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deep purple against an amber sky. As I beheld them thus shifting continually before my eye, and listened to the marvellous legends of the trader, a host of fanciful notions was conjured into my brain, which have haunted it ever since.

4. As to the Indian superstitions concerning the treasury of storms and sunshine, and the cloud-weaving spirits, they may have been suggested by the atmospherical phenomena of these mountains, the clouds which gather round their summits, and the thousand aërial effects which indicate the changes of weather over a great extent of country. They are epit'omes of our variable climate, and are stamped with all its vicissitudes.40 And here let me say a word in favor of those vicissitudes, which are too often made the subject of exclusive repining. If they annoy us occasionally by changes from hot to cold, from wet to dry, they give us one of the most beautiful climates in the world.

5. They give us the brilliant sunshine of the south of Europe, with the fresh verdure of the north. They float our summer sky with clouds of gorgeous tints or fleecy whiteness, and send down cooling showers to refresh the panting earth and keep it green. Our seasons are all poetical; the phenomena of our heavens are full of sublimity and beauty. Winter with us has none of its proverbial gloom. It may have its howling winds, and chilling frosts, and whirling snow-storms; but it has also its long intervals of cloudless sunshine, when the snow-clad earth gives redoubled brightness to the day; when, at night, the stars beam with intensest lustre, or the moon floods the whole landscape with her most limpid radiance.

6. And then the joyous outbreak of our Spring, bursting at once into leaf and blossom, redundant with vegetation, and vociferous with life! And the splendors of our Summer; its morning voluptuousness and evening glory; its airy palaces of sun-gilt clouds piled up in a deep azure sky; and its gusts of tempest of almost tropical grandeur, when the forked lightning and the bellowing thunder volley from the battlements of heaven and shake the sultry atmosphere ! And the sublime melancholy of our Autumn, magnificent in its decay, withering down the pomp and pride of a woodland country, yet reflecting back from its yellow forests the golden serenity of the sky! Surely we may say that, in our climate, "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork: day unto day uttereth speech; and night unto night showeth knowl edge."

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1.- HAPPINESS. - Keble.

'THERE are166 in this rude stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart,

Through dusty lane and wrangling mart
Plying their daily toil with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.

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Small service is true service while it lasts,
Of friends, however humble, scorn not one:
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,

Protects the lingering dew-drops from the sun.

3.- COMFORT IN ADVERSITY.

Methinks, if ye would know

How visitations of calamity

Southey

Affect the pious soul, 't is shown you there!
Look yonder at that cloud, which, through the sky,
Sailing alone, doth cross in her career

The rolling moon! — I watched it as it came,

And deemed the deep opaque would blot her beams
But, melting like a wreath of snow, it hangs
In folds of wavy silver round, and clothes
The orb with richer beauties than her own;
Then, passing, leaves her in her light serene!

4.- FUTURITY.40 — Dryden.

Too curious man, why dost thou seek to know
Events, which, good or ill, foreknown are woe?
The all-seeing Power that made thee mortal gave
Thee everything a mortal state should have;"
Foreknowledge only is enjoyed by Heaven,
And, for his peace of mind, to man forbidden;
Wretched were life, if he foreknew his doom;
Even joys foreseen give pleasing hope no room,
And griefs assured are felt before they come.

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A dew-drop, falling on the ocean-wave,
Exclaimed, in fear, "I perish in this grave;
But, in a shell received, that drop of dew
Unto a pearl of marvellous beauty grew;

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I care not, Fortune, what you me156 deny;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face,
You cannot barE my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave;
Of Fancy, Reason, Virtue, naught can me bereave!

7.- THE MORAL LAW.. Wordsworth.

All true glory rests,

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All praise of safety, and all happiness,
Upon the moral law. Egyptian Thebes,EI
Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves,
Palmy'ra central in the desert, fell,

And the arts died by which they had been raised.
Call Archimedēs from his buried tomb45
Upon the plain of vanished Syracuse,EI
And feelingly the sage shall make report
How insecure, how baseless in itself,
Is that philosophy whose sway is framed
For mere material instruments: - how weak
Those arts and high inventions, if unpropped
By Virtue.

8. THE RUINED CITY.

1ked of Time, from whom those temples rose,
That, prostrate by his hand, in silence lie.
His lips disdained the mystery156 to disclose,
And, borne on swifter wing, he hurried by!-
These broken columns,59 whose?" I asked of Fame:
(Her kindling breath gives life to works sublime131) —
With downcast looks of mingled grief and shame,
She heaved the uncertain sigh, and followed Time.
Wrapt in amazement, o'er the mouldering pile
I saw Oblivion pass, with giant stride;

and, whilst his visage wore Pride's scornful smile,

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Haply thou know'st;-then, tell me whose!" I cried, " Whose these vast domes that even in ruin shine?"

