Our own fair earth-shall she too drift, Of stormy clouds, that surge and swirl Its dark cone stretching, ghast and grey, From the sad, unsated quest Of knowledge, how I longed to rest And leaned my ear on Nature's heart, I learned her temperate laws to scan, Her beauty melted through my inmost heart. Still I languished for the word A holy light began to stream "Pluck thou the Life-tree's golden fruit, "Royally the lilies grow Basking in the sun and dew, Doth the wild-fowl need a chart There the Morning Star shall find thee, Sin and sorrow cannot hide thee- In the mystic agony On the Mount of Calvary, The Saviour with his dying eyes "Then weep not by the charnel stone In redeemed Humanity. Though mourners at the portal wept, Is thy heart so lonely?-Lo, "The friend whom not thy fickle will, Shall seek thee through the realms of space. "Then pluck the Life-tree's golden fruit, The blind shall see-the dead shall live; The Dragon, from his empire driven, No more shall find his place in Heaven, 'Till e'en the Serpent power approve The divine potency of love." "Guard thy faith with holy care,— Faith shall walk the stormy water- THE TRAILING ARBUTUS. There's a flower that grows by the greenwood tree, stream. Like a pure hope, nursed beneath sorrow's wing, It is not found by the garden wall, In the dewy morn of an April day, And the budding leaves of the birch-trees throw As they scent its breath on the passing breeze, And the tangled mosses beside the way, Till they catch the glance of its quiet eye, For me, sweet blossom, thy tendrils cling Now as I linger, 'mid crowds alone, When the shadows deepen around my way How fain my spirit, in some far glen, A STILL DAY IN AUTUMN. I love to wander through the woodlands hoary, How through each loved, familiar path she lingers, Where, o'er the rock, her withered garland falls. Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold. The moist winds breathe of crispèd leaves and flow ers, In the damp hollows of the woodland sown, Mirgli g the freshness of autumnal showers With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown. Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow, Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground, With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow, The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound. Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding Like a fond lover loth to say farewell; Or, with shut wings, through silken folds intruding, Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell. The little birds upon the hillside lonely, Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, Silent as a sweet, wandering thought, that only Shows its bright wings and softly glides away. The scentless flowers, in the warm sunlight dreaming, Fo: get to breathe their fulness of delight,And through the tranced woods soft airs are streaming, Still as the dew-fall of the summer night. So, in my heart, a sweet, unwonted feeling The tulips lift their proud tiàrs, The lilac waves her plumes; But she can bloom on earth no more, Our primrose, pure and pale, Her eyes of dewy light; HENRY REED. HENRY REED, the late Professor of Literature and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, whose sudden death among the passengers of the steamer Arctic cast a shade over the intelligent circle in which he moved, belonged to an old and honored family in the state. His grandfather was Joseph Reed, the President of Pennsylvania, the secretary and confidant of Washington, and the incorruptible patriot, whose memorable answer to a munificent proposal of bribery and corruption from the British commissioners in 1778, is among the oft-repeated anecdotes of the Revolution :- 66 I am not worth purchasing, but, such as I am, the king of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it.' * 1808. He received his early education in the classical school of James Ross, a highly esteemed teacher of his day in Philadelphia. Passing to the University of Pennsylvania, he attained his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1825. He then pursued the study of the law in the office of John Sargent, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. After a short interval, he was, in the year 1831, elected Assistant Professor of English Literature in his University, and shortly after Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy. In 1835 he was elected Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. It was on a leave of absence from these college duties, that, in the spring of 1854, he left America for a summer visit to Europe, a pilgrimage which he had long meditated; and it was on his return in the ill-fated Arctic that he perished in the wreck of that vessel, September 27 of the same year. He had thus passed onehalf of his entire period of life in the literary duties of his college, as professor. The wife of this honored lawyer and civilian also holds a place in the memoirs of the Revolution. Esther de Berdt, as she appears from the correspondence and numerous anecdotes in the biography prepared by her grandson, the subject of this notice, was a lady of marked strength of character and refined disposition. She was the daughter of Dennis de Beidt, a London merchant much connected with American affairs, and the predecessor of Dr. Franklin