light of the level sun; while a warm June sky just faintly adusk with early gloaming, lay softly over all. With excited anticipations of a repetition of my pleasure, a few weeks afterwards I returned to the spot. (Thou editorial wE, avaunt, and cumber me no longer.) But the spirit of the former loveliness had fleeted, and I looked on a very common-place landscape. Perhaps the change was caused by some less fortunate blending of light and shade, and the other earthy and skyey influences which minister to the beauty of the works of God; or perhaps there was wanting in me at the time, beautiful, joyous Greek, the human epitome of earthly intellect and earthly love. But the deepest word of the grave and devout Hebrew, the man of heavenly thought and spiritual life, was Peace. "May you be happy," was the kindest wish of the one. But the thoughtful statement of the other is, "Great peace have they who love thy law, and nothing shall offend them." It was on the saddest eve of his sad life, that the Man of Sorrows said to his disciples. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, (happiness or pleasure) give I unto you.' Even when baffled of happiness, the good man has a sure inheritance in Peace. Yet or "The freshness of the heart that falls like dew, dinarily, he is surer even of happiness than the And out of all the lovely things we see, Alas, 'twas not in them, but, in thy power, At any rate the charm was vanished, and I conned this lesson to myself as I trotted disappointed home: let me quietly pursue the road of duty, doing what good I can, thinking of no reward, expecting no payment, and many an unsought joy will surprise me by the way, But let me look for recompense, and prepare for it, each time I speak a word of encouragement to a struggler, or do a deed of mercy to an unfortunate, and much of the merit, and all of the pleasure of my goodness will evaporate, Do your act of virtue or of kindness, without the backing of any mercenary thought of recompense, I pray you. If you do, you will have all the enjoyment of it. But if you stop to reinforce yourself by the thought of the enjoyment, you will lose it all. Love and practice virtue, said the Philosopher of the Garden, for happiness resides in virtue. Love and practise it, said the Sage of the Porch, for it is in itself, right, and good, and best. And, paradox as it seems, by following the counsel of Zeno, we secure as an end, that which Epicurus would have us use as our motive, while by taking his advice, we lose it. No man ever yet tried to be good in order to be happy, and became either the one or the other. But no man who has ever persistently exerted himself to be good for the sake of goodness, has ever failed:-yes, perhaps he has, of happiness, oh, yes, many good men have failed of that, but never of something better than that of Peace. Happiness was the highest word of the sensuous, volatile,subtle, ungodly. But then he must not try to be good for the sake of happiness, at least for the sake of his own; for so, will he never be either good or happy. Did you ever plan a pleasure party, a Sunday School pic-nic say, weeks beforehand, and with every preparation and appliance ready, wait impatiently for the day? And when it came, have you not sometimes gone out only to meet annoyance and vexation, and returned fretted and jaded, and depressed at heart, as if you had committed some great fault? Well, you have. For you expected enjoyment, and to do that, is almost certainly to insure disappointment; because you are thinking of pleasure for yourself. It was you who were to be happy, you thought. You were resolved to seek enjoyment; and if you thought of that of others, it was but as something that would heighten yours. Had you gone cheerfully to work to make them happy, and subordinated yourself to make the day pass pleas antly to them, it would have passed pleasantly to you. And so in daily life; let us seek our own gratification chiefly, and we are sure to lose it. But let us try to make and increase that of others, doing good for good's sake, i. e., for God's sake, in Christ's words, "lending, hoping for nothing again;" and, looking for no reward, we shall be abundantly rewarded. Beneficently has God so made us, that in seeking other's happiness we find our own, whereas, in striv ing for our own, we lose the glow, and sparkle that gives all its freshness and exhilaration to enjoyment. And now let us vary our strain, as, at the Table we are privileged to do. How singular are poetical coincidences. There was a fellow at the court of Augustus, who, having learned the Eneid by rote, proclaimed himself its au thor; and, to the amazement of Virgil, proved his claim, by reciting the whole poem, line for line, in the presence of the Emperor and the true author. Longfellow may thank his stars that Dr. King, Bishop of Chichester, has been safe and snug under his flat stone for over two hundred years. Could he come back again, though even in the faint outlines of a photograph, as some dead folks are said by sundry of our reverend brethren to be doing e'en now in Boston, for the edification of the curious, well might our modern poet apostrophize him, as Macbeth, Banquo: "But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum, Pour changer le sujet. In a churchyard in Biddeford, Devonshire, we find the following touching epitaph on the tombstone of a young girl, snatched away by death, from the brink of perhaps the lesser evil,-matrimony. "The wedding day appointed was, And wedding clothes provided, 66 and had dared to invite a company to tea. At the tea-table she was fretfully attentive to the wants of her guests, and one of them, anxious to soothe her, besought her not to put herself to so much trouble. Then the cark explained itself in her impatient reply. 