them. She despatches, however, her envoys unto them-mean and poor representatives of their queen. To Ambition, she sends power; to Avarice, wealth; to Love, jealousy; to Revenge, remorse ;-alas! what are these, but so many other names for vexation or disappointment? Neither is she to be won by flatteries nor by bribes: She is to be gained by waging war against her enemies, much sooner than paying any particular court to herself. Those that conquer her adversaries, will find that they need not go to her, for she will come unto them. None bid so high for her as kings; few are more willing, none more able to purchase her alliance at the fullest price. But she has no more respect for kings than for their subjects; she mocks them, indeed, with the empty show of a visit, by sending to their palaces all her equipage, her pomp, and her train; but she comes not herself. What detains her? She is traveling incognito to keep a private assignation with Contentment, and to partake of a otête-à-tête, and a dinner of herbs in a cottage. Hear, then, mighty queen! what sovereigns seldom hear, the words of soberness and truth. I neither despise thee too little, nor desire thee too much; for thou wieldest an earthly sceptre, and thy gifts cannot exceed thy dominion. Like other potentates, thou also art a creature of circumstances, and an ephemeris of time. Like other potentates, thou also, when stripped of thy auxiliaries, art no longer competent even to thine own subsistence; nay, thou canst not even stand by thyself. Unsupported by Content on the one hand, and by: Health on the other, thou fallest, an unwieldly and bloated °pageant, to the ground. REV. C. C. °COLTON. CII. THE FUNERAL OF ARVALAN. MIDNIGHT, and yet no eye Through all the Imperial city closed in sleep. Behold her streets a-blaze With light that seems to kindle the red sky, Her myriads swarming through the crowded ways! Master and slave, old age and infancy, All, all abroad to gaze; House-top and balcony Clustered with women, who throw back their veils With unimpeded and insatiate sight To view the funeral pomp which passes by, As if the mournful rite Were but to them a scene of joyance and delight. Hark! 'tis the funeral trumpet's breath! At once ten thousand drums begin, With one long thunder-peal the ear assailing; And with one deep and general din Pour their wild wailing. The song of praise is drowned Amid the deafening sound: You hear no more the trumpet's tone, You hear no more the mourner's moan, Though the trumpet's breath, and the dirge of deata, But rising over all in one acclaim Is heard the echoed and re-echoed name, Arvalan! Arvalan! Ten times ten thousand voices in one shout The death procession moves along Their bald-heads shining to the torches' ray, And now at once they shout The universal multitude reply. In vain ye thunder on his ear the name; Borne upright in his "palankeen' There Arvalan' is seen! A glow is on his face-a lively red; It is the crimson canopy Which o'er his cheek a reddening shade hath shed! He moves, he nods his head, But the motion comes from the bearer's tread, As the body bōrne aloft in state Sways with the impulse of its own dead weight. Close following his dead son, Kehama came, Nor joining in the ritual song, Nor calling the dear name; With head leprest, and funeral vest, Silent, and lost in thought, he moves along. That nature, in his pride, hath dealt the blow, Even he himself is man, and not exempt from woe. CIII. THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Ir were superfluous to speak in praise of this work. It seizes us in childhood with the strong hand of its power, our manhood surrenders to the spell of its sweet sorcery, and its grasp upon us relaxes not when "mingles the brown of life with sober gray," nay, is often strongest amid the weariness of waning years. Its scenes are as familiar to us as the faces at home. Its characters live to our perceptions, no less than to our understanding. We have seen them all, conversed with them, realized their diversities of character and experience for ourselves. There never was a poem which so thoroughly took possession of our hearts, and hurried them along upon the stream of the story. We have an identity of in'terest with the hero in all his doubts and dangers. We start with him on his Pilgrimage; we speed with him in eager haste to the gate; we gaze with him on the sights of wonder; we climb with him the difficult hill; the blood rushes to our cheeks warm