bed! What spoils from all climates, what works of art from all lands, have been ingulfed by the insatiable and reckless waves! Who shall go down to examine and reclaim this uncounted and idle wealth? Who bears the keys of the deep?

And oh yet more affecting to the heart and mysterious to the mind, what companies of human beings. are locked up in that wide, weltering, unsearchable grave of the sea! Where are the bodies of those lost ones, over whom the melancholy waves alone have been chanting requiem? What shrouds were wrapped. round the limbs of beauty, and of manhood, and of placid infancy, when they were laid on the dark floor of that secret tomb?

Where are the bones, the relics of the brave and the fearful, the good and the bad, the parent, the child, the wife, the husband, the brother, the sister, and lover, which have been tossed and scattered and buried by the washing, wasting, wandering sea? The journeying winds may sigh, as year after year they pass over their beds. The solitary rain cloud may weep in darkness over the mingled remains which lie strewed in that unwonted cemetery.

But who shall tell the bereaved to what spot their affections may cling? And where shall human tears be shed throughout that solemn sepulchre? It is mystery all. When shall it be resolved? Who shall find it out? Who, but He to whom the wildest waves listen reverently, and to whom all nature bows; He who shall one day speak, and be heard in ocean's profoundest caves; to whom the deep, even the lowest deep, shall give up all its dead, when the sun shall sicken,

and the earth and the isles shall languish, and the heavens be rolled together like a scroll, and there shall be no more sea."

LESSON XIX.

SONG OF THE STARS.

WHEN the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,
And the empty realms of darkness and death
Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath,
And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame
From the void abyss by myriads came,—
In the joy of youth as they darted away,
Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rung,

And this was the song the bright ones sung.

"Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,—
The fair blue fields that before us lie,-
Each sun, with the worlds that round him roll,
Each planet, poised on her turning pole;
With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.

"For the source of glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides:
Lo, yonder the living splendors play;
Away, on our joyous path, away!

"Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,
In the infinite azure, star after star,

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass!
How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass!

And the path of the gentle winds is seen,

Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.

"And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews.

"Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres,
To weave the dance that measures the years;
Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent,
To the farthest wall of the firmament,-
The boundless visible smile of Him,
To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim."

LESSON XX.

ST. PETER'S CHURCH AT ROME.

ST. PETER'S is the largest, and far the most expensive structure in the world. The area of its noble piazza is eleven thousand and fifty-five feet long; its front is one hundred and sixty feet high, and three hundred and ninety-six feet wide; it is six hundred and seventy three feet long, and four hundred and

forty-four feet at the transept, or widest part; that is to say, it covers about seven acres. With these gene

ral ideas of the building, let us enter it.

We immediately observe, on the right and left of the door, statues, apparently of children-cherubsthat sustain marble vases of holy water. We approach them, and find that they are giants, more than six feet high. We see at a little distance, on the pilasters and just above the pedestal, sculptured doves-and they appear to the eye of no very extraordinary size, and we think that we can easily lay our hand on them.

We approach, and find that we can scarcely reach to touch them, and they are eighteen inches or two feet long. We advance along the mighty central nave, and we see, nearly at the termination of it and beneath the dome, the high altar, surmounted by a canopy, raised on four twisted pillars of bronze. The pillars and canopy seem to be of very suitable elevation for the place, and yet we soon learn that they are ninety feet high.

I have before spoken of the size of the dome with its walls twenty-three feet thick, its own height one hundred and seventy-nine feet, and itself raised two hundred and seventy-seven feet above the floor of the church. The dome is sustained by four square pillars, two hundred and twenty-three feet in circumference. That is to say, each one of these pillars, or masses of masonry, is nearly sixty feet on each side, and therefore as large as one of our common-sized churches, if it were raised up and set on the end.

There is a small church and an adjoining house on the Strada Felice in Rome, designedly built so as to be

together equal to the size of one of these columns. And yet these columns do not seem to be in the way at all; they do not seem to occupy any disproportionate space; they do not encumber the mighty pavement!

With regard to the objects within St. Peter's, I can notice only two or three that struck me most. One of them is the monument to the last of the Stuarts, Charles Edward, and his brother Henry, the cardinal. There are two angels of death before which I have spent hours. So exquisitely moulded are their forms, so delicate, thoughtful, beautiful are their faces, so sad, too, as they are about to extinguish the torch of lifeas they stand leaning their cheeks upon the reverse end of the long, slender stem so sad, indeed, but then that sadness so relieved by beauty-intellectual, contemplative, winning beauty-it seems to my fancy, at times, as if they would certianly appear to me at my own death; as if they would flit before the imagination, and reconcile the soul to a departure effected by a ministry so beautiful. Ah! blessed angels! I may one day strech out my hands to you, and ask your aid --but not yet not yet. But sickness, sorrow, deprivation, calamity in some shape, may make you welcome, before one thinks to be ready.

Among the mosaic copies of paintings in which St. Peter's is so rich, there is one of the Incredulity of Thomas, which has always made one of my stoppingplaces, in taking the customary circuit. The eagerness of Thomas, the calm dignity of Jesus, are fine; but the face of John, as he stands just behind Thomas, and looks upon his rash act, is one to remember always. It seems to me the very personification of forbearance.