VACATION RAMBLES. BY PROFESSOR LARRABER. THE CITY OF ELMS. THERE seems to be, of late, much competition among the cities for favorite epithets. No less than three-Cleveland on the Lake, Middletown on the Connecticut, and Portland on the Atlanticare aspiring to be called the "Forest City." How they will settle the question among them is uncertain. I believe, however, New Haven alone claims to be by pre-eminence the "City of Elms." I had often heard of the beauty of New Haven, of the magnificence of her grand old elms, of her neat and tidy streets, of the comfort and elegance of her homes, and of the fame of her ancient college. But though I had heard all this, and had been often all around the place, yet I had strangely failed ever to visit it. Feeling that my "education was not finished" till I had seen New Haven, I concluded to extend my vacation rambles to that city. On arriving at the railroad station, which at New Haven is quite subterranean, I ascended to the upper regions, and proceeded to look for the elms. I was not long in finding them, for they line nearly all the streets, entwining their branches so as to form shady avenues, in which you may walk for miles secure from the heat of the noonday sun. You can not give a blind man any idea of color. Equally may I despair of giving those who have never seen the like any idea of the appearance of the City of Elms. To form any correct notion of the place, you must see it; you must stand at some favorable point of view in its streets, and look each way along its shady avenues; you must walk along the streets, and observe the neat dwellings, the beautiful flower-gardens, and the ivy and woodbine twining over the antique walls; you must look at the venerable pile of college edifices, standing in the midst of the city, and embowered in elms; you must ascend the cupola of the Methodist church, and enjoy a panorama of the whole city and the surrounding country; you must ramble over its ancient cemetery, where sleep men whose names are an honor to the human race. My visit happened opportunely, affording me the privilege of attending the one hundred and fifty-first Commencement of Yale College. Among the most interesting exercises of the occasion was the meeting of the Alumni, under the great tent in the College yard. There were present I know not how many. There seemed to me to be a thousand or more. They had come up to attend the anniversary of their Alma Mater from the hills of New England, from the shores of the great lakes, from the plains of the west, and from the valleys of the south. Brief, appropriate, and interesting addresses were made by several gentlemen. They were not prepared and set speeches, but the eloquent out pourings of the soul in thoughts and words which were suggested by the circumstances of the occa | sion. Amusing anecdotes of college life, affecting reminiscences of the past, and good-humored sallies of wit formed the substance of most of the speeches. Obituary notices were read of those Alumni who had died during the year. Several hymns and songs were sung. The effect of a thousand voices singing the good old tunes of the Puritan times was surpassingly sublime. Among the songs was the following, written for the occasion. The reader will join me in pronouncing it beautiful. It was sung to the good old tune, Lenox: "Beneath these sacred shades, Long-severed hearts unite: And stormy zone The paths of earlier days, From skies of blue, We come, ere life departs, Ere winging death appears, Not all, not all are here: Some sleep 'neath funeral flowers, Let every heart Its love impart To Him on high." Not the least interesting feature of New Haven is its beautiful cemetery. It occupies a lovely spot just on one side of the city. There are no monuments extravagantly expensive, with grotesque designs, offensive to all good taste; but plain and neat stones, with simple and chaste inscriptions, mark the resting-place of the eminent dead, who have there laid down for their long and last sleep. The grave of Noah Webster is marked by a plain stone, with only one word-Webster-inscribed on it. The grave of Ashmun, the first governor of Liberia, of Whitney, the inventor of the cottongin, and of many others known to fame, are distinguished by plain monuments and brief inscriptions. The distinguished presidents of Yale College, whose names have become immortal among men, lie side by side with unknown and humble men. Death is the great leveler, the destroyer of all distinctions; and why should the living vainly attempt to keep up conventional distinctions in the graveyard? why create marks where marks are of no avail? THE FINISHED CITY. VACATION RAMBLES. A finished city we of the west do not often see. Our cities never get finished. The sound of the hammer is always heard, and piles of lumber, of brick, and of mortar are always incumbering our streets. But" down east" they have finished citiescities which were finished half a century ago, and which bid fair to retain