THE LADIES' REPOSITORY. MAY, 1847. THE BANIAN TREE. (SEE ENGRAVING.) "The entire circumference of the shadow, at noon, was eleven hundred and sixteen feet; and it required nine hundred and twenty feet to surround the fifty or sixty stems, by which the tree was supported." There is another specimen of this tree, in the same country, which "covers an area of seventeen thou WE present, this month, a very correct drawing of the celebrated Banian tree, whose singular properties have excited great attention in all ages of the world. It belongs to the family of fig-trees, and is called, by naturalists, the Ficus Indica, or Indiansand square yards;" and, we are told that both Fig. It flourishes extensively in the East Indies, and is the object of religious veneration among the Hindoos. The fruit of it is not very remarkable, either for size or esculent qualities; but the immense shade it offers to the weary traveler, when toiling over the sun-burnt regions of southern India, is indescribably refreshing, both to the mind and body. To the poor, way-worn pilgrim of that country, it is like the wandering Hebrews' "shadow of a great rock in a weary land," and is highly calculated to call forth the gratitude of the religious, as well as the veneration of the superstitious mind. The Banian tree possesses one very remarkable peculiarity. When it has reached a certain magnitude, and the parent stock stands up with all its "leafy honors on its head," the lateral branches send down to the ground perpendicular shoots, which, taking root, become trees, and have their own leaves and branches. This process, in a good soil, sometimes goes on till the original trunk has spread its secondaries all over a vast region, forming a natural arbor more beautiful than art can imitate, or the mind easily concieve. Strabo, the great Grecian geographer, compares this Banian arbor to "a tent supported by many columns." Pliny, also, the celebrated Roman naturalist, mentions this tree, and speaks glowingly of its properties; and Milton, catching his inspiration from the Latin original, embalms the fame of it in a passage of immortal beauty: "Branching so broad along, that in the ground The Banian tree, near Mangee, in Bengal, has been quite accurately measured by curious travelers. VOL. VII.-17 India and China are half embowered beneath these ""Twas a fair scene wherein they stood- It was a goodly sight to see For o'er the lawn, irregularly spread, Of gentle motion swung; So like a temple did it seem, that there A pious heart's first impulse would be prayer." It may be that some of our own poets, taking the hint from this beautiful picture, and warming their genius by the fire of the older bards, may give us a few verses equal to any thing that has been written, or a prose sketch, full of the poetry of thought and feeling. From looking at this tree, and thinking of the sultry summer's day where it grows, and conceiving the delicious coolness of its shade, and dreaming about the country gossip that may have been carried on beneath its wide-spreading branches, we have ourselves half resolved to write a sketch in prose. 130 HUMAN LIFE. BY BISHOP MORRIS. HUMAN LIFE. THIS life is a compound of good and evil, pleasure and pain, toil and rest, strength and weakness, joy and sorrow, hope and disappointment. On one hand, before we are ushered into being, a universe is prepared for our reception and accommodation, which affords us aliment pleasant to the taste, crystal streams to quench our thirst, the balmy air to inhale, the sun to light up the path of our earthly pilgrimage, the sweet melody of nature to enliven our feelings, and many kind friends to sympathize with us in all our troubles. On the other hand, the day we begin to live we begin to suffer, and, in one sense, to die. From infancy we are the subjects of pain, sickness, vexation, anguish, and revenge, till exhausted nature sinks beneath the accumulated weight of evils, or till some of the multiplied thousands of diseases to which humanity is heir, bring us down to the house appointed for all the living. It is well for us that, when we commence the journey of life, we are ignorant of what lies before us; for if we could then foresee all the plans, failures, treacheries, and losses, which come up in after life, that sight would so overwhelm us, as to paralyze all our efforts, and blast all our prospects. By a wise arrangement of Providence, we know not what a day may bring forth. The history of life is learned as it transpires. In the mean time, hope is buoyant, and, though often disappointed, it is among the last of all our friends that forsake us. When the winds of adversity howl around and threaten to overwhelm us, hope reaches within the vail of safety, and, like the mariner's anchor, is the most useful in a storm. When poverty blights our earthly possessions, or disease invades our domestic circles, and is permitted to spread the winter of death around us, Hope, like a smiling evergreen, rears its lovely form