*

*

ciled within itself some features supposed to be at variance, as transcendentalism in philosophy, supernaturalism in religion, and earnest devotion to practical reforms in real life. He believes heartily in the Church, and his labors have been much devoted to the improvement of the forms of worship and fellowship. The worship of the Church of the Disciples combines the features of responses on the part of the congregation, as in the English Church, the extempore prayer of the Congregationalists, and the silent prayer of the Friends. In faith Mr. Clarke inclines to the Evangelical party, so called, in the Unitarian denomination." Dr. Clarke's writings are numerous in theology, hisory, criticism, and general literature. From April, 1836, to May, 1839, he edited The Western Messenger, a monthly journal of religion, morals, and literature, published at Louisville, Ky., contributing many of its articles. In 1841 he translated from the German of De Wette, Theodore, or the Skeptic's Conversion, published in George Ripley's "Specimens of Foreign Literature." He has also translated from the German Hase's Life of Jesus, published in Boston in 1860. In 1848 he published in an octavo volume, in New York, a History of the Campaign of 1812, and Surrender of the Post of Detroit. In 1852 he was associated with the Rev. W. H. Channing and R. W. Emerson in the preparation of the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, each author contributing an independent portion of the work. He has also written various devotional works: A Service Book for the Use of the Church of the Disciples; Book of Worship for the Congregation and Home; The Christian Doctrine of the Forgiveness of Sins; the Christian Doctrine of Prayer, besides numerous sermons and discourses published at different times, and many articles in the Christian Examiner, the Dial, North American Review, &c., on literary and theological topics. In 1846 he delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, and has contributed poems to various periodicals. In 1864 he delivered a discourse in Boston at a tercentenary celebration of the birth of Shakspeare.

** Rev. Dr. Clarke has published in recent years: The Hour which Cometh, and Now Is, 1862; Sermons Preached in Indiana Place Chapel, Boston, 1864; Orthodoxy: Its Truth and Errors, 1866; Steps of Belief; or, Rational Christianity Maintained Against Atheism, &c., 1870; and Ten Great Religions, 1870. The latter work, a contribution towards comparative theology, is described as an attempt to compare the great religions of the world with each other. Its objects are to show wherein they agree and wherein they differ; and thus to distinguish them from each other; to determine the place, use, and value of each; and to show the relation of each partial religion to human civilization, and as a step in the progress of humanity." Common Sense in Religion followed in 1873.

A GLANCE AT COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY FROM TEN GREAT RELIGIONS.

Comparative Theology will probably show that the Ethnic Religions are one-sided, each containing a truth of its own, but being defective, want

ing some corresponding truth. Christianity, or the Catholic Religion, is complete on every side.

Brahmanism, for example, is complete on the side of spirit, defective on the side of matter; full as regards the infinite, empty of the finite; recognizing eternity but not time, God but not nature. It is a vast system of spiritual pantheism, in which there is no reality but God, all else being Maya, or illusion The Hindoo mind is singularly pious, but also singularly immoral. It has no history, for history belongs to time. No one knows when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began, what caused its progress, what its decline. Gentle, devout, abstract, it is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions. It combines the most ascetic self-denials and abstraction from life with the most voluptuous self-indulgence. The key to the whole system of Hindoo thought and life is in this original tendency to see God, not man; eternity, not time; the infinite, not the finite.

Buddhism, which was a revolt from Brahmanism, has exactly the opposite truths and the opposite defects. Where Brahmanism is strong, it is weak; where Brahmanism is weak, it is strong. It recognizes man, not God; the soul, not the all; the finite, not the infinite; morality, not piety. Its only God, Buddha, is a man who has passed on through innumerable transmigrations, till, by means of exemplary virtues, he has reached the lordship of the universe. Its heaven, Nirvana, is indeed the world of infinite bliss; but, incapable of cognizing the infinite, it calls it nothing Heaven, being the inconceivable infinite, is equivalent to pure negation. Nature, to the Buddhist, instead of being the delusive shadow of God, as the Brahman views it, is envisaged as a nexus of laws, which reward and punish impartially both obedience and disobedience.

