And now 1 view thee, 'tis, alas! with shame Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar, Happier in this than mightiest bards have been, LESSON LVII. Mont Blanc :-The hour before Sunrise.-COLERIDGE. HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star Rave ceaselessly, while thou, dread mountain form, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the sky and black: transpicuous deep, As with a wedge! But when I look again It seems thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Oh dread and silent form! I gazed on thee Till thou, still present to my bodily eye, Didst vanish from my thought.-Entranc'd in prayer, I worshipped the Invisible alone, Yet thou, methinks, wast working on my soul, E'en like some deep enchanting melody, So sweet we know not we are listening to it. And active will, self-conscious, offer now, Not as before, involuntary prayer And passive adoration. Hand and voice Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake! Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded and the silence came, Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Utter forth God! and fill the hills with praise ! And to thy summit upward from thy base LESSON LVIII. Maternal affection.-SCRAP Book, WOMAN'S charms are certainly many and powerful. The expanding rose just bursting into beauty has an irresistible. bewitchingness;-the blooming bride led triumphantly to the hymeneal altar awakens admiration and interest, and the blush of her cheek fills with delight;-but the charm of maternity is more sublime than all these. Heaven has imprinted in the mother's face something beyond this world, something which claims kindred with the skies, the angelic smile, the tender look, the waking, watchful eye, which keeps its fond vigil over her slumbering babe. These are objects which neither the pencil nor the chisel can touch, which poetry fails to exalt, which the most eloquent tongue in vain would eulogize, and on which all description becomes ineffective. In the heart of man lies this lovely picture; it lives in his sympathies; it reigns in his affections; his eye looks round in vain for such another ob ject on earth. Maternity, extatic sound! so twined round our hearts, that they must cease to throb ere we forget it! 'tis our first love; 'tis part of our religion. Nature has set the mother upon such a pinnacle, that our infant eyes and arms are, first, uplifted to it; we cling to it in manhood; we almost worship it in old age. He who can enter an apartment, and behold the tender babe feeding on its mother's beautynourished by the tide of life which flows through her generous veins, without a panting bosom and a grateful eye, is no man, but a monster. He who can approach the cradle of sleeping innocence without thinking that "Of such is the kingdom of heaven!" or see the fond parent hang over its beauties, and half retain her breath lest she should break its slumbers, without a veneration beyond all common feeling, is to be avoided in every intercourse of life, and is fit only for the shadow of darkness and the solitude of the desert. LESSON LIX. The last days of Herculaneum.-SCRAP BOOK. 6 A GREAT city-situated amidst all that nature could create of beauty and of profusion, or art collect of science and magnificence-the growth of many ages-the residence of enlightened multitudes-the scene of splendor, and festivity, and happiness-in one moment withered as by a spell -its palaces, its streets, its temples, its gardens, glowing with eternal spring,' and its inhabitants in the full enjoyment of all life's blessings, obliterated from their very place in creation, not by war or famine, or disease, or any of the natural causes of destruction to which earth had been accustomed-but in a single night, as if by magic, and amid the conflagration, as it were, of nature itself, presented a subject on which the wildest imagination might grow weary without even equalling the grand and terrible reality. The eruption of Vesuvius, by which Herculaneum and Pompeii were overwhelmed, has been chiefly described to us in the letters of Pliny the younger to Tacitus, giving an account of his uncle's fate, and the situation of the writer and his mother. The elder Pliny had just returned from the bath, and was retired to his study, when a small speck or cloud, which seemed to ascend from Mount Vesuvius, attracted his attention. This cloud gradually increased, and at length assumed the shape of a pine tree, the trunk of earth and vapor, and the leaves, "red cinders." Pliny ordered his galley, and, urged by his philosophic spirit, went forward to inspect the phenomenon. In a short time, however, philosophy gave way to humanity, and he zealously and adventurously employed his galley in saving the inhabitants of the various beautiful villas which studded that enchanting coast. Amongst others, he went to the assistance of his friend Pomponianus, who was then at Stabiæ. The storm of fire, and the tempest of the earth, increased; and the wretched inhabitants were obliged, by the continual rocking of their houses, to rush out into the fields with pillows tied down by napkins upon their heads, as their sole defence against the shower of stones which fell on them. This, in the course of nature, was in the middle of the day; but a deeper darkness than that of a winter night had closed around the ill-fated inmates of Herculaneum. This artificial darkness continued for three days and nights, and when, at length, the sun again appeared over the spot where Herculaneum stood, his rays fell upon an ocean of lava! There was neither tree, nor shrub, nor field, nor house, nor living creature; nor visible remnant of what human hands had reared there was nothing to be seen, but one black extended surface still streaming with mephitic vapor, and heaved into calcined waves by the operation of fire and the undulations of the earthquake! Pliny was found dead upon the seashore, stretched upon a cloth which had been spread for him, where it was conjectured he had perished early, his corpulent and apoplectic habit rendering him an easy prey to the suffocating atmosphere. LESSON LX. New mode of fishing.-SCRAP BOOK. SEVERAL years ago, a farmer, who resided in the immediate neighborhood of Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, kept a gander, who had not only a great trick of wandering himself, but alse delighted in piloting forth his cackling harem, to weary themselves in circumnavigating their native lake, or in straying amidst forbidden fields on the opposite shore. Wishing to check this vagrant habit, he one day seized the gander just as he was about to spring into his favorite element, and tying a large fish-hook to his leg, to which was attached part of a dead frog, he suffered him to proceed upon his voyage of discovery. As had been anticipated, this bait soon caught the eye of a greedy pike, which swallowing the deadly hook, not only arrested the progress of the astonished gander, but forced him to perform half a dozen somersets on the surface of the water! For some time the struggle was most amusing-the fish pulling, and the bird screaming with all its might-the one attempting to fly, and the other to swim, from the invisible enemy-the gander the one mo |