VALUE OF REPUTATION.

PHILLIPS.

1. WHO shall estimate the cost of priceless reputation,― that impress which gives this human dross its currency,-without which we stand despised, debased, depreciated? Who shall repair it injured? Who can redeem it lost? O, well and truly does the great philosopher of poetry esteem the world's wealth as "trash" in the comparison. Without it gold has no value; birth, no distinction; station, no dignity; beauty, no charm; age, no reverence;—without it every treasure impoverishes, every grace deforms, every dignity degrades, and all the arts, the decorations, and accomplishments of life, stand, like the beacon-blaze upon a rock, warning the world that its approach is dangerous, that its contact is death.

2. The wretch, without it, is under eternal quarantine';-no friend to greet,-no home to harbor him. The voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril; and, in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But, let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety, or individual exposure, this universal principle; it testifies a higher, a more ennobling origin.

3. It is this which, consecrating the humble circle of the hearth, will, at times, extend itself to the circumference of the horizon, which nerves the arm of the patriot to save his country,—which lights the lamp of the philosopher to amend man,—which, if it does not inspire, will yet invigorate the martyr to merit immortality,-which, when one world's agony is passed, and the glory of another is dawning, will prompt the prophet, even in his chariot of fire, and in his vision of Heaven, to bequeath to mankind the mantle of his memory!

4. O divine, O delightful legacy of a spotless reputation! Rich is the inheritance it leaves; pious the example it testifies; pure, precious, and imperishable, the hope which it inspires! Can there be conceived a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit,-to rob society of

its charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to outlaw life, but to attaint death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the gate of infamy and of shame!

5. I can conceive few crimes beyond it. He who plunders my property takes from me that which can be repaired by time; but what period can repair a ruined reputation ? He who maims my person, affects that which medicine may remely; but what herb has sovereignty over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify; but what riches shall redeem the bankrupt fame? What power shall blanch the sullied snow of character? There can be no injury more deadly. There can be no crime more cruel. It is without remedy. It is without antidote. It is without evasion.

6. The reptile, calumny, is ever on the watch. From the fascinations of its eye no activity can escape; from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime; it has no prey but virtue; it has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine where envy idolizes her own infirmities.

LESSON CLIV.

THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY.

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

1. 'Tis sweet to remember! I would not forego
The charm which the past o'er the present can throw,
For all the gay visions that Fancy may weave

In her web of illusion that shines to deceive.
We know not the future, the past we have felt,-
Its cherished enjoyments the bosom can melt;
Its raptures anew o'er our pulses may roll,
When thoughts of the morrow fall cold on the soul.
2. 'Tis sweet to remember! when storms are abroad,
To see in the rainbow the promise of God;

The day may be darkened, but far in the west,
In vermillion and gold sinks the sun to his rest;
With smiles like the morning, he passeth away;
Thus the beams of delight on the spirit can play,
When in calm reminiscence we gather the flowers
Which love scattered round us in happier hours.

3. 'Tis sweet to remember! when friends are unkind,
When their coldness and carelessness shadow the mind;
Then, to draw back the vail which envelops a land,
Where delectable prospects in beauty expand;
To smell the green fields, the fresh waters to hear,
Whose once fairy music enchanted the ear;
To drink in the smiles that delighted us then,
And list to the voices of childhood again;

O, this the sad heart, like a reed that is bruised,
Binds up, when the banquet of hope is refused!

4. 'Tis sweet to remember! and naught can destroy
The balm-breathing comfort, the glory, the joy,
Which spring from that fountain to gladden our way,
When the changeful and faithless desert or betray.
I would not forget! though my thoughts should be dark,
O'er the ocean of life, I look back from my bark,
And I see the lost Eden, where once I was blest,
A type and a promise of heavenly rest.

LESSON CLV.

EXPLANATORY NOTE.-1. CHI-CHEN, a term signifying Mouth of a Will, is the name given to the ruins of a very ancient city in Yucatan. Throughout that country, as well as in others in Central America, are found the remains of ancient cities and monuments, much dilapidated, and overgrown with weeds and shrubbery. They indicate a high state of civilization on the part of their builders.

THE RUINS OF CHI-CHEN.

B. M. NORMAN.

1. ON arriving in the immediate vicinity of the ruins of the ancient city CHI-CHEN, I was compelled to cut my way

I

through an almost impenetrable thicket of underbrush, interlaced and bound together with strong tendrils and vines. was finally enabled to effect a passage; and, in the course of a few hours, I found myself in the presence of the ruins. For five days did I wander up and down, among these crumbling monuments of a city which must have been one of the largest the world has ever seen.

2. I beheld before me, for a circuit of many miles in diameter, the walls of palaces, temples and pyramids, more or less dilapidated. The earth was strewed, as far as the eye could distinguish, with columns,—some broken, and some nearly perfect, which seem to have been planted there by the genius of desolation, which presided over this awful solitude.

3. Amid these solemn memorials of departed generations who have died and left no marks but these, there were no indications of animated existence, save from the bats, the lizards, and other reptiles, which now and then emerged from the crevices of the tottering walls and crumbling stones, that were strewed upon the ground at their base. No marks of human footsteps, no signs of previous visitors, were discernible; nor is there good reason to believe that any person, whose testimony of the fact has been given to the world, had ever before broken the silence which reigns over these sacred tombs of a departed civilization.

4. As I looked about me, and indulged in these reflections, I felt awed into perfect silence. To speak then, had been profane. A revelation from Heaven could hardly have impressed. me more profoundly with the solemnity of its communication, than I was now impressed, on finding myself the first, probably, of the present generation of civilized men, walking the streets of this once mighty city, and amid

"Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,

Of which the very ruins are tremendous."

5. For a long time I was so distracted with the multitude of objects which crowded upon my mind, that I could take no note of them in detail. It was not until some hours had

elapsed, that my curiosity was sufficiently under control to enable me to examine them with any minuteness. The Indians, for many leagues around, hearing of my arrival, came to visit me daily; but the object of my toil was quite beyond their comprehension. They watched my every motion, occasionally looking up to each other with an air of unfeigned astonishment.

6. Of the builders or occupants of these edifices, which were in ruins about them, they had not the slightest idea; nor did the question seem ever to have occurred to them. After the most careful search, no traditions, nor superstitions, nor legends of any kind concerning these remains, could be discovered. Time and foreign oppression had paralyzed, among this unfortunate people, those faculties which have been ordained by the God of nations to transfer history into tradition. All communication with the past, here seems to have been cut off.

7. Nor did any allusion to their ancestry, or to the former occupants of these mighty palaces and monumental temples, produce the slightest thrill through the memories of even the oldest Indians in the vicinity. Defeated in my anticipations from this quarter, I addressed myself, at once, to the only course of procedure, which was likely to give me any solution of the solemn mystery, to the ruins themselves.

8. My first examination was made at what I conceived to be the ruins of the TEMPLE. These consist of four distinct walls, standing upon an elevated foundation of about sixteen feet. I entered at an opening at the western end, which I considered to be the main entrance; and presumed, from the broken walls, ceilings, and pillars still standing, that the opposite end had been the location of the shrine or altar. The distance between these two extremities, is four hundred and fifty feet.

9. Of the entrance, or western end, about one-half remains, —the interior showing broken rooms and ceilings, not entirely defaced. The exterior is composed of large stones, beautifully hewn, and laid in fillet and molding work. The opposite, or altar end, consists of similar walls, but has two sculptured pillars, much defaced by the falling ruins.