The system of Confucius has many merits, especially in its influence on society. The most conservative of all systems, and also the most prosaic, its essential virtue is reverence for all that is. It is not perplexed by any fear or hope of change; and the very idea of progress is eliminated from the thing which has been is that which shall be; the thought of China. Safety, repose, peace, these are its blessings. Probably merely physical comfort, earthly bien-être, was never carried further than in the Celestial Empire. That virtue so much exploded in Western civilization, of respect for parents, remains in full force in China. The emperor is honored as the father of his people; ancestors are worshipped in every family; and the best reward offered for a good action is a patent of nobility, which does not reach forward to one's children, but backward to one's parents. This is the bright side of Chinese life; the dark side is the fearful ennui, the moral death, which falls on a people among whom there are no such things as hope, expectation, or the sense of progress. Hence the habit of suicide among this people, indicating their small hold on life. In every Chinese drama there are two or three suicides. A soldier will commit suicide rather than go into battle. If you displease a Chinaman, he will resent the offence by killing himself on your door-step, hoping thus to give you some inconvenience. Such are the merits and such the defects of the system of Confucius.

The doctrine of Zoroaster and of the Zend Avesta is far nobler. Its central thought is that each man is a soldier, bound to battle for good against evil. The world, at the present time, is

the scene of a great warfare between the hosts of light and those of darkness. Every man who Every man who thinks purely, speaks purely, and acts purely, is a servant of Ormazd, the king of light, and thereby helps on his cause. The result of this doctrine was that wonderful Persian empire, which astonished the world for centuries by its brilliant successes; and the virtue and intelligence of the Parsees of the present time, the only representatives in the world of that venerable religion. The one thing lacking to the system is unity. It lives in perpetual conflict. Its virtues are all the virtues of a soldier. Its defects and merits are, both, the polar opposites of those of China. If the everlasting peace of China tends to moral stagnation and death, the perpetual struggle and conflict of Persia tends to exhaustion. The Persian empire rushed through a short career of flame to its tomb; the Chinese empire vegetates, unchanged, through a myriad of years.

If Brahmanism and Buddhism occupy the opposite poles of the same axis of thought, if the system of Confucius stands opposed, on another axis, to that of Zoroaster, - we find a third development of like polar antagonisms in the systems of ancient Egypt and Greece. Egypt stands for Nature; Greece for Man. Inscrutable as is the mystery of that Sphinx of the Nile, the old religion of Egypt, we can yet trace some phases of its secret. Its reverence for organization appears in the practice of embalming. The bodies of men and of animals seemed to it to be divine. Even vegetable organization had something sacred in it: "O holy nation," said the Roman satirist, "whose gods grow in gardens!" That plastic force of nature which appears in organic life and growth made up, in various forms, as we shall see in the proper place, the Egyptian Pantheon. The life-force of nature became divided into the three groups of gods, the highest of which represented its largest generalizations. Kneph, Neith, Sevech, Pascht, are symbols, according to Lcpsius, of the World-Spirit, the World-Matter, Space and Time. Each circle of the gods shows us some working of the mysterious powers of nature, and of its occult laws. But when we come to Greece, these personified laws turn into men. Everything in the Greek Pantheon is human. All human tendencies appear transfigured into glowing forms of light on Mount Olympus. The gods of Egypt are powers and laws; those of Greece are persons.

The opposite tendencies of these antagonist forms of piety appear in the development of Egyptian and Hellenic life. The gods of Egypt were mysteries too far removed from the popular apprehension to be objects of worship; and so religion in Egypt became priesteraft. In Greece, on the other hand, the gods were too familiar, too near to the people, to be worshipped with any real reverence. Partaking in all human faults and vices, it must sooner or later come to pass that familiarity would breed contempt. And as the religion of Egypt perished from being kept away from the people, as an esoteric system in the hands of priests, that of Greece, in which there was no priesthood as an order, came to an end because the gods ceased to be objects of respect

at all.

WILLIAM HAYNE SIMMONS-JAMES WRIGHT

SIMMONS.

DR. W. H. SIMMONS is a native of South Carolina, and at present a resident of East Florida.

