That shall be up at Heaven, and enter there,
Ere sun-rise; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

Ang.
Isab.

Well, come to-morrow.

Heaven keep your honor safe.

LESSON CLXXIII.

The Passions.-An Ode.-COLLINS.

WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse's painting;
By turns, they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined:
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,

From the supporting myrtles round,
They snatched her instruments of sound;
And, as they oft had heard, apart,
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each-for madness ruled the hour-
Would prove his own expressive power.

First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid;
And back recoiled, he knew not why,
E'en at the sound himself had made.

Next Anger rushed his eyes, on fire,

In lightning owned his secret stings;
In one rude clash he struck the lyre,
And swept with hurried hand the strings

With woful measures, wan Despair.....
Low, sullen sounds his grief beguiled-
A solemn, strange, and mingled air-
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild.

But thou, O Hope! with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whispered promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail.

Still would her touch the strain prolong;
And from the rocks, the woods, the vale,
She called on Echo still through all her song:
And where her sweetest theme she chose,

A soft, responsive voice was heard at every close: And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair.

And longer had she sung; but, with a frown,

Revenge impatient rose.

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down,
And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,

And blew a blast so loud and dread,

Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of wo;

And, ever and anon, he beat

The doubling drum with furious heat:

And though, sometimes, each dreary pause between,

Dejected Pity, at his side,

Her soul-subduing voice applied,

Yet still he kept his wild, unaltered mien

While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his

head.

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed

Sad proof of thy distressful state :

Of differing themes the veering song was mixed :

And now it courted Love; now, raving, called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,

Pale Melancholy sat retired;

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And, from her wild, sequestered seat,

In notes by distance made more sweet,

Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul;

And, dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels joined the sound:

Through glades and glooms, the mingled measures stole,

Or, o'er some haunted streams with fond delay,

(Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace, and lonely musing,)

In hollow murmurs died away.

But, oh! how altered was its sprightlier tone, When Cheerfulness-a nymph of healthiest hue— Her bow across her shoulder flung,

Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung !— The hunter's call, to faun and dryad known.

The oak-crowned sisters and their chaste-eyed queen, Satyrs and sylvan boys were seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green :

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear,

And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addressed;
But soon he saw the brisk, awakening viol,
Whose sweet, entrancing voice he loved the best.
They would have thought who heard the strain,
They saw in Tempé's vale her native maids,
Amidst the festal-sounding shades,
To some unwearied minstrel dancing:
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,

Love framed with Mirth a gay, fantastic round,
(Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,)
And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,
Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

LESSON CLXXIV.

Indolence and Intellectual Dissipation.-WIRT.

WHEREVER I see the native bloom of health and the genuine smile of content, I mark down the character as industrious and virtuous; and I never yet failed to have the prepossession confirmed on inquiry. So, on the other hand, wherever I see pale, repining and languid discontent, and hear complaints uttered against the hard lot of humanity, my first impression is, that the character from whom they proceed is indolent, or vicious, or both; and I have not often had occasion to retract the opinion.

There is, indeed, a class of characters, rather indolent than vicious, who are really to be pitied; whose innocent and captivating amusements, becoming at length their sole pursuits, tend only to whet their sensibility to misfortunes, which they contribute to bring on; and to form pictures of life so highly aggravated, as to render life itself stale and flat.

In this class of victims to a busy indolence, next to those who devote their whole lives to the unprofitable business of writing works of imagination, are those who spend the whole of theirs in reading them. There are several men and women of this description, in the circle of my acquaintance; persons, whose misfortune it is to be released from the salutary necessity of supporting themselves by their own exertions, and who vainly seek for happiness in intellectual dissipation.

Bianca is one of the finest girls in the whole round of my acquaintance, and is now one of the happiest. But when I first became acquainted with her, which was about three years ago, she was an object of pity: pale, emaciated, nervous and hysterical, at the early age of seventeen, the days had already come, when she could truly say, she had no pleasure in them. She confessed to me, that she had lain on her bed, day after day, for months together, reading, or rather devouring, with a kind of morbid appetite, every novel that she could lay her hands on-without any pause between them, without any rumination, so that the incidents were all 3.3*

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conglomerated and confounded in her memory. She had not drawn from them all a single useful maxim for the conduct of life; but, calculating on the fairy world, which her authors had depicted to her, she was reserving all her address and all her powers for incidents that would never occur, and characters that would never appear.

I advised her immediately to change her plan of life; to take the whole charge of her mother's household upon herself; to adopt a system in the management of it, and adhere to it rigidly; to regard it as her business exclusively, and make herself responsible for it; and then, if she had time for it, to read authentic history, which would show her the world as it really was; and not to read rapidly and superficially, with a view merely to feast on the novelty and variety of events, but deliberately and studiously, with her pen in her hand, and her note-book by her side, extracting, as she went along, not only every prominent event, with its date and circumstances, but every elegant and judicious reflection of the author, so as to form a little book of practical wisdom for herself. She followed my advice, and, when I went to see her again, six months afterwards, Bianca had regained all the symmetry and beauty of her form; the vernal rose bloomed again on her cheeks, the starry radiance shot from her eyes; and, with a smile which came directly from her heart, and spoke her gratitude more exquisitely than words, she gave me her hand, and bade me welcome.

In short, the divine denunciation, that in the sweat of his brow man should earn his food, is guarantied so effectually, that labor is indispensable to his peace. It is the part of wisdom, to adapt ourselves to the state of being in which we are placed; and, since here we find that business and industry are as certainly the pledges of peace and virtue, as vacancy and indolence are of vice and sorrow, let every one do, what is easily in his power-create a business, even where fortune may have made it unnecessary, and pursue that *business with all the ardor and perseverance of the direst necessity so shall we see our country as far excelling others in health, contentment and virtue, as it now surpasses them in liberty and tranquillity.