as agent or the Province of Massachusetts. Having become acquainted with Mr. Reed in the society of Americans in which her father moved, she became his wife under circumstances of mournful interest, after the death of her parent, when removing to America she encountered the struggle of the Revolution, sustaining her family with great fortitude during the necessary absence of her husband on public duties. After acting well her part of a mother in America in those troublous times, and receiving the congratulations of Washington, she died in Philadelphia before the contest was closed, in 1780. The memoir by her grandson is a touching and delicate tribute to her memory, and a valuable contribution to the historical literature of the country. Henry Reed When we add to these few dates, Professor Reed's marriage in 1834 to Elizabeth White Bronson, a grand-daughter of Bishop White, we have completed the external record of his life, save in the few publications which he gave to the world. A diligent scholar, and of a thoroughbred cultivation in the best schools of English literature and criticism, of unwearied habits of industry, he would probably, as life advanced, have further served his country by new offerings of the fruits of his mental discipline and studies. The chief compositions of Professor Reed were several courses of lectures which he delivered to the public at the University of Pennsylvania, and of which a collection has been published since his death, by his brother, Mr. William B. Reed, with the title, Lectures on English Literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson. The tastes, mental habits, Henry Reed was born in Philadelphia, July 11, and associations of the writer, are fully exhibited *The Life of Esther De Berdt, afterwards Esther Reed, of Pennsylvania. Privately printed. Philadelphia: C. Sherman, Printer, 1853. in these productions, which cover many topics of moral and social philosophy, besides the criticism of particular authors. As a scholar and thinker, Mr. Reed belonged to a school of English writers who received their first impulses from the genius | of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is characterized by its sound conservatism, reverential spirit, and patient philosophical investigation. He was early brought into communication with Words worth, whom he assisted by the supervision and arrangement of an American edition of his poems. The preface to this work, and an elaborate article in the New York Review, of January, 1839, which appeared from his pen, show his devotion to this master of modern poetry. After the death of the poet, he superintended the publication of the American edition of the memoirs by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth. With the Coleridge family, he maintained a similar correspondence and intimate relation. A memoir which he prepared of Sara Coleridge for the Literary World,* though brief, was so carefully and characteristically executed, that it appeared not long after reprinted entire among the obituaries of the Gentleman's Magazine. A passage, referring to his foreign tour, from the personal introductory notice prefixed to the Lectures, will exhibit this relation to his English friends. No American, visiting the Old World as a private citizen, ever received a kinder or more discriminating welcome. The last months of his life were pure sunshine. Before he landed in England, his friends, the family of Dr. Arnold, whom he had only known by correspondence, came on board the ship to receive him; and his earliest and latest hours of European sojourn were passed under the roof of the great poet whose memory he most revered, and whose writings had interwoven themselves with his intellectual and moral being. "I do not know," he said in one of his letters to his family," what I have ever done to deserve all this kindness." And so it was throughout. In England he was at home in every sense; and scenes, which to the eye were strange, seemed familiar by association and study. His letters to America were expressions of grateful delight at what he saw and heard in the land of his forefathers, and at the respectful kindness with which he was everywhere greeted: and yet of earnest and loyal yearning to the land of his birth -his home, his family, and friends. It is no violation of good taste here to enumerate some of the friends for whose kind welcome Mr. Reed was so much indebted; I may mention the Wordsworths, Southeys, Coleridges, and Arnolds, Lord Mahon, Mr. Baring, Mr. Aubrey De Vere, Mr. Babbage, Mr. Henry Taylor, and Mr. Thackeray-names, one and all, associated with the highest literary or political distinction. He visited the Continent, and went, by the ordinary route, through France and Switzerland, as far south as Milan and Venice, returning by the Tyrol to Inspruck and Munich, and thence down the Rhine to Holland. But his last associations were with the cloisters of Canterbury (that spot, to my eye, of matchless beauty), the garden vales of Devonshire, the valley of the Wye, and the glades of Rydal. His latest memory of this earth was of beautiful England in her summer garb of verdure. The last words he ever wrote were in a letter of the 20th September to his venerable friend, Mrs. Wordsworth, thanking her and his English friends generally for