He is a graduate of the medical school of Philadelphia, but has never practised the profession. He published anonymously some years since at Charleston, an Indian poem, with the title, Onea, which contains descriptive passages of merit. Mr. Simmons is also the author of a History of the Seminoles. The following is from his pen :

THE BELL BIRD.*

Here Nature, clad in vestments rich and gay,
Sits like a bride in gorgeous palace lone;
And sees naught move, and hears no sound all day,
Save from its cloudy source the torrent tumbling,
And to the mountain's foot its glories humbling,
Or wild woods to the desert gale that moan!
From the tall pine's glossy spine, where the breeze,
Or, far, the Araponga's note deep toiling
Impels the leafy billows, ever rolling.
Disporting o'er the green and shoreless seas,
It comes again! sad as the passing bell,
That solitary note!-unseen whence swell
The tones so drear-so secret is the shade
Where that coy dweller of the gloom has made
His perch. On high, behind his verdant screen,
He nestles; or, like transient snow-flake's flash,
Or flying foam that winds from torrent's dash,
Plunges to stiller haunts, where hangs sublime
The trav'lling water vine, its pitcher green
Filled from the cloud, where ne'er the bear may
climb,

Or thirsting savage, when the summier ray
Has dried each fount, and parched the desert way.
Here safe he dips refreshed his pearly bill
In lymph more pure than from a spring or rill;
No longer by the wand'ring Indian shared,
The dewy draught he there may quaff unscared,-
For vacant now glooms ev'ry glen or grove
Where erst he saw the quivered Red Man rove;
Saw, like the otter's brood upon the stream,
His wild-eyed offspring sport, or, 'neath the tree,
Share with the birds kind nature's bounty free.
Changed is the woodland scene like morning dream!
The race has vanished, to return no more,
Gone from the forest's side, the river's shore.
Is it for this, thou lone and hermit bird!
That thus thy knell-like note so sad is heard?
Sounding from ev'ry desert shade and dell
Where once they dwelt, where last they wept fare-
well!

They fled-till, wearied by the bloody chase;
Or stopped by the rich spoil, their brethren pale,
Sated, the dire pursuit surceased a space.
While Memory's eye o'er the sad picture fills,
They fade! nor leave behind or wreck or trace;

"It is generally supposed," says the Rev. R. Walsh, in his Notices of Brazil, that the woods abound with birds whose flight and note continually enliven the forest, but nothing can be inore still and solitary than everything around. The silence is appalling, and the desolation awful; neither are disturbed by the sight or voice of any living thing, save one-which only adds to the impression. Among the highest trees, and in the deepest glens, a sound is sometimes heard so singular, that the noise seems quite unnatural. It is like the clinking of metals, as if two lumps of brass were struck together; and resembles Sometimes the distant and solemn tolling of a church bell, struck at long intervals. This extraordinary sound proceeds from a bird called Araponga, or Quiraponga. It is about the size of a small pigeon; white, with a red circle round the eyes. It sits on the tops of the highest trees, and in the deepest forests; and though constantly heard in the most desert places, is very rarely seen. It is impossible to conceive anything of a more solitary character than the profound silence of the woods, broken only by the metallic and almost preternatural sound of this invisible bird, wherever you go. I have watched with great perseverance when the sound seemed quite near to me, and never once caught a glimpse of the cause. It passed suddenly over the tops of very high trees, like a large flake of snow, and immediately disappeared."

The valiant tribes forgotten on their hills, And seen no more in wilderness or vale.

JAMES WRIGHT SIMMONS, a younger brother of the preceding, was born in South Carolina. He studied at Harvard, wrote verses, afterwards travelled in Europe, and returned to America to reside in the West. In 1852 he published at Boston a poem, The Greek Girl; a sketch in the desultory style made fashionable by Don Juan, and so well adapted to the expression of emotion. It breathes a poetic spirit, and bears traces of the author's acquaintance with books and the world. Mr. Simmons has written several other poems of an occasional or satirical character, and is also the author of a series of metrical tales, Woodnotes from the West, which are still in manuscript. The following, from the volume containing the "Greek Girl," are in a striking vein of reflection.

TO HIM WHO CAN ALONE SIT FOR THE PICTURE.

