magnificence. But where is there even a relic of Babylon now, save on the faithful pages of Holy Writ? The very place of its existence is a matter of uncertainty and dispute. Alas! that the measure of time should be doomed to oblivion; and that those who first divided the year into months, and invented the zodiac itself, should take so sparingly of immortality as to be, in the lapse of a few centuries, confounded with natural phenomena of mountain and valley!

Who can certainly show us the site of the tower that was "reared against heaven?" Who were the builders of the pyramids that have excited so much the astonishment of modern nations? Where is Rome, the irresistible monarch of the East, the terror of the world? Where are the proud edifices of her glory, the fame of which has reached even to our time in classic vividness? Alas, she too has faded away in sins and vices. Time has swept his unsparing scythe over her glories, and shorn this prince of its towering diadems.

"Her lonely columns stand sublime,

Flinging their shadows from on high
Like dials, which the wizard Time

Has raised, to count his ages by.'

Throughout the range of our Western wilds, down to Mexico, Yucatan, Bolivia, &c., travellers have been able to discover the most indisputable evidences of extinct races of men highly skilled in learning and the arts, of whom we have no earthly record, save the remains of their wonderful works which time has spared for our contemplation. On the very spot where forests rise in unbroken grandeur, and seem to have been explored only by their natural inhabitants, generation after generation has stood, has lived, has warred, grown old and passed away; and not only their names but their nation, their language have perished, and utter oblivion has closed over their once populous abodes. Who shall unravel to us the magnificent ruins of Mexico, Yucatan, and Bolivia, over which hangs the sublimest mystery, and which seem to have been antiquities in the day of Pharaoh! Who were the builders of those gorgeous temples, obelisks and palaces, now the ruins of a powerful and highlycultivated people, whose national existence was probably before that of Thebes or Rome, Carthage or Athens? Alas! there is none to tell the tale; all is conjecture, and our best information concerning them is derived only from uncertain analogy. How forcibly do these wonderful revolutions, which overturn the master-works of man, and utterly dissolve his boasted knowledge, remind

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us that God is in them all! Wherever the eye is turned, to whatever quarter of the world the attention is directed, there lie the remains of more powerful, more advanced, and more highly skilled nations than ourselves-the almost obliterated records of the mighty past. How seemingly well founded was the delusion, and indeed how current even now, that the discovery of Columbus first opened the way for a cultivated people in the "new world." And yet how great reason is there for the conclusion, that while the country of Ferdinand and Isabella was yet a stranger to the cultivated arts, America teemed with power and grandeur; with cities and temples, pyramids and mounds, in comparison with which the buildings of Spain bear not the slightest resemblance, and before which the relics of the old world are shorn of their grandeur.

All these great relics of still greater nations, should they not teach us a lesson of humiliation, confirming, as they do, the truth that God is in history, which man cannot penetrate? If the historian tells us truly that a hundred thousand men, relieved every three months, were thirty years in erecting a single Egyptian pyramid, what conclusion may we not reasonably form of the antiquities of our own continent, which is styled-almost by way of derision, one would suppose the "new world?”

IMPATIENCE.

HY A. B. H.

On! child of earth, wherefore art thou impatient? Why seek to have thy wishes granted in such nervous haste? Is there no more time but the present, and is it the fittest time to gain thine ends! If the thing sought after be really good, canst thou not afford to wait a little till Providence, or a succession of events, or the wise laws of growth and progress, shall develop it? Repugnance of delay in the affairs of life may not always or commonly find vent in language; but does it not lurk in stifled murmurs in almost every human bosom? The child betrays symptoms of it early in life. He tires of restraint, and therefore wishes himself a man. He would, with one leap, escape from the imbecility and nurture of his minority to the free and independent condition of manhood. The confinement of the schoolroom is painful; the acquisition of knowledge slow; wholesome government checks him here and impels him there; the "line-upon-line and precept-upon-precept" system he would instantly

Supersede, even though a miracle should be necessary to give him physical stamina, education and experience in this higher sphere. But the weakness does not vanish with maturer years; it cleaves to our nature.

We are an impulsive race. We want to see results with the least possible intervening space, and often without the use of proper means; and because they do not come about accordingly, the feelings chafe with impatience. Almost any thing is better than delay. The traveller, although borne from place to place now in as many hours as once it took weeks, flies into petulance and passion at the least delay, however unavoidable, in his journey.

Many a well-laid scheme of worldly honor or opulence has been defeated for want of a little patience. Indeed, how few there are that would rise to eminence in wealth, learning, influence, or any of the honorable distinctions of society, who will yet take the time and pains to watch, and wait, and work, to guard against defeat on every hand, till the seedling of their hopes shall take root, and gradually send up its branches laden with golden fruit. They would reap that whereon they bestowed no labor, and gather where they had not strewed.

Thus impatience defeats its own end. It hinders the possible by aiming at what is impossible. Instead of treading step by step in the path which leads circuitously down into smiling valleys, over hillocks, by the banks of rivulets and rushing streams, through shady groves, and sometimes deep morasses, and up, finally, to the bright vision of success-instead of this, it seeks the gilded prize by one sudden single bound, and, of course, disappointment must ensue.

