If such be the character of the youthful mind, if it be with such aims and such ambition that its natural elevation can be satisfied, am I to ask you what must be the appearances of riper years?— what the effect of such habits of thought upon the understanding of manhood? Alas! a greater instructor, the mighty instructor, experience, may show you in every rank of life what these effects are. It will show you men born with every capacity, and whose first years glowed with every honorable ambition, whom no vice even now degrades, and to whom no actual guilt is affixed, who yet live in the eye of the world only as the objects of pity or of scorn-who, in the idle career of habitual amusement, have dissipated all their powers and lost all their ambition-and who exist now for no purpose but to be the sad memorials of ignoble taste and degraded understanding.

2. The inordinate love of pleasure is, in the second place, equally hostile to the moral character. If the feeble and passive disposition of mind which it produces be unfavorable to the exertions of the understanding, it is, in the same measure, as unfavorable to the best employments of the heart. The great duties of life, the duties for which every man and woman is born, demand, in all situations, the mind of labor and perseverance. From the first hour of existence to the last-from the cradle of the infant, beside which the mother watches with unslumbering eye, to the grave of the aged, where the son pours his last tears upon the bier of his father-in all that intermediate time, every day calls for exertion and activity, and the moral honors of our being can only be won by the steadfast magnanimity of pious duty.

Alas! experience has here also decided; it tells you that the mind which exists only for pleasure, cannot exist for duty; it tells you that the feeble and selfish spirit of amusement gradually corrodes all the benevolent emotions of the heart, and withers the most sacred ties of domestic affection; and it points its awful finger to the examples of those, alas! of both sexes, whom the unrestrained love of idle pleasure first led to error and folly, and whem, with sure but fatal progress, it has since conducted to be the objects of secret shame and public infamy.

3. In the last place, this unmanly disposition is equally fatal to happiness as to virtue. To the wise and virtuous, to those who use the pleasures of life only as a temporary relaxation, as a restingplace to animate them on the great journey on which they are travelling, the hours of amusement bring real pleasure; to them the well of joy is ever full, while to those who linger by its side, its waters are soon dried and exhausted.

I speak not now of those bitter waters which must mingle themselves with the well of unhallowed pleasure, of the secret reproaches of accusing conscience, of the sad sense of shame and 1

of that degraded spirit which must bend itself beneath the scorn of the world; I speak only of the simple and natural effect of unwise indulgence, that it renders the mind callous to enjoyment, and that, even though the "fountain were full of water," the feverish lip is Alas! here, too, we may see the incapable of satiating its thirst. examples of human folly. We may see around us everywhere the fatal effects of unrestrained pleasure; the young sickening in the midst of every pure and genuine enjoyment; the mature hastening, with hopeless step, to fill up the hours of a vitiated being; and, what is still more wretched, the hoary head wandering in the way of folly, and, with an unhallowed dotage, returning again to the trifles and the amusements of childhood.

Such, then, my young friends, are the natural and experienced consequences of the inordinate love even of innocent amusement, and such the intellectual and moral degradation to which the paths Let me entreat you to pause ere you begin of pleasure conduct. your course, ere those habits are acquired which may never again be subdued, and ere ye permit the charms of pleasure to wind around your soul their fascinating powers.

Think, with the elevation and generosity of your age, whether this is the course that leads to honor or to fame; whether it was in this discipline that they were exercised who, in every age, have blessed or have enlightened the world, whose shades are present to your midnight thoughts, and whose names you cannot pronounce without the tear of gratitude or admiration.

Think, still more, whether it was to the ends of unmanly pleasure that you were dedicated, when the solemn service of religion first enrolled you in the number of the faithful, and when the ardent tears of your parents mingled with the waters of your baptism. If they live, is it in such paths that their anxious eyes delight to see you tread? If they are no more, is it on such scenes that they can bend their venerated heads from heaven, and rejoice in the course of their children?

LÆTITIA ELIZABETH MACLEAN, 1802-1838.

LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON, one of the most eminent among the female poets of our age, was born in London, on the 14th of August, 1802. She was the eldest of three children, of whom one, a girl, died at the age of thirteen; the other, the Rev. Whittington Henry Landon, was the attached and almost inseparable companion of her childhood and youth. She gave early indications of her

love of letters, reading with avidity every thing that came in her way, and writing stories, the invention of her youthful genius, which she would read to her brother. In 1821, when she was about nineteen, appeared her first publication, "The Fate of Adelaide," a Swiss romantic tale, dedicated to Mrs. Siddons,-a story of love, war, and misery, with some minor poems. From this period till 1824, a series of "Poetical Sketches," to which were annexed the signature "L. E. L.," appeared in the "Literary Gazette;" and L. E. L. speedily became a great favorite with the public. She also contributed largely to many other periodicals, and to nearly all the annuals, of some of which she wrote all the poetry, as of "Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap-Book," the "Flowers of Loveliness," and the "Bijou Almanac." This almost ceaseless composition necessarily precluded the thought, study, and cultivation essential to the production of poetry of the highest order. "Hence, with all their fancy and feeling, her principal works-the Improvisatrice,' the Troubadour,' the Golden Violet,' the Golden Bracelet,' and the "Vow of the Peacock,'-bear a strong family likeness to each other in their recurrence to the same sources of allusion, and the same veins of imagery-in the conventional rather than natural coloring of their descriptions, and in the excessive though not unmusical carelessness of their versification. In spite, however, of the ceaseless strain upon her powers, and the ceaseless distractions of a London life, Miss Landon accomplished much for her own mind in the progress of its career; she had reached a deeper earnestness of thought, had added largely to the stores of her knowledge, and done much toward the polishing and perfecting of her verse."

