Those Things alone are acceptable to Heaven.

But, though we praise th' exact designer's skill, Account them implements of mischief still.

No works shall find acceptance, in that day When all disguises shall be rent away, That square not truly with the scripture plan, Nor spring from love to God, or love to man. As he ordains things, sordid in their birth, To be rosolv'd into their parent earth; And, though the soul shall seek superior orbs, Whate'er this world produces, it absorbs; So self starts nothing but what tends apace Home to the goal where it began the race. Such as our motive is our aim must be; If this be servile, that can ne'er be free: If self employ us, whatsoe'er is wrought, We glorify that self, not him we ought, Such virtues had need prove their own reward, The Judge of all men owes them no regard. True Charity, a plant divinely nurs❜d,

Fed by the love from which it rose at first,

Which springs from love to God or Man.

Thrives against hope; and, in the rudest scene,
Storms but enliven its unfading green;

Exub'rant is the shadow it supplies;

Its fruit on earth, its growth above the skies.
To look at him, who form'd us and redeem'd ;
So glorious now, though once so disesteem'd ;
To see a God stretch forth his human hand,

T' uphold the boundless scenes of his command;
To recollect that, in a form like our's,'

He bruis'd beneath his feet th' infernal pow'rs,
Captivity led captive, rose to claim

The wreath he won so dearly in our name;
That thron'd above all height, he condescends
To call the few that trust in him his friends;

That, in the heav'n of heav'ns, that space he deems
Too scanty for th' exertion of his beams,

And shines, as if impatient to bestow
Life and a kingdom upon worms below;
That sight imparts a never-dying flame,
Though feeble in degree, in kind the same.

And were the Churches warmed by Charity,

Like him, the soul, thus kindled from above,
Spreads wide her arms of universal love;
And, still enlarg'd as she receives the grace,
Includes creation in her close embrace.

Behold a Christian!—and, without the fires
The founder of that name alone inspires,
Though all accomplishment, all knowledge meet,
To make the shining prodigy complete,
Whoever boasts that name-behold a cheat!
Were love, in these the world's last doting years,
As frequent as the want of it appears,

The churches warm'd, they would no longer hold
Such frozen figures, stiff as they are cold;
Relenting forms would lose their pow'r, or cease;
And ev❜n the dipt and sprinkled live in peace:
Each heart would quit its prison in the breast,
And flow in free communion with the rest,
The statesman skill'd in projects dark and deep,
Might burn his useless Machiavel, and sleep;
His budget, often fill'd, yet always poor,
Might swing at ease behind his study door,

Virtue, Truth, and Love, would be more prevalent.

No longer prey upon our annual rents,
Or scare the nation with its big contents:
Disbanded legions freely might depart,
And slaying man would cease to be an art.
No learned disputants would take the field,
Sure not to conquer, and sure not to yield;
Both sides deceiv'd, if rigtly understood,
Pelting each other for the public good,
Did charity prevail, the press would prove
A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love;

And I might spare myself the pains to show
What few can learn, and all suppose they know.
Thus have I sought to grace a serious lay
With many a wild, indeed, but flow'ry spray,
In hopes to gain, what else I must have lost,
Th' attention pleasure has so much engross❜d.
But if, unhappily deceiv'd, I dream,
And prove too weak for so divine a theme,
Let Charity forgive me a mistake

That zeal, not vanity, has chanc'd to make,
And spare the poet for his subject's sake,

RY

UNIVERSI? Y

GF CALIFORNIA

CONVERSATION,

Nam neq; me tantum venientis sibilus austri, Nec percussa juvant fluctú tam litora, nec quæ Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles.

VIRG. Ecl. 5.

THOUGH nature weigh our talents, and dispense To ev'ry man his modicum of sense, And Conversation, in its better part, May be esteem'd a gift and not an art, Yet much depends, as in the tiller's toil, On culture, and the sowing of the soil. Words learn'd by rote a parrot may rehearse, But talking is not always to converse;