think merely of himself or of his own immediate friends. In accordance with the noble sentiment of Terence, he will feel himself a man, and be interested in whatever relates to humanity. He will reflect upon the great discoveries in science and the arts which have been made; upon the new light which has been shed upon moral and religious truth; upon the more extended diffusion of the means of happiness and comfort, and the progress which the world has made in sound thinking and good conduct. He, who takes this wide view, will perceive much to make him sober; for states and empires have likewise their alternations of prosperity and adversity. Nations may be sitting around us in sackcloth and ashes, cities may have fallen into the jaws of earthquakes, pestilence and famine may have unpeopled kingdoms, and the energies of countless millions may be running to waste for want of the fresh air and genial sunshine of Liberty. He will find in such reflections a source of consolation for his own sorrows; for how poor and trifling must they seem, in comparison with the afflictions which throw whole realms into mourning.*

One of the Greek pastoral poets, in lamenting the death of his friend, complains of the peculiarly hard lot of mankind. The flowers, he says, that wither and die beneath the chilling breath of Winter, we know will appear again in the ensuing Spring and gladden the earth anew with the same beauty of hue and form; but when we have consigned to the earth the bodies of our friends, it is to a long, endless sleep. There is no spring to the winter of the tomb. We shall no more again see the face that was dear to us, nor hear the voice that we loved. To the natural mind, without the light of revelation, such would be the thought which affliction would suggest, and such, by a natural law of association, would be those, which the present season would awaken. How melancholy must have been the winter reflections of an ancient Greek or Roman, who had elevation of soul and superiority of mind enough to feel the "longing after immortality," but whose intellect was not of that colossal order, as to be able to catch a faint and twilight glimmering of that "day-spring from on high," with which our eyes have been blessed. The external universe, though the theatre of continual changes, yet seemed stamped with the impress of endless duration. The bending sky appeared a broad page, on which eternity was written in letters of light. To him that looked upon the floor of ocean, the very first thought was one of boundless extent and unceasing motion. The natural mind could conceive of no power, which could make the mountains melt like wax, and hush the awful voice of the cataract. Even the most delicate flower or fragile shrub, contained within itself an indestructible principle of life, and, while it appeared to be dead, was in fact only sleeping. But as for man, he was as the shadow of smoke, and vanished away like morning dew. Disappointment and sorrow attended upon his steps during his short life, and soon, weary and faint, he sunk down upon the lap of Earth, and his strong and graceful limbs were resolved into the ele

* Ex Asia rediens, cum ab Egina Megaram versus navigarem, cœpi regiones circumcirca conspicere. Post me erat Egina, ante Megara, dextra Piræus, sinistra Corinthus; quæ oppida quodam tempore florentissima fuerunt, nunc prostrata ac diruta, ante oculos jacent. Capi egomet sic cogitare. Hem! nos homunculi indignamur, si quis nostrum interüt aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior debet esse, cum uno loco tot oppidûm cadavera projecta jacent. Cicero ad Fam. Lib. iv. Ep. 5.

ments, and became like the senseless clods. That which gave light to the eye, bloom to the cheek, and motion to the form, had gone; but where? The stars gave back no answer to the mourner's voice; the spirit's home was not in the depths of ocean, nor in the caves of the earth; and the wind brought no tidings of its flight. They mocked themselves with fables of Elysian fields and islands of the blest, but these were but the dreams of poets, and were the abodes only of heroes, and statesmen, and princes. But for the husband, the father, the child, the friend, whose names had never been blown about the world, and who lived only in the hearts of a few survivers, as humble as they themselves had been, for them there was no home. The body and the soul had alike departed.

