Puslapio vaizdai
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Spread out earth's holiest records here, Of days and deeds to reverence dear; A zeal like this what pious legends tell? On kingdoms built

In blood and guilt,

The worshippers of vulgar triumph dwell;
But what exploit with theirs shall page,
Who rose to bless their kind,

Who left their nation and their age,
Man's spirit to unbind?

Who boundless seas passed o'er,
And boldly met, in every path,

Famine, and frost, and heathen wrath,

To dedicate a shore,

Where piety's meek train might breathe their vow,
And seek their Maker with an unshamed brow;
Where liberty's glad race might proudly come,
And set up there an everlasting home!

LESSON XCIII.

EXERCISES IN EMPHASIS.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.
We are weak, and ye are strong.

Business sweetens pleasure, as labor sweetens rest.
Prosperity gains friends, and adversity tries them.

Note.

When two words are opposed to each other, and contrasted with two other words, the emphasis on the four words is called double.

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WHEN, from the sacred garden driven,

Man fled before his Maker's wrath,

An angel left her place in heaven,

And crossed the wanderer's sunless path.

'Twas Art! sweet Art! New radiance broke Where her light foot flew o'er the ground, And thus with seraph voice she spoke"The curse a blessing shall be found."

She led him through the trackless wild,
Where noontide sunbeam never blazed;
The thistle shrank, the harvest smiled,

And Nature gladdened as she gazed.
Earth's thousand tribes of living things,
At Art's command, to him are given;
The village grows, the city springs,
And points their spires of faith to heaven.

He rends the oak- and bids it ride,

To guard the shores its beauty graced; He smites the rock-upheaved in pride, See towers of strength and domes of taste. Earth's teeming caves their wealth reveal; Fire bears his banner on the wave; He bids the mortal poison heal,

And leaps triumphant o'er the grave.

He plucks the pearls that stud the deep,
Admiring Beauty's lap to fill ;

He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep,
And mocks his own Creator's skill.
With thoughts that swell his glowing soul,
He bids the ore illume the page,
And proudly scorning Time's control,
Commerces with an unborn age.

In fields of air he writes his name,
And treads the chambers of the sky;
He reads the stars, and grasps the flame
That quivers round the throne on high.

In war renowned, in peace sublime,
He moves in greatness and in grace;
His power, subduing space and time,
Links realm to realm, and race to race.

LESSON XCIV.

EXERCISES IN EMPHASIS.

A friend cannot be known in prosperity; and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.

Note.

This without those obtains a vain employ,

Those without this, but urge us to destroy.

When three emphatic words are opposed to three other emphatic words in the same sentence, the emphasis is called treble.

Progress of Reform. E. H. CHAPIN.

THAT our age holds an amount of refinement and civilization that preceding ages did not have, seems evident. We may not see minutely how this operation of human progress goes on we may not be able to trace the transfusion of the good and the true through every particle and member. But we see the grand result. So the great ocean comes on imperceptibly. Men build their huts at the foot of some huge mountain, and till the green fields that spread out before them, thinking nothing so permanent. But, by and by, other men come that way, and the green fields are all gone. The summer fruit has long since been gathered. Where the husbandman found his wealth, the fisher draws his support; where the sickles rustled in the bending corn, the ships of war go fleeting by; and the old mountain has become a gray and wave-beaten crag a landmark to the distant mariner, and a turret where the sea-bird screams,

But this was accomplished imperceptibly. One generation may not have witnessed the advancement of the waters; another may have passed away without noting it; but slowly they kept advancing. And by and by, all men saw it saw the grand result, though they did not mark each successive operation. So with human progress. One age may scarcely perceive it, and another may die without faith in it; but we must take some distant period, that is not too closely blended with our time, and compare that with the present; and in the grand result we shall discover that there has been human progress.

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Still, some may say, Yes, there has been progress, but not over the whole world; there have been salient points, but also retreating angles; and when you speak of human progress, you must appeal to the world at large — say, has that advanced?" I answer, that in the world, somewhere, there has been a constant tendency to advancement. Even the dark times have been seasons of fruition; the middle ages nourished and prepared glorious elements of human reformation. If one nation has lost the thread of advancement, another has taken it up; and so the work has gone forward if not in the race, as a whole, at any one time, yet in the race somewhere. But the race is fundamentally the same, and what may be predicated of a portion of mankind, as belonging essentially to humanity, may be predicated of the whole; and so in the advancement of a portion of the race, the whole becomes hopeful.

The capacity of the race for progress has been demonstrated. Is that capacity never to be gratified? Though the period never has been that all the race were at the same time on the same level, — who shall say that the time never will come? that it never can come ? Who shall say, so long as the capacity exists, how quick the transfusion of what is excellent in one portion may be made through the whole? A victory over the formal Asiatic, grim and bloody as it is, may be one agent of such transfusion. A triumph of ma

chinery may help to accomplish it. The steam-car may carry truth and light over drifted deserts and frozen mountains. The march of opinion, aided by circumstances, may penetrate to lands that never knew the commerce of Phoenicia or the wisdom of Athens where Alexander never ventured with his hosts, and where Cæsar turned back his eagles. This is the main point- not universal progress, but human progress - not progress every where, but progress somewhere. Grant but that, and all humanity becomes hopeful grant but the capacity, and the doctrine is practicable let the law be in operation only at one point, still it is a law, and as such is to be heeded and acted upon.

Old nations may die, but new nations shall spring up. Let the principle be at work, and no one can limit the result. It may take a longer sweep of ages than have yet passed over mankind, to bring all nations to the same point of advancement. Some nations, now here and now there, may always be in advance of others; yet if the others advance also, the great law will be in operation, and no people shall have lived or died in vain. Into the deepest sepulchres of the old and the past a new life shall be kindled, showing that they have not waited so long for nothing. Dim Meroe will shout freedom from beyond the fountains of the Nile, and the stony lips of the Sphinx shall preach the gospel.

LESSON XCV.

On the Nature of Thunder-Storms.

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

WHEN, in a day calm and serene, we look upwards to and around the region of the sky, the eye encounters no obstacle in its survey, and freely penetrates the depths of space to the

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