4. If you are separated from them, maintain with them a correspondence. This will do yourself good, as well as them. Do not neglect this duty, nor grow remiss in it. Give your friendly advice, and seek theirs in return. As they mingle intimately with their sex, they can enlighten your mind respecting many particulars relating to female character, important for you to know; and, on the other hand, you have the same opportunity to do them a similar service. However long or widely separated from them, keep up your fraternal affection and intercourse. It is omnious of evil, when a young man forgets his sisters.
THE DESERTED VILLAGE.- GOLDSMITH."
1. Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where wealth and plenty cheered the laboring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed;
Dear, lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,—
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighboring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age, and whispering lovers made!
2. How often have I blessed the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its aid to play,
Goldsmith, (Oliver,) was born in Ireland in 1731, and died in 1774. He traveled extensively, and was an excellent writer.
And all the village train, from labor free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree!
While many a pastime circled in the shade,-
The young, contending, as the old surveyed;
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round!
Sweet, smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amid thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green:
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way;
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made :
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour,
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.
Here, as I take my solitary rounds,
Amid thy tangling walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.
In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs and God has given my share,-
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amid these humble bowers to lay me down.
7. Oh blessed retirement! friend to life's decline,
Retreat from care, that never must be mine,
How blessed is he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of labor with an age of
ease;
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 't is hard to combat, learns to fly!
So on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue's friend;
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
THE ETERNITY OF GOD.- BROOKS.
[See Rule 7, p. 182.]
1. The deep fountains of the earth are thine,
Laid by thy hand, Almighty, when of old
From ancient chaos order rose, and light
From darkness, beauty from a shapeless mass.
A glorious orb from its Creator's hands
It came, in light and loveliness arrayed,
Crowned with green em'rald mounts, tinted with gold,
And wearing as a robe, the silver sea,
Seeded with jewels of resplendent isles.
2. The awful heavens are thine; -the liquid sun,
That heaves his fiery waves beneath thy eye!
The ocean, fount of all the streams of light,
That from their beamy treasures through the wide,
Illimitable ether, watering with their rays,
The wide-spread soil, to where the burning sands
Of dark immensity, eternal barriers throw
Against the flowing of their crystal streams,
Was from the Godhead's urn of glory poured.
8. The stars are thine,- thy charactery grand,
In which, upon the face of awful heaven,
Thy hand has traced in radiant lines, thy grace,
Thy glory, thy magnificence and power,
For eye of man and angel to behold,
And read and gaze on, worship and adore.
These shall grow old; the solid earth, with years
Shall see her sapless body shrivel up,
And her gray mountains crumble piece-meal down,
Like crypt and pyramid, to primal dust.
4. The sea shall labor: on his hoary head
Shall wave his tresses, silvered o'er with age.
The deep pulsations of his mighty heart,
That bids the blood-like fluid circulate
Through every fiber of the earth, shall cease;
And the eternal heavens, in whose bright folds,
As in a starry vesture, thou art girt,
Shall lose their luster, and grow old with
5. And as a worn-out garment, thou shalt fold
Their faded glories, and they shall be changed
To vesture bright, immortal as thyself.
Yea, the eternal heavens, on whose blue page
Thy glory and magnificence are traced,
With age shall tarnish, and shall be rolled up
As parchment scrolls of abrogated acts,
And be deposited in deathless urns,
Among the archives of the mighty God.
6. Thou art the same,-thy years shall never fail:
In glory bright, when every star and sun
Shall lose their luster, and expire in night;
Immortal all, when time and slow decay
Imprint their ravages on nature's face;
Triumphantly secure, when from the tower
Of highest heaven's imperial citadel,
The bell of nature's dissolution toll,
And sun, and star, and planet be dissolved,
And the wide drapery of darkness hang
A gloomy pall of sable mourning round
Dead nature in the grave of chaos laid.
VISION OF MIRZA.-ADDISON.
[Narrative. The reader may also determine what other character of language, or principle of elocution is exemplified in this piece, and tell how it should be read. See p. 200.]
1. On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers I always kept holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat,b in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on the vanity of human life; and, passing from one thought to another, "Surely," said I, "man is but a shadow, and life a dream."
■ Addison, one of the best writers in the English language, died in 1719. b BagJat, capital of a Turkish province in Asia, the southern part of Mesopotamia
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