We, who have walked in the cheering and invigorating light of revelation, can hardly have any idea of the heart-sickening desolation which must have been occasioned by such thoughts as these, whether called forth by affliction, or suggested by external objects. But it may be doubted whether a deeper study of the laws of nature, and of the operations of the mind, would not have proved to them that the one was necessarily liable to dissolution and decay, and the other as necessarily exempted from them, though the direct evidence of the senses would have established entirely opposite conclusions. Indeed, that doubt is at an end, by the fact, that more than one of the leading minds of antiquity believed firmly in the immortality of the soul, though they were unable to give a satisfactory reason for the faith that was in them."* There is no diversity between what is commonly called Nature, and Revelation, but, on the contrary, the most beautiful and perfect analogy. Nature is the vestibule to the temple of Revelation, and each is the work of the same Divine Builder. As we can look up and behold the sky and the stars "face to face," and look down and see their image in a clear fountain at our feet, so in the workings of our own minds, in the laws of the material world and the general course of human life, we can perceive reflections and shadows, more or less distinct, of the great truths which our Savior was sent to teach.

But be this as it may, it does not diminish, one jot, the unspeakable value of that conviction of the immortality of the soul, which we derive from revelation. The opinion was confined to a few of the most distinguished philosophers, and even with them, the strength of their belief arose from the strength of their hope and the ardor of their aspirations; and the arguments, by which they supported the doctrine, would not have convinced themselves on any other subject. But with us it is no longer a conjecture or a hope, but a life-giving truth; it does not feebly glimmer upon a few lofty minds, but it is as universal as air and light, and as blessed in its operation. It illuminates the humblest mind; it breathes peace into the lowliest heart. For us there is a voice breaking the marble silence of the tomb, which tells us that "death is but an event in the life of the mind," and that the cold and senseless

* The New Testament contains the certain proof of the immortality of the soul. He who believes in the genuineness and authenticity of the books, must, as a necessary consequence, believe also the doctrine to be true. But there can be no doubt that it was firmly believed by more than one of the leading minds of antiquity. In the celebrated dialogue of Plato, entitled Phædo, nothing is more remarkable than the contrast between the strong and deep conviction of the truth of the soul's immortality in the author's mind, and the insufficiency, and almost absurdity of the arguments by which he attempts to prove it.

form, which we consign to its embrace, is not the being that we loved, but the perishing tabernacle in which he dwelt, and that he himself has entered upon a new state of existence, in which his enlarged and purified faculties are presented with more abundant materials for intellectual and moral growth. Death has indeed lost his sting, and the victo‐ ry is wrested from the grave. A ray from heaven turns into beauty the gloomy ruins of earthly expectations, and there the celestial flower of hope blooms brightest, and wafts an undying perfume. How infinitely more to be desired is the condition of the poorest and humblest human being in Christendom, to that of the most gifted and learned of the philosophers of antiquity. The leading principle of all religions of human origin, is a deification of strength and power. To the unlettered heathen, the divinity of Jupiter was in his thunderbolts, and that of Apollo in his arrows. The sage, who was too enlightened to be the slave of such gross delusions, worshiped a vague abstraction, which he called the soul of the universe, an all-pervading, intellectual essence, which bore the same relation to the outward world, that the mind of man does to his body, and which was the ocean, from which the stream of each human soul derived its origin, and to which it again returned. But the glory of Christianity, and that which most strikingly distinguishes it from all human religions, and one of the most convincing proofs of its divine origin, is, that it is eminently a religion of the affections. It is, throughout, consistent with the character of its founder, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, and "suffered little children to come unto him, and forbade them not." The mourner goes to it for consolation, and he that rejoices, finds in its promises and assurances an additional motive for cheerfulness and contentment. It points us to a light, which shines brighter and brighter, as the scene grows darker around us. It exalts the unobtrusive qualities of character, the virtues of charity, patience and humility, and teaches that "he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." And, above all, it gives an elevating self-respect to every member of the human family; it bids the obscurest man lift up his brow with a noble confidence, and take his proper stand among God's works, for "the very hairs of his head are all numbered." And that the lowliness of his station will be no more of a bar to his obtaining the rewards of well-doing, than the greatness of the great will serve him for a screen against the punishment of guilt. Take all the eloquence, the poetry and the philosophy of antiquity, and multiply their sum a thousand fold, and what a heap of rubbish do they seem, when compared with the short and simple declaration, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

