they are more harmonious than the best of battle hymns or the most celebrated of modern songs. They awaken emotions deep, tender, and lasting; they cause us to exult in the triumph of the Jewish return; to mourn when they are oppressed. The lamentation called forth by the taunts of their enemies, in whose land they were held captive, cannot be equalled for pathos and passion.

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat down, yea we wept when we remembered Zion," and as the prophet sings the multitude weeps, their sadness and loneliness increased by the words; but their resolutions are greatly strengthened.

Thus has been described Miriam's song and its effect! "Hark! the hum of a mighty host. It rose and fell, fainter, and more faint, then the murmur of water was heard and lost, as it welled and gathered, and burst in one grand volume of sound like a hallelujah from myriad lips.

Out from the resounding echo, out from the dying cadence, a single female voice arose. Clear, pure, rich, it soared above the tumult of the crowd that hushed itself, a living thing. Higher, sweeter, it seemed to break the fetters of mortality, and tremble in divine adoration before the Infinite. My breath stilled with awe. Was it a spirit voice-one of the glittering host in the jaspar city, that has no need of the sun, nor of the moon to shine in it? Was the water, the river clear as crystal, flowing from the great white throne? But no, the voice now floated out soft, sad, human. There was no mournful strain in that nightless land, where the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations; the beautiful voice was of the earth, and sin-stricken. From the sobbing mingled with the rippling of the waters it went up once more gladly, joyfully; it went up inspired to the sky, and, hark! the Hebrew tongue : 'The horse and rider hath he thrown into the sea.'"

O, power, not to be imagined, not to be equalled, not to be described; carrying the soul to the gates of the celestial city itself!

THE OLD SONG.

A little song came floating on the air
Up to my window, and I listened there,
With quivering lip but most attentive ear,
To every note that rose so sweet and clear.
As welcome as the coming of the April sun
And odorous breath of violets to one,
Who, on his bed of weariness and pain
Yearns but to see the blooms of spring again,
So came to me the notes that trilled along
The tender words of that most cherished song.
"I cannot sing the old songs ;"-then my head
Bent lowly, for it seemed I heard the tread
Of solemn feet, far in the evening gloom,
That bore a cherished friendship to its tomb,
And then, O memory! thy serried hosts
Uprose within my heart; those troubled ghosts
That would not rest in peace, but haunted me
With mournful eyes that dimmed my own to see.
I thought then of another voice that oft

Had breathed that very song in notes as soft;

Another voice, whose music has for me
Died as the fickle wind dies on the sea;

As suddenly as though the hand of death

Had touched the lips and hushed the trilling breath.

I thought of this ;-the memory that brings
Such vain regret,—the bitterest c☛ stings,—
A❝ harsh word spoken." "Ah, 'twill ever be
That that sweet song shall be "too dear to me."

GEORGE BRENT.

THE ENERGIES OF OUR CIVILIZATION.

[An oration delivered by C. Park, at the preliminary Junior Orator contest of the Franklin Literary Society, Wednesday evening, December 9th.]

Themistocles boasted that he knew how to make a small state a great one. The misty horizon shut in the sunburnt plains of Attica. The desert air trembled over the base and withered crags of the Acropolis. The little stream in the valley below had well-nigh poured itself away to slake its own thirst. Little barren Attica was the only retreat for the small weak tribes that wandered over early

Greece. Here, they were safe in their babyhood of reason. Here, they were safe in their wretchedness and poverty. The very wilderness was their defense.

To-day, Attica is canopied with the same lurid skies. To-day, the same hot air trembles in her sunlight. To-day, the same Acropolis looms up before the same barren plains. To-day, her mountain steeps are sprinkled with scrub-oaks and fir-trees. To-day, her Summers drink up her winter torrents. But is this all of Attica,— and how little-of Attica, the nurse of heroes, the mother of eloquence and the school of minds? Read the answer in the sacred halo of humiliated Athens; read it, stereotyped on the world's heart, on its history, on the corner-stones of its civilization,—yea hear it, as it still echoes along the file of ages, quickening and energizing the intellectual life of millions, and then wonder not that on every pale olive leaf, on every broken column, on every wrinkled rock, throughout that classic land, are written the eloquence, the mind, of an expired nation. The boast of Themistocles was neither idle nor vain. There was true philosophy in it. He would distinguish a nation by its mental criteria, and not alone by its “ plumed and jewelled turbans,” by its "barbaric pearl and gold.” He would judge it by its worth in force of character, in energy, in enterprise, in manhood, and not by the vanity of its grandeur, nor the poetry of its childish fancy, nor the infancy of its reason, nor the helplessness of its effeminacy. That nations differ by their minds. trates to the very springs of national life, lengthening, broadening, deepening the channels of prosperity, influence and success, whether for a day or an age. What a tremendous power! what an energy of civilization, if it be guided in the right direction, if it study life as an awful stupendous fact, as a "solemn reality and waking" and not as a fine dream, if it be that worthy a free, noble, patriotic people, and not that which prevailed in the Paris of Louis XIV, who said that he was the state. It must be a culture that shall seek to give tone, and impetus, and stimulus, to the intellect of the whole people. Such mental culture will gain the victories in the name of liberty, victories in the name of peace. Such a mental culture will triumph over bigotry and prejudice, and teach the world that every contact need not be one of war. O, let all humanity study the humanities, that advance only in the name of pleasure and