before the vision of our desolate hearts. Thus we are borne onward through the changing scenes of mor tal life. In contemplating human life, there is, perhaps, nothing which strikes us more forcibly, or admonishes us more frequently, than the thought of its brevity. After breathing for half a century, then reviewing the past, life appears as a dream when one awakes from his night slumbers; and should fifty per cent. be yet added to the years of his life, he would be but a breathing mass of physical and mental weakness, tottering on the verge of time, ready to lanch on the dark ocean of death. And is our race so nearly run? and are we so little concerned about the end of it? Again: how many millions of our race, who came into being after we did, have gone to the spirit land! Neither childhood, youth, nor manhood has any security against the shafts of Death. Of the nine hundred millions of human beings now upon earth, as nearly as can be calculated, there is one birth and one death per second, on an average. And are the children of men going into eternity at the rate of sixty per minute, or three thousand six hundred per hour, or eighty-six thousand four hundred per day, or nine hundred millions per one generation of thirty years? and is not our time at hand? Though the patriarchs lived for centuries, the life of man has, ever since their day, been gradually growing shorter, as he increases in the luxuries of civilized society. In the days of the Psalmist, the years of his life were reduced to three-score and ten, and, perhaps, now would scarcely average thirty years. How truly it said, "Man that is born of a woman, is few of days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth, also, as a shadow, and continueth not!" In view of all which, it follows, to consider our latter end, so as to prepare for it, is wisdom, and to neglect it is madness. Dying is truly a solemn event, but living is still more so, when properly considered. For every act of life we are accountable to the great Author of our being; but for the pains of death we are not accountable. It is not in death, but while living, that we adopt our principles, form cur characters, and take our coloring for eternity. When a man dies in the order of Providence, he is not held responsible for the time, place, or circumstances of his dissolution; but, let it be remembered, the King of kings and Lord of lords has said, "For every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Every day that we live we are laying up a good foundation against the time to come, or treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath, and the revelation of the righteous judgments of God. Our business in this world, therefore, is to get well through and safe out of it; and whoever does this, shall have accomplished the great end of living; but whoever fails herein, will have occasion to say, with the celebrated statesman, when dying, "Remorse;" and it would be better for such a delinquent if he had never been born. In regard to the termination of life, that which should concern us most is to be prepared for it, and for what lies beyond it. Whether we sink under slowly wasting disease, or break with sickness in a day—whether we die at home, surrounded with family and friends, or abroad amidst strangers, or entirely alone, is not material; but every thing depends on dying in Christ, and being saved with the power of an endless life. A few years ago, a young man, in the city of New Orleans, whose friends had assembled to witness his departure from this world, and catch the last whispers that might fall from his quivering lips, on reviewing the countless dangers through which he had passed, and surveying the crown of life then full in view, amidst the agonies of death exclaimed, "I am safe!" That young man was a Christian, and knew whom he had believed. THE CHURCHES OF ROME. BEFORE the western traveler reaches Rome, he will have become sensible of the striking resemblance between the pomp and ceremony of the ancient Pagan and the Catholic worship. And after he has been in Rome a week or two, and inquired for the sites of some of the most celebrated temples which adorned the ancient city, and found them occupied by Christian churches, in some cases even retaining the Pagan names, he will be convinced, that it was the policy of the Church, after the accession of Constantine, as far as possible, to render the sacred edifices, rites, and customs of the old subservient to the new religion. The adoption of this policy was quite a natural consequence at that time; for it required, in addition to this accommodation of the new religion, the powerful example of the throne, and not unfrequently the violent exertion of its absolute authority, to convert and preserve the savage tribes of the north and west, and the no less impracticable inhabitants of fallen Italy. Hence, from the beginning of the fourth century, the cross and the sword went hand in hand, and the union was sanctified in the