Which o'er the weary, working world
Like starry music came!

With what still hours of calm delight
Thy songs and image blend!

I cannot choose but think thou wert
An old familiar friend.

The charms that dwell in songs of thine

My inmost spirit moved;

And yet I feel as thou hadst been

Not half enough beloved.

They say that thou wert faint and worn
With suffering and with care;

What music must have filled the soul
That had so much to spare!

MISS L. E. LANDON.

LESSON XXI.

THE TWO VOICES.

Two solemn voices, in a funeral strain,
Met, as rich sunbeams and dark bursts of rain
Meet in the sky:

"Thou art gone hence!" one sang,

66

our light is flown, Our beautiful, that seemed too much our own

Ever to die!

"Thou art gone hence! our joyous hills among, Never again to pour thy soul in song,

When spring-flowers rise;

Never the friend's familiar step to meet,
With loving laughter, and the welcome sweet

Of thy glad eyes."

“Thou art gone home, gone home!” then high and clear, Warbled that other voice; "thou hast no tear

Again to shed;

Never to fold the robe o'er secret pain,

Never, weighed down by Memory's clouds, again
To bow thy head.

"Thou art gone home! oh! early crowned and blest'
Where could the love of that deep heart find rest

With aught below?

Thou must have seen rich dream by dream decay,
All the bright rose-leaves drop from life away;
Thrice blessed to go!"

Yet sighed again that breeze-like voice of grief,
"Thou art gone hence! alas! that aught so brief,
So loved should be;

Thou tak'st our summer hence; the flower, the tone,
The music of our being, all in one,

Depart with thee!

"Fair form, young spirit, morning vision fled !
Canst thou be of the dead, the awful dead?
The dark unknown?

Yes! to the dwelling where no footsteps fall,
Never again to light up hearth or hall,
Thy smile is gone!"

“ Home, home!" once more the exulting voice arose;
"Thou art gone home! from that divine repose
Never to roam!

Never to say farewell, to weep in vain,
To read of change, in eyes beloved, again:
Thou art gone home!

"By the bright waters now thy lot is cast;
Joy for thee, happy friend! thy bark hath passed
The rough sea's foam!

Now the long yearnings of thy soul are stilled,
Home! home! thy peace is won, thy heart is filled,
Thou art gone home!"

MRS. HEMANS.

LESSON XXII.

THE ANGEL'S GREETING.

COME to the land of peace! Come where the tempest hath no longer sway, The shadow passes from the soul away,

The sounds of weeping cease.

Fear hath no dwelling there,

Come to the mingling of repose and love,
Breathed by the silent spirit of the dove
Through the celestial air '

Come to the bright, and blest,

And crowned forever! 'mid that shining band,
Gathered to Heaven's own wreath from every land,
Thy spirit shall find rest..

Thou hast been long alone:

Come to thy mother! on the Sabbath shore,
The heart that rocked thy childhood, back once more
Shall take its wearied one.

In silence wert thou left?

Come to thy sisters! joyously again

All the home-voices, blent in one sweet strain,
Shall greet their long bereft.

Over thine orphan head

The storm has swept, as o'er a willow's bough:
Come to thy Father! it is finished now:

Thy tears have all been shed.

In thy divine abode,

Change finds no pathway, memory no dark trace,
And, oh! bright victory! death by love no place :
Come, spirit, to thy God!

MRS. HEMANS.

LESSON XXIII.

EVENING PRAYER AT A GIRL'S SCHOOL.

HUSH! 'tis a holy hour; the quiet room

Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds A faint and starry radiance, through the gloom

And the sweet stillness, down on bright young heads, With all their clustering locks, untouched by care, And bowed, as flowers are bowed with night, in prayer.

Gaze on! 'tis lovely! childhood's lip and cheek

Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought;
Gaze! yet what seest thou in those fair, and meek,
And fragile things, as but for sunshine wrought?
Thou seest what grief must nurture for the sky,
What death must fashion for eternity.

