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superiority but His favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world.

3. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the register of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands, their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away.

4. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation; and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged-on whose slightest actions the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest --who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away.

5. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed His will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God!

6. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men— the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the

other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatic Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire.

7. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them.

8. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or on the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were, in fact, the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world.

9. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world like Sir Artegale's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but

having neither part nor lot in human infirmities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

Charles Fleetwood, one of the Parliamentary generals in the English civil war of 1642. Sir Henry Vane, an English patriot who took an active part, on the parliamentary side, in the civil war of 1642. Talus, a brazen man made by Vulcan for Minos to guard the island of Crete. Spenser, in the Faery Queen, represents him as an attendant upon Sir Artegale, and as running continually round the island of Crete, administering correction to offenders by flooring them with an iron flail.

LESSON XXXV.

BARBARA.

BY ALEXANDER SMITH.

Alexander Smith, a Scotch Poet of pronounced genius, was born at Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, in 1830. He was intended for the ministry, but circumstances having conspired to prevent his entering upon the necessary course of study, he was put to the business of a lace-designer in Glasgow. During this period he devoted his leisure to literature. Having forwarded some extracts from his Life Drama to the Rev. George Gilfillan, of Dundee, that gentleman was so highly pleased with the young poet's verses that he procured their insertion in the Critic. He afterward wrote City Poems, and Edwin of Deira, and three volumes of prose, entitled Dreamthorp, A Summer in Skye, and Alfred Hagart's Household. In 1854 he was appointed Secretary to the University of Edinburg, and died in 1867.

N the Sabbath day,

ON

Through the churchyard old and gray,

Over the crisp and yellow leaves I held my rustling way;

And amid the words of mercy, falling on the soul like balms,

'Mong the gorgeous storms of music in the mellow organ-calms, 'Mong the upward-streaming prayers, and the rich and solemn psalms, I stood heedless, Barbara!

2. My heart was otherwhere,

While the organ filled the air,

And the priest, with outspread hands, blessed the people with a prayer. But when rising to go homeward, with a mild and saintlike shine Gleamed a face of airy beauty, with its heavenly eyes on mine— Gleamed and vanished in a moment. O the face was like to thine, Ere you perished, Barbara!

3. O that pallid face!

Those sweet, earnest eyes of grace!

When last I saw them, dearest, it was in another place;

You came running forth to meet me with my love-gift on your wrist, And a cursed river killed thee, aided by a murderous mist.

O, a purple mark of agony was on the mouth I kissed,

When last I saw thee, Barbara!

4. Those dreary years, eleven,

Have you pined within your heaven,

And is this the only glimpse of earth that in that time was given?
And have you passed unheeded all the fortunes of your race-
Your father's grave, your sister's child, your mother's quiet face-
To gaze on one who worshiped not within a kneeling place?
Are you happy, Barbara?

5. 'Mong angels do you think

Of the precious golden link

I bound around your happy arm while sitting on yon brink?
Or when that night of wit and wine, of laughter and guitars,
Was emptied of its music, and we watched through lattice-bars
The silent midnight heaven moving o'er us with its stars,
Till the morn broke, Barbara?

6. In the years I've changed,

Wild and far my heart has ranged,

And many sins and errors deep have been on me avenged;
But to you I have been faithful, whatsoever good I've lacked;
I loved you, and above my life still hangs that love intact,
Like a mild, consoling rainbow o'er a savage cataract.
Love has saved me, Barbara!

7. O Love! I am unblest,

With monstrous doubts opprest

Of much that's dark and nether, much that's holiest and blest.
Could I but win you for an hour from off that starry shore,

The hunger of my soul were stilled; for Death has told you more
Than the melancholy world doth know-things deeper than all lore.
Will you teach me, Barbara?

8. In vain, in vain, in vain!

You will never come again;

There droops upon the dreary hills a mournful fringe of rain, The gloaming closes slowly round, unblest winds are in the tree, Round selfish shores forever moans the hurt and wounded sea; There is no rest upon the earth, peace is with Death and theeI am weary Barbara!

LESSON XXXVI.

THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

John Greenleaf Whittier, The Quaker Poet, was born in Haverhill, Mass., in 1807. He worked on his father's farm until his eighteenth year, when he attended an academy for two years. His skill with the pen came from his early connection with the newspaper press. He edited a political newspaper in Boston, afterward a literary weekly at Hartford, Conn., and still later an anti-slavery journal in Philadelphia. His religious education among the Society of Friends made him a strong opponent of slavery. One of his earliest prose works was a discussion of that question, and the volume of poems that first gave him reputation was entitled Voices of Freedom. His principal prose works are: Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, a Sketch of Puritan Intolerance, Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, and Literary Recreations. His poems were collected in an elegant volume in 1850. Other productions appeared later: Songs of Labor in 1851, The Chapel of the Hermits in 1852, The Panorama in 1856, Home Ballads in 1860, In War Time in 1863, Snow Bound in 1865, The Tent on the Beach in 1867, and Among the Hills in 1868. Mr. Whittier owes little to the graces taught in schools, and is eminently a natural port. He resides in Amesbury, Mass. The following poem has been cut down to dimensions suited to a reading exercise.

O

'ER the bare woods, whose outstretched hands

Plead with the leaden heavens in vain,

I see, beyond the valley lands,

The sea's long level dim with rain.

Around me all things, stark and dumb,
Seem praying for the snows to come,

And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone,
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone.

2. Along the river's summer walk,

The withered tufts of asters nod;

And trembles on its arid stalk

The hoar-plume of the golden-rod.
And on a ground of somber fir,

And azure-studded juniper,

The silver birch its buds of purple shows,

And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose.

3. With mingled sound of horns and bells,

A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly,

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