But deep this truth impressed my mind-
Through all his works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.

LESSON CLXXIII.

The American Eagle.-NEAL.

THERE'S a fierce gray BIRD, with a bending beak,
With an angry eye, and a startling shriek,
That nurses her brood where the cliff-flowers blow,
On the precipice-top, in perpetual snow;
That sits where the air is shrill and bleak,
On the splintered point of a shivered peak,
Bald-headed and stripped,-like a vulture tor
In wind and strife-her feathers worn,

And ruffled and stained, while loose and bright
Round her serpent-neck, that is writhing and bare,
Is a crimson collar of gleaming hair,

Like the crest of a warrior, thinned in fight,
And shorn, and bristling:-See her! where
She sits, in the glow of the sun-bright air,
With wing half poised, and talons bleeding,
And kindling eye, as if her prey

Had suddenly been snatched away,
While she was tearing it and fecding.-
Above the dark torrent, above the bright stream
The voice may be heard

Of the thunderer's bird,

Calling out to her god in a clear, wild scream,
As she mounts to his throne, and unfolds in his beam:
While her young are laid out in his rich, red blaze,
And their winglets are fledged in his hottest rays.
Proud Bird of the cliff! where the barren yew springs,
Where the sunshine stays, and the wind-harp sings,
She sits, unapproachable, pluming her wings.
She screams-She's away!-over hill-top and flood,
Over valley and rock, over mountain and wood,
That Bird is abroad in the van of her brood!

"Tis the Bird of our baner, the free bird that braves, When the battle is there, all the wrath of the waves:

That dips her pinions in the sun's first gush;
Drinks his meridian blaze, his farewell flush;
Sits amid stirring stars, and bends her beak,
Like the slipped falcon* when her piercing shriek
Tells that she stoops upon her cleaving wing,
To drink at some new victim's clear, red spring.
That monarch Bird! she slumbers in the night
Upon the lofty air-peak's utmost height;
Or sleeps upon the wing, amid the ray
Of steady, cloudless, everlasting day :-
Rides with the thunderer in his blazing march,
And bears his lightnings o'er yon boundless arch;
Soars wheeling through the storm, and screams away,
Where the young pinions of the morning play;
Broods with her arrows in the hurricane;
Bears her green laurel o'er the starry plain,

And sails around the skies, and o'er the rolling deeps,
With still unwearied wing, and eye that never sleeps.

LESSON CLXXIV.

Reply of Rob Roy Mac Gregor to Mr. Osbaldistone.-SCOTT. You speak like a boy-like a boy, who thinks the old gnarled oak can be twisted as easily as the young sapling. Can I forget that I have been branded as an outlaw, stigmatized as a traitor, a price set on my head as if I had been a wolf, my family treated as the dam and cubs of the hillfox, whom all may torment, vilify, degrade, and insultthe very name which came to me from a long and noble line of martial ancestors, denounced, as if it were a spell to conjuret up the devil with ?—

And they shall find that the name they have dared to proscribe that the name of Mac Gregor is a spell to raise the wild devil withal. They shall hear of my vengeance, that would scorn to listen to the story of my wrongs.-The miserable Highland drover, bankrupt, barefooted, stripped of all, dishonored and hunted down, because the avarice of others grasped at more than that poor all could pay, shall burst on them in an awful change. They that scoffed at the grovelling worm, and trod upon him, may cry and howl when they see the stoop of the flying and fiery-mouthed dragon. But why do I speak of all this?-only ye may + Pron. kǎn'jar.

*Pron. faw'kn.

opine it frets my patience to be hunted like an otter, or a seal, or a salmon upon the shallows, and that by my very friends and neighbors: and to have as many sword-cuts made, and pistols flashed at me, as I had this day in the ford of Avondow, would try a saint's temper, much more a Highlander's, who are not famous for that good gift, as you may have heard.-But one thing bides with me of what Nicol said. I'm vexed for the bairns-I'm vexed when I think of Robert and Hamish living their father's life-But let us say no more of this. * * * *

You must think hardly of us-and it is not natural that it should be otherwise. But remember, at least, we have not been unprovoked :—we are a rude and an ignorant, and it may be, a violent and passionate, but we are not a cruel people. The land might be at peace and in law, for us, did they allow us to enjoy the blessings of peaceful law. But we have been a persecuted people; and if persecution maketh wise men mad, what must it do to men like us, living as our fathers did a thousand years since, and possessing scarce more lights than they did? Can we view their bloody edicts against us-their hanging, heading, hounding, and hunting down an ancient and honorable name—as deserving better treatment than that which enemies give to enemies?-Here I stand-have been in twenty frays, and never hurt man but when I was in hot blood!—and yet, they would betray me and hang me, like a masterless dog, at the gate of any great man that has an ill will at me.

