sanctity have they, more than the last sound of a chord that is snapped, of an instrument that is broken? : To sum up all If we must wholly perish, then is obedience to the laws but an insane servitude; rulers and magistrates are but the phantoms which popular imbecility has raised up; justice is an unwarrantable infringement upon the liberty of men,—an imposition, a usurpation; the law of marriage is a vain scruple; modesty a prejudice; honor and probity, such stuff as dreams are made of; and incests, murders, parricides, the most heartless cruelties and the blackest crimes, are but the legitimate. sports of man's irresponsible nature; while the harsh epithets attached to them are merely such as the policy of legislators has invented, and imposed upon the credulity of the people. Here is the issue to which the vaunted philosophy of unbelievers must inevitably lead. Here is that social felicity, that sway of reason, that emancipation from error, of which they eternally prate, as the fruit of their doctrines. Accept their maxims, and the whole world falls back into a frightful chaos; and all the relations of life are confounded; and all ideas of vice and virtue are reversed; and the most inviolable laws of society vanish; and all moral discipline perishes; and the government of states and nations has no longer any cement to uphold it; and all the harmony of the body politic becomes discord; and the human race is no more than an assemblage of reckless barbarians, shameless, remorseless, brutal, denaturalized, with no other law than force, no other check than passion, no other bond than irreligion, no other God than self! Such would be the world which impiety would make. Such would be this world, were a belief in God and immortality to die out of the human heart. star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, Not in entire forgetfulness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,- The youth who daily farther from the east At length the man perceives it die away, Oh joy! that in our embers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest,— With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast, Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised,But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day Are yet a master light of all our seeing, Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never,— Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Hence in a season of calm weather, Can in a moment travel thither, OLD-SCHOOL PUNISHMENT. LD Master Brown brought his ferule | "Go, seat you there, now, Anthony Blair, down, And his face looked angry and red. Along with the girls," he said. Then Anthony Blair, with a mortified air, With his head down on his breast, Round purple peaks It sails, and seeks Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, Where high rocks throw, Through deeps below, A duplicated golden glow. Far, vague, and dim, While on Vesuvius' misty brim, Here Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles; Calm Capri waits, Her sapphire gates Beguiling to her bright estates. I heed not, if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise. Under the walls Where swells and falls The bay's deep breast at intervals At peace I lie, Blown softly by, A cloud upon this liquid sky. The day, so mild, Is Heaven's own child, With earth and ocean reconciled; The airs I feel Around me steal Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. |