How hast thou used the boundless power
That unto thee was given?

The seeds of good thou had'st to sow,
How have they grown and thriven?
The barren places of the earth

Hast thou like gardens made?
Do arid wildernesses smile

With green bough and with blade? And doth the gospel sunlight shine Where all before was shade?

Thou answerest, yea, the mental waste
Is now a waste no more;

My missionaries have gone forth
To every distant shore;

My merchant-ships have crossed the main
To civilize mankind;

No more the savage is a brute,

The heathen no more blind;

And broken are the chains which bind
The body or the mind.

'Tis even so-thou hast done this,
And unabashed might'st stand
Before the judgment seat, but there
Are red spots on thy hand,

And Pride is throned upon thy brow,
And Hatred in thy heart;

From many a fair and fertile realm
Thou badest Peace depart;
And oft with words of brotherhood,
Didst act a foeman's part.

How will the Hindoo testify,
And how the brave Affghan,
The dweller by the Yellow Sea,
The red Canadian ?

Will not thy sister Erin have
A mournful tale to tell?

Will not accusing voices rise

From Scottish height and dell; And Cambria send a list of wrongs The catalogue to swell?

Oh, thou hast run a mad career
Of conquest and of blood;
A chequered record is thy past
Of evil mixed with good.
Too willing ere to take offence,
Too prompt to draw the sword;'
Of generous heart and open hand,
Yet smiting at a word;

With evil thoughts, and passion wild,

Too readily upstirred.

Surrounding nations have looked on
In jealousy and fear,

To see thy wide possessions still
Increasing year by year:
They wait until thy lion's paw

Hath a less nervous sweep,

Till languor or decrepitude
Have laid his powers asleep,
For slights and fancied injuries
To take a vengeance deep.

They watch, and not methinks in vain,
Disgraces to retrieve;

The times are big with bodeful signs,
Thy faithful sons to grieve;
Distress and Poverty combine
Thy limbs to paralyze;

The voice of discontent is heard
From all thy towns to rise;
Where famine-goaded multitudes
With wild shouts rend the skies.

Oh, let thine armies be recalled
That pillage and lay waste;
Be just, be true, be merciful,
Nor self-destruction haste;
Let equal laws be felt by all
Who dwell thy sway beneath;
Unchain thy ports, let commerce be
Free as the heaven's breath;
Or it may hap that, scorpion-like,
Thou'lt sting thyself to death.

Look back to other times, and learn
Deep wisdom from the past;
The reign of fraud and violence
When knew ye this to last?
Pride goeth e'er before a fall,
God grant thine be not near!
A people should be ruled by Love
And not by slavish FEAR;
A nation that but forgeth chains,
Perchance those chains may wear.

HUMAN INVENTIONS.

Ir is amazing and delightful to consider what seemingly difficult things are done by means of human knowledge, scanty and confined as it is. The wonders performed by means of reading and writing are so striking, that some learned men have given it as their opinion, that the whole was communicated to mankind originally by some superior being. That by means of the various compositions of about twenty different articulations of the human voice, performed by the assistance of the lungs, the glottis, the tongue, the lips, and the teeth, ideas of all sensible and intelligible objects in nature, in art, in science, in history, in morals, in

supernaturals, should be communicable from one mind to another; and again, that signs should be contrived, by which those articulations of the human voice should be expressed, so as to be communicable from one mind to another by the eye; this seems really beyond the reach of humanity left to itself. To imagine, for example, the first of mankind capable of inventing any set of sounds, which should be fit to communicate to one another the idea of what is meant by virtue or rectitude, or any other idea wholly unconnected with any kind of sound whatever, and afterwards of inventing a set of signs, which should give the mind by the eye, an idea of what is properly an object of the sense of hearing (as a word when expressed with the voice, represents an idea, which is the mere object of the understanding); to imagine mankind, in the first ages of the world, without any hint from superior beings, capable of this, seems doing too great honor to our nature. Be that as it will; that one man should, by uttering a set of sounds no way connected with, or naturally representative of one set of ideas more than another; that one man should, by such seemingly unfit means, enlighten the understanding, rouse the passions, delight or terrify the imagination of another; and that he should not only be able to do this when present, viva voce, but that he should produce the same effect by a set of figures which are themselves the representatives of ideas, is truly admirable.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILBEN FOUNDATIONS.