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built with cedar; and so lavishly was this costly wood employed in one of Solomon's palaces, that it is called "the house of the forest of Lebanon." As a matter of luxury, also, the cedar was sometimes used for idols, and for the masts of ships. In like manner, the cedar was highly prized among heathen nations. It was employed in the construction of their temples, as at Tyre and Ephesus; and also in their palaces, as at Persepolis.

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EDWARD EVERETT.

EDWARD EVERETT, the son of Rev. Oliver Everett, and a younger brother of Alexander H. Everett, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on the 11th of April, 1794. After the usual preparatory studies at Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, under the venerable Dr. Abbot, he entered Harvard College at the early age of thirteen, and took his degree, in course, in 1811, with a high reputation as a scholar. The next year he was appointed a tutor in the College, and held the situation for two years, when he entered the theological school at Cambridge, and in 1814, when but twenty years of age, succeeded the eloquent Buckminster as pastor of Brattle Street Church, Boston. The next year he was elected Professor of the Greek Language and Literature in Harvard College, with the privilege of further qualifying himself for its duties by a visit to Europe. He accepted the appointment, and immediately embarked for England, whence he went to Göttingen University, where he remained more than two years, devoting his time to Greek literature and the German language, and receiving the degree of P. D., or Doctor of Philosophy. He returned home in 1819, and entered at once upon the duties of his professorship. In 1820, he became editor of the "North American Review," infusing new spirit into that journal, to which in the next four years he contributed about fifty papers, and above sixty more subsequently, when the Review was edited by his brother Alexander, and those who succeeded him. In 1824, he delivered an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, upon The Circumstances favorable to the Progress of Literature in America, closing it with a beautiful apostrophe to General Lafayette, who was present on the occasion. In 1825, he took his seat in the House of Representatives of the United States, from Middlesex County, and kept the same for ten years, bearing a prominent part in many of the debates.5 In 1835, he retired from Congress, and for four years successively he was elected Governor of Massachusetts; but in

12 Sam. v. 11; vii. 2; comp. Jer. xxii. 14, 15.-21 Kings vii. 2; x. 17.— 3 Isa. xliv. 14; Plin. H. N. xiii. 11.- Ezek. xxvii. 5; where the description evidently refers to splendid pleasure-vessels.

His Congressional career did not, I am sorry to say, add much to his reputation. In his maiden speech, March 9, 1826, he went out of his way to apologize for slavery and to defend it from the New Testament. For this he was rebuked with great force by Ichabod Bartlett, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by Churchill C. Cambreleng, of New York, and with withering sarcasm by John Randolph, of Virginia.

1839, he lost his election by one single vote. In 1841, he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James, for which post he was peculiarly well qualified by his great learning, his elegance of manners, and his familiarity with most of the European languages. On his return home in 1846, he was elected President of Harvard College, a position which he held till 1849. In November, 1852, he again entered political life, succeeding Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, under the administration of Millard Fillmore, and in 1853 he succeeded John Davis, of Massachusetts, in the United States Senate.'

Mr. Everett now resides in Boston, occupied, it is said, in the preparation of a systematic treatise on the modern Law of Nations. His published works are A Defence of Christianity, 1 vol.; Miscellaneous Writings, 2 vols. 8vo; Oratione and Speeches, 2 vols. 8vo. These four last volumes contain eighty-one articles on literature, science, the arts, political economy, education, including his various orations and addresses before literary, scientific, and agricultural societies.

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THE PILGRIMS OF THE MAYFLOWER.

Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower, of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route, and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The

1 On the 14th of March, 1854, in the United States Senate, he presented a huge petition, signed by three thousand and fifty clergymen of New England, against the "Nebraska Bill." The object of the petition was immediately attacked, and the petitioners themselves foully (though characteristically) assailed, by Senators Douglas, of Illinois, and Mason, of Virginia; while Senators Houston, of Texas, and Seward, of New York, warmly and eloquently defended both. Mr. Everett also spoke; but his remarks were so tame and apologetical, that it would have been better for the cause of freedom had he been silent.

