rises early and toils late, forms plans and devises implements, endures cold and heat, braves the perils of sea or wilderness, penetrates the heart of mountains, foregoes comfort, enjoyment, improvement, even character, all for property! And property, never securely held, seldom quietly enjoyed, seldom indeed, existing as a part of the present, or the past, but only of the future. And yet where is there property of any kind, either so secure or so rich, as that which the past itself offers to those who seek? Even to the mercenary, it gives that for which they should pay the debt of gratitude-its discoveries, inventions, detections, instruments and monuments. To the intellectual and moral, to the scholar, the artist, the statesman, the philanthropist, it is rich in gifts and they may be had without price, and treasured where no moth can corrupt. All that ages have thrown up in their march, all that busy generations have accumulated and worlds brought to light, the gathered stores of centuries, the works of science, the products of genius, the results of enterprise, selfish or benevolent, the experience and wisdom of all who have ever lived-these are not merely offered, they are thrown into the lap of the present, from the overflowing past. They are forced into the paths, and hands and minds of the living. Debtors

are we all, with unmeasured obligation, to the ages that have moved along, and scattered seed, and planted truths, and lighted beacons on their course. If the actors themselves who have gone with them, have not always succeeded or attempted thus to enrich those who follow, GOD has done it, through them, and by his great teacher, destroyer and renovator, Time. And what we may specially note is, that these gifts and influences are ours, in a peculiar sense. They are necessarily and indestructibly ours. We grow up in the midst of them. We are fashioned by their power. They make most of the

material of life's fabric.

They are clothing to the

body, food to the mind, discipline for the faculties, nutriment for the whole nature. The past encircles us like an atmosphere. It wraps us in countless seen and unseen folds, its very nature enters into ours, and becomes our property forever.

This without effort. This is the appointed education and universal gift of God. Add effort, sympathy, grateful reception and discriminating appropriation—how is the gift enhanced and enlarged! He who acknowledges the Giver, and uses all powers to make the property his own not simply by inheritance but by labor and reward, becomes proprietor in the true and noble sense.

Discernment, wisdom, self-culture, and independent fidelity, will draw from the past all that it holds, and more-by blending with it the influence and original action of every free and growing mind, and all that is thus gained, nothing, nothing can take away. The treasures of the past belong to the soul.

The future is, we know not what-
Untried, unseen, unsearchable ;

The present a contracted spot,

Where the mind will not, cannot dwell;
And over these is ever cast,

A blight or blessing from the past.

Delusive hope before us springs,

Still seeking some more sunny clime,
And brings upon her halcyon wings
Sweet promise for a future time.
That time to us may ne'er be known-
The past, the past is all our own.

TO SWITZERLAND.

BY THE REV. A. STEVENS.

ROMANTIC Suisse ! still are thy memories dear;
Thy snow-crowned peaks, thy crystal mountain rills,
Meandering midst the sloping vineyards bloom,
While blithesome songs of love and liberty
Blend with the fanning breeze and strains of birds,
And virgin hands the purple clusters pluck;
Thy verdant vales! with adamantine walls,
Snow-topped and reaching to the skies, fenced in ;
Sweet garden spots of earth! with flowers decked,

While, in strange contrast, hoary winter bends,
Delayed and charmed, to smile upon the scene;
Thy lakes, thy beauteous lakes! adorned with all
The ever-varying hues of thy glad skies-
Here shadowing forth the form of some tall cliff,
And there the vineyard's gay luxuriant growth,
While on their placid bosoms wave and glide,
Like things of air, fantastic sails of skiffs.

Sweet Leman! on thy lovely shores full oft
My youthful footsteps wandered with delight,
And oft with heart entranced reclined beneath
The shadowing mountain cliff, I drunk from thee
Delicious draughts of poetry, till thought
Dissolved away in airy reverie!

Thou art the mirror placed by nature's hand,
Reflecting back her gayest, loveliest charms.
Thy verdant shores are classic, on them roamed
The Albion bard whose reckless muse profane
Here felt thy inspiration, pure, intense,

And kindling sung in chaster, nobler lays,
Of freedom and of love, such as thine own!
The images of Julie, Clare, St. Preux

Still dwell among thy beauteous scenery.
The shades of Bonaventura, of Staël,
Of Gibbon, Fernay's patriarch, and him*
Whose thrilling pen drew lines of fire, haunt yet
Thy sylvan solitudes.

*Rousseau.

MONT BLANC !-Oft have mine eyes gazed on thy brow,
Thine awful brow! but long to gaze once more

Before they close on earth. Thou art, dread peak,
Alone, without a brother, like the God

Whose hand almighty made and holds thee up,
Sublime in thine own solitude! The storms
Pay worship round thee; winds and thunderbolts
Go from thy foot, like monarch's heralds swift,
And all the mountain tops responsive roll

Their echoing homage on, with trembling awe!
The generations of the past have gazed

On thee, but they have gone; ten thousand more
May look and die; but thou wilt still remain,-
For thou, dread genius of the mountain storm,
Shalt only sink when nature sinks and dies,
When suns go out, and stars from heaven fall.

Land of glacier and the avalanche !

Thou wert not made to be the home of slaves !
The heart among thy lofty heights beats free,
And trembles not at sceptres or at chains.
God hath ordained thee freedom's mountain home,
And built thy battlements up to his throne!
Firm hast thou stood in liberty's great cause,
Midst falling states and changing monarchies.
Still stand! stand like thine everlasting hills!
The spirits of thy Tells and Winkelreids
Are yet abroad, and thou needst never fall!