of her majesty, who gives her special protection to the industrious girls. "Such is this asylum, truly admirable in all its details, founded by the exertions of a poor woman; so true is it that Providence frequently, from the smallest origin, produces the greatest results. The story of Rosa Govona serves to prove in what way, without saddling any expense upon the citizens, and without donations or legacies, so vast a scheme of labor may be brought to a successful termination. In a little chapel adjoining the work-rooms, I read the following monumental inscription :-' Here repose the remains of Rosa Govona de Mondovi, who from her youth consecrated herself to God, for whose glory she founded in her country, in this city, and divers others, retreats for unfortunate young females, in order to lead them to serve God, and gave them excellent rules, to attach them to piety and labor. During her administration of more than thirty years, she gave constant proofs of an admirable charity and an indomitable perseverance. She passed to the life eternal the 28th day of February, in the year 1776, and of her age the 60th. The children recognize in her their mother and benefactress, and consecrate this monument to her memory.' "Humble words these, when one considers the good which has been done, and the benefits which these institutions still continue to confer upon the country, and for which Rosa merits the highest possible eulogiums. I was deeply affected, especially when I considered that the good Rosa Govona had as yet received no place amongst the list of the benefactors of the human race." May this little paper make her known as she deserves to be. HEB. xiii. 14: For here have we no continuing city. WHEN the child is swiftly passing down the river, to him it seems as though the lines of houses and trees on the shore were passing, when really it is only himself. So under the influence of strong feeling men transfer to outward things what is really only transpiring within themselves. They speak of having "no continuing city," when the simple fact is, the city continues, but they pass out of it. It is a solemn moment with any thoughtful man when he has to come down from his lofty height of feeling, where it had seemed to him that all nature and art sympathized with him in his sorrow, when in reality he has been but magnifying his consequence and thinking of himself "more highly than he ought to think." The sun rises in its primal glory; the stars shine in the twilight heavens; and the moon rolls up her radiant chariot from out the valley and clothes the hills in a beauty all her own, as though no tear was ever shed, or parting word ever spoken. Solitude, silence, and darkness, are many times more desired by grief than society, speech, and light; because the heart magnifies its emotions as no other can magnify them, and there is, therefore, no response to the fulness of its woe. There is something really sublime in the vision which the text and context suggests as having taken possession of the Apostle's mind. He had dwelt on the pre-eminent dignity and offices of Jesus; he had exhorted to the duties of responsive love; and he concludes his epistle with a strong word in behalf of fidelity to him who, in his offices and relations to man as Mediator and Redeemer, is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." "We have an altar," he says, "whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." A better religion has a better life for its adherents; and to those who had accepted Christ, there were joys and blessings which must, of necessity, be unknown to those who still read Moses with a veil upon their heart, and pursued shadows to the missing of the substance. And then the Death of Jesus, the great sacrifice, loomed up: Jesus was seen, as it were, bearing his cross without the gate of the city, and the faithful are called to behold and follow him up the hill of sacrifice. Doing this, in feeling and imagination, the city seemed to the disciple to pass away, when, in reality, it continued the same. There it was, with its thronged streets and wealthy palaces; its marts and its halting places; its retreats of prayer and its gorgeous temple; its representatives of all nations and peoples, who, by their presence, told of the many cities afar that were continuing despite the ravages of death and the passing away of those who once gave direction to the energies of the citizens. But to the strong feelings of the Apostle it seemed as though the city was not; it appeared to float away as gilded vapor, and the continuing city was that which was to come, the city of the Messiah, the city of God, the city whose palaces were Truth, whose temple was Love, and whose light was the glory of God. In comparison with the endurance of this city, Jerusalem was indeed a thing of the moment, and Rome, on her seven hills, but the pageant of an hour. It is grand to think how transient is every thing belonging to the outward world when the soul is fully awakened to its own gran deur; when thought masters the senses, and mind is recognized as the only enduring thing. The city of the soul has, indeed, here no representative in the gorgeous show of material industry and modern civilization. There is no earthly city worthy of being its continual home; and the humblest Christian, like Bunyan