VOICES OF THE TRUE HEARTED. No. 6. TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE. SYMPATHY. Thou hast not left the rough-barked tree to grow I see them,-crowd on crowd they walk the earth-But many a cup the glittering drops has drank ; The bird must sing to one who sings again, THE GRAVEYARD. My heart grows sick before the wide spread death, TIME INSTANT. Is there no hope of better things for our world, and must that, which hath been, still be? Is our life really a lie, and can it, by no possibility, come true? 'Twere painful inexpressibly to think thus. 'Twere to make the universe a chaos and our life a riddle. When, stepping forth in one of these perfect June mornings, we find ourself so gloriously compassed-that magnificent vault above and this prodigal earth under us-yon ever-stirring sea kissing its shores, and the fresh early breeze wafting a blessing unto us—and then think, for a moment, on the falsities, the disorders, the everlasting clash and unrest, the disunion and disharmony of this our social condition-we cannot believe 'tis to endure as now. We must needs dream of man, the nobler being, harmonized with nature, the meaner creation. Sprung from the same original, one wisdom and love, brightest often, has found at last its destroying supervises both. It needs not many years to teach us how at odds is the unsophisticated spirit with the social order whereunto 'tis born. Where lives he, to whom the revelation of what the world truly is was not a shock and an anguish unspeakable? Evermore 'tis by a downhill path one reaches the platform, whereon the world's tasks are to be executed and worldly success achieved. Were the whole truth to burst at once upon us, we were overwhelmed. But one beauteous illusion after another fades away-one principle after another is surrendered as romantic and impracticable-compromise after compromise is struck with absolute verity-lash on lash of the torturing scourge of necessity drives us into the beaten ways and bows us to " things as they are"ray by ray goes out of our birth-star, till "At length the man perceives it die away, Yet no time, nor custom, nor debasement itself, can utterly destroy our inwrought impressions of the existence of a somewhat purer and nobler than actually greets the sense, the possession whereof 'tis man's prerogative to achieve. Manifold and unmistakable are the intimations thereof. Of the myriad things, that recall our youth, not one but remembers us of youth's high purposes and hopes. Music bears witness to us of a more exalted than our wonted sphere. And nature, with its undying harmonies and ever fresh beauty, hath perpetual rebuke for our disorder and deformity. But especially does poesy, the ever-living witness of the Divine to man, point unceasingly to an ideal, challenging our aspirations. From all which causes it is that reform is measurably a demand of every age. However self content and however absorbed by its own immediate schemes, it cannot evade the thought of a possible | advance. Our own time is one altogether unwonted in this regard. The reform-call is universal. One malfeasance and defect after another has been assaulted, till no mountain-side but hath echoed back, and no remotest valley that hath not been startled, by the vehement demand for new and better lifeconditions. Governments, once keeping afar the inquiries of the mass by pompous awes and terrors, have at last felt the pressure of the common hand on their shoulders, and been fain to render, as they might, a justification of their existence. The Church, no longer the Ark, the touch whereof is death, has been, mayhap, even rudely handled, and anywise been moved to asssign men's largest good as the sole reason for its surviving. And throughout all departments of social life the same movement has gone. Intemperance itself-earth's coeval and universal curse-that foul, prodigious birth, to which the world, desperate of resistance, has been fain to yield an annual sacrifice, from its hopefulest and Theseus, and life looks greener in expectancy of this deliverance. Madness, that thing of horrid mystery, before which, as 'twere a fiend incarnate, other days have quailed in helpless awe, has by modern benevolence been looked steadily in the eye and tamed. Nor has the " prisoner" been forgot. No more, like the old time, leprous, are they shut out from sympathetic interchange with the sound, and branded irrecoverable, so left to die uncared of. 'Twas remembered that a condemned one accepted the Christ of God while the people's "honorable ones" flouted and murdered him-that to one cut judicially off was "Paradise opened," while over the self-complacent, who settled and witnessed his fate, a doom impended so appalling as to draw tears from the guiltless victim of their barbarity. That most illustrious of chivalrous banners, the ensign of Howard, the Godfrey of the crusade for the redemption of the outcast, has gathered about it a host of congenial spirits, and many a prison of ours, like that of Paul and Silas, has echoed with hymns of the "free"-of those born into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." But grateful as these movements are to the philanthropic heart, 'tis impossible not to see, that, after all, they are neither central nor permanent. 