how great, how glorious, how far surpassing human conìprehension, must be the plans and the attributes of the infinite and Eternal Creator! "His greatness is unsearchable, and His ways past finding out." Could we thoroughly comprehend the depths of His perfections, or the grandeur of His empire, He would cease to be God, or we should cease to be limited and dependent beings. 7. But, in presenting to our view such magnificent objects, it is evidently His intention that we should rise, in our contemplations, from the effect to the cause, from the creature to the Creator, from the visible splendors and magnificence of creation to the invisible glories of Him who sits on the throne of the universe, "whose kingdom ruleth over all, and before whom all nations are counted as less than nothing and vanity." QUESTIONS.-1. What idea does the sun present to us? 2. Of what does it afford a thrilling emblem? 3. What questions are propounded in the 3d and 4th paragraphs? 4. Of what does the sun prove the existence, power, and agency? 5. What, in the 5th paragraph? 6. What was the evident intention of the Creator in presenting to our view such magnificent objects? LESSON CXLVII. WORDS FOR SPELLING AND DEFINING. IN VOKE', call upon. AP PAR EL ED, RE-LUM' ING, lighting again. HALO, luminous circle. DI LATE', enlarge; expand. E MAN CI PA TION, freedom. 1. MEMNON was, according to some accounts, a king of Ethiopia, according to others, of the Assyrians. After death he was worshiped as a sort of demi-god. There are still to be seen, at Thebes. remains of colossal statues of this celebrated hero. One of these, it is affirmed, used to utter a joyful sound, when the sun rose and shone upon it; when, however, the sun set, the sound was sad and mournful. AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF TEMPERANCE AND VIRTUE. HORACE MANN. 1. I invoke the sons of genius, through the sure promotion and supremacy of this cause, to add a luster to their names, which the highest perfection of their own beautiful arts can never give, and which no corrosions of time can ever impair. 2. Painters, sculptors, representatives of a race whose eldest born dwelt amid forms of eternal beauty, and whose hallowed spirits, in every age, have presided over the sanc tuaries where genius has worshiped; know you not that there are forms of loftier beauty than any which ever shone in the galleries of art; souls, souls, created in the very likeness of God, but now faded, blackened, defiled, deformed, yet still capable of renovation, still capable of being appar eled in such celestial covering, and of bearing such a divine impress, as no skill of human artist can ever émulate? 3. I know that the out-raying gladness of the forms which quicken beneath your plastic skill, betoken to the eye of sense a living spirit within; yet reason assures us, that, though we call them "divine," they are still unconscious. However deeply they may thrill or ravish us, we know their charms are external only; that no immortal spirit is enshrined beneath their surface; that conscience, benevolence, and joy, are not their attributes. 4. Spare, then, a brief hour, to shed actual blessedness on bosoms whose heavings and anguish are no illusion of the senses. Leave, for a time, the dead marble and the insens ate canvas; mount up to higher conceptions of art than to give coloring, however brilliant, or shape, however exquisite. to inanimate forms; go from perishable matter to the im perishable spirit, and pour blissful feelings deep inward along the agonized nerve, and the quivering heart-strings. 5. You shape the semblance of divinest contour and features, but they are cold and motionless; their very existcnce to themselves is death, and day and night are alike darkness to them: is it not nobler to waken, all the day long, in redeemed households, such spontaneous songs of joy as the statue of 'Memnon never uttered, and to send dreams of paradise, by night, to visit the once thorny pillow of wife and children? 6. Rise, then, from the feigned to the real, and, by reluming the human countenance with the light of longdeparted joys, convert your long-departed joys, convert your own loveliest emblems into glorious realities. As you await a happy moment of inspiration to give the last, lighting-up touches to your own choicest works; so seize the higher inspirations of benevolence to solace the disconsolate, and thus give a hallowing finish, an unfading halo, to your own fame, and consecrate the immortality you win. 7. YOUNG MEN, you last, you chiefest, let me implore! You, whose precious privilege it still is, to make life long by commencing the performance of its duties early! Where lie your own welfare, your own honor, your own blessedness? Lie they not in that future course of life which is to flow out of your own minds and hearts, and which your own hands are to fashion, as the temple is fashioned by the buílder? The Future, that greatest heritage on earth, is all your own. Dilate, expand your thoughts to some compre hension of its value. 8. Each day is a tablet which is put into your hands, unmarked by a single linc. Your thoughts, your resolves, your deeds, for that day, are engraven upon it; it is then taken away and deposited in the chambers of the indestructible Past. There, by an irreversible law of God, it must remain forever; nor time, nor decay, nor man, nor angels, can ever obliterate a word of its eternal record. Let that record be your glory, and not your shame, forever. 9. When a Roman youth passed from minority to manhood, when he ceased to be a child in the family, and became a pillar of the State, the day of his emancipation was celebrated with solemn services. The ceremony of putting on the graceful garment of manhood, in token that the duties of manhood were then to be assumed, was performed on some great festival day of the nation, amid crowds of assembled friends, and under the auspices of his household gods. 10 Thence, in long procession, they moved to some public temple, where, with songs and vows, they implored the divinities to crown with honor and usefulness the life of the new-born citizen; while he himself was commended, and, as it were, apprenticed, to the example of some of the city's illustrious men. Such were the solemn rites and aspirations which ushered a young man into life in pagan Rome. What holy resolutions, then, what self-consecration of the entire life to truth and duty, befit the aspiring and ingenuous youth of the American republic! 11. As your fathers are swiftly passing away into the realms of silence, do not all the transcendent interests of society, its prosperity, its happiness, its honor in distant lands and in distant times, devolve upon yoú? How is all that is precious, in our public institutions, to be ennobled, and transmitted, from early ancestors to late posterity, unless one generation after another shall receive and improve, and then pass it onward, as from hand to hand? 12. Grasp, then, this conception of your high destiny. Embody it in deeds. Your power to fulfill it, is the choicest boon of Heaven; and ere the habits, the morals, the institutions of society, pass beyond your reach forever, redeem them from all pollution, cast out from them the seeds of death and every element of decay, and imbue them with the immortal strength of knowledge, purity, and Temperance. QUESTIONS.-1. What question is addressed to painters and sculptors? 2. For what are they desired to spare a brief hour? 3. How 18 it suggested that songs of joy may be wakened? 4. What does he call upon young men to do? 5. What is said of the ceremony of passing a Roman youth from his minority to manhood? 6. With what exhortation does the piece conclude? Are the questions in the 2d and 5th paragraphs direct or indirect? What rule for the rising inflection on builder, 7th paragraph ? Why the rising inflection on you, 11th paragraph? FROM THE GERMAN OF LANGBEIN, BY J. N. MʼELLIGOTT. 1. What means that wondrous belfry there With neither gate nor door to bar When this old bell is heard? 2. 'Tis oft that passing strangers ask: 8. Unthankfulness, e'en in their day, To him the right was given, |