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wisdom, and overflowing beneficence, will, at every step, surround you. The infinitely great and the infinitely little will compete for your admiration; and, in contemplating the great scheme of creation which these inquiries present to your minds, you will not overlook the almost superhuman power by which it has been developed.

2. Fixed upon the pedestal of his native earth, and with no other instrument but the eye and the hand, the genius of man has penetrated the dark and distant recesses of time and space. The finite has comprehended the infinite. The being of a day has pierced backwards into primeval time, deciphering the subterranean monuments, and inditing its chronicle of countless ages. In the rugged crust and shattered pavement of our globe, he has detected those gigantic forces by which our seas and continents have changed places, -by which our mountain ranges have emerged from the bed of the ocean,- by which the gold, and the silver, the coal, and the iron, and the lime, have been thrown into the hands of man as the materials of civilization, and by which mighty cycles of animal and vegetable life have been embalmed and entombed.

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3. In your astronomical studies, the Earth on which you dwell will stand forth in space a suspended ball, taking its place as one of the smallest of the planets, and like them pursuing its appointed path, -the arbiter of times and seasons. Beyond our planetary system, now extended, by the discovery of Neptune, to nearly three thousand millions of miles from the sun, and throughout the vast expanse of the universe, the telescope will exhibit to you new suns and systems of worlds, infinite in number and variety, sustaining, doubtless, myriads of living beings, and presenting new spheres for the exercise of divine power and beneficence.

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4. The advances which have recently been made in the mechanical and useful arts, have already begun to influence our social condition, and must affect still more deeply our systems of education. The knowledge which used to constitute a scholar, and fit him for social and intellectual intercourse, will not avail him under the present ascendency of practical science. New and gigantic inventions mark almost every passing year, the colossal tubular bridge, conveying the monster train over an arm of the sea, the submarine cable, carrying the pulse of speech beneath two thousand miles of ocean, the monster ship freighted with thousands of lives, and the huge rifle-gun, throwing its fatal charge across miles of earth or of ocean.

5. New arts, too, useful and ornamental, have sprung up luxuriantly around us. New powers of Nature have been evoked, and man communicates with man across seas and continents with more certainty and speed than if he had been endowed with the velocity of the race-horse, or provided with the pinions of the eagle. Wherever we are, in short, art and science surround us. They have given birth to new and lucrative professions. Whatever we purpose to do, they help us. In our houses, they greet us with light and heat. When we travel, we find them at every stage on land, and at every harbor on our shores. They stand beside our board by day, and beside our couch by night.

6. To our thoughts they give the speed of lightning ; and to our time-pieces, the punctuality of the sun; and though they can not provide us with the boasted lever of Archimedes' to move the earth, or indicate the spot upon which we must stand, could we do it, they have put into our hands tools of matchless power, by which we can study the remotest worlds; and they have furnished us with an

intellectual plummet, by which we can sound the depths of the earth, and count the cycles of its endurance.

7. In his hour of presumption and ignorance, man has tried to do more than this; but, though he was not permitted to reach the heavens with his cloud-capped tower of stone, and has tried in vain to navigate the aërial ocean, it was given him to ascend into the empyrean2 by chains of thought which no lightning could fuse, and no comet strike; and though he has not been allowed to grasp with an arm of flesh the products of other worlds, or tread upon the pavement of gigantic planets, he has been enabled to scan, with more than an eagle's eye, the mighty creations in the bosom of space, to march intellectually over the mosaics of sidereal systems, and to follow the adventurous Phaeton in a chariot which can never be overturned.

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LESSON XCIV.

GAUL, a native or inhabitant of Gaul, the name anciently given to France. GOTH, one of an ancient tribe or nation, of Asiatic origin, who overran the Roman Empire, and took an important part in its subversion.

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He bade the guiding Spirit of the stars,
With lightning speed, in silver-shining cars,
Along the bright floor of his azure hall
Advance!

Sun, Stars, and Time obey the voice, and all
Advance!

2. The river at its bubbling fountain cries,

Advance!

The clouds proclaim, like heralds, through the skies,
Advance!

Throughout the world, the mighty Master's laws
Allow not one brief moment's idle pause;
The earth is full of life, the swelling seeds

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Advance!

And summer hours, like flowery harnessed steeds,
Advance!

3. To man's most wondrous hand the same voice cried, Advance!

Go, clear the woods, and o'er the bounding tide
Advance!

Go, draw the marble from its secret bed,
And make the cedar bend its giant head;
Let domes and columns through the wandering air

Advance!

The world, O man! is thine. But wouldst thou share?

Advance!

4. Unto the soul of man the same voice spoke,

Advance!

From out the chaos thunder-like it broke,

Advance!

Go, track the comet in its wheeling race,
And drag the lightning from its hiding-place;
From out the night of ignorance and tears,

Advance!

For love and hope, borne by the coming years,
Advance !

5. All heard, and some obeyed, the great command,

Advance!

It passed along from listening land to land,
Advance!

The strong grew stronger, and the weak grew strong, As passed the war-cry of the world along,

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Awake, ye nations! know your powers and rights;

Advance!

Through Hope and Work, to Freedom's new delights, Advance!

6. Knowledge came down, and waved her steady torch, Advance!

Sages proclaimed, 'neath many a marble porch,
Advance!

As rapid lightning leaps from peak to peak,
The Gaul,' the Goth,2 the Roman, and the Greek,
The painted Briton, caught the wingèd word,

Advance!

And earth grew young, and caroled as a bird,
Advance!

LESSON XCV.

THE POLAR STAR.

WESTBY GIBSON.

1. TAR of the North, whose clear, cold light

STAR

Breaks on the darkness of the sky,

When solemn-paced the pilgrim Night
In silence journeys by!

Watcher by heaven's embattled walls,
How far through Nature's circle falls
The radiance of thine eye?

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