not his business to bring his family before the theatre footlights, and call for bouquets from the gallery as he wept over them.

16. If any young man of letters reads this little sermon, and to him, indeed, it is addressed,-I would say to him," Bear Scott's words in your mind, and 'be good, my dear."" Here are two literary men gone to their account, and, laus Deo, as far as we know, that account is fair, and open, and clean. Here Here is no need of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which would have been virtues but for unavoidable et cetera.

It

17. Here are two examples of men most differently gifted: each pursuing his calling; each speaking his truth as God bade him; each honest in life; just and irreproachable in his dealings; dear to his friends; honored by his country; beloved at his fireside. has been the fortunate lot of both to give incalculable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win the baton or epaulettes, but Heaven give us strength to guard the honor of the flag!

XCVI.. HUMAN BLINDNESS TO THE FUTURE.

POPE.

See in Index, HUMBLE, INDIAN, SPHERE, POPE, The following passage is from the author's principal work, his "Essay on Man."

I.

HEAVEN from all creatures hides the book of fate:

All but the page prescribed, their present state;

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know; Or who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,

Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.

II.

O blindness to the future! kindly given

That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

III.

Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar ;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What* future bliss, He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always To Be blest:
The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the

IV.

poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way,

Yet, simple Nature to his hope has given,

Behind the cloud-topt hill, a humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste;
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment no Christians thirst for gold.

V.

TO BE, contents his natural desire;

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;

An elliptical expression, meaning, What may be future bliss, &c.

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

VI.

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of senge,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence ;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such;
Say, here He gives too little, there too much
Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge His justice, be the god of God.

VII.

In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes;
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel :

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of ORDER, Sins against th' ETERnal cause.

XCVII. AN AMERICAN WILDERNESS.

DE TOCQUEVILLE.

In the year 1831, De Tocqueville and Beaumont (see page 132) traveled from Pontiac in Michigan to Saginaw through what was then an uncleared wilderness. The fidelity of the following description of an American "forest primeval " in Michigan will be recognized by all who have witnessed a similar scene. See remarks on the narrative and descriptive style, § 48. See in Index, Axe or ax, TRAVELER or TRAVELLER, TOCQUEVILLE.

1. As we proceeded, we gradually lost sight of the traces of man. Soon all proofs even of savage life disappeared, and before us was the scene that we had so long been seeking,—a virgin forest. Growing in the middle of the thin brushwood, through which objects are

perceived at a considerable distance, was a single clump of full-grown trees, almost all pines or oaks.

2. Confined to so narrow a space, and deprived of sunshine, each of these trees had run up rapidly, in search of air and light. As straight as the mast of a ship, the most rapid grower had overtopped every surrounding object; only when it had attained a higher region did it venture to spread out its branches, and clothe itself with leaves. Others followed quickly in this elevated sphere; and the whole group, interlacing their boughs, formed a sort of immense canopy. Underneath this damp, motionless vault, the scene is different.

3. Majesty and order are overhead, near the ground, all is chaos and confusion: agëd trunks, incapable of supporting any longer their branches, are shattered in the middle, presenting nothing but a sharp, jagged point. Others, long loosened by the wind, have been thrown unbroken on the ground. Torn up from the earth, their roots form a natural barricade, behind which several men might easily find shelter. Huge trees, sustained by the surrounding branches, hang in mid-air, and crumble into dust, without reaching the ground.

4. There is no district in France so scantily peopled as to make it possible for a forest to be so completely abandoned that the trees, after quietly fulfilling the purpose of their existence, attain old age undisturbed, and at last perish from natural decay. Civilized man strikes them while yet in their prime, and clears the ground of their remains. In the solitude of America all-powerful nature is the only instrument of ruin, as well as of reproduction.

5. Here, as well as in the forests over which man rules, death strikes continually; but there is no one to clear away the remains; they accumulate day by day. They fall, they are heaped upon one another. Time

alone does not work fast enough to reduce them to dust, so as to make way for their successors. Side by side lie several generations of the dead. Some, in the last stage of dissolution, have left on the grass a long line of red dust as the only trace of their presence; others, already half consumed by time, still preserve their outward shape. Others again, fallen only yesterday, stretch their long branches over the traveler's path.

6. I have often at sea enjoyed one of the calm, serene evenings, when the sails, flapping idly against the mast, leave the crew in ignorance even of the quarter whence the breeze will rise. The perfect repose of nature is as striking in the wilderness as on the ocean. When at noonday the sun's rays penetrate the forest, there is often heard a long sob, a kind of plaintive cry echoing in the distance. It is the last breath of the expiring breeze. Deep silence ensues, and such absolute stillness as fills the mind with a kind of superstitious awe. The traveler stops to contem'plate the

scene.

7. Pressed against one another, their boughs inter laced, the trees seem to form one vast indestructible edifice, under whose arches reigns perpetual darkness. Around are violence and destruction, shattered trees, and torn trunks; the traces of long elemental war, But the struggle is suspended. It seems to have been suddenly arrested, as if by the fiat of a supernatural Being. Half-broken branches seem to hold by some invisible link to the trunk that no longer supports them; trees torn from their roots hang in the air as if they had not had time to reach the ground.

8. The traveler holds his breath to catch the faintest sound of life. No noise, not even a whisper, reaches him. You may be lost in a European forest, but some noise belonging to life is audible. You hear a churchbell, or a woodman's axe, or the report of a gun, or the