If to be free from aught of guile,
Neither to do nor suffer wrong;
Yet in thy judgments gentle still,
Serene-inflexible in will,

Only where some great duty lies;
Prone to forgive, or, with a smile,
Reprove the errors that belong
To natures that fall far below
The height of thy empyreal brow:
Of self to make a sacrifice,
Rather than view another's woe;
And guided by the same fixed law
Supreme, to yield, in argument,

The bootless triumph that might draw
Down pain upon thy opponent:

By fate oppressed, in each hard instance tried,"
Still seen with Honor walking by thy side;

E'en in those hours when all unbend,

And by some thoughtless word offend,
Thy conscious spirit, great and good,
Neither upborne, nor yet subdued,
Impressed by sense of human ill,
Preserv'st its even tenor still;

While 'neath that calm, clear surface lie
Thoughts worthy of Eternity!

And passions-shall I call them so?

Celestial attributes! that glow

Radiant as wing of Seraphim,

Lighting thy path, in all else dim.

Placed on their lofty eminence,

Thou see'st the guerdons that to thee belong,
Passed to the low-browed temple, burn intense-
Standing between thee and the throng
Of noble minds, thy great compeers!
And still the same serenity appears,
Like stars in its own solitude-
Setting its seal on thy majestic blood!
If elements like these could give
The record that might bid them live,
The mighty dead-Saint, Sophist, Sage,
Achilles in his tent-

Might claim in vain a brighter page,
A haughtier monument.

TWILIGHT THOUGHTS.

Ye're fading in the distance dim,
Illusions of the heart!

Yes, one by one, recalled by Him-
I see ye all depart.

The swelling pride, the rising glow, The spirit that would mount!

The mind that sought all things to know
And drank at that dread fount.
Over whose waters, dark and deep,
Their sleepless vigils still
Those melancholy Daughters keep,
Or by thy sacred Hill!
Deep Passion's concentrated fire,
The soul's volcanic light!
A Phoenix on her fun'ral pyre,
The Eden of a night!
The wish to be all things-to soar,
And comprehend the universe;
Yet doomed to linger on the shore,

And feel our fettered wings a curse! To drink in Beauty at a glance,

Its graces and its bloom;
Yet weave the garlands of Romance
To decorate the tomb!

To sigh for some dear Paradise,
Exempt from age or death;
To live for ever in those eyes,

And breathe but with that breath !

To be awakened from such dream,

With the remembrance clinging still! Like flowers reflected in a stream, When all is changed and chill.

To feel that life can never bring

Its Rainbow back to our lost sky! Plucks from the hand of death its sting, The grave its victory!

FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.

MRS. OSGOOD was a member of a family distinguished by literary ability. Mrs. Wells, the author of a graceful volume of Poems, was the daughter of Frances's mother by a previous marriage, and her youngest sister, Mrs. E. D. Harrington, and her brother, A. A. Locke, are known as successful magazine writers. Their father, Mr. Joseph Locke, was a well educated merchant of Boston, where his daughter Frances was born about the year 1812.

The chief portion of her childhood was passed in the village of Hingham, a locality peculiarly adapted by its beautiful situation for a poetic culture, which soon developed itself in her youthful mind. She was encouraged in writing verses by her parents, and some of her productions being seen by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, were so highly approved, as to be inserted by her in a juvenile Miscellany which she at that time conducted. They were rapidly followed by others from the same facile pen, which soon gave their signature, "Florence," a wide reputation.

In 1834, Miss Locke formed the acquaintance of Mr. S. S. Osgood, a young painter already favorably known in his profession. She sat to him for her portrait, and the artist won the heart of the sitter. Soon after their marriage they went to London, where they remained

* Anna Maria Foster was born about 1794 in Gloucester, a sea-port town of Massachusetts. Her father died during her infancy, and her mother marrying some years after Mr. Joseph Locke, became the mother of Mrs. Osgood. Miss Foster married in 1829 Mr. Thomas Wells, an officer of the United States revenue service, and the author of a few prize poems. In 1831 she published Poems and Juvenile Sketches in a small volume, and has since occasionally contributed to periodicals, her chief attention having been given to a young ladies' school.