'Oh, it's no' the trouble I mind, it's the expense!" And she recalls that other desolate widow in the kingdom of Fife, as its denizens style Fifeshire, who was lamenting her successive losses at the close of a black year. "First there was Robbie, puir laddie, that de'ed o' the chicken cough, and then Jennie dwined away wi' the measles, and then the gudeman himsel', oh, me, and now, Hawkie, the cow, she maun dee on tap o' a'; but to be sure, I gat sixteen shillings for her hide, though." One epitaph more from a churchyard at "Sacred to the memory And that reminds me, by what association of ideas I cannot tell, of the Irish lawyer, who, in the eye and manner of his opponent advoin pleading for a client, thought he discerned cate, a design to take advantage of an incautious admission of his own. With chest expanded, and head thrown back defiantly, and with shaking finger at his antagonist, in a rich confusion of metaphor, characteristic of the land of bulls, he thus admonished him that his intent was anticipated, and would be barred: "I smell a rat; 'tis brewing in the storm; but I shall nip it in the bud." And now shift we to yet another theme whose Was it not vexatious, not only that she should die, but that the cost of the wedding clothes should be wasted? The poet is evidently al-key-note thought shall be my Sunday School, most as much annoyed at their loss as at hers, its teachers, and my good brother, its faithful It reminds me of an old Scottish lady of penusuperintendent. rious habits, who had "burst her girths," as we say in Scotland, or in America, who had broke out of the bonds of her usual closeness, I have just returned from a rehearsal of some new hymns they are learning for a Sun. * Vide "Vestiges of the Creation." day school concert next Lord's Day evening. What are operas and oratorios, with " their intricacies of laborious song," to strains like these? The cultivated voices of adult singers please better, doubtless, the cultivated ear; but there is something in the voices of children when they join by scores or hundreds in a sacred song, and when they sing with expression of the feeling of the song, that "dirls" upon the heart, and swells it into the throat, while devotion floods the soul with a sense of God and Christ, of childish innocence and heavenly love, till we feel for the time, as pure as we fancy them to be, and "but a little lower than the angels." I know not how it is with others, but the song of a multitude of children, when they sing as did mine to-night, of the Babe of Bethlehem, of the suffering Man of Sorrows, or of the Christ of glory, comes upon me with a rush of sound, shrill, yet full, artless, yet with a charm beyond the reach of art, a blending of the warbling of the throats of thrushes, for they are innocent-with the blasts of the clarions of the cherubim, for they are heaven's children, infant faces lifted upon angel's wings. As I listened to them to-night, as I threw in my voice with theirs, I felt as glad and good, at least for the moment, as they; and I caught myself saying after Jesus, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." I do not know that with that incident in his life unrecorded, we should have felt the want of it; but surely now that it is given to us there, we do feel as if something would have been lacking in his sympathies with our whole humanity, if he had not thus been put into affectionate connexion with the gentlest and the tenderest part of it, the young children," whom he took up in his arms," and "put his hands on them, and blessed them." Aye, I sometimes think that there will be a want in heaven, no human children there. And to fill their places, I do hope that the cherubs are no fictions of the painter's fancy, but real inspirations of his soul, and that we shall have their sunny faces, forever young, forever flashing round us, as on gleaming wings they carry to and fro, through all the heavens, the lighter messages of God, glad and bounding on their errands through the everlasting light, as our children in their gladdest play, those infant Heads of glory, those children of the Angels. - Good reader, what I have written above is no longer mine alone, but ours now. And having tried to be moral and didactive in our first part, slightly antiquarian and inquisitive in our second, having had a little fun in our third, not I trust "beyond the limits of becoming mirth," and having begun and closed this Sunday night with a thought or two about our Sunday School children, not unfit in strain, howe'er expressed, for a minister to write on the evening of a day of the Lord, and for all who list, to read, Our work is done, I have no more to tell, And so God love us all, and Fare ye well. EXTRACTS. "letters We have lately been reading some from camp," which have interested us very deeply. They are not, however, from a camp of '61 or '62, but date as far back as 1799, a time when the war-clouds which burst over our country in 1812 were beginning to loom up in ominous shadows. They were written by Col. W. S. Smith, and are addressed to his wife, who was the only daughter of the second President of the United