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natural to youth, and which, therefore, promises well of their maturity. We foresee for them, at least, a life of pure and virtuous enjoyment, and we are willing to anticipate no common share of future usefulness and splendor.

In the second place, the pursuits of knowledge lead not only to happiness, but to honor." "Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left are riches and honor." It is honorable to excel even in the most trifling species of knowledge, in those which can amuse only the passing hour. It is more honorable to excel in those different branches of science which are connected with the liberal professions of life, and which tend so much to the dignity and well-being of humanity. It is the means of raising the most obscure to esteem and attention; it opens to the just ambition of youth some of the most distinguished and respected situations in society; and it places them there with the consoling reflection that it is to their own industry and labor, in the providence of God, that they are alone indebted for them. But to excel in the higher attainments of knowledge, to be distinguished in those greater pursuits which have commanded the attention and exhausted the abilities of the wise in every former age, is, perhaps, of all the distinctions of human understanding, the most honorable and grateful.

When we look back upon the great men who have gone before us in every path of glory, we feel our eye turn from the career of war and ambition, and involuntarily rest upon those who have displayed the great truths of religion, who have investigated the laws of social welfare, or extended the sphere of human knowledge. These are honors, we feel, which have been gained without a crime, and which can be enjoyed without remorse. They are honors also which can never die—which can shed lustre even upon the humblest head-and to which the young of every succeeding age will look up, as their brightest incentives to the pursuit of virtuous fame.

ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF AMUSEMENTS.

It were unjust and ungrateful to conceive that the amusements of life are altogether forbid by its beneficent Author. They serve, on the contrary, important purposes in the economy of human life, and are destined to produce important effects both upon our happiness and character. They are, in the first place, in the language of the Psalmist, "the wells of the desert;" the kind resting-places in which toil may relax, in which the weary spirit

may recover its tone, and where the desponding mind may resume its strength and its hopes.

It is not, therefore, the use of the innocent amusements of life which is dangerous, but the abuse of them; it is not when they are occasionally, but when they are constantly pursued; when the love of amusement degenerates into a passion, and when, from being an occasional indulgence, it becomes an habitual desire. What the consequences of this inordinate love of amusement are, I shall now endeavor very briefly to show you.

1. It tends to degrade all the powers of the understanding. It is the eternal law of nature, that truth and wisdom are the offspring of labor, of vigor, and perseverance in every worthy object of pursuit. The eminent stations of fame, accordingly, and the distinguished honors of knowledge, have, in every age, been the reward only of such early attainments, of that cherished elevation of mind which pursues only magnificent ends, and of that heroic fortitude which, whether in action or in speculation, pursues them by the means of undeviating exertion.

For the production of such a character, no discipline can be so unfit as that of the habitual love of amusement. It kindles not the eye of ambition, it bids the heart beat with no throb of generous admiration, it lets the soul be calm, while all the rest of our fellows are passing us in the road of virtue or of science. Satisfied with humble and momentary enjoyment, it aspires to no honor, no praise, no pre-eminence, and, contented with the idle gratification of the present hour, forgets alike what man has done and what man was born to do.

If such be the character of the youthful mind, if it be with such aims and such ambition that its natural elevation can be satisfied, am I to ask you what must be the appearances of riper years?— what the effect of such habits of thought upon the understanding of manhood? Alas! a greater instructor, the mighty instructor, experience, may show you in every rank of life what these effects are. It will show you men born with every capacity, and whose first years glowed with every honorable ambition, whom no vice even now degrades, and to whom no actual guilt is affixed, who yet live in the eye of the world only as the objects of pity or of scorn-who, in the idle career of habitual amusement, have dissipated all their powers and lost all their ambition-and who exist now for no purpose but to be the sad memorials of ignoble taste and degraded understanding.

2. The inordinate love of pleasure is, in the second place, equally hostile to the moral character. If the feeble and passive disposition of mind which it produces be unfavorable to the exer

tions of the understanding, it is, in the same measure, as unfavorable to the best employments of the heart. The great duties of life, the duties for which every man and woman is born, demand, in all situations, the mind of labor and perseverance. From the first hour of existence to the last-from the cradle of the infant, beside which the mother watches with unslumbering eye, to the grave of the aged, where the son pours his last tears upon the bier of his father-in all that intermediate time, every day calls for exertion and activity, and the moral honors of our being can only be won by the steadfast magnanimity of pious duty.

Alas! experience has here also decided; it tells you that the mind which exists only for pleasure, cannot exist for duty; it tells you that the feeble and selfish spirit of amusement gradually corrodes all the benevolent emotions of the heart, and withers the most sacred ties of domestic affection; and it points its awful finger to the examples of those, alas! of both sexes, whom the unrestrained love of idle pleasure first led to error and folly, and whom, with sure but fatal progress, it has since conducted to be the objects of secret shame and public infamy.

3. In the last place, this unmanly disposition is equally fatal to happiness as to virtue. To the wise and virtuous, to those who use the pleasures of life only as a temporary relaxation, as a resting-place to animate them on the great journey on which they are travelling, the hours of amusement bring real pleasure; to them the well of joy is ever full, while to those who linger by its side, its waters are soon dried and exhausted.

