scape. Often, on the pinions of imagination, he soars aloft where the eye has never travelled; where other stars glitter on the mantle of night, and a more effulgent sun lights up the blushes of morning. 3. Flying from world to world, he gazes on all the glories of creation; or, lighting on the distant margin of the universe, darts the eye of fancy over the mighty void, where power creative never yet has energized, where existence still sleeps in the wide abyss of possibility. 4. By imagination he can travel back to the source of time; converse with the successive generations of men, and kindle into emulation while he surveys the monumental trophies of ancient art and glory. He can sail down the stream of time until he loses "sight of stars and sun, by wandering into those retired parts of eternity, when the heavens and the earth shall be no more.' 5. To these unequivocal characteristicks of greatness in man, let us adduce the testimony of nature herself. Surrounding creation subserves the wants and proclaims the dignity of man. For him day and night visit the world. For him the seasons walk their splendid round. For him the earth teems with riches, and the heavens smile with beneficence. 6. All creation is accurately adjusted to his capacity for bliss. He tastes the dainties of festivity, breathes the perfumes of morning, revels on the charms of melody, and regales his eye with all the painted beauties of vision. Whatever can please, whatever can charm, whatever can expand the soul with ecstasy of bliss, allures and solicits his attention. All things beautiful, all things grand, all things sublime, appear in native loveliness, and proffer man the richest pleasures of fruition. LESSON XLI. Education Prevents Crime. 1. CRIME, we fear, must increase numerically in every nation with the increase of population and wealth; but it is a great mistake to suppose, that they increase more than acts of virtue and beneficence, and a still greater to suppose, that any part of the former increase is owing to the diffusion of knowledge. This, on the contrary, is, beyond all doubt, a great counteracting cause. 2. Vice, it is now generally agreed, proceeds from ignorance; and the only sure way to reclaim or to secure men from its temptations, is to instruct them as to the consequences of their yielding. The great causes of crime are, the want of means to prosecute lawful industry with success; the want of habits of reflection, and self-command to point out the consequences of misconduct, and to ensure effect to the conviction; and the want of innocent and interesting occupations to dispel the ennui of idleness and insignificance. 3. Now, education strikes directly at the root of all these causes of evil: and to say that a man, who has been qualified by instruction for almost every species of honest industry; whose faculties and powers of reflection have been cultivated by study; and to whom boundless sources of interesting specu lation and honourable ambition have thus been laid open, is, in consequence of these very things, more likely to commit crimes than one in opposite circumstances, is obviously to maintain, not an erroneous, but an absurd proposition, and, in fact, to be guilty of a plain contradiction in terms. 4. It is very true that education will not absolutely eradicate our evil propensities, and that to those depraved individuals whom it has not been able to correct, it may occasionally afford the means of more deliberate and more effective guilt. It is quite true, for example, that a man who has been taught to write is better qualified to commit forgery than one who has not. 5. But it is equally true, that a man who can speak is better fitted to commit perjury than one who is dumb; and that one who has been cured of palsy, is more likely to engage in assaults than one who is still disabled by such a malady: but it is no more the natural or common use of the power of writing to facilitate forgery, than it is of speech or manual vigour to for ward deceit or violence; and the reasoning is not less absurd, which would, on such grounds, arraign the expediency of teaching all men to write, than that by which it should be concluded, that the world would be much happier and better if the bulk of mankind were mute and incapable of motion! EDINBURGH REVIEW. LESSON XLII. Address to the Sun. 1. O THOU, that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers!-Whence are thy beams, O sunthy everlasting light? Thou comest forth, in thy awful beauty, and the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone: who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall: the mountains themselves decay with years: the ocean shrinks and grows again: the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. 2. When the world is dark with tempests; when thunder rolls, and lightning flies; thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But, to Ossian, thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season, and thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning, 3. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills; the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.-Ossian, LESSON XLIII. Song of the Pilgrims. 1. THE breeze has swelled the whitening sail, Homes, and all we loved before. 2. The deep may dash, the winds may blow, From that shore we'll speed us fast. 3. For we would rather never be, Than dwell where mind cannot be free; But bows beneath a despot's rod, Bear us o'er the troubled deep! 4. Oh, see what wonders meet our eyes! Columbian hills have met our view! 5. As long as yonder firs shall spread Shall those cliffs and mountains be LESSON XLIV. Visit to the Falls of Missouri. 1. As Captains Lewis and Clark approached the mountains, and had got considerably beyond the walls already described, at the meridian of nearly 110°, and the parallel of about 47. 20', the same almost as that of the station of the Mandans, there was a bifurcation of the river, which threw them into considerable doubt as to which was the true Missouri, and the course which it behooved them to pursue. The northernmost possessed most strongly the characters of that river, and the men seemed all to entertain no doubt that it was the stream which they ought to follow. 2. The commanders of the expedition, however, did not decide till after they had reconnoitred the country from the higher grounds, and then determined to follow the_southern branch. On the eleventh of June, 1806, Captain Lewis set out on foot with four men, in order to explore this river. They proceeded till the 13th, when, finding that the river bore considerably to the south, fearing that they were in an errour, they changed their course and proceeded across the plain. 3. In this direction Captain Lewis had gone about two miles, when his ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water; and as he advanced, a spray, which seemed driven by the high southwest wind, rose above the plain like a column of smoke, and vanished in an instant. Toward this point he directed his steps; and the noise, increasing as he approached, soon became too tremendous to be mistaken for any thing but the great falls of the Missouri. 4. Having travelled seven miles after hearing the sound, he reached the falls about 12 o'clock. The hills, as he approached, were difficult of access, and about two hundred feet high. Down these he hurried with impatience; and seating himself on some rocks under the centre of the falls, he enjoyed the sublime spectacle of this stupendous cataract, which, since the creation, had been lavishing its magnificence on the desert. 5. These falls extend, in all, over a distance of nearly twelve miles; and the medium breadth of the river varies from three to six hundred yards. The principal fall is near the lower extremity, and is upwards of eighty feet perpendicular. The river is here nearly three hundred yards wide, with perpendicular cliffs on each side, not less than one hundred feet high. For ninety or one hundred yards from the left cliff, the water falls in one smooth, even sheet, over a precipice at least eighty feet high. 6. The remaining part of the river precipitates itself also with great rapidity; but being received, as it falls, by irregular and projecting rocks, forms a splendid prospect of white foam, two hundred yards in length, and eighty in perpendicular elevation. 7. The spray is dissipated in a thousand shapes, flying up in high columns, and collecting into large masses, which the sun adorns with all the colouring of the rainbow. The fall, just described, must be one of the most magnificent and picturesque that is any where to be found. 8. It has often been disputed, whether a cataract, in which the water falls in one sheet, or one where it is dashed irregu larly among the rocks, is the finer object. It was reserved for the Missouri to resolve this doubt, by exhibiting both at once in the greatest magnificence. 9. There is another cascade, of about forty-seven feet, higher up the river, and the last of all is twenty-six feet; but the suc cession of inferiour falls, and of rapids of very great declivity, is astonishingly great; so that, from the first to the last, the whole descent of the river is three hundred and eighty-four feet. "Just below the falls," says Captain Lewis, "is a little island. in the river well covered with timber. Here, on a cotton-wood tree, an eagle had fixed its nest, and seemed the undisputed |