Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp, Still this great solitude is quick with life. They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, To his domestic hum, and think I hear Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground LESSON XXXII. What thy God has given, impart. WHY are springs enthroned so high, AMULET. 'Tis that thence their streams may flow, Fertilizing all below. Why have clouds such lofty flight, Why does God exalt tne great? Riches, why doth he confer? Does he light a Newton's mind? Reader, whosoe'er thou art, Hast thou power? the weak defend; Light? give light; thy knowledge lend remember him who gave; Rich? Free? be brother to the slave. Called a blessing to inherit, Bless-and richer blessings merit : LESSON XXXIII. The Moon and Stars. J. MONTGOMERY. On the fourth day of creation, when the sun, after a glori ous but solitary course, went down in the evening, and darkness began to gather over the face of the uninhabited globe, already arrayed in exuberance of vegetation, and prepared by the diversity of land and water for the abode of uncreated animals and man, a star, single and beautiful, stepped forth into the firmament. Trembling with wonder and delight in new-found existence, she looked abroad, and beheld nothing in heaven or on earth resembling herself. But she was not long alone; now one, then another, here a third, and there a fourth resplendent companion had joined her, till, light after light stealing through the gloom, in the lapse of an hour the whole hemisphere was brilliantly bespangled. The planets and stars, with a superb comet flaming in the zenith, for a while contemplated themselves and each other; and every one, from the largest to the least, was so perfectly well pleased with himself, that he imagined the rest only partakers of his felicity, he being the central luminary of his own universe, and all the host of heaven beside displayed around him in graduated splendor. Nor were any undeceived with regard to themselves, though all saw their associates in their real situations and relative proportions, self-knowledge being the last knowledge acquired either in the sky or below it, till, bending over the ocean in their turns, they discovered what they imagined, at first, to be a new heaven, peopled with beings of their own species; but when they perceived further that no sooner had any one of their company touched the horizon than he instantly disappeared, they then recognized themselves in their individual forms, reflected beneath, according to their places and configurations above, from seeing others, whom they previously knew, reflected in like manner. By an attentive but mournful self-examination in that mirror, they slowly learned humility; but every one learned it only for himself, none believing what others insinuated respecting their own inferiority, till they reached the western slope, from whence they could identify their true images in the nether element. Nor was this very surprising, stars being only visible points, without any distinction of limbs; each was all eye; and though he could see others most correctly, he could neither see himself, nor any part of himself, till he came to reflection! The comet, however, having a long train of brightness streaming sunward, could review that, and did review it with ineffable self-complacency: indeed, after all pretensions to precedence, he was at length acknowledged king of the hemisphere, if not by the universal assent, by the silent envy of all his rivals. But the object which attracted most attention and astonishment, too, was a slender thread of light, that scarcely could be discerned through the blush of evening, and vanished soon after nightfall, as if ashamed to appear in so scanty a form, like an unfinished work of creation. It was the moon, the first new moon: timidly she looked round upon the glittering multitude, that crowded through the dark serenity of space, and filled it with life and beauty. Minute, indeed, they seemed to her, but perfect in symmetry, and formed to shine forever; while she was unshapen, incomplete, and evanescent. In her humility, she was glad to hide herself from their keen glances in the friendly bosom of the ocean, wishing for immediate extinction. When she was gone, the stars looked one at another with inquisitive surprise, as much as to say, "What a figure!" It was so evident that they all thought alike, and thought contemptuously of the apparition, (though at first they almost doubted whether they should not be frightened,) that they soon began to talk freely concerning her, of course, not with audible accents, but in the language of intelligent. sparkles, in which stars are accustomed to converse with telegraphic precision from one end of heaven to the other, and which no dialect on earth so nearly resembles as the language of eyes- the only one, probably, that has survived, in its purity, not only the confusion of Babel, but the revolutions of all ages. Her crooked form, which they deemed a violation of the order of nature, and her shyness, equally unlike the frank intercourse of stars, were ridiculed and censured from pole to pole. For what good purpose such a monster could have been created, not the wisest could conjecture; yet, to tell the truth, every one, though glad to be countenanced in the affectation of scorn by the rest, had secret misgivings concerning the stranger, and envied the delicate brilliancy of her light, while she seemed but the fragment of a sunbeam, they indeed knew nothing about the sun, detached from a long line, and exquisitely blended. All the gay company, however, quickly returned to the admiration of themselves and the inspection of each other. What became of them, when they descended into the ocean, they could not determine: some imagined that they ceased to be; others that they transmigrated into new forms; while a third party thought it probable, as the earth was evidently convex, that their departed friends travelled through an underarching sky, and might hereafter reascend from the opposite quarter. In this hypothesis they were confirmed by the testimony of the stars that came from the east, who unanimously asserted, that they had been preëxistent for several hours in a remote region of sky, over continents and seas now invisible to them; and, moreover, that when they rose here, they |