eyes of the Catholic world by the triumph of Constantine, who marched to victory over the Pagan Maxentius, cheered by the appearance of the cross in the heavens, and by the celestial voice proclaiming, hoc vinces. But the history of the dark and bloody middle ages has taught us rightly to understand the following words of our Savior: "My kingdom is not of this world;" and the diffusion of sound learning and rational liberty is fast teaching men to think for themselves, and to feel the force of another saying of our Lord: "They that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth; for the Father secketh such to worship him." This passage the Catholics have violated by filling their churches with various sensible stimulants to devotion; while the Friends (I say it with all due respect for this excellent and once spiritual people) have construed it too severely, and rejected the sensible institutions and ordinances of religion. Hence, the first have seduced the senses to the injury of faith and spirituality, and the second have fallen into confusion and weakness for the want of those sensible forms and helps which the constitution of the mind and society require. This golden mean is the great desideratum in Christianity; and, perhaps, is not fixed and absolute, but varies with the variations of society. 131 In pursuance of the prevailing intent to construct the churches for religious effect, they are more remarkable, even for architecture, in their interior than in their exterior. Their outward appearance generally disappoints the stranger, or at least strikes him less than the interior. No spires shoot up to the clouds-no towers look down majestically from above. But round cupolas and swelling domes crown the heavy edifices, and are scarcely seen from the streets, but sit finely upon the city viewed from a distance. It is remarkable that there is no specimen of Gothic architecture in the churches of Rome, while it is found in the north and south of Italy. This is a very remarkable fact, and difficult to explain, when we remember that there are specimens of the ecclesiastical architecture of Rome dating as far back as the fifth century. The fronts of the churches are in a vitiated style of Grecian architecture. They are broken up into angles and small surfaces, and overloaded with ornaments. Yet you can see the elements of the simple and sublime architecture of the classic Greek, disjointed and oppressed by the bad taste which prevailed upon the revival of the arts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and you feel offended at these meretricious ornaments, as if you should behold the magnificent dress of a fine woman covered over with flaunting ribbons and gay flowers. But, as a matter of taste and art, the interior of many of the churches of Rome are worthy of all admiration. They are adorned with beautiful columns and exquisite marbles, from the ruined edifices of ancient Rome, and are the repositories of some of the finest specimens of architecture, painting, and sculpture to be found in the world. There is nothing that can compare with the interior of St. Peter's, scarcely any thing with that of St. John Lateran, or Sante Maria Degli Angeli, which was produced by alterations made by M. Angelo in the Imperial Hall of Diocletian's Baths. In the alterations, he had the good sense to preserve the unrivaled granite columns which adorned the Hall, and to adapt the church to them as they stood, rather than to adapt them to the church. They are each a single piece of syenite, and now show a height of forty-six feet, and sixteen feet in circumference at the base, besides six feet, including the original base, now concealed under the present pavement, which has been raised to suit the present level of the city. This is the church which I admire next to St. Peter's. *An inhabitant of the new world can scarcely conceive how much the level of a great city may be raised by its being successively destroyed and rebuilt. In many parts, the pres ent level of Rome is twenty feet above the ancient; and the general rise is equal to eight or ten feet; so that one descends into the ancient Pantheon now by two steps, though formerly the Romans ascended to it by eight or ten steps. The foundations of all the ancient monuments of Rome are several feet below the present level of the city, and when exposed are seen in sunken areas. 132 FRIENDSHIP IN HEAVEN.