You are a kind-hearted and an honorable youth, and understand, doubtless, that which is due to the feelings of a man of honor.-But the heather that I have trod upon when living must bloom over me when I am dead-my heart would sink, and my arm would shrink and wither, like fern in the frost, were I to lose sight of my native hills; nor has the world a scene that would console me for the loss of the rocks and cairns, wild as they are, that you see around us. And Helen-what would become of her, were I to leave her, the subject of new insult and atrocity?—or how could she bear to be removed from these scenes where the remembrance of her wrongs is the recollection of her revenge? aye sweetened by I was once so hard put at by my great enemy, as I may well call him, that I was forced e'en to give way to the tide, and removed myself, and my people, and my family from our dwellings in our native land, and to withdraw for a time into Mac Cullum.

more's country,—and Helen made a lament on our departure, as well as Mac Rimmon himself could have framed it; and so piteously sad and wosome, that our hearts almost brake as we listened to her :-it was like the wailing of one for the mother that bore him-and I would not have the same touch of the heart-break again,.

no, not to have

all the lands that were ever owned by Mac Gregor.

LESSON CLXXV.

Prophecy of the destruction of Babylon, and the return of the Jews from their captivity in that city.

Isaiah xiii. 1—xiv. 27.—LOWTH'S TRANSLATION. CHAP. XIII. 1 THE ORACLE CONCERNING BABYLON WHICH WAS REVEALED TO ISAIAH, THE SON OF AMOTS.

2

UPON a lofty mountain erect the standard; Exalt the voice; beckon with the hand; That they may enter the gates of princes.

3 I have given a charge to my enrolled warriors;

I have even called my strong ones to execute my wrath ; Those that exult in my greatness.

4 A sound of a multitude in the mountains, as of a great

people;

A sound of the tumult of kingdoms, of nations gathered

together!

Jehovah, God of Hosts, mustereth the host for the battle. 5 They come from a distant land, from the end of the heavens ;

Jehovah, and the instruments of his wrath, to destroy the whole land.

6 Howl ye, for the day of Jehovah is at hand:

As a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

Therefore shall all hands be slackened;

And every heart of mortal shall melt; and they shall be terrified :

8 Torments and pangs shall seize them;

*

*

*

*

They shall look one upon another with astonishment:
Their countenances shall be like flames of fire.

9 Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, inex ́orable;

Even indignation, and burning wrath:

To make the land a desolation;

And her sinners he shall destroy from out of her. 10 Yea, the stars of heaven, and the constellations thereof, Shall not send forth their light:

The sun is darkened at his going forth,

And the moon shall not cause her light to shine. 11 And I will visit the world for its evil,

And the wicked for their iniquity :

And I will put an end to the arrogance of the proud ; And I will bring down the haughtiness of the terrible 12 I will make a mortal more precious than fine gold; Yea a man, than the rich ore of Ophir.

13 Wherefore I will make the heavens tremble:
And the earth shall be shaken out of her place :
In the indignation of Jehovah God of Hosts;
And in the day of his burning anger.

14 And the remnant shall be as a roe chased;

And as sheep, when there is none to gather them to-
gether;

They shall look, every one towards his own people;
And they shall flee, every one to his own land.

15 Every one, that is overtaken, shall be thrust through: And all that are collected in a body shall fall by the sword.

17

Behold, I raise up against them the Medes; Who shall hold silver of no account;

And as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

18 Their bows shall dash the young men ;

Their eye shall have no pity even on the children.

19 And Babylon shall become-she that was the beauty of kingdoms,

The glory of the pride of the Chaldeans

As the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah by the han of God.

20 It shall not be inhabited for ever;

Nor shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation:
Neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there:
Neither shall the shepherds make their folds there.
But there shall the wild beasts of the deserts lodge,
And howling monsters shall fill their houses:
And there shall the daughters of the ostrich dwel
And there shall the satyrs hold their revels.