which we would make the subject of thought. There is not a sermon written from the heart, or preached with power, that does not speak of departed spirits, as perfectly retaining their recollections, their affections, their consciences, their identity. We cannot speak to a child, of heaven, and bid him be good, that he may go up from the grave and live there happily, but we give him at once an idea of another life, differing little from this in its external and apparent circumstances. We cannot stand by the bed of the dying, and comfort him who is convulsed with the agonies and trembling with the horrors of death, but by awakening within his soul the hope and the belief, that his being 'is sown a natural body, to rise a spirtual body;' and therefore that he is still to be,still to be a man, with all the thoughts and feelings, which make him such, unharmed, untouched by the disease, which restores the frame he no longer needs to its original elements. Now these imperious, these unavoidable convictions of the mind and heart, upon which rest all the truths that dignify, and all the hopes which cheer humanity, should scarcely be considered as nothing more than the necessary weaknesses and wanderings of imperfect beings. Are they not rather glimpses of light permitted to shine upon our upward path, that we may not be in utter ignorance whither it shall lead? any rate, who will deny, that impressions of an individual and substantial existence in another life are sufficiently strong and universal to give the most profound and spirit-stiring interest to poetry adequate to them?

At

POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE OF THE WISE AND GOOD.

THE relations between man and man cease not with life. The dead leave behind them their memory, their example, and the effects of their actions. Their influence still abides with us. Their names and characters dwell in our thoughts and hearts. We live and commune with them in their writings. We enjoy the benefit of their labors. Our institutions have been founded by them. We are surrounded by the works of the dead. Our knowledge and our arts are the fruit of their toil. Our minds have been formed by their instructions. We are most intimately connected with them by a thousand dependencies. Those whom we have loved in life are still objects of our deepest and holiest affections.

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Their power over us remains. They are with us in our solitary walks; and their voices speak to our hearts in the silence of midnight. Their image is impressed upon our dearest recollections, and our most sacred hopes They form an essential part of our treasure laid up in heaven. For, above all, we are separated from them but for a little time. We are soon to be united with them. If we follow in the path of those we have loved, we too shall soon join the innumerable company of the spirits of just men made perfect. Our affections and our hopes are buried in the dust, to which we commit the poor remains of mortality. The blessed retain their remembrance and their love for us in heaven; and we will cherish our remembrance and our love for them on earth.

Creatures of imitation and sympathy as we are, we look around us for support and countenance even in our virtues. We recur for them, most securely, to the examples of the dead. There is a degree of insecurity and uncertainty about living worth. The stamp has not yet been put upon it, which precludes all change, and seals it up as a just object of admiration for future times. There is no service which a man of commanding intellect can render his fellow creatures better than that of leaving behind him an unspotted example. If he does not confer upon them this benefit; if he leaves a character dark with vices in the sight of God, but dazzling with shining qualities in the view of men; it may be that all his other services had better been forborne, and he had passed inactive and unnoticed through life. It is a dictate of wisdom, therefore, as well as feeling, when a man, eminent for his virtues and talents, has been taken away, to collect the riches of his goodness, and add them to the treasury of human improvement. The true Christian liveth not for himself, and dieth not for himself; and it is thus, in one respect that he dieth not for himself.

PICTURE OF A GOOD MAN.

SOME angel guide my pencil, while I draw,
What nothing less than angel can exceed,
A man on earth devoted to the skies.

With aspect mild, and elevated eye,
Behold him seated on a mount serene,

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peace.

Above the fogs of sense, and passion's storm;
All the black cares and tumults of this life,
Like harmless thunders, breaking at his feet,
Excite his pity, not impair his
Earth's genuine sons, the sceptred and the slave,
A mingled mob! a wandering herd! he sees,
Bewilder'd in the vale; in all unlike!
His full reverse in all! What higher praise?
What stronger demonstration of the right?

The present, all their care; the future, his.
When public welfare calls, or private want,
They give to fame; his bounty he conceals.
Their virtues varnish nature; his, exalt.
Mankind's esteem they court; and he, his own.
Theirs, the wild chase of false felicities;
His, the composed possession of the true.
Alike throughout is his consistent peace;
All of one colour, and an even thread;
While party-colour'd shreds of happiness,
With hideous gaps between, patch up for them
A madman's robe; each puff of fortune blows
The tatters by, and shows their nakedness.

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He sees with other eyes than theirs. Where they
Behold a sun, he spies a deity:

What makes them only smile, makes him adore.
Where they see mountains, he but atoms sees:
An empire, in his balance, weighs a grain.
They things terrestrial worship as divine;
His hopes immortal blow them by, as dust,
That dims his sight, and shortens his survey,
Which longs, in infinite, to lose all bound.
Titles and honors-if they prove his fate,—
He lays aside, to find his dignity.
No dignity they find in aught besides.
They triumph in externals-which conceal
Man's real glory-proud of an eclipse.
Himself too much he prizes to be proud,
And nothing thinks so great in man, as man.
Too dear he holds his interest, to neglect
Another's welfare, or his right invade:
Their interest, like a lion, lives on prey.
They kindle at the shadow of a wrong:

Wrong he sustains with temper, looks on heaven,
Nor stoops to think his injurer his foe:

Nought, but what wounds his virtue, wounds his peace.
A cover'd heart their character defends;

A cover'd heart denies him half his praise.
With nakedness his innocence agrees;
While their broad foliage testifies their fall.
Their no joys end where his full feast begins;
His joys create, theirs murder future bliss.
To triumph in existence his alone;
And his alone triumphantly to think
His true existence is not yet begun.

His glorious course was, yesterday, complete;
Death, then, was welcome; yet life still is sweet.

STANZAS,

Written on visiting a scene in Argyleshire.

AT the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,

On the wind shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruined and wild is their roofless abode,
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree;
And traveled by few is the grass-covered road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode
To his hills that encircle the sea.

Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,

One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been.

Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,
From each wandering sunbeam, a lonely embrace;
For the night-weed and thorn overshadowed the place,
Where the flower of my forefathers grew.

Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all

That remains in this desolate heart!

The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall;

But patience shall never depart!

Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,

In the days of delusion by fancy combined,
With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
Abandon my soul like a dream of the night,
And leave but a desert behind.

Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns
When the faint and feeble deplore;

Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore!

Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain
May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!

Yea! even the name I have worshiped in vain
Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again;
To bear is to conquer our fate.

DEATH A SUBLIME AND UNIVERSAL MORALIST. From a Sermon on the death of the Hon. William Pinckney, preached March 3d, 1822, in the hall of the house of representatives in congress.

No object is so insignificant, no event so trivial, as not to carry with it a moral and religious influence. The trees that spring out of the earth are moralists. They are emblems of the life of man. They grow up; they put on the garments of freshness and beauty. Yet these continue but for a time; decay seizes upon the root and the trunk, and they gradually go back to their original elements. The blossoms that open to the rising sun, but are closed at night never to open again, are moralists. The seasons are moralists, teaching the lessons of wisdom, manifesting the wonders of the Creator, and calling on man to reflect on his condition and destiny. History is a perpetual moralist, disclosing the annals of past ages, showing the impotency of pride and greatness, the weakness of human power, the folly of human wisdom. The daily occurrences in society are moralists. The success or failure of enterprise, the prosperity of the bad, the adversity of the good, the disappointed hopes of the sanguine and active, the sufferings of the virtuous, the caprices of fortune in every condition of life, all these are fraught with moral instructions, and, if properly applied, will fix the power of religion in the heart.

But there is a greater moralist still; and that is, DEATH. Here is a teacher, who speaks in a voice, which none can