I reck not whose," he said; "they now are mine!"

XLI. JOHN POUNDS, THE COBBLER.

1. JOHN POUNDS was one of those good Samaritans of whom every generation apparently produces some examples. Born on the 17th of July, in the year 1766, at Portsmouth in England, he was apprenticed, when twelve years of age, to a shipwright, with whom he served three years of his term, when a serious accident happened to the boy. Falling one day from a considerable height into one of the dry docks, he dislocated his thigh, and was in other respects very grievously injured. Time and surgical ingenuity sufficed to restore him to a tolerable state, but he was crippled in such a manner as to be unfitted is resume his trade; and so John Pounds became a cobbler.

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2. He lived a lonely kind of life. Having no household soci ety,9 92 and being little disposed to go abroad in quest of entertainment, he relieved his involuntary solitude by rearing and domesticating all kinds of singing birds and harmless animals; teaching some of them a variety of amusing tricks, and accustoming those of opposite propensities to live together in harmony. He would sit with a cat upon one shoulder, and a canary-bird on the other, charming away fear from the one, and curbing destructive inclinations in the other.

3. The notion of undertaking the gratuitous education of poor children seems to have been suggested accidentally to John Pounds. A brother of his, who was a seafaring man with a large family, had amongst the rest a feeble little boy, with deformed feet. John benevolently took charge of this lad, cured him of his deformity, and taught him to read. Thinking it would be well for the boy to have a companion in study, he took another, and then another poor child under his care, until at length he became a sort of ragged schoolmaster-general to all the poorer population; and, in a spirit of noble disinterested ness, performed a most serviceable work in his generation.

4. He might be seen, day after day, in his small workshop about six feet wide, and eighteen in length, in St. Mary-street Portsmouth, seated on his stool, mending shoes, and attending at the same time to the studies of a busy crowd of ragged children, clustering around him. Sometimes there would be assembled in his shop as many as forty boys and girls, the latter of whom he kept a little apart from the rest. In receiving pupils, he made choice of those who seemed most in need of his reforming disci pline. He had a decided predilection for "the little black guards," and was frequently at great pains to attract such within his door. He was once seen following a young vaga

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bond of this stamp, and endeavoring to entice him to come to school with the bribe of a baked potato."

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5. His methods of tuition were somewhat original. He col· lected all sorts of refuses hand-bills and scraps of printed and written paper, which he found lying anywhere uselessly about, and with these he contrived to teach reading and spelling. With the younger children his manner was particularly pleasant. He would ask them the names of different parts of their body, make them spell the words, and signify their uses. For instance, taking hold of a child's hand, he would say, "What do you call this?" and, having received his answer, direct him to spell the word. Then, giving the hand a playful slap, he would ask, "What do I do?" and teach him next to spell the word expressive of the

act.

6. Should this remind any one of Mr. Squeers's analogous method of teaching a boy to spell "horse," and then, by way of emphatic illustration, sending him to rub such an animal down, that he might the better remember his lesson, it will be proper to recollect the different pretensions of the parties, and not to confound an ignorant charlatan with an honest and benevolent person, who performs his work with conscientious consideration, and according to the extent of his ability and means.

7. Writing and arithmetic were taught by John Pounds to the elder pupils, in a manner to give them a creditable degree of skill in those branches. Many of the boys he taught to mend their shoes, to cook their food, and perform a variety of useful services for themselves and others. Not only did he superintend their sports and personal habits, but the generous and considerate teacher likewise exerted himself in curing their bodily ailments, such as chilblains, and coughs, and the manifold cuts and bruises to which the children of the poor are continually exposed. Often he shared his own scanty and homely provisions with destitute and forsaken children. He acknowledged universal kinship with the neglected and unhappy.

8. The sort of education which John Pounds was enabled to give was doubtless very imperfect; but it was infinitely preferable to none at all. He had ample assurances that his steadfast labors, adhered to through a long life, were not fruitless. Coming home from foreign service or a distant voyage, often would some tall soldier, or rough jovial sailor, now grown up out of all remembrance, call to shake hands with him, and confess the benefits he had received from his instruction. These were proud occasions for the poor and modest cobbler. Other recompense than this he had scarcely any. So quietly and unobtrusively had he all along pursued his purpose, that comparatively few

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