-A FRAGMENT. A Protestant does not feel offended upon entering the principal churches in Rome, as he did upon entering most of the Catholic churches on his journey thither. And when he comes to understand the cause, he will find it to be the absence of the crude and disgusting pictures and statues he had so frequently seen elsewhere, and the presence of those forms of beauty and truth, which the first artists of the world have left as a rich legacy to the capital of the Roman Catholic religion. No one can look upon Michael Angelo's statue of Moses in the church of St. Peter's, in Vincoli, without quailing before the calm majesty and firm selfpossession of the Jewish lawgiver; and he will involuntarily conceive a respect for a people who, in the space of three thousand five hundred years, produced only one such man as this. And he will be readily inclined to credit the good priest and the ciceroni, who told us, that, when the artist had finished the statue, he stepped back, gazed upon it in rapture, and commanded it to speak to him, which it not condescending to do, he struck it on the knee, and the mark of his mallet is shown to the stranger at this day. FRIENDSHIP IN HEAVEN. BY ERWIN HOUSE. In a world like ours, subject as we are to vicissitude, and sickness, and separation, and death, how inestimable is the boon of friendship! and how cold and frozen must be that heart which can neither acknowledge nor appreciate the pleasures of mutual interchange of soul and soul! When prosperity, with its sunlight, irradiates our path, and the sky above us and the earth beneath us are radiant with gladness, we feel much, very much in need of one who, with us, can share the common joy. But when the heavens are overcast, and clouds and darkness fill our hearts, and love and hope are blighted, how, then, do we need one who can sympathize with us in our sorrows, and who, Church of the first-born, but FOR EVER WITH THE LORD! What a thought! what a union! what a friendship! and what a society of changeless bliss in the world beyond the grave! "It must be so: 'tis not for self That we so tremble on the brink, Yet cling to being's severing link. To hold each heart the heart that shares, A FRAGMENT. BY ANNETTA. Ir was a cold, bleak night in December. The wind was whistling without, and the frost was raging within the humble cottage of an honest peasant, who resided in the vicinity of His family consisted of a wife, and one lovely babe of a year and a half old. She was a child of exquisite beauty and sweetness of temper. She was the object of her father's fondest solicitude, and her mother's tenderest care. That night the parents were aroused from their quiet slumbers with a hoarse cough and feverish delirium, that had seized their lovely babe-their darling Elizabeth. That night the father might have been seen, muffled in his rustic habit of olden times, hastening across the meadows and lawns to the neighboring village, for the physician, and the mother might have been seen folding the lovely babe close, and still closer to her fond embrace, that she might impart heat and temporary relief to her suffering child. The physician came, the child was examined, and prescriptions quickly attended to; but all effort to restore the little sufferer was in vain: she sunk into the cold and icy arms of death, and the parents were obliged to follow her to the narrow house appointed for all living. They returned to their lonely habitation; but the object of their love, the darling of their hearts, the pledge of their mutual affection, and the object upon which fond parents too often doat, was gone, and gone for ever. They mourned, and would not be comforted. The father, especially, spent his nights in restless That springs and sets not to the last! anxiety, and his days in melancholy reflection. His But friendship in heaven! How much more en- pillow he bedewed with tears, and sleep departed during, how much more consoling, and how much from his eyes, and slumber from his eyelids. One more full of comfort to the heart-stricken mourner night, after spending many hours in restless anxiety, of earth! There, with the many that shall come he fell into a faint doze of slumber, when the lovely from the north, and from the south, and from the form of his departed babe came suddenly gliding east, and from the west-with the wise and the good, into his chamber. She seemed as an angel of light, the great and the pure-with the entire heaven of and a glorified and happified spirit, sent on an errand angels, and the whole host of the redeemed, will he of mercy to soothe the troubled emotions of a doathave sweet and enduring fellowship for ever. Foring father's intolerable grief; and she accomplished ever? Yes, FOR EVER-not only with the angels, and the saints, and the general assembly of the When fortune's gone, or fled afar, And hatred's shafts fly thick and fast, the purpose of her mission. Just as the father would lovely angel form in his THE CROSS.