in prison, may be dwelling amid splendor and magnifi cence that has no parallel in any city on the grandest of festival days, or at the proudest moment of prosperity and display. To remember | this is our duty. It has inspirited thousands to abandon wealth rather than honesty, and to find God in obscurity rather than lose him in the glitter of fame and popularity. It has given nerves firmer than steel, endurance the most heroic, and a spirit of victory as unconquerable as the ocean, as irresistible as the tides. To sell his soul for a city, is no temptation to such; for the soul is grander than the city, and more enduring. Its glory is perpetual. But it is difficult to keep strained to this high note in the Christian's song. With a divine faith we have human hearts. The seen affects us as the unseen cannot. Our life, our joy, our virtue even, seems sometimes centred in one place. There our best years have been passed, and no other place can have the experience of those years. To pass away is really to have the city pass-it ceases to be what it was-it is not visible as it once was; and however its familiar streets, with their stores and houses, may be present to the imagination, there is something like a shroud about them and the silence of the grave. It is with such a city as with the dead. The dead live to our faith; they go on in progress; we are not essential to their growth; but live as they may, and improve as they may, they are not to us, nor we to them, what they and we were when they were visible to us, and we gave to and received directly from them in the interchange of lip and eye. So with the city; afar from it, we know it still is, but for us it contin- | ues not as it once continued. It is a Memory. It is to be called up to the Imagination, not to the Eye. It is no longer to give the daily stimu lus to our thoughts, the direction to our efforts, the changes to our most secret life, as in the past. We are not there to hail the new born, nor weep above the dead. We are not to be gladdened at the growth of the youth, or to be saddened by the decay of the aged. We are not to feel elevated by the progress of great principles as though we were a part of the city thus moved to a higher and nobler life, nor depressed and shamed by the tardy step of reform and improvement. And say what we will, there is a solemn sense in which the departing can say of the city of his long residence, "Here have we no continuing city." The city will indeed survive. The sunlight will fall on its thousands of dwellings; the sounds of awakening industry will break on the morning air, and the noon-bell will call the laborers to lay by the hammer and the sledge, to still the wheel and lift the valve, and crowd the streets to where plenty awaits hunger; the evening star will look in upon many a group by the casement, and lamps will flicker here and there amid the mist that suddenly falls as the winds beat up the ocean vapors to shroud the river shores and fill the streets with misty dimness. But the city continues no longer as it once existed to the soul. There is no charm that can make it so. Insensibly other influences will operate to form other habits, customs, modes of thinking and feeling, and in a little while the change in the speech of the visitor betrays from whence he came, and that he is a guest where he was late a citizen. It is well then that proper feelings be invited to the heart when a city, where a soul has known a marked experience, is to be left. Such parting, say what we will, is something like a farewell to a friend who may live to our Memory, but may not to our Sight; and as far as the friends of the departing one who leaves the city make a portion of that city, the sadness and solemn thought of the time may be reciprocated. It is a fact that we are no longer to be what we have been. We shall live to each other indeed, but not as we have lived. SOMETHING IS TO DIE TO DAY. We shall be interested in each other, ready to rejoice and weep as the good God may send joy or sorrow; and I hope we shall pray for each other, and that our Divine Savior will see us pursuing different ways to the same eternal centre of Love, Light, and Liberty. But SOMETHING must die to day. We must not wish to be what we have been to each other. Some feelings must be transferred, and around another name you must weave the garland freshest from the hand of friendship. Some other must have the good things this city would have given to me had I longer tarried here; and not the shadow of a reed shall be in the way, on my part, to prevent the passing to him of all that might, in your best moments, have been prepared for me. Prostrate before God I have asked him to help me give up this city-this field of earnest labor, sacred to me by a thousand associations; and now I ask that He will aid the souls to whom I have been something in a spiritual way, to give up me to so give me up that I may not be in the way of any just transfer of feeling, but be quoted as one who wrought for the same end to which the Coming Man may direct his labors. We are not essential to each other. We can stand apart and grow; and from our branches the great Husbandman may pluck the grapes that shall fill the cup of Communion with the same richness of refreshing drink, telling that the same sun has shone upon the vine in