Thus the mind of the Christian will not shrink from the gloom and cheerlessness of winter, nor will he be utterly cast down with the thoughts which it calls forth. Nor will he recoil in horror from the Autumn of life, and the wintry repose of the tomb. He will feel that the purposes, for which he was created, can be no more completed without the one, than the functions of the natural year can be carried on without the other. He will feel that though linked for a time to a perishing body, he is, by his immortal nature, immeasurably superior to the grandest and most majestic forms of Nature. Whatever is seen and material, must die at last, though it live for countless centuries; what

Neither the bulk of the

ever is unseen and spiritual, must live forever. mountain, nor the compactness of the diamond, secures them against the operation of the universal laws of matter, while not only the mind is immortal, but each of its acts may be said to be also, since they influence its nature and character of that which lives forever. Every progress, which each mind makes in virtue, knowledge and religion, every instance of self-denial and of suffering for the sake of principle, every victory which, on the field of a human heart, the hosts of heaven gain over the armies of earth,-they are each and all recorded in the book of God's remembrance, and the angels in heaven take cognizance of them. Thus, though the wind whistles with a dirge-like sound through the naked arms of the forests, and the objects around us speak of a beauty that has departed, yet the thoughts, which they call forth, though tinged with something of a natural sadness, will be as far removed from the bitterness of despair, as from the exhilaration of joy.

THE FLY'S REVENGE.

"So," said a fly, as he paused and thought
How he had just been brushed about,
"They think, perhaps, I am next to nought-
Put into life but to be put out!

"Just as if, when our Maker planned
His mighty scheme, he had quite forgot
To grant the work of his skilful hand,
The peaceful fly an abiding spot!

"They grudge me even a breath of air,
A speck of earth and a ray of sun!

This is more than a fly can bear

Now I'll pay them for what they've done!"

First, he lit on the idle thumb

Of a poet, and, "Now for your thoughts," said he,
"Wherever they soar, I'll make them come
Down from their towering flight, to me!"

He went and tickled the nasal tip

Of the scholar, and over his eyebrow stung,
Till he raised his hand, and his brain let slip
A chain of gems that had just been strung.

He washed his feet in the worthless tear

A belle at the theatre chanced to weep-
"Rouge in the bath!" he cried; "my dear,
Your cheek has a blush that is not skin deep!"

Off, to a crowded church, he flew,

And over their faces boldly stepped,
Pointing out to the pastor's view

How many sheep in the pasture slept.

He buzzed about at a lady's ear,

Just as a youth, with piteous sigh,
Popped the question she would not hear,
And only answered, "a saucy fly!"

On the astronomer's painted glass

He leisurely stood and stretched his wing;
For here, he knew he was sure to pass
For quite a great and important thing.

"Now is the time," said he, "my man,
To measure the fly from head to heel!
Number the miles, and if you can,
Name the planets that I conceal!

"What do you call the twinkling star
Over the spot where you see me tread-
And the beautiful cluster of lights afar,
Ranged in the heavens above my head?

"Ah! it is station which swells us all,
At once, to a size that were else unknown!
And now, if ever I hear you call

My race an order beneath your own

"I'll tell the world of this comic scene;
And how will they laugh to hear that I,
Small as you think me, can stand between
You and your view of the spacious sky!"

H. F. G.

THANKSGIVING.

THE New-England Magazine would be a reproach to the name by which it is identified, were the present number to go forth to the world, bearing no record of New-England's national festival—no memorial of attachment to an institution of New-England's Pilgrim Fathers—an institution, which has been honored abroad for its moral influence, and cherished at home as the exhaustless source of pleasures unknown to the rest of the world. We should blush at our unworthiness to claim descent from the puritan exiles, could we forget to celebrate an anniversary so rich in remembrances of their virtues, and consecrated by innumerable recollections of enjoyments as pure and holy as their impressions are deep and ineffaceable.

THANKSGIVING !—there is a magic in the sound of the word, which calls up from the grave of years the shadows of departed pleasures, breathes upon them the breath of life, fills them with their original attributes, decorates them again with the freshness of reality, and bids them move before the enraptured imagination, a long and gay procession of images, reflecting the innocence of childhood, the generous affection of youth, the fervency and faithfulness of that unsophisticated and momentary interval, which precedes the entrance on the scenes of business and bustle, of anxiety and calculation, of cold-hearted in