This then is the vital truth : Mental culture alone pene

peace, and there will be no wrecks of

empires, no seas of blood. But let us enter into a little more detail. The spirit of mind always keeps pace with the spirit of the age. The two must beat in harmony. Let one strike a lower note, and the other is hushed in the discord. The national mind then, not only reflects and images the national character and strength. It is more than a passive mirror. It is an energy, a power, a genius directing, sustaining, developing industrial art, utilizing our liberty, perpetuating our peace, in the fullest sense, it is an energy of our civilization. Industrial art is the primary condition of our success as a nation and as a republic. There is a vital connection between it and mental culture. Quicken the latter, and you energize the former. What is the universe, but the material expression of God's creative genius? What is our industrial art, but the physical expression of cultured thought? Little England is almost hidden in the fogs and waves of the Atlantic, yet to-day she ranks first in industrial art, and among the first in literature. Behold then the connection between mind and labor and that very same connection you can see every where else in the civilized world. But Webster says "the mind is the lever of all things." As such, it not only moves and actuates the industrial world, but the Civil and Social, the domain of truth, liberty and peace. It is truth that frees men, and it is mental culture that frees truth. It was the culture of the American mind that disclosed to it, and to the world, the overwhelming truth of liberty, and the black falsehood of slavery. And to-day the culture of the universal mind, is disclosing another triumphing truth, the truth of peace, the brotherhood of nations: for the nations are fast learning that arbitration binds and heals, where war would sever and wound. But the genius of mind does not stop here. Industrial art, liberty, peace and morality do not only receive her blessings. They are but the stepping stones to greater elevations on which humanity shall finally stand, full of confidence in itself, and of faith in its God.

The law of mind is progress. No power then can resist the action of mind, but the divine power. By its action it constantly developes new facts, unlocks old mysteries, establishes the omnipotence of science and revelation, yea, energizes our civilization. Why then need we wonder that we are, what we are? Let us

rather be surprised at what we are not. The divine energy of

But there is another energy

mind is the energy of our civilization. that makes our civilization beautiful,and noble,and lasting. It is the energy that came into action before the grand uprising of the divine soul of Nazereth. It is the energy that smote with confusion and terror the godlike atoms of Tyndall on crucifixion day, on resurrection day, and whose very pity, and love and sacrifice, will warm the hearts of men in spite of the cold, bald materialism of Huxley, and Darwin, and Spencer. O this beautiful civilization of the heart ! This energy that purifies the within, that electrifies by its impulses the aims and minds of men! See it quickening the martyrs into life eternal. Hear it ringing out on the cold desolate air of New England, in the hymnal songs of the Pilgrims. Behold it leaning on heaven, in the "so help us God" of the first Continental Con. gress. Yea, behold it as a principle, running through all time, more fundamental than any law of nature, underlying all civil and social liberty, and upon the contempt or regard for which depends the equilibrium of state, its happiness, its peace, its prosperity. What civilization needs to-day is a practical and not an ideal manhood. Christianity works its perfect type of the latter, reduces the former to every-day life. Plato had a grand ideal of manhood when in his Dialogues he said: "May I, being of sound mind, do unto others as I would they should do unto me Socrates had a noble ideal of manhood; and the life that has just gone out-that of John Stuart Mill,—was the action of a noble manhood. But these men, though they were very learned, were unsafe as guides. They were preeminently ever searching, yet never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Other men might have seen in them something of the spirit of manhood, and yet they failed to catch it. But Christ, by his wonderful power, by his life and death, by his vital contact with the heart of humanity, imparted to it the true energy of manhood, or as one of our divines well says: “He hurled the very law of love into the bosom of men.”

Blessed energies of intellect and heart! May they never fail our civilization; but may they ever spread their influences further and further, until the whole world shall become one vast field for their action, in preparing and perfecting all humanity for its highest destiny, its noblest civilization, its life with God.