and proud as we gird ourselves for the combat with Apollyon; it curdles at the heart again amid the "hydras and chimeʼras °dire" of the Valley of the Shadow of Death; we look with him upon the scoffing multitude from the cage of the town of Vanity; we now lie, listless and sad, and now flee, fleet and happy, from the cell in Doubting Castle; we walk with him amid the pleasantness of Beulah; we ford the river in his company; we hear the joy-bells ringing in the City of Habitation; we see and greet the hosts of welcoming angels; and it is to us as the gasp of agony with which the drowning come back to life, when some rude call of earthly concernment arouses us from our reverie, and we wake, and behold, it is a dream. Thêre must be marvelous power in a book that can work such enchantment, wrought withal with the most perfect self-unconsciousness on the part of the enchanter himself. "The joy that made him write" was, in no sense, the prospect of literary fame. With the true modesty of genius he hesitated long as to the propriety of publication, and his fellow-prisoners in the jail were impanneled as a literary jury, upon whose verdict depended the fate of the story which has thrilled the pulses of the world. In fact, his book fulfilled a necessity of his nature. He wrote because he must write: the strong thoughts within him labored for expression. The "Pilgrim's Progress" was written without thought of the world. It is just a wealthy mind rioting in its own riches for its own pleasure; an earnest soul painting in the colors of a vivid imagination its older anguish, and revelling in exultation at the prospect of its future joy. And while the dreamer thus wrote °primarily for himself-a "prison amusement" at once beguiling and hallowing the hours of a weary bondage-he found to his delight, and perhaps to his surprise, that his vision became a household book to thousands; worldlings enraptured with its picture, with no inkling of the drift of its story; Christians pressing it to their hearts as a night" of their trouble, or finding in its thrilling pages hope" through which they glimpsed the coming of the day. There was no affectation, but a well-grounded apprehension in "Cowper's well known line: "Lest so despised a name should move a sneer." song in the 46 a door of At length, long the darling of the populace, it became the study of the learned. Critics went down into its treasure-chambers, and were astonished at their wealth and beauty. The initiated ratified the foregone conclusion of the vulgar; the Tinker's dream became a rational classic; and the pontificate of literature installed it with a blessing and a prayer. No uninspired work has extorted eulogies from a larger host of the men of mark and likelihood. That it redeemed into momentary kindliness a ferocious critic like Swift; that it surprised, from the leviathan lips of Johnson, the confession that he had read it through and wished it longer; that Byron's banter spared it, and that Scott's chivalry was fired by it; that Southey's philosoph'ical analysis, and Franklin's serene contemplation, and Mackintosh's elegant research, and Macaulay's artistic criticism, should have resulted in a symphony to its praise; that the spacious intellect and poet-heart of Coleridge rev'elled with equal gladness in its pages; that the scholarly Arnold, chafed by the attritions of the age, and vexed by the doubt-clouds which darkened upon his gallant soul, lost his trouble in its company, and looked through it to the Bible, which he deemed it faithfully to mirror;—all these are cumulative testimonies that it established its empire over minds themselves imperial, and constrained their acknowledgment of its kingly power. REV. W. M. PUNSHON. CIV.-SUNRISE AND SUNSET. "At evening-time it shall be light." FIRST VOICE. How beautiful is MORNING, Of gold and amethyst. Oh! then, earth, air, and sky, with music ring, And like the lark, our souls at heaven's gate sing. Such be the morning of thy life's young day, Without a care to dim its rosy ray, SECOND VOICE. But morn, sweet morn, must vanish; Before his glance of fire; The flowers bend pale and drooping, Robbed of their pearly dew; No lark's glad song is thrilling Yon sky of burning blue. Then comes the heat and burden of the day, THIRD VOICE. Then, lovelier than the morning, To crown the well-spent day. As balmy are the blossoms Its holy dews have kissed; Of gold and amethyst. Then is the time to rest; 'neath angel-wings, |