the one place and in the other, and that both alike were "rooted and grounded in love." Yes, the city continues though the man perishes. It is humbling to pride to see how every thing goes on just the same as though the absent were present. He was told what great interests would suffer, what a loss would be sustained, but it is really but as the waters part when the boat glides through them :-in a little while the troubled stream is quiet, and the reflection of the overshadowing rock or tree is as perfect as in a mirror. The fact is, the individual lives to but a small circle, except in very unusual cases, and his passing is more like the little fluttering of the leaves on the branch of the tree when the bird flies away, than like even the lightest passing of the boat in the stream. Let us not make ourselves of too great consequence. Let us call up the growth of the city, its multiplied agencies, its methods of improvement, its rapid increase in population, its evidence of energy and enterprise, and see it all like some gorgeous vision of Power in which we may be represented but as a mere bubble,-it may be a bubble that a Newton used, but a bubble still, the explosion of which did not stop the progress of the science of Light; for other bubbles were to be found and were used. To the misanthrope and to the child of vanity there is nothing more oppressive than this independence which a city has over the individual. To the one, it seems as though there was no life but in association with numbers, that like some armies seem immortal, as the name of the old member is taken by the new; but the vain man is an amusing spectacle as he keeps up the prosecution of little arts to make himself seem of consequence-arts that betray his jealousy, his longing to have a place that does not belong to him, and that makes him wander like a ghost that would disturb the festival of the new marriage and forbid the banns, forgetting that he is but a ghost. It is better to die once for all when our time comes. It is better to own to ghostship, and keep in the realms of shade, appearing in the flesh and blood of a mere visitor, not a disturber of the peace, claiming our widow as our bride. Of one thing we may be certain, A man lives in the city he leaves, but the life he then lives there, is not to be changed or touched. In this sense we must reverse our language and say, Here have we a continuing city. Paul lived in Tarsus after he went to Damascus, and at Damascus after he went on his mission of Truth to other cities,-Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Rome; in all of which he left a life of power when he departed from their limits. If we think we have done any thing in the way of Christian effort, we need not sorrow as though the work passed with the man. No! the work remains just as truly as the houses which have been built by mechanics whose trowels strike the brick no more in the streets. And so our friend's work remains when he goes away. No man can kill it. It is not a flame to be put out with water from the river, or by even the new fire annihilator. It is like the Wind-" thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." Its effects will prove its existence. It lives as prayer lives to God when it has died on the ear. Who can tell how prayer works the mighty end for which it is offered, and to which it is directed by the overruling care of God? So the path of the continued life of one who goes out from a city is not to be traced as we once traced his form in the thoroughfare or in the home. It is like all spirit-no one can tell its place of lodgment. Some have said the soul was in the stomach, some in the heart, some in the brain, and so on; but it is all idle guess work; and so of what a man has done for God and his truthit cannot be seen, it may be traced, to this person or class, humble or exalted, but it is somewhere a vitality, a power, a regenerating force. This may satisfy the man who feels he must die in one sense to a city; and it may also satisfy those who feel sorrow at heart because that death must take place. God lives, and every thing that has lived for Him lives on like the growth of the grain that crowns the hill-side with green and gold in luxuriant increase, though the seed of that fruitfulness is no more. Sept. 1851. HENRY BACON. "BUT not to me can the present seem Like a foolish tale, or an idle dream." A VALENTINE.' DEAR Valentine, how oft my thoughts will roam, O, when the sunset clouds grow gray at even, Waken a single thought of one afar ? Ah! were I but the healthful mountain air, Yes, I would be a cloud, a flower, a tree, THE same truths present a very different as pect, and confirm a very different view to one man, from what they do to another. To proceed at once to the most important illustration of this, the Christian, cherishing one main conception of human life, sees some facts as primary, and others as secondary, while to the sensu alist, it is precisely the reverse. Indeed, they may be said to interchange views of human life; to both it is trivial, to both it is great, but in senses exactly opposite. In one point of view, human life is a great thing to the sensualist. It is so when he looks at it from within, because, entertaining no conceptions which rise above its animal or material uses, to him it is every thing. It