States. We think the Colonel must have been a model officer and understood mankind-soldier-kind, perhaps we should say, remarkably well. From a letter dated Union Camp, Nov. 24th, he writes: You say you often think of me, enduring, as I must, many hardships and inconveniences; they are, however, hardships and inconveniences which scarce deserve regard, relating only to the person; the pains which really incom mode, are in the mind, occasioned by delays in the supply of the necessary materials. I have been so annoyed by drones, that I have assumed the command of everything; contractors, burners of brick, venders of boards, and all the horses and wagons in the country, and have given a new spring and turn to all our gloomy prospects. My troops will all be covered; their houses are built, and most of their chimneys rise above the roof, so that if the storms docome severely, they can go to cover. The officers are now busied about theirs, and many are in considerable forwardness. For my own, I laid the first beam yesterday, at noon; if I am able to strike my tent the second week in December, I shall be content; but I will not go into a house before the troops are all comforta bly cantoned. Do not be uneasy, I shall not suffer. I am above what the world calls suffering; I am a stranger to that state of mind which accompanies or occasions the sufferings in others. No officer, or soldier, or even any of the inhabitants, dare say it's cold in camp A laughable circumstance occurred the other morning, just after the beating of the reveille drum, when the surface of the earth was covered with a strong frost, I was walking to the huts when I was overtaken by a countryman who had brought poultry to market; he communicated his errand, and said, rubbing his hands and his teeth chattering, "'tis a plaguey sharp morning, Colonel; 'tis terribly cold." "Are you cold, my friend?" "Yes, very." "Here, sergeant of the guard, take this friend of mine, put him by the guard fire, put a sentinel over him, turn him, but don't baste him, until he is about half roasted; for no man must be cold in this camp. And every man hereafter, who imagines himself so, and presumes to express it, must be roasted; for it is a fine, pleasant morning, and the weather will continue fine until our huts are built.' The countryman had not long been by the fire before he began to beg. I kept near: at length he called to me,For goodness' sake, Colonel, let me go, they'll roast me! Forgive me this time, and if I'm half froze to death I'll never say it's cold, when I'm in camp again.' I let him off in a perspiration. It is now fine fun for the soldiers; if any of them happens to say it's cold, his comrades take him, neck and heels, and carry him to the fire, and amuse them selves much with this trifle. Let it be ever so sharp, the soldier's say, 'It's a beautiful, fine day, huzza!'", "I find no difficulty in introducing and supporting discipline. The brigade will be ready to meet a legion of devils on horseback, whenever the order is given, and are now disposed to do everything I choose to order, or even look as if I wish to have it done. The real dignity of military command shall never be tarnished in my hands. I will preserve it pure and unblemished for my country's glory, which must and will shine resplendent in arms, should circumstances offer. ... "I am totally absorbed in military business and instruction; I have not been out of the cantonment for sixteen days. We are all in harmony and good humor our camp is a military paradise; if I look, they are solicitous to understand it if I speak, they jump to execute; in short, they are all obedience, and I am more placidly and elegantly serene, than ever you saw me; I think sometimes, if you could but remark me through the day, you would be half in love with me by tea-time! You laugh, I know, at my military enthusiasm; laugh on. I really feel, sometimes, as if I could "play at bowls with the sun and the moon, and frighten the world with eclipses." ... "The troops bear the cold well, and seem to be buoyed above the frost; for they say, look at the Colonel, he never goes to a fire, and why should we complain? In short, they are ready to undergo the toils of war, and bear the hardships that their leader bears;' who cannot, however hard the struggle may be between duty and love, leave them to freeze or burn without him." Here is some good philosophy from the soldier's pen. "There are a great many crossgrained things in the affairs of this life, my dear, which must be borne up against, with firmness; and when we allow ourselves to consider what a variety of character it necessarily takes to compose a world, with the aid of a little philosophy, we may rise superior to most of the common occurrences of life; at least, not permit them too pointedly to interfere with that negative, if not positive happiness which depends greatly upon ourselves, and the proper organization of our own minds." Here writes the Christian father. "Never tell me my dear baby is sick; if you were to write me she was dead, 1 could bear it; for I bow with reverence to the final decisions of a wise and overruling Providence, but when I think she is in pain, and that my assiduities as a parent, might relieve her from a pang, I am tortured that I cannot fly to give her a momentary comfort in the lap of affection and parental ten lerness." But I am taking too much room. As I close the book, I cannot help thinking of the thrilling interest that