all she and they had done for him. Professor Reed edited several books in con * No. 290, Aug. 21, 1852, nexion with his courses of instruction. In 1845 he prepared an edition of Alexander Reid's Dictionary of the English Language, and in 1847 edited "with an introduction and illustrative authorities," G. F. Graham's English Synonymes -the series of poetical citations added by him, being confined to Shakespeare, Milton, andWordsworth. He also edited American reprints of Thomas Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, and Lord Mahon's History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Paris. In 1851 he edited the Poetical Works of Thomas Gray, for which he prepared a new memoir, written with his accustomed judgment and precision. An Oration cya a True Education was delivered by him before the Zelosophic Society of the University of Pennsylvania in 1848. To this enumeration is to be added a life of his grandfather, Joseph Reed, published in Mr. Sparks's series of American biography.* The life and correspondence of Joseph Reed have been given to the public at length by Mr. William B. Reed, who is also the author of several published addresses and pamphlets, chiefly on historical subjects. Among them are A Letter on American History in 1847, originally written for circulation among a few friends interested in the organization of a department of that study in Girard College; and a Reprint of the original Letters from Washington to Joseph Reed, in connexion with the Sparks and Lord Mahon controversy.t ** In 1867 he replied, in a series of pamphlets, to the statements in Bancroft's His"tory of the United States relative to Joseph Reed. His chief work is World Essays: Among My Books. poetical and PROSE READING. ? It is a good practical rule to keep one's reading well proportioned in the two great divisions, prose and poetry. This is very apt to be neglected, and the consequence is a great loss of power, moral and intellectual, and a loss of some of the highest enjoyments of literature. It sometimes happens that some readers devote themselves too much to poetry; this is a great mistake, and betrays an ignorance of the true use of poetical studies. When this happens, it is generally with those whose reading lies chiefly in the lower and merely sentimental region of poetry, for it is hardly possible for the imagination to enter truly into the spirit of the great poets, without having the various faculties of the mind so awakened and invigorated, as to make a knowledge of the great prose writers also a necessity of one's nature. The disproportion lies usually in the other direction-prose reading to the exclusion of poetry. This is owing chiefly to the want of proper culture, for although there is certainly a great disparity of imaginative endowment, still the imagination is part of the universal mind of man, and it is a work of education to bring it into action in minds even the least imaginative. It is chiefly to the wilfully unimaginative mind that poetry, with all its wisdom and all its glory, is a sealed book. It sometimes happens, however, that a mind, well gifted with imaginative power, loses the capacity to relish poetry simply by the neglect of reading nietrical literature. This is a I sad mistake, inasmuch as the mere reader of prose cuts himself off from the very highest literary enjoyments; for if the giving of power to the mind be a characteristic, the most essential literature is to be found in poetry, especially if it be such as English poetry is, the embodiment of the very highest wisdom and the deepest feeling of our English race. hope to show in my next lecture, in treating the subject of our language, how rich a source of enjoyment the study of English verse, considered simply as an organ of expression and harmony, may be made; but to readers who confine themselves to prose, the metrical form becomes repulsive instead of attractive. It has been well observed by a living writer, who has exercised his powers alike in prose and verse, that there are readers "to whom the poetical form merely and of itself acts as a sort of veil to every meaning, which is not habitually met with under that form, and who are puzzled by a passage occurring in a poem, which would be at once plain to them if divested of its cadence and rhythm; not because it is thereby put into language in any degree more perspicuous, but because prose is the vehicle they are accustomed to for this particular kind of matter, and they will apply their minds to it in prose, and they will refuse their minds to it in verse.' ویر The neglect of poetical reading is increased by the very mistaken notion that poetry is a mere luxury of the mind, alien from the demands of practical life-a light and effortless amusement. This is the prejudice and error of ignorance. For look at many of the strong and largely cultivated minds, which we know by bicgraphy and their own works, and note how laige and precious an element of strength is their studious love of poetry. Where could we find a man of more earnest, energetic, practical cast of character than Arnold?