'Tis but shearing off the poisonous growths, the roots whereof are left intact and vigorous. The hour has come, we think, for assaying that radical reform, wherein all reforms else are comprised. Our social order itself rests on principles unsound and pernicious, and why not strike at the root of the tree? It pains us to witness so much of honorable, real and faithful endeavour little better than flung away in tasks, which still must be renewed at the instant of completion. Might we but live to see even the corner-stone laid of a right Christian Society! What now be we but sons of Ishmael? Of a huge majority 'tis the anxious, everlasting cry, "how shall we exist ?" Not," how shall we achieve the noblest good?" Not, "how shall we unfold most completely the godlike within us?" And can it be God's unrepealable ordinance that the great mass of them bearing His impress shall drudge through their life-term to supply their meanest wants, perpetually overtasked, shrouded thick in intellectual night, uncognisant of the marvels of wisdom and beauty testifying His presence in our world, unparticipant of a joy above that of the beasts that perish? Must war and pestilence and famine, must crime and vice and sickness and remorse still hound this poor life of man through the whole of its quick-finished cir cle? Must the gallows yet pollute, and the prison gloom, and the brothel curse, and madhouse and poorhouse shadow the green breast of earth? Wo for our wisdom, that to labor, the first great ordinance of Heaven, we have discovered no better instigation than the insufferable goad of starvation! Wo for a social system, wherein the individual and I and not the lowest enact the governing and moulding the general good stand irreconcilably opponent ! power-wherein the want and anxiety and thraldom Without prevalent sickness the physician must and everlasting clash, which now so torment man's famish. But for quarrel and litigation the lawyer's life, shall no longer be, and the individual and the hearth fire must go out. On the existence of war's general weal shall be joined in indissoluble marriage. "butcher-work" the soldier's hopes are based. The Who, on this broad earth, yearns not for such a monopolist grows fat on the scarcity that makes social state? And, unless reason be a will-o'-theothers lean. The builder and an associated host are wisp and figures a lie, such a state is possible, and, lighted to wealth by the conflagration that lays through association, shall ere long exist! half a city in ashes. Everywhere the same disunity prevails, and the precept, "Love thy neighbor as thyself,” is practically nullified by the very motive powers of our social existence. The true man can remain such only by fleeing to the desert, or waging everlasting warfare with all influences about him. How is it the world deals, and ever hath dealt with that extraordinary virtue, the manifestation of the Divine to man? Alas, for the dishonoring tale! Lo, the noble Athenian expiring of the hemlock in the malefactor's prison! Lo, a far higher than the Athenian writhing on the "accursed tree!" Ever 'tis crucifixion the world exacts as penalty of him who would "show it a more excellent way." And what reception finds genius, that perpetual witness to a race ingulfed by sense of the immortal and invisible? Does the world hail its Avatar and reverently listen to its utterances, as to the oracle's responses? Alas, for the historic leaf that registers its mortal fate! Society has no allotted place for him who, dowered with this divine attribute, surrenders himself wholly to its inspirations, speaks out its unmodified suggestions, and treads, unquestioning, the path it points out. Obstructions hedge him about, penury cramps and denies him both instruments and occasions, calumny and ridicule dog him, neglect freezes or hate turns to gall his heart's ardent loves, and, with naked feet, he is constrained to tread a stony, thorny way. Even so deals the world with them commissioned of God as its prophets and teachers. No marvel, then, at the frequent perversion and sometimes deep debasement of genius. Want and fashion, and the broad, deep currents of immemorial opinion 'tis not given, save rarely, even to this to resist and overcome. Blame not, then, that you witness Heaven's own subtle flame burning on strange altars, or the temple vessels desecrated by heathen orgies. But the social order, that necessitates things like these is it for us to acquiesce therein, or shall we demand a reorganization? Verily, we crave no impracticable, no irrational thing. We ask a society wherein all God's children shall be sufficiently fed, and clad, and housedwherein every individual shall find leisure, sphere, and means for the fit, harmonious unfolding of all his powers of body and spirit-wherein each shall have his true standing place and environment, and may act his individual self freely and fully outwherein the highest shall be recognized as highest, EPHEMERA. BY CHARLES WEST THOMPSON. D. H. B. "What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue." Whence so few might e'er return again. As he gazed, amid the gold pavillions Round his throne, upon that crowd so vast; Musing with subdued and solemn feelings, On the awful thoughts that filled his soul,One of those most terrible revealings That will sometimes o'er the spirit roll: Not, perhaps, would one be left alive : Careless of the millions passed away. Well might weep he-well might we, in weeping, Like the shadow on the mouldering wall; O'er the earth it sparkles and is gone; All as swiftly fly, as soon are fled; Chase no more the phantom of thy dreaming- SONNETS, BY RICHARD CHENEVIX FRENCH. THE NOBLER CUNNING. Ulysses, sailing by the Sirens' isle, FRANCE, 1834. How long shall weary nations toil in blood, Of virtue, manners, and pure homes endued O, suffering, toiling France, thy toil is vain! Heady and fierce, unholy and impure, Sealed first his comrades' ears, then bade them fast They cannot build a work which shall endure. Bind him with many a fetter to the mast, Least those sweet voices should their souls beguile, VESUVIUS. As when unto a mother, having chid, Her child in anger, there have straight ensued, More than an instant; but her work of peace, The earth, her stricken child, will never cease; WILD FLOWERS. How thick the wild-flowers blow about our feet, To one born and bred in New England, the senti ment must be inevitable, that it is a free country.' The language of every-day life teems with that ca. pital idea. It is the first idea that infancy is taught, and the last one forgotten by old age. Freedom, of costly water in the jewelry of our patriotism. Liberty, Free Institutions, Free Soil, &c. are terms How pleasant it is to think-be