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At length he draws near his end; he is seventy-three years

of age, and he yields his work on the "revolutions of the heavenly orbs" to his friends for publication. The day at last has come on which it is to be ushered into the world. It is the 24th of May 1543. On that day,-the effect, no doubt, of the intense excitement of his mind operating upon an exhausted frame,an effusion of blood brings him to the gates of the grave. His last hour is come; he lies stretched upon the couch from which he will never rise, in his apartment at the Canonry at Frauenberg, in East Prussia. The beams of the setting sun glance through the gothic windows of his chamber; near his bedside is the armillary sphere, which he has contrived to represent his theory of the heavens; his picture painted by himself, the amusement of his earlier years, hangs before him; beneath it his astrolabe and other imperfect astronomical instruments; and around him are gathered his sorrowing disciples. The door of the apartment opens; the eye of the departing sage is turned to see who enters; it is a friend who brings the first printed copy of his immortal treatise. He knows that in that book he contradicts all that had ever been distinctly taught by former philosophers; he knows that he has rebelled against the sway of Ptolemy, which the scientific world had acknowledged for a thousand years; he knows that the popular mind will be shocked by his innovations; he knows that the attempt will be made to press even religion into the service against him; but he knows that his book is true.

He is dying, but he leaves a glorious truth, as his dying tequest, to the world. He bids the friend who has brought it place himself between the window and his bedside, that the sun's rays may fall upon the precious volume, and he may behold it once before his eye grows dim. He looks upon it, takes it in his hands, presses it to his breast, and expires. But no, he is not wholly gone. A smile lights up his dying countenance; a beam of returning intelligence kindles in his eye; his lips move; and the friend who leans over him can hear him faintly murmur the beautiful sentiments which the Christian lyrist of a later age has so finely expressed in verse:―

"Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, with all your feeble light!
Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, pale empress of the night!
And thou, refulgent orb of day, in brighter flames arrayed,
My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, no more demands thy aid.
Ye stars are but the shining dust of my divine abode,

The pavement of those heavenly courts, where I shall reign with God."

So died the great Columbus of the heavens.

THE CONGRESS OF 1776.-WIRT.

.WHAT was the state of things under which the Congress of 1776 assembled, when Adams and Jefferson again met? It was, as you know, in this Congress, that the question of American Independence came, for the first time, to be discussed; and never, certainly, has a more momentous question been discussed, in any age or in any country, for it was fraught, not only with the destinies of this wide-extended continent, but, as the event has shown, and is still showing, with the destinies of man all over the world.

How fearful that question then was, no one can tell but those who, forgetting all that has since past, can transport themselves back to the time, and plant their feet on the ground which those patriots then occupied. "Shadows, clouds, and darkness" then covered all the future, and the present was full only of danger and terror. A more unequal contest never was proposed. It was, indeed, as it was then said to be, the shepherd boy of Israel going forth to battle against the giant of Gath; and there were yet among us, enough to tremble when they heard that giant say, "Come to me, and I will give thy flesh to the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field." But there wer: those who never trembled-who knew that there was a God in Israel, and who were willing to commit their cause "to His even-handed justice," and His almighty power. That their great trust was in Him, is manifest from the remarks that were continually breaking from the lips of the patriots. Thus, the

patriot Hawley, when pressed upon the inequality of the contest, could only answer, "We must put to sea-Providence will bring us into port;" and Patrick Henry, when urged upon the same topic, exclaimed, "True, true; but there is a God above, who rules and overrules the destinies of nations."

EMPTINESS OF EARTHLY GLORY.-WAYLAND.

THE crumbling tombstone and the gorgeous mausoleum, the sculptured marble and the venerable cathedral, all bear witness to the instinctive desire within us to be remembered by coming generations. But how short-lived is the immortality which the works of our hands can confer! The noblest monuments of art that the world has ever seen are covered with the soil of twenty centuries. The works of the age of Pericles lie at the foot of the Acropolis in indiscriminate ruin. The ploughshare turns up the marble which the hand of Phidias had chiselled into beauty, and the Mussulman has folded his flock beneath the falling columns of the temple of Minerva.

But even the works of our hands too frequently survive the memory of those who have created them. And were it otherwise, could we thus carry down to distant ages the recollection of our existence, it were surely childish to waste the energies of an immortal spirit in the effort to make it known to other times, that a being whose name was written with certain letters of the alphabet once lived, and flourished, and died. Neither sculptured marble, nor stately column, can reveal to other ages the lineaments of the spirit; and these alone can embalm our memory in the hearts of a grateful posterity.

As the stranger stands beneath the dome of St. Paul's, or treads, with religious awe, the silent aisles of Westminster Abbey, the sentiment which is breathed from every object around him is, the utter emptiness of sublunary glory. The fine arts, obedient to private affection or public gratitude, have here embodied, in every form, the finest conceptions of which

their age was capable. Each one of these monuments has been watered by the tears of the widow, the orphan, or the patriot. But generations have passed away, and mourners and mourned have sunk together into forgetfulness.

The aged crone, or the smooth-tongued beadle, as now he hurries you through aisles and chapel, utters, with measured cadence and unmeaning tone, for the thousandth time, the name and lineage of the once-honored dead; and then gladly dismisses you, to repeat again his well-conned lesson to another group of idle passers-by. Such, in its most august form, is all the immortality that matter can confer. It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered by after ages. It is by thought that has aroused my intellect from its slumbers, which has "given lustre to virtue, and dignity to truth," or by those examples which have inflamed my soul with the love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that I hold communion with Shakspeare and Milton, with Johnson and Burke, with Howard and Wilberforce.

ON PARLIAMENTARY INNOVATIONS.-BEAUFOY.

To calumniate innovation, and to decry it, is preposterous. Have there never been any innovations on the Constitution? Can it be forgotten, for one moment, that all the advantages, civil and political, which we enjoy at this hour, are in reality the immediate and fortunate effects of innovation? It is by innovations that the English Constitution has grown and flourished. It is by innovations that the House of Commons has risen to importance. It was at different eras that the counties and towns were empowered to elect representatives. Even the office of Speaker was an innovation; for it was not heard of till the time of Richard the Second. What was more, the freedom of speech, now so highly valued, was an innovation; for there were times when no member dared to avow his sentiments, and when his head must have answered for the boldness of his tongue. To argue against innovations, is to argue against improvements of every kind.

It is the motto

It is the barrier

When the followers of Wickliffe maintained the cause of humanity and reason against absurdity and superstition, "No innovation" was the cry; and the fires of persecution blazed over the kingdom. "Let there be no innovation," is ever the maxim of the ignorant, the interested, and the worthless. It is the favorite tenet of the servile advocate of tyranny. which Bigotry has inscribed on her banners. that opposes every improvement, political, civil, and religious. To reprobate all innovations on the Constitution, is to suppose that it is perfect. But perfection was not its attribute either in the Saxon or Norman times. It is not its attribute at the present moment. Alterations are perpetually necessary in every Constitution ; for the government should be accommodated to the times, to the circumstances, to the wants of a people, which are ever changing.

MARIE ANTOINETTE.-BURKE.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,— glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. O! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.

But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, econo

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