four years, during which Mr. Osgood pursued his art of portrait-painting with success; and his wife's poetical compositions to various periodicals met with equal favor. In 1839, a collection of her poems was issued by a Lonpublisher, with the title of A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England. A dramatic poem, Elfrida, in the volume, impressed her friend James Sheridan Knowles the dramatist, so favorably, that he urged her to write a piece for the stage. In compliance with the suggestion, she wrote The Happy Release or the Triumphs of Love, a play in three acts. It was accepted by one of the theatres, and would have been produced had not the author, while engaged in the reconstruction of a scene, been suddenly summoned home by the melancholy news of the death of her father. She returned with Mr. She returned with Mr. Osgood to Boston in 1840. They soon afterwards removed to New York, where, with a few intervals of absence, the remainder of her life was passed. Her poetical contributions appeared at brief intervals in the magazines, for which she also wrote a few prose tales and sketches. In 1841 she edited The Poetry of Flowers and Flowers of Poetry, and in 1817, The Floral Offering, two illustrated gift books.

Mrs. Osgood's physical frame was as delicate as her mental organization. She suffered frequently from ill health, and was an invalid during the whole of the winter of 1847-8. During the succeeding winter she rallied, and her husband, whose own health required the reinvigorating influence of travel, with a view to this object, and to a share in the profitable adventure which at that time was tempting so many from their homes, sailed for California in February, 1849. He returned after an absence of a year, with restored health and ample means, to find his wife The husband fast sinking in consumption. carried the wife in his arms to a new residence, where, with the happy hopefulness characteristic of her disorder, she selected articles for its furniture and decoration, from patterns brought to her bedside. The rapidly approaching termination

of her disorder was soon gently made known to her, and received, after a few tears at the thought of leaving her husband and two young children, with resignation. The evening but one after she wrote for a young girl at her side, who was making and teaching her to make paper flowers, the following lines.

You've woven roses round my way,

And gladdened all my being;
How much I thank you, none can say,
Save only the All-seeing.

Im going through the eternal gates,
Ere June's sweet roses blow;
Death's lovely angel leads me there,

And it is sweet to go.

The touching prophecy was fulfilled, by her calm death, five days after, on Sunday afternoon, May 12, 1850. Her remains were removed to Boston, and laid beside those of her mother and daughter, at Mount Auburn, on Wednesday of the same week.

Mrs. Osgood's poems were collected and published in New York, in 1846, and in one of the series of illustrated volumes of the works of American poets, by A. Hart of Philadelphia, in 1849.

In 1851 a volume containing contributions by her many literary friends, entitled the Memorial, was published by G. P. Putnam of New York. It contained a memoir from the pen of Mr. Griswold. It was an illustrated gift-book, and the profits of its sale were intended for the erection of a monument to the gifted writer, in whose honor it was issued.

Of a rare gracefulness and delicacy, Mrs. Osgood lived a truly poetic life. Her unaffected and lively manners, with her ready tact in conversation, combined with an unusual facility in writing verses, charmed a large circle of friends, as her winning lines in the periodicals of the day engaged the attention of the public. As an instance of her playfulness of mind, she wrote a collection of ludicrous and humorous verses for a child's book, to set off some rude engravings of The Cries of New York. The fanciful and the delicate in sentiment, supplied the usual themes of her verses, touched at times with passionate expression, and a darker shade, as the evils of life closed around her.

TO THE SPIRIT OF POETRY.

Leave me not yet! Leave me not cold and lonely,
Thou dear Ideal of my pining heart!
Thou art the friend-the beautiful-the only,
Whom I would keep, tho' all the world depart!
Thou, that dost veil the frailest flower with glory,
Spirit of light and loveliness and truth!
Thou that didst tell me a sweet, fairy story,

Of the dim future, in my wistful youth!
Thou, who canst weave a halo round the spirit,
Thro' which naught mean or evil dare intrude,
Resume not yet the gift, which I inherit
From Heaven and thee, that dearest, holiest
good!
Leave me not now! Leave me not cold and lonely,
Thou starry prophet of my pining heart!
Thou art the friend-the tenderest the only,
With whom, of all, 'twould be despair to part.
Thou that cam'st to me in my dreaming childhood,
Shaping the changeful clouds to pageants rare,