-A REVIVAL INCIDENT. arms, and held her to earth again, she lifted up her hands and eyes to heaven, and, with all the beauty of infinite perfection and angelic sweetness, she exclaimed, "O, the glories of the Redeemer's kingdom!" and immediately vanished out of sight. Soon after, the morning sun broke over the eastern horizon, and day dawned upon that peasant's cottage, not in its usual gloom. All nature seemed changed. The load fell from off his heart, and he could now look beyond the cold and narrow tomb, and see his lovely little innocent prattler, by the eye of faith, in a world of spirits, free from all pain and sorrow, perched upon the boughs of the tree of paradise, beholding the glories of that Redeemer that she had so vividly represented to the eye of his imagination. Years fled; but time was not misspent by the humble cottager. He set up the standard of the cross by his own fireside; and, in all the simplicity of an honest and sincere Christian, he never omitted his duties in public or private. He was a pattern of meekness and humility; and when years had stolen away, and time had left many a wrinkle upon his brow, and the frosts of many winters had whitened his thin scattering locks, I have seen him seated in his old oaken chair by the fireside of his happy home, and heard him relate the affecting incident of this child's death and appearing to him, which was so vividly impressed upon his mind that he could hardly think it any thing but real. Yes, I say when years had fled, I have seen the tear of fond recollection steal into his eye; but soon it was suppressed, when he would proceed with his narrative. Long since the lovely babe and the venerable father's remains have moldered in the cold grave; but we have no doubt but that the spirits are reunited, and are together participating in all the glories of the Redeemer's kingdom. THE CROSS. I LOVE the cross. At its base gushes the fount of perfect joy-upon its top burns the light of heavenaround it cluster the ministering angels of God. It is the centre of the Christian's system. God's first promise, from out the gloom of despoiled Eden, with humble, yet certain trust, points to it. From the cross, amid the dire confusion of burning worlds, and dissolving systems, is suspended Heaven's last favor. Yes, I love the cross of Jesus. It is the sinner's only hope-my only plea. Its doctrines alone can calm the troubled heart-its blood alone can cleanse the polluted soul-its sacrifice alone can open the gates of paradise. At the cross I am completely happy. While I gaze upon it, I fear not for time nor eternity. He who bore it up the steep of Calvary was the God-man. When Death triumphed over mortality, Jehovah-Jesus tore the laurel from his brow, and in his dark dominions wrote, "Death is swallowed up in victory!" BEMIES. A REVIVAL INCIDENT. BY E. M. B. 133 A FEW weeks since, business had detained me in a neighboring city until a much later hour than I had expected; and as I approached the ferry to cross the river that rolled between me and my home, the shades of a February evening were gathering thick and dark around. As I stood deliberating on my course, in that mood of mind that permits a trifle to determine us, I was accosted by a friend, whose kindly invitation soon removed my incertitude, and I returned to pass the night at his comfortable dwelling. We were received by that smile and look of heartfelt welcome, which are a tender husband's best and most prized reward, after the toils and business of the day. The evening repast was prepared and enjoyed; and then, drawing our chairs near the glowing grate, we conversed on the recent revival in which he had mingled, and of which I had already heard so much. Tears stood in the father's eyes as he adverted to the growing seriousness of his eldest son, and mentioned among the hopeful converts his own Matilda, the blue-eyed girl who had assisted her mother in the hospitalities of the tea-table. "There is a special meeting appointed to-night," he continued, "for the benefit both of those who have lately made a profession of religion, and of those who have resolved to relinquish all in order that they may obtain the like precious hope. Such only are invited to attend, with a few older members to assist by prayer and counsel. My pleasure in your unexpected visit had almost caused me to forget my engagement. Matilda has already disappeared, and, if you please, we will follow her." I assented with pleasure; but what was my surprise, on entering the church, to find that nearly three hundred had accepted the invitation! As I looked on the interesting assemblage, emotions, which they alone can realize who have felt the worth of immortal souls, filled my heart, and my fervent, lowbreathed prayer ascended to heaven, that all might "be strengthened, established, settled" in the way which they had chosen. With but few exceptions, all were in the morning of life-it seemed the budding of the flowers, ere opened to the full blaze of day; but, in addition to the natural ingenuousness of youth, there rested on each countenance a deeper, holier feeling; and it was not difficult to suppose that each heart there recognized the sentiment as true, "Thou, God, seest me." Denton, (my friend,) who, from his union of deep piety with strong and cultivated intellect, was one of the most influential members of the Church, was seated within the railing of the altar; and after a whispered consultation between him and the pastor, the latter arose, and expressed his gratitude to God for the large number who had obeyed the strivings of the Spirit, and had |