their finish till they take their places among the ruins of the past. Among finished cities Middletown stands pre-eminent. Twenty years have produced, so far as I could discover, no change either in the place or the people. The place consists of the very same houses, of the very same color, and occupied by the very same people. I began to think nobody ever died there, and that must be the place from which it had been said people had to move away in order, when tired of life, to die. I found the very same persons-men, women, and children-with whom I was formerly acquainted, all apparently no older than they were twenty years ago. But on taking a ramble over the city and its vicinity, I was convinced, by the numerous and populous graveyards, that death had been doing its legitimate work even in that fair and healthy region. I observed in the city and on its immediate borders six cemeteries, four of them very ancient and strangely populous. It would appear to the observer that many, very many more people lie in those old graveyards than live in the modern city. Many of the inscriptions on the gravestones are utterly illegible from age. "Time's effacing fingers" have been busy on the surface of the soft sandstone, and no Old Mortality has performed on them his gra- | tuitous labor in memory of the dead. We could barely make out the date of a few of the more ancient. On one old stone was inscribed the name, and a tribute to the virtues of an amiable young lady, who died nearly two hundred years ago. | “Alas!” said my companion, who had never before visited an ancient cemetery, "what a long time, a very long time, for the poor child to sleep here!" Even so. Two hundred times has summer come and gone, two thousand times has the moon performed her monthly round, and seventy thousand times has the morning sun shone and the evening shades fallen on her grave, and still she sleeps on, unmindful of the return of spring or of morn. On the summit of a lofty hill, not far from the Wesleyan University, is a small cemetery, less ancient, but to us more fruitful of hallowed associations than the old and more populous graveyards we had visited. There sleeps the incomparable, the peerless Fisk. And there, too, since our visit to the place, has been laid the great and the good Olin. There, too, are the graves of the students who have died at the University, away from home. Among them is the grave of Hurd, once a student of mine, and one of the most excellent and most promising young men whom I have ever known. This college cemetery is in a beautiful place, but I was sorry to observe the appearance of neglect VOL. XII.-2 17 about it. The gate was hingeless, the fence out of repair, the shrubbery untrimmed, and some of it broken and ruined by unruly cattle, that should never be allowed to desecrate a graveyard. The external appearance of the buildings of the University has suffered little or no change during twenty years. Of its internal arrangements I had little opportunity to form an opinion. The Alumni, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, are a firstrate, good-looking set of fellows. Among them are lots of presidents, professors, and doctors of divinity. I heard two of them deliver addresses before societies connected with the institution. One of the addresses was on "Physical Theism." It had the singular merit of total abstinence from all allusion to the "American Union,” the “ Compromise," and the "Fugitive-Slave law." This merit was the more singular from the fact, that, so far as I have heard, no other literary address has been delivered, during the past year, without being surcharged with discussions on the "Compromise." The other address at Middletown, before one of the societies, by a graduate, was remarkable for its want of appropriateness, both in manner and matter, to the time and the occasion. No stranger should leave Middletown without crossing the river to see the sandstone quarries. They are a curiosity. A large number of men-I should judge nearly two thousand-are constantly employed in quarrying the rock. The quarries are, some of them, nearly one hundred feet deep, with walls perpendicular. Down deep in these pits the stone is quarried, and then drawn up, with stout chains, by steam. The steam-engine handles a block weighing several tons as easily as a boy would handle a sling-pebble. And, what is more curious, a yoke of stout oxen is let down, in a big box, into the quarry, and, when the day's work is done, drawn up by steam to the upper regions. The poor creatures, with philosophic indifference, suffer themselves to be driven into the box, and swung off over a precipice terrific as that of Niagara; and when evening comes, they come cheerfully up to the box, and wait quietly for their turn to be drawn up. They must have stronger nerves than I have, or they would grow dizzy on being suspended by a single chain over such a precipice. THE CITY OF THE PURITANS. Boston is sometimes called the City of Notions. But