-eminent as an historian, and in other the gravest departments of thought and learning, active in the cause of education, zealous in matters of ecclesiastical, political, or social reform; right or wrong, always intensely practical and single-hearted in his honest zeal; a champion for truth, whether in the history of ancient politics or present questions of modern society; and, with all, never suffering the love of poetry to be extinguished in his heart, or to be crowded out of it, but turning it perpetually to wise uses, bringing the poetic truths of Shakespeare and of Wordsworth to the help of the cause of truth; his enthusiasm for the poets breaking forth, when he exclaims, "What a treat it would be to teach Shakspeare to a good class of young Greeks in regenerate Athens; to dwell upon him line by line and word by word, and so to get all his pictures and thoughts leisurely into one's mind, till I verily think one would, after a time, almost give out light in the dark, after having been steeped, as it were, in such an atmosphere of brilliance!" This was the constitution not of one man alone, but of the greatest minds of the race; for if our Anglo-Saxon character could be analysed, a leading characteristic would be found to be the admirable combination of the practical and the poetical in it. This is reflected in all the best English literature, blending the ideal and the actual, never severing its highest spirituality from a steady basis of sober good sense-philosophy and poetry for ever disdosing affinities with each other. It was no false boast when it was said that "Our great poets have been our best political philosophers;" nor would it be to add, that they have been our best moralists. The reader, then, who, on the one hand, gives himself wholly to visionary poetic dreamings, is false to his Saxon blood; and equally false is he who divor ces himself from communion with the poets. There is no great philosopher in our language in whose genius imagination is not an active element; there is no great poet in whose character the philosophic element does not largely enter. This should teach us a lesson in our studies of English literature. For the combination of prose and poetic reading, a higher authority is to be found than the predominant characteristic of the Saxon intellect as displayed in our literature. In the One Book, which, given for the good of all mankind, is supernaturally fitted for all phases of humanity and all conditions of civilization, observe that the large components of it are history and poetry. How little else is there in the Bible! In the Old Testament all is chronicle and song, and the high-wrought poetry of prophecy. In the New Testainent are the same elements, with this difference, that the actual and the imaginative are more interpenetrated-narrative and parable, fact and poetry blended in matchless harmony; and even in the most argumentative portion of holy Writ, the poetic element is still present, to be followed by the vision and imagery of the Apocalypse. Such is the unquestioned combination of poetry and prose in sacred Writ-the best means, we must believe, for the universal and perpetual good of man ; and if literature have, as I have endeavored to prove, a kindred character, of an agency to build up our incorporeal being, then does it follow that we should take this silent warning from the pages of Revelation, and combine in our literary culture. the same elements of the actual and the ideal or imaginative. COMPANIONSHIP OF THE SEXES IN THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. All that is essential literature belongs alike to mind of woman and of man; it demands the same kind of culture from each, and most salutary may the companionship of mind be found, giving reciprocal help by the diversity of their power. Let us see how this will be. In the first place, a good habit of reading, whether in man or woman, may be described as the combination of passive recipiency from the book and the mind's reaction upon it; this equipoise is true culture. But, in a great deal of reading, the passiveness of impression is well nigh all, for it is luxurious indolence, and the reactive process is neglected. With the habitual novelreader, for instance, the luxury of reading becomes a perpetual stimulant, with no demand on the mind's own energy, and slowly wearing it away. The true enjoyment of books is when there is a co-operating power in the reader's mind-an active sympathy with the book; and those are the best books which demand that of you. And here let me notice how unfortunate and, indeed, mischievous a term is the word "taste" as applied in intercourse with literature or art; a metaphor taken from a passive sense, it fosters that lamentable error, that literature, which requires the strenuous exertion of action and sympathy, may be left to mere passive impressions. The temptation to receive an author's mind unre flectingly and passively is common to us all, but greater, I believe, for women, who gain, however, the advantages of a readier sympathy and a more unquestioning faith. The man's mind reacts more on the book, sets himself more in judgment upon it, and trusts less to his feelings; but, in all this, he is in more danger of bringing his faculties separately into action; he is more apt to be misled by our imperfect systems of metaphysics, which give us none but the most meagre theories of the human mind, and which are destined, I believe, to be swept away, if ever a great philosopher should devote himself to |