Miss Landon was married on the 7th of June, 1838, to George Maclean, Esq., Governor of Cape Coast Castle, South Africa, and soon after left England for her new abode. Letters were received from her by her friends in England, telling them of her employments and her happiness; but these were soon followed by news of her death. On the 15th of October, of the same year, she was found dead on the floor of her chamber, with an empty phial in her hand, which had contained prussic acid. She had been in the habit of using this as a remedy for spasmodic affections, and had undoubtedly taken an overdose. The stories that were circulated about her having poisoned herself were doubtless cruel slanders, as a letter to a friend, written on the morning of her death, breathing a spirit of content and happiness, was found upon her table.

Of Mrs. Maclean's genius, there can be but one opinion. "She had great intellectual power, a highly sensitive and ardent imagination, an intense fervor of passionate emotion, and almost unequalled eloquence and fluency. Of mere art she displayed but little. Her style is irregular and careless, but there is genius in every line she has written. It is, however, to be regretted that she too often took sad and melancholy views of life. There is a morbid feeling in much of her poetry that throws over it a misanthropic cast, and which gave some coloring to the stories that were circulated about her death." The following are some of her choicest pieces.

• About this time she lost her father, and to her honor it must be stated that she applied the fruits of her literary labors to the maintenance of her family, especially to the assistance of her brother, then at Oxford.

SUCCESS ALONE SEEN.

Few know of life's beginnings-men behold
The goal achieved;-the warrior, when his sword
Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun;
The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm;
The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice,
And mould opinion on his gifted tongue:

They count not life's first steps, and never think
Upon the many miserable hours

When hope deferr'd was sickness to the heart.
They reckon not the battle and the march,
The long privations of a wasted youth;
They never see the banner till unfurl'd.
What are to them the solitary nights
Pass'd pale and anxious by the sickly lamp,
Till the young poet wins the world at last
To listen to the music long his own?
The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind
That makes their destiny; but they do not trace
Its struggle, or its long expectancy.

Hard are life's early steps; and, but that youth
Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope,
Men would behold its threshold, and despair.

THE LITTLE SHROUD.

She put him on a snow-white shroud,
A chaplet on his head;

And gather'd early primroses

To scatter o'er the dead.

She laid him in his little grave

'Twas hard to lay him there,

When spring was putting forth its flowers,
And every thing was fair.

She had lost many children-now

The last of them was gone;

And day and night she sat and wept
Beside the funeral stone.

One midnight, while her constant tears
Were falling with the dew,

She heard a voice, and lo! her child
Stood by her weeping too!

His shroud was damp, his face was white;

He said "I cannot sleep,

Your tears have made my shroud so wet;
O mother, do not weep!"

Oh, love is strong!-the mother's heart
Was fill'd with tender fears;

Oh, love is strong!-and for her child

One eve a light shone round her bed,
And there she saw him stand-
Her infant in his little shroud,
A taper in his hand.

"Lo! mother, see my shroud is dry,
And I can sleep once more!"
And beautiful the parting smile
The little infant wore.

And down within the silent grave
He laid his weary head;

And soon the early violets
Grew o'er his grassy bed.

The mother went her household ways-
Again she knelt in prayer,

And only ask'd of Heaven its aid
Her heavy lot to bear.

THE WIDOW'S MITE

It is the fruit of waking hours
When others are asleep;

When, moaning round the low-thatch'd roof,
The winds of winter creep.

It is the fruit of summer days
Pass'd in a gloomy room,
When others are abroad to taste
The pleasant morning bloom.

'Tis given from a scanty store,
And miss'd while it is given;
'Tis given-for the claims of earth
Are less than those of heaven.
Few, save the poor, feel for the poor;
The rich know not how hard

It is to be of needful food

And needful rest debarr'd.

Their paths are paths of plenteousness:
They sleep on silk and down,

And never think how heavily

The weary head lies down.

They know not of the scanty meal,
With small pale faces round;
No fire upon the cold, damp hearth,
When snow is on the ground.

They never by their window sit,
And see the gay pass by,

Yet take their weary work again,
Though with a mournful eye.

The rich, they give-they miss it not

A blessing cannot be

Like that which rests, thou widow'd one,
Upon thy gift and thee!