contains the sum total of his hopes, his joys, his treasures. Like the widow's two mites, these days and hours, ebbing so fast away, constitute all he has, even all his living. He recognizes no domain of being, except that which is comprised in the circle of his perception; he conceives no happiness but that which mates itself with his bound ing pulses. Of what lies outside, his soul never pauses to think; or, if it hovers a moment over that speculation, it drops into dark and gloomy conjecture, and flies back to the present, as its only tabernacle of love and desire. To him, this life is great in itself; in its breathing consciousness, its sunlight and its air. It is to him a harp, which, if shattered, you destroy all music; a lamp, which, if quenched, you put out all light. Kept continually close to his eye, it covers the expanse of the horizon, and veils the stars. It is great in itself, and it is great in its accessories, its pomp, its wealth, its pleasure. Indeed, these are as important as life itself; for if this present being be regarded as all, what we possess, what we wear, or eat, or grasp, is an essential part of life. Money is life; fame is life; the splendid apparel and the sumptuous banquet are life. If there is nothing within us that transcends these material circumstances, then man and they are equal, having a like dignity and significance. So, this earthly existence is a great thing, when, like the sensualist, we confessedly or virtually regard it as our all; when its forms are, for us, the only substantial realities; when its tumult drowns all other voices; when its glitter eclipses all other splendors; when it darkens our heaven, and banishes our God; when it is great enough to bind all the affections, to absorb all the interests, and to fill all the capacities of a human soul. But, on the other hand, life, regarded from this point of view, by the Christian, appears extremely small. Seen by him as a mere mortal term, and with only its sensual relations, it is as a vapor and a dream, for it lies enfolded within conceptions that stretch out through eternity, and that are overshadowed with the reflection of Divine realities. In itself, it is but a hasty breath, a momentary spark, a swift running brook, measured off by a few spring flowers, a few withered leaves. And its accessories are but the glories of an hour, the drapery of decay; the uncertain sceptre, the glittering dust, that drops broken and useless from the hands of the dead. To him who rises into the scope of a truly spiritual view, small indeed is the span of mortal existence. Tracing the current of immortal years, its days of joy and sorrow dwindle to a point; gazing upon countless regions of life and thought, its theatre of action, with all the pomp and excitement it holds, shrinks to a dim obscurity. But again, looking upon human life from without, the sensualist or materialist regards it as trivial. Turning upon it the cold gaze of science, it becomes merely a phenomenon of nature; a result evolved in the everlasting process of things. No view of life is so depressing and heartless as that of a philosophic materialist, or sceptic. It withdraws from the universe the light of a personal and Infinite Father; it severs the vital ligaments of man's worth and duty, and quenches in his heart the sparks of immortal hope. Viewing him only as an effect projected by the mysterious agencies of matter, perishable as the plant or the brute; regarding him as a material object among other objects, whirled in the orbit of eternal necessity, and under the control of unbending and unpitying laws, it bids him look upward, where worlds lie strewn thick as golden sands, and then acknowledge his insignificance; it bids him look down into the unsounded chasm of the grave, and there behold his end. From no quarter have there issued such mean and degrading views of human life, such satire upon man's weakness and worthlessness, such withering scorn at all he attempts or executes, as from those whose conceptions of our nature are sensual and material, and who have looked upon it from the side of science or philosophy. But, to the Christian, looking upon human life from the same point of view, yet with a vision of intense spiritual sympathy, it rises at once into greatness and importance. Viewed in its essence, considered in its relations, its capacities, its purposes, it becomes a grand and exhaustless fact. So far from dwindling before the greatness of nature, this only furnishes vaster suggestions of its destiny, and wider fields for its capabilities. While, considering man as only a material object, he might be disposed to say, "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and stars, which Thou had ordained, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" And while the condescension admitted in these questions fills him with humility and gratitude, still, he rejoices in the fact that God is mindful of him, that God has visited him, and also has singled him out with infinite goodness, and distinguished him from the plant or the brute; for He has made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. He recognizes the fact that he is not merely a material object, but a spiritual and immortal being. And, comprehended in this vision, life is a great fact. [Univ. Quarterly. E. II. CHAPIN. |