I speak not now of those bitter waters which must mingle themselves with the well of unhallowed pleasure, of the secret reproaches of accusing conscience, of the sad sense of shame and dishonor, and of that degraded spirit which must bend itself beneath the scorn of the world; I speak only of the simple and natural effect of unwise indulgence, that it renders the mind callous to enjoyment, and that, even though the "fountain were full of water," the feverish lip is incapable of satiating its thirst. Alas! here, too, we may see the examples of human folly. We may see around us everywhere the fatal effects of unrestrained pleasure; the young sickening in the midst of every pure and genuine enjoyment; the mature hastening, with hopeless step, to fill up the hours of a vitiated being; and, what is still more wretched, the hoary head wandering in the way of folly, and, with an unhallowed dotage, returning again to the trifles and the amusements of childhood.

Such, then, my young friends, are the natural and experienced consequences of the inordinate love even of innocent amusement,

and such the intellectual and moral degradation to which the paths of pleasure conduct. Let me entreat you to pause ere you begin your course, ere those habits are acquired which may never again be subdued, and ere ye permit the charms of pleasure to wind around your soul their fascinating powers.

Think, with the elevation and generosity of your age, whether this is the course that leads to honor or to fame; whether it was in this discipline that they were exercised who, in every age, have blessed or have enlightened the world, whose shades are present to your midnight thoughts, and whose names you cannot pronounce without the tear of gratitude or admiration.

Think, still more, whether it was to the ends of unmanly pleasure that you were dedicated, when the solemn service of religion first enrolled you in the number of the faithful, and when the ardent tears of your parents mingled with the waters of your baptism. If they live, is it in such paths that their anxious eyes delight to see you tread? If they are no more, is it on such scenes that they can bend their venerated heads from heaven, and rejoice in the course of their children?

LÆTITIA ELIZABETH MACLEAN, 1802-1838.

LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON,1 one of the most eminent among the female poets of our age, was born in London on the 14th of August, 1802. Her father dying when she was very young, and her mother being left with a large family and but little for their support, Lætitia, whose talent for poetry was early manifested, devoted her youthful enthusiasm to literary composition, the fruits of which were applied to the maintenance and advancement of her family. Her first productions were brought forward about the year 1822, in the pages of the "Literary Gazette," to which she continued for many years a frequent contributor, and to which she was mainly indebted for her reputation. She also contributed largely to many other periodicals, and to nearly all the annuals, of some of which she wrote all the poetry, as of "Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap-Book," the "Flowers of Loveliness," and the "Bijou Almanac." This almost ceaseless composition necessarily precluded the thought, study, and cultivation essential to the production of poetry of the highest order. 'Hence, with all their fancy and feeling, her principal works-the 'Improvisatrice,' the 'Troubadour,' the 'Golden Violet,' the 'Golden Bracelet,' and the Vow of the Peacock'

Better known to the literary world by the signature L. E. L.

bear a strong family likeness to each other in their recurrence to the same sources of allusion, and the same veins of imagery-in the conventional rather than natural coloring of their descriptions, and in the excessive though not unmusical carelessness of their versification. In spite, however, of the ceaseless strain upon her powers, and the ceaseless distractions of a London life, Miss Landon accomplished much for her own mind in the progress of its career; she had reached a deeper earnestness of thought, had added largely to the stores of her knowledge, and done much towards the polishing and perfecting of her verse."

Miss Landon was married on the 7th of June, 1838, to George Maclean, Esq., Governor of Cape Coast Castle, South Africa, and soon after left England for her new abode. Letters were received from her by her friends in England, telling them of her employments and her happiness; but these were soon followed by news of her death. On the 15th of October, of the same year, she was found dead on the floor of her chamber, with an empty phial in her hand, which had contained prussic acid. She had been in the habit of using this as a remedy for spasmodic affections, and had undoubt. edly taken an overdose. The stories that were circulated about her having poisoned herself were doubtless cruel slanders, as a letter to a friend, written on the morning of her death, breathing a spirit of content and happiness, was found upon her table.

Of Mrs. Maclean's genius, there can be but one opinion. "She had great intellectual power, a highly sensitive and ardent imagination, an intense fervor of passionate emotion, and almost unequalled eloquence and fluency. Of mere art she displayed but little. Her style is irregular and careless, but there is genius in every line she has written. It is, however, to be regretted that she too often took sad and melancholy views of life. There is a morbid feeling in much of her poetry that throws over it a misanthropic cast, and which gave some coloring to the stories that were circulated about her death." The following are some of her choicest pieces, that are the most free from such sentiments:

SUCCESS ALONE SEEN.

Few know of life's beginnings-men behold
The goal achieved;-the warrior, when his sword
Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun;

The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm;

The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice,
And mould opinion, on his gifted tongue:

They count not life's first steps, and never think
Upon the many miserable hours

When hope deferr'd was sickness to the heart.

They reckon not the battle and the march,

The long privations of a wasted youth;
They never see the banner till unfurl'd.
What are to them the solitary nights

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