will, sixty years hence, attach to those letters from Union Camps, which have gone hither and thither, through the past year of trial. What records of hardships borne witho"t a murmur, of sufferings endured with scarcely a groan, of duties fulfilled without a momentary quail, of dreary pickets, of lonely beats, of forced marches, of battles by land and by water, of sad defeats and glorious victories! We are making history fast now, and history too, that the generations to come, will read with tearful eyes and throbbing hearts. God grant that its last page may be clear from blot! C. A. S. The soul never acts so effectually or joy fully as when all its powers and affections conspire: as when thought and feeling, reason and sensibility are called forth together, by one great aud kindling object. It will never devote itself to God with its whole energy, whilst its guiding faculty sees him a being to shock and confound it. Channing. BOOK NOTICES. Lectures on Moral Science; delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston. By Mark Hopkins, D. D., LL.D. Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1862. The Lowell Lectures, now so popular in this Eyes and Ears; by Rev. Henry Ward Beech er. Messrs. Ticknor & Field, Boston. Instead of any notice of our own, in the tone of which we might possibly be biased by a sectarian feeling, in favor of one who does a semiUniversalist work,—though in a fantastic way -among outsiders, we copy the words of another, and a purely literary periodical, as city, were commenced in the winter of 1839. 40. They derive their name from Mr. John Lowell, Jr., the originator and founder of the plan. In the will of Mr. Lowell provision was made" for the establishment of regular courses of public lectures, upon the most important branches of natural and moral science, to be annually delivered in the city of Boston." The bequest for this noble and generous pur-containing what we think a very just estimate pose amounted to nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; thus making the system at once permanent and self-sustaining. The lectures are delivered gratuitously to all who choose to attend them, the compensation provided by the bequest being sufficient, not only to command the highest talent in the country, but also to reward the lecturers for the most thorough and elaborate preparation of their course. of this book. "Mr. Beecher's book treats of common place themes of almost every description, from Major-Generals to grasshoppers, discoursing of all in a lively style, with piquant humor and felicitous illustration. The best articles bors and sports of the country. In this field of are those which relate to rural topics,--the lathought, Mr. Beecher is much more truthful and pleasant than in the pulpit or forum. . . . ... As a miscellaneous writer on ordinary ubjects, he labors to good advantage, and succeeds without giving offence. His pages display wit, ingenuity, sprightliness of fancy, and accuracy of observation. His style, without being elegant, is free and strong-the natural expression of natural thought. In the present considerable amount of puffery; but mingled therewith are many passages which, by their spirit and humane tendency, redeem the surrounding platitudes." The lectures comprising this volume, with the exception of the last, were delivered before the Institute, during the winter of 1861-2. These are twelve in number, and all evince the most careful preparation. They are lectures for scholars, although, as the author tells us in his summary, the course of thought passed over, is one, in itself, entirely simple. The in-volume, there is a good deal of trash, and a troductory lecture treats of the two classes of sciences physical and moral - their relation, progress and importance. Defining these two classes, the author says, one respects the sources of that light which is from without, the other of that which is within." In the second lecture, he lays the foundation of his work in these three questions:-1st. What ought man to do? 2d. Why ought he to do it? and 3d. How ought he to do it? "Whoever " says the author, can answer in all cases, these three questions, has mastered the science of morals." The chief aim and object of these lectures, is to answer these three important questions, which the doctor has done in a style which is at once interesting and instructive. These answers may be summed up briefly, as follows. 1st. To choose and seek the end for which God made This, we think, is a very fair verdict on most of what Rev. Henry Ward Beecher produces for the public. A. G. L. The Altar; a Service-book for Sunday Schools, by Rev. J. G. Bartholomew, 180 pages, 18mo. Price $2 per doz. Tompkins & Co., Boston. In the arrangement of the services, the au thor has displayed most excellent taste, and given us what we have long needed - service adapted to children. The Scripture selections, are arranged in paragraphs, to be read either by the superintendent alone, or alternately with the scholars. The prayers are all original, of him. 2d. Because of the intrinsic good there ing the true spirit of the Ohristian faith. Each the right length, plain and simple, yet breathis in the end. This end is to be sought, 3d. By hymn is set to music especially adapted to chilthe full activity of all his powers upon their ap-dren, some of which was written expressly for propriate objects. We might perhaps dissent this book. We predict for it a rapid sale. |