and drop out of their sockets. The penetrating eye, that searched into the very abyss of thought, is altogether useless, or but dimly discerns the rays of light. Manly fortitude is now no more, and wisdom itself retires from the decayed mansion. Dr. Hugh Smith. THE CHRISTIAN HEART. As a watch, though tossed up and down by the agitation of him who carries it, does not, on that account, undergo any perturbation or disorder in the working of the spring or wheels within; so the true Christian heart, however shaken by the joltings it meets with in the pressure and tumult of the world, suffers no derangement in the adjustment and action of its machinery. The hand still points to eternity. Rev. R. A. Willmott. THE BEAUTIES OF VEGETATION. I HAVE often been surprised to find those who possessed a very acute sensibility of artificial or literary grace, and were powerfully affected by the beauties of a poem, a piece of sculpture, or painting, not at all more sensible of the charms of a tree or a floweret than a common and inelegant spectator. This is certainly the effect of a superficial judgment! for there is no truth of which philosophers have been longer convinced, than that the realities of Nature infinitely exceed the most perfect productions of imitating art. Defects are always discovered in works of art when they are examined with a microscope; but a close examination of a leaf or a flower is like taking off a veil from the face of beauty. The finest needle ever polished, and pointed by the most ingenious artist, appears, when it is viewed by the solar microscope, quite blunt; while the sting of a bee, however K magnified, still retains all its original acuteness of termination. The serrated border of the petal of a flower, and the fringe on the wing of a fly, display an accuracy of delineation which no pencil ever yet could rival. The taste of the florist has not, indeed, been much admired, or generally aspired at; while that of the connoisseur in painting is considered as a mark of elegance of character, and an honourable distinction; yet surely it is an inconsistency to be transported with the workmanship of a poor mortal, and feel no raptures in surveying those highly finished pictures in which it is easy to trace the finger of the Deity. Rev. V. Knox. As the light leaf, whose fall to ruin bears BURIAL AT SEA. FROM his room to the deck they brought him drest With his boots, and stock, and garments on, For he wished a child might come and lay Then they wrapp'd his corse in the tarry sheet, And prepared him to seek the depths below, His companions, mix'd with the hardy crew, Then they bore his remains to the vessel's side, One sullen plunge - and the scene is o'er The sea roll'd on as it roll'd before. Rev. B. Bailey. THE SILENCE OF NATURE. A THOUGHT Comes into my mind, as I shake the rain out of this lily, how calm and unpretending is everything in God's visible world! No noise! No pretension! You never hear a rose growing, or a tulip shooting forth its gorgeous streaks. The soul increases in beauty as its life resembles the flowers! Addison said, that our time is most profitably employed in doings that make no figure in the world. Rev. R. A. Willmott. |