Impatience often frustrates our plans of benevolence. Reforms are brought about usually not without considerable anxiety and trouble. To root existing evils out of the world, generally requires time and prayer, and a succession of well-directed efforts, persevered in, "in season and out of season," against unbelief, and whatever of discouragement may chance to arise. And it is just here the trouble is found; opposition will be met; faith must have its trial; and often one disappointment will follow another, until all that lacks patient principle in our philanthropy is consumed away, and, of course, our good intentions are blighted. Then there is injustice and wrong in the world, which cannot escape the view, and which the virtuous mind can contemplate only with pain. True, we have the injunction, "Fret not thyself because of evil

doers;" but when we see iniquity entrenched in high places; the strong trampling down the weak; the good made to suffer without redress; and vice and crime stalk abroad in forms so subtle as to elude law and all human vigilance to bring to punishment, then it is no easy matter to remain cool and calm, and keep down the risings of impatience within us.

What then is the antidote against impatience! We answer, firm confidence in an all-wise and overruling Providence. His own conduct, in some respects, is an example for us. No haste was ever evinced in the great productions of His hand. He took time to create the earth, and to establish the human family upon it. He took time to display here the most illustrious deed of beneficence the universe ever saw, or will see, in the gift of Christ, the world's Redeemer. He took time also when He sent judgments upon the nations of antiquity for national crimes. It is here, indeed, "He is slow to anger;" where provocation to wrath seems strongest, there we find the Almighty preeminently patient. He takes time now to spread the principles of his kingdom in the earth, and to perfect right habits and a holy character in each individual member thereof. Now he allows "tares" to grow with the "wheat," and forbids his servants to pluck them up hastily, lest more harm than good should be the result.

Here, then, is our example; and the instruc tion it gives us is essential and timely. If we seek what is truly good, "patient continuance" therein is the surest means of success. "Let patience have her perfect work." But if, after all, the good is withheld, even this is a still better issue in the view of One who cannot err. If virtue meets not its reward in this world, if vice cannot be reformed, and must evade the justice of human tribunals, then let us restrain all haste and invective, and "quietly wait the salvation of the Lord." All wrong shall finally be rectified; and goodness, in that day, shal, come forth from her obscurity shining like the sun.

A WISE ANSWER.-A teacher once asked a child, "If you had a golden crown, what would you do with it?" The child replied, "I would give it to my father to keep till I was a man." He asked another: "I would buy a coach and horses with it," was the reply. He asked a third: "Oh," ," said the little girl to whom he spoke, "oh! I would do with it the same as the people in heaven do with their crowns: I would cast it at the Saviour's feet."

FIERCELY blows the northern blast,
And I fold my cloak around me,
Fearful that, ere noon hath passed,
Boreal darts may wound me.
Up and down the thoroughfares

Of this mighty home of wealth,
Hurry thousands from their cares,
Seeking what may bring them health;
And perchance each busy brain

Often thinks of calmer hours, When the golden-headed grain Felt the influence of showers.

Now no more the rose adorns
Beauty's fair and gorgeous dwelling,
And no more come sunny morns,
Or the zephyr's gentle swelling.
Now no longer sing the birds

'Mid the foliage of the trees; Nor the lightly-echoing words

Float like music on the breeze From the cheerful little band

That the infant-school compose→ Hope of our Columbian land,

For the faith our fathers chose.

In the fairy month of June,
What delight there was in roaming,
With our fancies to commune,

On the banks of rivers foaming-
Near the noisy waterfalls,
Rushing o'er their rocky bed
"Twixt imposing granite walls,
With the azure arch o'erhead.
Many a flower there we found,
Many a precious sylvan gem,
Fit to form a wreath around
Some imperial diadem.
Memories, O Summer! come,
Of thy oft-regretted hours,
And I seem to hear the hum

Of the bee among the flowers;
And a thousand murmurs float
From my favorite crystal brook,
While full many a thought I note
In imagination's book.
Oh, for thy return I long!

When the days no longer sadden,— That again the matin-song

Of the lark my soul may gladden.

RAINY SABBATHS.-The following anecdote is told of a celebrated clergyman of Albany. He told his parishioners he should reserve the best efforts of his mind for rainy days—and the worse the weather, the better should be his sermonsand he kept his word. The consequence naturally was, that his church was never so well filled as in wet weather, and the harder the rain poured down, the more the people flocked in.

BY DR. BEECHER.

SOME time ago, after Chaos and old Night had reigned undisturbed from eternity, and matter had fermented, and tossed, and rolled into almost infinite forms, it happened to fall, for the first time, into just those relations which constituted the volcanic power; when, in a moment, an explosion took place, loud as ten thousand thunders, which sent out innumerable suns, flying in fusion through space, streaming athwart the darkness their baleful light, till they stopped and became fixed stars in the glorious firmament above. But they carried in their bosom the sad accidents which gave them birth; and new throes ensued, sending out around them comets, and planets, and satellites, all moving in elliptic orbits, with arithmetical accuracy, so that for ages past, and for ages to come, the almanac discloses their movements with as exact accuracy as the clock tells of time. What chance it was which checked their flight, and, by a resolution of force, wheeled them round in their elliptic career or why, the centripetal power exhausted, they did not fall back, with accelerated momentum, into the horrible crater whence they sprung-or where that mass may be, which could furnish matter of which to make the universe, and sustain the reäction of sending it out;

that mighty cannon, whose shot are suns and worlds, our philosophers have not yet discovered. But so it happened--they were exploded, and as yet they have not fallen back.

