling blocks that crowd the path to everlasting life, the descendants of those "slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie bleaching on the Alpine mountains cold," were indebted to one ardent and consumptive youth for all things that pertain either to life, or godli ness. And here, for our social instruction, let us take note of Neff's enlarged plan of education. He was not satisfied with teaching peasants merely to read and write; he thought it little charity to make useless scholars of men, who must hardly earn their daily bread; he felt his duty was not complete by giving the herdsman's son an education which, if unaccompanied by a knowledge more appropriate to his station, would only unfit him for the toilsome business of life: but, when the school-door was shut, when the little church built by himself no longer poured the prayer to heaven, as a censer of sweet savour on a hill, the humble pastor of the High Alps might be seen working on the road with a pickaxe, or in some newly reclaimed corner of a valley teaching its happier occupant to trench, to plant, to reap: nay, he encouraged and recommended the men to net, and the women to sew in the very church, (though not on the sabbath,) that while with their ears they were hearing the Gospel preached to the poor, with their hands they might be honestly providing for the needs of bumbler manhood. How fair a picture of unsophisticated Christi sants-" 66 anity: alas, now that he is dead, (—“ who would not weep for Lycidas ?"-Rather with Bion, A σε πάλιν κλαῦσαι, πάλιν εἰς ἔτος ἄλλο δακρύσαι,)— how dreadful a gloom broods above Dormeilleuse, how dark a morn has broke upon Val Fressinière : truly, in the untaught poetry of those sorrowing peaa gust of wind has extinguished the torch, which should have guided them across the precipice." Yet, not quite so cheerless is the scene: he that was "lovely in his life" has left behind him many likeminded, who still labour in carrying out his schemes of divine philanthropy. Such men as Martyn, Oberlin and Neff are in their deaths martyr's blood, the seed of truth, charity, and religion, that yet shall bear an hundredfold." 66 Henceforth, my harp, be still,"-like the fabled canorus ales, which died with the echoes of its sweetest song, in the midst of recollections so melodious to the heart rightly attuned, and while the music of so faultless a character yet lingers in thy strings, here let thine hymning cease. It may be long ere again thou shalt awaken with a "poscimur:" for we live at a time, when Poetry, like her holy elder sister Religion, finds few congenialities around with her own spiritual essence,—an age of short-sighted expediency, of infidel utilitarianism, of accounting man more as the human animal, than a moral being born for immortality. We are "fallen on the evil days and evil men" of mercantile maxims; the 'cui bono? in every one's mouth is a question that searches no farther than the body's good; we are taught to account of fame as "words, and words but wind," heedless that in "the noble minds," the greatest characters, it is the very might and mainspring of good,-" the spur which the clear spirit doth raise;" we no longer think it honour, "monstrari digito prætereuntium Fidicen," because in the gross reaping of daily cares and daily comforts we forget the delicate harvest growing up in the intellect and affections: many a bruised reed, there breathing out cassia, dies under the weight of common worldliness: the dock with its rank leaves hideth the sun from violets. But, now, albeit the Preacher saith "Of making books there is no end," and that probably "the world could not contain books which might be written," yet happily there may be an end of one: we must hasten to our goal, ever a happy consummation; for, "Better is the end of a thing, than the beginning thereof," and a most wise heathen hath said, ηdù TÒ TÉλOÇ,—sweet is the end,-for sweet is every fulfilment. Our brief list, our seventy, our septuagint of worthies, with One above the seventy, is complete : we have eschewed the μέγα βιβλιον, for all are agreed that a great book is a great evil: we have endeavoured to be of a Catholic yet honest spirit, and by exhibiting excellence and varieties of gifts in persons of all ages and of all countries, to subserve the honour of Universal Man; and everywhere our aim has been Truth. If so vast an induction of |