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relieve the tedium of that season of life, when new aoquisitions can no more be made, and the mind can no longer flatter and delude us with its illusory hopes and promises.

5. When life begins, like a distant landscape, gradually to disappear, the mind can receive no solace but from its own ideas and reflections. Philosophy and literature, a knowledge of the works of God, and of the laws which govern the material and intellectual world, will then furnish us with an inexhaustible source of the most agreeable amusements, which, if blended with the sustaining power of our divine religion, will render old age as happy as youth was joyous.

6. The man of letters, when compared with one that is illiterate, exhibits nearly the same contrast as that which exists between a blind man and one that can see; and, if we consider how much literature enlarges the mind, and how much it multiplies, adjusts, rectifies, and arranges the ideas, it may well be reckoned equivalent to an additional sense. It affords pleasures which wealth cannot procure, and which poverty cannot entirely take away. A well cultivated mind places its possessor beyond the reach of those trifling vexations and disquietudes which continually harass and perplex those who have no resources within themselves, and, in some measure, elevates him above the smiles and frowns of fortune.

Bigland.

LESSON 149.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES.

BY Nebo's lonely mountain,

On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave;

And no man knows that sepulchre,

And no man saw it e'er,

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

2. That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth—
Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes back when night is done,
And the crimson streaks on ocean's cheek
Grow into the great sun.

3. Noiselessly as the spring-time
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves;

So without sound of music,

Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountain crown,
The great procession swept.

4. Perchance the bald old eagle,
On gray Beth-Peor's height,
Out of his lonely eyry,

Look'd on the wondrous sight.
Perchance the lion stalking,

Still shuns that hallow'd spot,
For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.

5. But when the warrior dieth,

His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed and muffled drum,
Follow his funeral car;

Y

They show the banners taken,
They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute-gun.

6. Amid the noblest of the land We lay the sage to rest,

And give the bard an honor'd place,

With costly marble drest,

In the great minster transept

Where lights like glories fall,

And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings, Along the emblazoned wall.

7. This was the truest warrior

That ever buckled sword;

This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word;
And never earth's philosopher
Traced with his golden pen,

On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.

8. And had he not high honor,—
The hill-side for a pall,

To lie in state while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall,

And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave,

And God's own hand in that lonely land,

To lay him in the grave?

9. In that strange grave, without a name,
Whence his uncoffin'd clay

Shall break again, oh, wondrous thought!
Before the Judgment day,

And stand with glory wrapt around
On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life,
With the Incarnate Son of God.

10. O lonely grave in Moab's land!
O dark Beth-Peor's hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still.
God hath his mysteries of grace,

Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep

Of him he loved so well.

Mrs. Alexander.

LESSON 150.

EXTRACT FROM "THE DESERTED VILLAGE.”

WEET was the sound, when oft, at evening's close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;

There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below:
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung;
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool;
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind.
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; -
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.

2.

But now the sounds of population fail;

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,

No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled,
All but yon widowed, solitary thing,

That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;
She only left of all the harmless train,

The sad historian of the pensive plain.

3.

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild,
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place;
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain;
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away,

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won. Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe.

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