Oh! joyous creatures, that will sink to rest,
Lightly, when those pure orisons are done,
As birds, with slumber's honey-dew oppressed,
'Mid the dim folded leaves, at set of sun;
Lift up your hearts! though yet no sorrow lies
Dark in the summer-heaven of those clear eyes;

Though fresh within your breasts the untroubled springs
Of hope make melody where'er ye tread;

And o'er your sleep, bright shadows, from the wings
Of spirits visiting but youth, be spread;
Yet in those flute-like voices, mingling low,
Is woman's tenderness; how soon her woe!
Her lot is on you; silent tears to weep,

And patient smiles to wear through suffering's hour,
And sumless riches, from Affection's deep,
To pour on broken reeds—a wasted shower!
And to make idols, and to find them clay,
And to bewail that worship; therefore pray!
Her lot is on you; to be found, untired,

Watching the stars out by the bed of pain,
With a pale cheek, and yet a brow inspired,

And a true heart of hope, though hope be vain;
Meekly to bear with wrong, to cheer decay,
And, oh! to love through all things; therefore pray!
And take the thought of this calm vesper time,

With its low murmuring sounds and silvery light,
On through the dark days, fading from their prime,
As a sweet dew to keep your souls from blight.
Earth will forsake; oh! happy to have given
The unbroken heart's first fragrance unto Heaven!

MRS. HEMANS.

LESSON XXIV.

FASHIONABLE

FOLLIES.

THERE are in the United States one hundred thousand young ladies, as Sir Ralph Abercrombie said of those of Scotland, "the prettiest lassies in a' the world," who know neither to toil nor spin, who are yet clothed like the lilies of the valley; who thrum the piano, and, a few of the more dainty, the harp; who walk, as the Bible says, softly; who have read romances, and some of them seen the interior of theaters; who have been admired at the examination of their high school; who have wrought algebraic solutions on the blackboard; who are, in short, the very roses of the garden, the attar of life; who yet, can never expect to be married, or, if married, to live without shall I speak, or forbear?-putting their own lily hands to domestic drudgery.

We go into the interior villages of our recent wooden

country. The fair one sits down to clink the wires of the piano. We see the fingers displayed on the keys, which, we are sure, never prepared a dinner, nor made a garment for her robust brothers. We traverse the streets of our own city, and the wires of the piano are thrummed in our ears from every considerable house. In cities and villages, from one extremity of the Union to the other, wherever there is a good house, and the doors and windows betoken the presence of the mild months, the ringing of the piano wires is almost as universal a sound, as the domestic hum of life within.

We need not enter in person. Imagination sees the fair one, erect on her music stool, laced, and pinioned, and reduced to a questionable class of entomology, dinging at the wires, as though she could, in some way, hammer out of them music, amusement, and a husband. Look at her taper and creamcolored fingers. Is she a utilitarian? Ask the fair one, when she has beaten all the music out of the keys, "Pretty fair one, canst talk to thy old and sick father, so as to beguile him out of the headache and rheumatism? Canst write a good and straight forward letter of business? Thou art a chemist, I remember, at the examination; canst compound, prepare, and afterward boil, or bake, a good pudding? Canst make one of the hundred subordinate ornaments of thy fair person? In short, tell us thy use in existence, except to be contemplated, as a pretty picture? And how long will any one be amused with the view of a picture, after having surveyed it a dozen times, unless it have a mind, a heart, and, we may emphatically add, the perennial value of utility?"

It is a sad and lamentable truth, after all the incessant din we have heard of the march of mind, and the interminable theories, inculcations, and eulogies of education, that the present is an age of unbounded desire of display and notoriety, of exhaustless and unquenchably burning ambition; and not an age of calm, contented, ripe, and useful knowledge, for the sacred privacy of the parlor. Display, notoriety, surface, and splendor, these are the first aims of the mothers; and can we expect that the daughters will drink in a better spirit? To play, sing, dress, glide down the dance, and get a husband, is the lesson; not to be qualified to render his home quiet, wellordered, and happy.