220

OF THE OPEN SKY.

far away? By no means. Look at the clouds and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded 'lustre of their magnificent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away they were shaped for their place high above your head: approach them and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapour. Look at the crest of the Alp from the far away plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communed with it by their myriads. It was built for its place in the far off sky approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its foundations, and the tide of human life is met at last by the Eternal "Here shall thy waves be staid," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness: its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fret-work saddened into wasting snow: the stormbrands. of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.

If you desire to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain, you must not ascend upon its sides. All there is disorder and accident, or seems so. Retire from it, and as your eye commands it more and more, you see the ruined mountain world with a wider glance; behold! dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in the disjointed mass: line binds itself into stealthy fellowship with line: group by group the helpless fragments gather themselves into ordered companies new captains of hosts, and masses of battalions become visible one by one; and, far away answers of foot to foot and of bone to bone, until the powerless is seen risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap can now be spared from the mystic whole.

STONES OF VENICE.

POLITENESS is said to be nothing: so is an air-cushion: but it wonderfully softens the jolts of life.

The Christian Courists.

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest
Goaded from shore to shore;

No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,
The leaves of empire o'er.

Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts
The love of man and God,

Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts,
And Scythia's steppes, they trod.

Where the long shadows of the fir and pine
In the night sun are cast,

And the deep heart of many a Norland mine
Quakes at each riving blast;

Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands,
A baptized Scythian queen,

With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands,
The North and East between!

Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, stray
The classic forms of yore,

And Beauty smiles, new risen from the spray,
And Dian weeps once more;
Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart resounds
And Stamboul from the sea

Lifts her tall minarets over burial-grounds

Black with the cypress tree!

The reader of the Biography of the late Wm. Allen, the philanthropic associate of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his simple and beautiful record of a tour through Europe, in the years 1818 and 1819, in the company of his American friend Stephen Grellett.

222

THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.

From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome,

Following the track of Paul,

And where the Alps gird round the Switzer's home
Their vast, eternal wall;

They paused not by the ruins of old time,

They scanned no pictures rare,

Nor lingered where the snow-locked mountains climb
The cold abyss of air!

But unto prisons, where men lay in chains,
To haunts where Hunger pined,

To kings and courts forgetful of the pains
And wants of human kind,

Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of good,
Along their way, like flowers,
Or, pleading as Christ's freemen only could,
With princes and with powers;

Their single aim the purpose to fulfil
Of Truth, from day to day,
Simply obedient to its guiding will,

They held their pilgrim way,

Yet dream not, hence the beautiful and old

Were wasted on their sight,

Who in the school of Christ had learned to hold
All outward things aright.

Not less to them the breath of vineyards blown
From off the Cyprian shore,

Not less for them the Alps in sunset shone,
That man they valued more.

A life of beauty lends to all it sees

The beauty of its thought;

And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies

Make glad its way, unsought.

READING NOT KNOWLEDGE.

In sweet accordancy of praise and love,
The singing waters run;

And sunset mountains wear in light above
The smile of duty done;

Sure stands the promise-ever to the meek
A heritage is given;

Nor lose they Earth, who, single-hearted, seek

223

The righteousness of Heaven!

J. G. WHITTIER.

Reading not Knowledge.

It may be questioned whether the reading of what are called good books may not be carried too far-whether it may not hinder reflection, promote self-ignorance, flatter with the name of a good work, and terminate in mere profession and spiritual pride. All the books in the world will not let us into the knowledge of our hearts, unless we take them there ourselves by meditation. The very innocence of the employment renders a man too careless of what should be going on within. He is like a person who, having a large acquaintance with men of agreeable manners, wide information, and good character, spends all his time among them, without looking to his domestic concerns. And the consequence is likely to be the same-a home in disorder and confusion. Let those companions be the most pious of men, the result will not be otherwise; and let the student's occupation be sacred literature itself, he will not escape the evil effects of too exclusively outward attention, unless he is careful, by frequent meditation, to apply the results of his studies to practical improvement.

EVANS'S BIOG. OF THE EARLY CHURCH.

Che Quaker of the Olden Vime.

AN ARGUMENT FOR FREE PRODUCE.

THE Quaker of the olden time !—
How calm and firm and true!
Unspotted by its wrong and crime
He walked the dark earth through!
The lust of power, the love of gain,
The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain
The purity within.

With that deep insight, which detects
All great things in the small,

And knows how each man's life affects
The spiritual life of all,

He walked by faith and not by sight,
By love and not by law ;-

The presence of the wrong or right,
He rather felt than saw.

He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,
That nothing stands alone,

That whoso gives the motive, makes
His brother's sin his own.

And pausing not for doubtful choice
Of evils great or small,

He listened to that inward voice
Which called away from all.

Oh, spirit of that early day!

So pure and strong and true,
Be with us in the narrow way
Our faithful fathers knew.