I know not as the people are more notional than other people. Nor am I certain as it deserves, more than some other places, the name I have given it-the City of the Puritans. It is fast losing the distinctive characteristics which the old Puritans marked on it. It is, however, a notable city. The stranger in Boston will be in danger of being shocked at the crowded and awfully crooked streets. You have heard of the fence so crooked that the pig, often as he attempted to crawl through, invariably found himself still on the same side. But that fence is not a circumstance to the streets of Boston. A man undertook one day to go from Brattle Square to Roxbury. After having traveled all day, in what he supposed the proper direction, he found himself at night in the same place from which he started in the morning. But we can excuse the obliquity of the streets, crooked as they are, since they are so scrupulously clean. No filth of any kind is allowed to accumulate. No dirty water is seen running along the gutters. Underground drains carry off all the water. That pest of western cities-the hog-is unknown in the streets of Boston. It is said that an unlucky pig once did escape from his pen, and appear in the streets. No sooner was the fact known, than all the ladies scampered home, and the mayor issued his proclamation, calling out the whole force of the city to capture the beast. You may have a fine view of Boston and its vicinity, either from the cupola of the State-House or from the summit of Bunker Hill Monument. Looking down on the city, it seems one solid but uneven mass of slate. The beauty of the view lies in the surrounding country. North, south, and west, far as the eye can reach, is one vast extent of village, with interspersed gardens and groves. No where in America, if any where in the world, can be seen so fine a suburban landscape. For the first time I visited the time-honored and world-renowned Faneuil Hall. It is a naked, unfurnished room, without a chair, or a seat of any kind, or a single article of furniture, or the slightest ornament, except a portrait of Peter Faneuil, John Adams, and of a few others, men of olden time. The "associations" that inspire so much eloquence in that Hall must be purely ethereal, for there is woeful absence of all external paraphernalia. The churches of Boston are very fine. Among the finest, if not the very finest and most costly in the city, is the Methodist church in Hanover-street. I walked down with my friend to see it. I could only see the outside; for though the pastor of the Church was once my student, and is yet my warm friend, and would cheerfully have admitted me, not only to the house, but to the pulpit, yet I had no time to call on him, nor to look within his magnificent church. Some of the churches of Boston are more celebrated for their ancient associations than for their beauty of architecture. The Old South was used for soldiers' barracks during the war of the Revolution. Just over the door of the Brattle-Street Church you may now perceive a cannon-ball in the very place where it was lodged from some brazenmouthed instrument, in one of the Revolutionary engagements. The Park-Street, Berry-Street, and Hollis-Street are celebrated for having echoed to the eloquence of Griffin, and of Channing, and of Pierpont. Boston is celebrated for its "law and order." You can not ride fast in the street, nor smoke on the sidewalks. Getting intoxicated or using profane language subjects you to a fine. I understand it is in contemplation by the authorities to issue a city ordinance against spitting. If so, I would like to have the same law extended over the west, so as at least to reach the place where I live, and move, and have my being; for, in that respect, we of the west may say, in the language of a great man, "our sufferings are intolerable.” THE CITY OF ISLANDS. I believe it was Don Quixotte who had so wonderful a faculty for giving descriptive names to persons and places. I intend, by no means, to place my rambles in competition with his renowned wandering, but I seem to have a propensity, quite new to me, to follow in some degree his notable example. However, I know not as I can better describe Portland than by calling it the City of Islands; for the city itself is all but an island, and it is situated on a bay abounding with the most beautiful clusters of islands in the world. To see Portland to advantage, you should ascend the Observatory, on the summit of Munjoy Hill. Looking to the west, you will see, extending along a peninsular promontory, the city, which, in the beauty and verdure of its elms, shading its neat and wide streets, is scarcely inferior to New Haven. Beyond the city you will see a beautiful evergreen plain, stretching away in the dim distance. On the south, you see, far beyond the coast of Cape Elizabeth, the open ocean, with numerous gallant ships spreading their white sails to the wind. On the east you see the Bay of Casco, with its three hundred