And now, leaving the suns, and orbs, and other systems, we descend to trace the history of our own mother earth, whom we meet reeking from her recent explosion, her waves of fire tossing and raging, which, as they cooled, crusted and stood upright as an heap, and became the perpetual hills and everlasting mountains. weightier masses sunk downward towards the centre, with lighter and lighter deposits above, leaving the crust, when pulverized, for fallow-ground and harvests.

The

As yet, however, the earth was without form and void, and a hideous nakedness spread over its late burning surface. When, strange to tell, grass and trees sprang up and began to ornament the hills and carpet the valleys-and hard on the footsteps of this wonder, trod another; the waters teemed with organic life, which lashed with oar the pliant wave, and sported in the deep; and suddenly the hills sent down to the valleys,

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and the valleys sent back to the hills, the bleating of flocks and herds; while the groves sent forth the joyous notes of birds and insects. All these, in grand concert, burst out upon the silence of nature, and all, as they needed, waited on almighty Chance, who gave them their meat in due season.

The organization of this delighted choir was such as demanded respiration and the flowing of a warm blood, for which an elastic atmosphere was needed; and it happened, as the earth cooled and consolidated, that several gases escaped from confinement, so exactly of the same specific gravity, and blessed with such social and friendly dispositions, that they agreed to exist in partnership, and to surround the earth, and most benevolently to volunteer their aid for respiration. Each, alone, deadly to life; but, united, its sustaining power.

This world of breathing animation rose up with optics-camera obscura in the head, to pencil inside the images of objects without. When, lo, the orb of day, when he fled from his heated prison, forgot not in his panic to take with him stores of light, manufactured for immediate use, which ever since he has been pouring out, unexhausted, in marvellous abundance. Light, so dexterously compounded of seven colors as to be colorless, and well adapted to the purposes of vision.

But amid this exuberance of animated being, there was not a man to till the ground or admire the beauties of nature. Behold then another wonder the fortuitous concourse of atoms, before the earth so cooled as to stop fermentation, produced a human skeleton; around which, with kind affinity, came the sinews and the muscles, and took their place. The lungs for breathing, and the arteries and veins to carry around the vital fluid, offered their aid, and were accepted. The nervous system--semi-animal, semi-spiritual -took its middle place, as arbitrator between the soul and the body. And to cover what otherwise had been unsightly, kind nature provided a blanket, and with kind sympathy threw its velvet covering over the whole. The eye, too, lit itself up accidentally, just at the moment it was wanted, and the socket stood excavated for its reception, and the mucus warm to make it easy, and the ligament to tie it in. The mouth opened at the right time to prevent suffocation, and in the right place for speech, and ornamented with double rows of ivory for mastication. While Nature's self, with pencil dipped in the colors of heaven, stood by, well pleased to put

upon her beauteous workmanship the finish of the sparkling eye, and rosy cheek, and ruby lip. All this, however, had constituted only a beauteous animal, but for the glorious accident of a machine for thinking, which happened to pass that way, and consented to stop a little, and make an experiment of its powers in the upper department of this marvellous product of Chance. It took its place, and swung the pendulum, and has continued to go with surprising accuracy; though latterly, in some instances, it has seemed to be out of order, and to stand in need of some little rectification in respect to its reasoning powers.

FAITH OF THE INDIANS.--Catlin gives the following account of the belief of the western tribes of Indians in a future state, as described by an Indian chief:

"Our people all believe that the spirit lives in a future state; that it has a great distance to travel after death towards the west; that it has to pass a dreadful deep and rapid stream, which is hemmed in on all sides by high and rugged hills. Over the stream, from hill to hill, there is a long and slippery pine log, with the bark peeled off, over which the dead have to pass to the delightful hunting-grounds. On the other side of the stream there are six persons on the good hunting-grounds, with rocks in their hands, which they throw at them all when they are on the middle of the log. The good walk safely to the hunting-grounds, where there is one continual day; where the trees are always green; where the sky has no clouds; where there are continual fine and cooling breezes; where there is one continual scene of feasting, dancing and rejoicing; where there is no pain or trouble, and people never grow old, but for ever live and enjoy the youthful pleasures. The wicked see the stones coming, and try to dodge, by which they fall from the log, and go down thousands of feet to the water, which is dashing over the rocks, and is stinking with dead fish and animals, where they are carried around and brought continually back to the same place, in whirlpools; where the trees are all dead, and the waters are full of toads, and lizards, and snakes; where the lost are always hungrý, and have nothing to eat; are always sick, and never die; where the wicked are continually climbing up by thousands on the side of the high rock, from which they can overlook the beautiful country of the good hunting-grounds, the place of the happy, but never reach it."