it true or falsethat cold, hard-soiled, pure-skyed New England, is, indeed, a free land! that in her long struggle for freedom, she expunged from her soil every crimson spot, every lineament of human slavery, and severed every ligament that connected her with that inhuman institution! And so we thought. We got out of our cradle with that idea. It was in our heart when we first looked up at the blue-sky, and listened to the little merry birds that were swimming in its bosom. It was in our heart, like thoughts of music, when the spring winds came, and spring voices twittered in the tree tops; when the swallow and the lark and all the summer birds sang for joy, and the meadow-stream chimed in its silvery treble, I ada. Canada and heaven, he said, were the only two deftly singing to the daisies. When every thing was places that the slave sighed for, and he tied up his alive with the rapture of freedom, we thought, clouted shoes to go. He laid his hand on the latch, among other bright and boyish vagaries, that this and his eyes asked if he might go. We knew what land was free-free as the air; otherwise we would was in his heart, and he what was in our own, when never have slid down hill on it, or rolled up a snow- the children came near and asked their parents why fort, or have done any thing of the kind by way of the negro boy might not live in Massachussetts, and sport. And we were told that it was free. Old men why he should go so far to find a home. And we that wore queues and hobbled about on crutches, came looked in each other's faces and said not a word, for and set by our father's fireside, and showed great our hearts were troubled at their questions. scars on their flesh, and told how much it had cost Some one asked for "the bond," and it was read; to make this land free. And on a hot summer day and there, among great swelling words about liberty, of every year, the people stuck up a long pole in the we found it written, that there was not an acre nor middle of the village green; and they tied to the an inch of ground within the limits of the great top a large piece of striped cloth; and they rung American Republic which was not mortgaged to the bell in the steeple; and they shot off a hollow slavery. And when the reader came to that passage log of cast iron; and the hills and woods trembled in the bond, his voice fell, lest the children should at the noise, and father said, and every body said, it hear it, and ask more questions. He passed the inwas because this land was free. It was our boyhood's strument around, and he saw it written,—" too fairthought, and of all our young fancies, we loved itly writ"-that there was not a foot of soil in New best; for there was an element of religion in it. We England-not a spot consecrated to learning, liberhave clung fondly to the patriotic illusion, and should have hugged it to our bosom through life, but for an incident that suddenly broke up the dream. While meditating one Sabbath evening, a few years ago, upon the blessings of this free, gospel land, and with the liberty wherewith God here sets his children free, a neighbour opened the door, and whispered cautiously in our ear, that a young, sable fugitive from Slavery had knocked at his door, and he had given him a place by his fire. "A slave in New England!" exclaimed we as we took down our hat: is it possible that slaves can breathe here and not be free!" 6 There were many of us that gathered around that young man; and few of us all had ever seen a slave. There were mothers in the group that had sons of the same age as that of the boy; and tears came into their eyes when he spoke of his widowed slave mother; and there were young sisters with Sundayschool books in their hands, that surrounded him and looked in his face with strange and tearful earnestness, as he spoke of the sister he had left in bondage. He had been hunted like a partridge upon the mountains,' and his voice trembled as he spoke. His pursuers had tracked him from one place to another; they were even now hard at his heels; his feet were bruised and swollen from the chase; he was faint and weary, and he looked around upon us imploringly for protection. Starting at every sound from without, he told with a tremulous voice, the story of his captivity, and re-capture, for thrice had he fled from slavery, and twice had he been delivered up to his pursuers. He was checkered over with the marks of the scourge, for his master had prescribed a hundred lashes to cure him of his passion for freedom. A worse fate awaited him if he failed in his third attempt to be free; and he walked to the window and softly asked the nearest way to Can ty, or religion-not a square inch on Bunker Hill, or It was a bright night. The heavens were full of eyes looking down upon the earth; and we wished that they were closed for an hour; that the clouds would come over the moon; for the man-hunters had come. They had tracked the young fugitive, and were lying in wait to seize him even on the hearth of a freeman. We never shall forget that hour. We had attired the young slave in a female garb, and put his hand within the arm of one of our number. A passing cloud obscured the moon, and the two issued into the street. Softly and silently we followed them at a distance, and our hearts were heavy within us, that Massachusetts had no law that could extend protection to that young human being, or permit him to be protected without law. It was a strange feeling to walk the streets of Worcester, as if treading on enemies' ground; to avoid the houses and faces of our neighbours and friends, as if they were all slaveholders, and in pursuit of the fugitive; as if here, in the heart of the Old Bay State, there was something felonious in that deed of mercy that would obliterate the track of the innocent image of God flying for life and liberty before his relentless pursuer. We passed close by the old Burial Ground, where slumbered many a hero of Seventy Six. There, within a stone's throw, was the grave of |