2" As a man of letters, in every branch of public service, and in society and private life, Mr. Everett has combined the useful with the ornamental, with a tact, a universality, and a faithfulness, almost unprecedented. At Windsor Castle, we find him fluently conversing with each member of the diplomatic corps in their vernacular tongue; in Florence, addressing the Scientific Congress with characteristic grace and wisdom; in London, entertaining the most gifted and wisely-chosen party of artists, authors, and men of rank or state, in a manner which elicits their best social sentiments; at home, in the professor's chair, in the popular assembly, in the lyceum-hall, or to celebrate an historical occasion, giving expression to high sentiment, or memorable fact, with the finished style and thrilling emphasis of the accomplished orator."-Homes of American Authors.

laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all-but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth; weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their shipmaster for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes. Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers? Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures, of other times, and find the parallel of this! Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? Was it hard labor and spare meals? Was it disease? Was it the tomahawk? Was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea? Was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes -that not all combined-were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible that, from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, (not so much of admiration as of pity,) there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?

PAMPERING THE BODY AND STARVING THE SOUL.

What, sir, feed a child's body, and let his soul hunger! pamper his limbs, and starve his faculties! Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding-places in the sea, and spread out your wheat-fields across the plain, in order to supply the wants of that body which will soon be as cold and as senseless as the poorest clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious capacities for improvement, languish and pine! What! build factories, turn in rivers upon the water-wheels, unchain the imprisoned spirits of steam, to weave a garment for the body, and let the

soul remain unadorned and naked! What! send out your vessels to the furthest ocean, and make battle with the monsters of the deep, in order to obtain the means of lighting up your dwellings and workshops, and prolonging the hours of labor for the meat that perisheth, and permit that vital spark, which God has kindled, which he has intrusted to our care, to be fanned into a bright and heavenly flame,-permit it, I say, to languish and go out! What considerate man can enter a school, and not reflect, with awe, that it is a seminary where immortal minds are training for eternity? What parent but is, at times, weighed down with the thought, that there must be laid the foundations of a building which will stand, when not merely temple and palace, but the perpetual hills and adamantine rocks on which they rest, have melted away!-that a light may there be kindled which will shine, not merely when every artificial beam is extinguished, but when the affrighted sun has fled away from the heavens?

THE ETERNAL CLOCKWORK OF THE SKIES.

We derive from the observations of the heavenly bodies which are made at an observatory our only adequate measures of time, and our only means of comparing the time of one place with the time of another. Our artificial timekeepers,-clocks, watches, and chronometers, however ingeniously contrived and admirably fabricated, are but a transcript, so to say, of the celestial motions, and would be of no value without the means of regulating them by observation. It is impossible for them, under any circumstances, to escape the imperfection of all machinery, the work of human hands; and the moment we remove with our timekeeper east or west, it fails us. It will keep home-time alone, like the fond traveller who leaves his heart behind him. The artificial instrument is of incalculable utility, but must itself be regulated by the eternal clockwork of the skies.

This single consideration is sufficient to show how completely the daily business of life is affected and controlled by the heavenly bodies. It is they and not our main-springs, our expansionbalances, and our compensation-pendulums, which give us our time. To reverse the line of Pope,

'Tis with our watches as our judgments: none
Go just alike, but each believes his own.

But for all the kindreds and tribes and tongues of men,—each upon their own meridian,-from the Arctic pole to the equator, from the equator to the Antarctic pole, the eternal sun strikes twelve at noon, and the glorious constellations, far up in the ever

lasting belfries of the skies, chime twelve at midnight-twelve for the pale student over his flickering lamp-twelve amid the flaming wonders of Orion's belt, if he crosses the meridian at that fated hour-twelve by the weary couch of languishing humanity, twelve in the star-paved courts of the Empyrean-twelve for the heaving tides of the ocean; twelve for the weary arm of labor; twelve for the toiling brain; twelve for the watching, waking, broken heart; twelve for the meteor which blazes for a moment and expires; twelve for the comet whose period is measured by centuries; twelve for every substantial, for every imaginary thing, which exists in the sense, the intellect, or the fancy, and which the speech or thought of man, at the given meridian, refers to the lapse of time.

Discourse at Albany, 1856.

THE HEAVENS BEFORE AND AFTER DAWN.

I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston, and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Every thing around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene midsummer's night: the sky was without a cloud, the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades just above the horizon shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in the south; the steady pointers far beneath the pole looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign.

Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels hidden from mortal eyes shifted the seenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from

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