NIGHT AND DAY. BY Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, YOUNG. Y a poetical metaphor, Night is said to be Nature in mourning for the loss of the sun! Yet in her seeming sadness, how grateful to the wearied sons of toil, iş her stillness and repose! "Night is the time for rest How sweet when labors close, To gather round an aching breast Stretch the tired limbs and lay the head "The sweet oblivious antidote" to all our sorrows and trials, is also the great necessity of our nature, superseding every other want. Silent and solemn night, thou art also the almoner of blessings to the poor and afflicted, for not only dost thou bring a truce to toil 298 and labor, but thou dost still the cry for food of the neglected children of poverty. Night-gentle, soothing, refreshing night-the earthly paradise of slave, the soothing balm of the care-worn and suffering, the nurse of social endearments, of poetry and devotionhow the great panting heart of humanity yearns for thy sweet return! Under thy benign and peaceful reign, the tumultuous conflicts of life, with its strife of tongues, its pride and avarice, its baubles and phantoms, its envy and ambitions, alike cease. All life's fretting cares, its doubts and perplexities, and its countless contending emotions are for a season hushed into silence and repose. How beneficent is this ordinance of the Divine Providence: alike grateful to peasant and to prince, to the rude as well as to the refined: to the lower creation as well as to its lord. "Oh, night! I love thee, as a weary child Loves the maternal breast on which it leans! A strange, mysterious power belongs to thee, Not only is night ever welcome as affording a respite to the wearied activities of the day-thus fitting us, by its recuperative influences, for the duties of the morrow; it is also the time of social intercourse, when * Hosmer. the endearments of home, with its amenities and loving interests, atone for the rude asperities of the world. Here the rivalries of ambition and the fierce contests for power and preference are unknown-all is serenity, gentleness and peace-the storms of life are lulled into a calm. Home is the citadel of the heart-its loved retreat-and when sanctified by the pure harmonies of love and devotion, our "paradise regained.” "Dear night! This world's defeat; The stop to busy fools-care's check and curb, Which none disturb." * Night, especially, is the time for prayer-sanctified to this use by the Great Founder of our faith. "This sacred shade and solitude, what is it? It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul, To settle on herself, our point supreme! There lies our theatre-there sits our judge. Night is the good man's friend, and guardian too; We read that the Patriarch of old went forth to meditate at eventide-and although his thoughts have not been chronicled, for our perusal, we may safely conjecture that they were of a devotional kind. Doubtless his emotions of gratitude were excited by a sense of the fitness and adaptation, not to say physical necessity to our very existence, which exists for this regular * Vaughan. alternation of day and night-since its interruption would most unquestionably prove fatal. What could we know of the countless beauties of creation did not the king of day reveal to us the enchanted vision? Then the "garish eye of day," with all its pomp and splendor, passes into eclipse, in order that the glories of the stellar firmament may ravish our gaze the more. "Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patins of bright gold!" What silent eloquence is there in the splendors of the midnight heavens! Who can gaze upon them in the lone stillness without deep emotions of solemn awe? "The sacred hour of night, When eloquent darkness opens to the eye There, where in floating argentry are hung The living wilderness of galaxy, O'er the black void like foam from ocean flung That solemu sea of air whose silence hath a tongue.' There is something strangely beautiful in the contemplation of night-when the smiling stars seem to do homage to their pale-faced queen, and the clouds float silently through the tranquil sky, and the wind speaks in soft whispers, as if fearful of waking the sleepers." Such is the sweet repose of a peaceful conscience. But when the hues of evening slant dimly away, * Reade. when the cheerless curtains of darkness are drawn, when aërial shadows loom up and flit along the vaulted arch, "like grim ghosts trailing blackness through the heavens"-such is the fearful shadow that hangs over the broken slumber of a soul in which there is no peace." "How slowly rolls the night along," is the sad refrain of the child of suffering, albeit he may mingle his moanings with "songs in the night"-for he, too, has retreated from the world of sense, holding "colloquy sublime" with the spirit-world. To one of unfaltering faith in Him who is "the resurrection and the life," even the night of death is divested of its gloom. "Night is one of the greatest blessings men enjoy. We have many reasons to thank God for it. Yet night is to many a gloomy season. There is the pestilence. that walketh in darkness'-there is the terror by night-there is the terror of robbers and fell disease, with all those fears that the timorous know, when they have no light wherewith to discern objects. It is then they fancy that spiritual creatures walk the earth; though, if they knew rightly, they would find it to be true that "Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, Unseen, both when we sleep, and when we wake :' and that at all times they are round about us-not more by night than by day. Night is the season of terror and alarm to most men. Yet even night hath its songs. Have you never stood by the sea-side at night, and heard the pebbles sing, and the waves chant God's glories? Night hath its song. We need not |