and sixty-five islands. On the north rises the grand range of White Mountains, stamping the landscape with intense sublimity. Such a landscape, combining such variety, so much of the beautiful, the grand, and the sublime, as may be seen from the Portland Observatory, I have seen no where else. I doubt whether the world affords another prospect so fine. Indeed, I can conceive of nothing in natural scenery more charming to the eye of the poet, the painter, or the landscape admirer. The beauty of the city, the groves of evergreen on the plains, the open ocean, the Bay with its islands, the tide-water rivers gleaming amid the forests and fields, and the mountain background, afford a variety and scope of view that can not be excelled. Though born on the limits of the city, and residing till near manhood in its immediate neighborhood, and visiting it often during my life, yet I never so fully could appreciate the beauties of its situation, as when, after having been absent for many years, and having seen other places most celebrated for beauty, I returned, and stood on the Munjoy Observatory, and surveyed at leisure all the landscape. The beauties of the place, as seen from that spot, are indeed exhaustless. You may look, and observe, and spy with a good glass all day, and yet constantly be finding in the surrounding landscape some new feature of interest. Portland has been fruitful of poets. Willis, and Mellen, and Longfellow were born and brought up THE ITINERANT'S DAUGHTER. in that city. Nor do I wonder at the fame they have acquired, if there be, as I doubt not there is, an intimate connection between natural scenery and the development of poetic genius. THE ITINERANT'S DAUGHTER. BY REV. B F. CRARY. In the spring of 1851, while stationed at Wesley Chapel, Indianapolis, a gracious revival of religion was enjoyed, and God's Spirit was felt, in saving power, by many precious souls. An interesting class of young ladies, of the Indiana Female College, were converted. A more lovely scene angels never gazed upon than was presented one night, during the progress of the meeting. Many of the young ladies, with their teachers and the beloved President, were kneeling at God's altar. Penitents were crying for mercy, and Christian friends were speaking words of encouragement and hope to them. Deeply sorrowing, among the penitents, bowed the gifted young Carrie E., the object of ten thousand prayers. Her sobs and cries for mercy were really melting, and to hear her plead with Jesus and beg for pardon, would make the most hardened feel. Mingled with her prayers and cries were tender allusions to her dear, departed father, her widowed mother, and her own wicked heart. Would God not answer a father's prayer, who had already gone to heaven? Would Jesus not pity the poor, bereaved mother, and convert her child, that she might be a solace to her in her widowhood? "Come, O Jesus, come and bless me!" poor Carrie would sob; and then her bursting heart would be agonized in the dreadful suspense of unpardoned guilt, and her faith alternate between the command and promise of Jehovah. "Give me thy heart," something seemed to whisper in her ear, and then, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." 19 emotion. When I saw her throw up her hands toward heaven, and beseechingly ask for mercy and salvation, I kneeled by her, and listened to her musings and prayers. Her language was about this: "O, blessed Jesus, thou didst die on Calvary for me; thou didst shed thy precious blood that I might live. Save me-O, save me, or I die! Father in heaven, forgive, for the sake of thy Son! O, thou art merciful; thou wilt forgive! Yes; thou dost forgive! Now I believe it; Jesus has forgiven me!" The next moment she raised her face to heaven. A smile, the smile of heavenly grace, played upon her features; a glow of radiant glory seemed beaming upon her; tears of rapture rolled after each other, and fell from her enlivened cheeks. "Glory to God!" at last whispered the happy girl; and the next moment, in one loud shout of praise, she published the glad news of her triumphant deliverance. Carrie was a new creature. "Old things had passed away; all things become new to her. "I shall meet my father in heaven," she said; "I shall see him after awhile, glory to God!" That father had gone to rest. The weary itinerant had given up his beloved charge in North Ohio for a glorious crown in heaven, and left his child a legacy to the Church to be loved and taught, converted and saved. Several of this itinerant's family had already gone. All of his children but Carrie were with him in paradise. They were scattered here and there, as he had traveled and they had fallen. Carrie was now on her way to glory. What more could the father want? Yes, sweet girl, thy father shall soon see thee blooming in immortality. A month passed, and still Carrie loved Jesus, the class-room, her leader, her class, her teachers, her pastor, and the Church. Her mother delighted in her more than She rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory; for now she had a fair prospect of uniting with her whole family in heaven. Another month She grew in passed-a happy month to Carrie. grace, in knowledge, and all spiritual fruits seemed to be ripening in her soul. Half a year had almost ever. "What shall I do? Will God forgive me?" fled. The fourth quarterly meeting was coming. sighed the wretched Carrie. Carrie and her companions were to be received into full connection. Ay, and she was received; but it was in the Church triumphant. God received her; Jesus received her; angels, attending, sung the new song for her; and her father received her; for "Friends shall meet again, How strange is sin! What wonderful guilt and sorrow seems to be pent up in the human soul till God exposes and destroys it! Carrie was amiable, mild, intelligent, truthful, obedient, and young; yet her heart was filled with anguish when she saw her sins. Now she would promise to serve God; to be a good girl; to forsake all sin; and again she would Carrie was sick. We all prayed for her-all weep, as though her head was a fountain of tears, gathered around to receive the farewell kiss, or at the remembrance of past sins. Ministers at that hear her exultant words. We could not stay the altar of prayer felt deeply and prayed earnestly for hand of death. But may not her schoolmates and all; yet some I know felt unusual interest in Carrie. classmates singEvery Methodist preacher will respond to that feeling when I say that Carrie was the child, the last child of an itinerant minister. Her teacher whispered words of consolation to the grief-stricken penitent. Pious females prayed fervently to God for her. My own soul swelled with unutterable "Our Carrie the haven hath gained; "I have hope," said the happy and dying itinerant's daughter. "I shall soon go to glory. Tell my schoolmates to meet me in heaven." Yes; we will tell them, and urge them, and pray for them; and may God help them to meet thee there! Down the stream she gently glided, and, locked in the embrace of Jesus, she passed the flood, and George Elliott and his last child had a shout on Zion's hill. O, brethren, when we are gonewhen we lie down to rest, and leave our children in the world, shall we not hope that the Church will care for them? 'Tis sad, indeed, to think of sowing such precious seed, and yet reaping none ourselves. It will not be so. Our children, if we are faithful, will be converted to God, and we shall hail them in the land of joy. If it be our lot to see our children die before us, and if we leave them in different graveyards, let us still hope in God, and work while life shall last. Carrie sleeps beside her father; and brethren of the North Ohio conference, as they tread lightly over the grave of the father, will remember that a covenant-keeping God hath taken home the last child of the itinerant preacher, whose ashes lie beneath them. We all bid thee, dear Carrie, a long farewell. May thy mother yet see thee where sorrow and sighing shall be no more! WHAT SO mild and gentle, so graceful and attractive, so winning and eloquent, in the life and character of the good man as humility-genuine and unassumed humility! With it, and its sister graces, the Christian has every thing that religion commends or Heaven approves. Without it there can be no completeness or symmetry of Christian character. Humility was one of the most distinguishing as well as loveliest traits of the character of Him who blended in his own person the highest perfections of the human with all the essential attributes of the Divine nature. And very logically does the apostle Paul infer the necessity of humility in the Christian Churches, from that which characterized the life of the Lord of glory, when he says, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." All who would have the spirit of Christ must be "meek and lowly in heart;" and such alone will be ultimately crowned with the fadeless diadem of immortality. Then, fair reader, as we journey on through this vale of tears to our destiny in the skies, let us seek to be clothed with humility; for it is our fairest, purest, holiest dress. THE ORPHAN'S REVERIE. BY ORIA. THEY sighed, and said, in pitying tone, My mother had gone home. E'er called his wandering child; Alone? O no! what have I said? There's brightness every-where; The birds their sweetest notes will sing As if, in my deep, heavenward glance, As though they brought away, They stop to lave my weary feet; Then, murmuring, pass again; Leaving with me sweet thoughts, which say, "God maketh naught in vain." He writeth on the tiny flowers Bright truths for me to find; And every little leaflet brings A soothing to my mind. The rain-drops in the summer-time They kiss me in their downward course, To man's weak heart 'tis given. The loved and loving from my side, O no! He gives me many a friend, Now scattered on the ground. When hidden from my sight I feel that guardian spirits' wings |