he has given dark hints, as if the most important events which were to happen after his time had not been wholly hidden from his sight. Less scientific in the arrangement of his materials than his great scholar, he has infinitely more variety, more spirit, more beauty, evincing, at every step, that it was in his own choice to become the most profound of philosophers, the most pointed of orators, or the most sublime of poets, or, by a skilful combination of all, to form such a character as the world had never yet seen, nor was ever after to witness.

AMUSEMENTS.

An inordinate love of amusement 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 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.

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 degrade understanding. The great duties of life, the duties for which every man is born, demand, in all situations, the mind of labor and perseverance.

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.

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

ON THE PLEASURE OF ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE.

In every period of life, the acquisition of knowledge is one of the most pleasing employments of the human mind. But in youth, there are circumstances which make it productive of higher enjoyment. It is then that everything has the charm of novelty; that curiosity and fancy are awake; and that the heart swells with the anticipations of future eminence and utility. Even in those lower branches of instruction which we call mere accomplishments, there is something always pleasing to the young in their acquisition. They seem to become every well-educated person; they adorn, if they do not dignify, humanity; and, what is far more, while they give an elegant employment to the hours of leisure and relaxation, they afford a means of contributing to the purity and innocence of domestic life.

But in the acquisition of knowledge of the higher kind in the hours when the young gradually begin the study of the laws of nature, and of the faculties of the human mind, or of the magnificent revelations of the gospel-there is a pleasure of a sublimer nature; and, while they see, for the first time the immensity of the universe of God, and mark the majestic simplicity of those laws by which its operations are conducted, they feel as if they were awakened to a higher species of being, and admitted into nearer intercourse with the Author of Nature.

To feel no joy in such pursuits, to listen carelessly to the voice which brings such magnificent instruction, to see the veil raised which conceals the counsels of the Deity, and to show no emotion at the discovery, are symptoms of a weak and torpid spirit-of a mind unworthy of the advantages it

possesses, and fitted only for the humility of sensual and ignoble pleasure. Of those, on the contrary, who distinguish themselves by the love of knowledge, who follow with ardor the career that is open to them, we are apt to form the most honorable anticipations.

GREATNESS.

There are different orders of greatness. Among these the first rank is unquestionably due to moral greatness, or magnanimity; to that sublime energy by which the soul, smitten with the love of virtue, binds itself indissolubly, for life and for death, to truth and duty; espouses as its own the interests of human nature; scorns all meanness and defies all peril; hears in its own conscience a voice louder than threatenings and thunders; withstands all the powers of the universe, which would sever it from the cause of freedom, virtue, and religion; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour, and is ever "ready to be offered up" on the altar of its country or of mankind.

Next to moral, comes intellectual greatness, or genius in the highest sense of that word; and by this we mean that sublime capacity of thought, through which the soul, smitten with the love of the true and the beautiful, essays to comprehend the universe, soars into the heavens, penetrates the earth, penetrates itself, questions the past, anticipates the future, traces out the general and all comprehending laws of nature, binds together by innumerable affinities and relations all the objects of its knowledge; and, not satisfied with what is finite, frames to itself ideal excellence, loveliness and grandeur. Next comes the greatness of action; and by this we mean the sublime power of conceiving and executing bold and extensive plans constructing and bringing to bear on a mighty object a complicated machinery of means, energies, and arrangements, and accomplishing great outward effects.

SHAKSPEARE'S SENSIBILITY.

Shakspeare's sensibility is in proportion with his other gifts. His heart is as great and as strong as his mind. He feels the beauty and the worth of things as truly and as deeply as he discerns their relations; is alive to the slightest and equal to the strongest impression. He sympathizes, calmly yet intensely, with all that he finds and all that he makes; he loves all things; his soul gushes out in warm virgin-like affection over all the objects of his contemplation, and embraces them in its soft, heavenly radiance. He discerns a soul, a pulse of good even in things that are evil; knows, indeed, that nothing can exist utterly divorced from good of some sort : that it must have some inward harmony to hold it in existence. To this harmony, this innate, indestructible worth, his mind is ever open. He is, therefore, a man of universal benevolence; wishes well of all things; will do his best to benefit them: not, indeed, by injuring others, but by doing them justice; by giving them their due, be they saints or be they sinners. He is strictly and inexorably impartial, and even shows his love of perfect justice by shedding the sunshine and the rain of his genius alike on the just and on the unjust. For his feelings are the allies, not the rivals, of his other powers; exist in sympathy, not in antagonism with them, and therefore never try to force or tempt him from his loyalty to truth. Many think him deficient in moral sensibility; whereas, in fact, he shows the perfection of such sensibility in altogether preferring truth to them both; for there is really nothing more vicious or more vitiating than, what some people seem greatly in love with, the attempting to teach better morality than is taught by nature and Providence.

THE GREATNESS OF WASHINGTON.

Great he was, preeminently great, whether we regard him sustaining alone the whole weight of campaigns all but desperate, or gloriously terminating a just warfare by his resources and his courage; presiding over the jarring elements of his political council, alike deaf to the storms of all extremes,

or directing the formation of a new government for a great people, the first time that so vast an experiment had ever been tried by man; or, finally, retiring from the supreme power to which his virtue had raised him over the nation he had created, and whose destinies he had guided as long as his aid was required, retiring with the veneration of all parties, of all nations, of all mankind, in order that the rights of men might be conserved, and that his example never might be appealed to by vulgar tyrants.

This is the consummate glory of Washington; a triumphant warrior where the most sanguine had a right to despair; a successful ruler in all the difficulties of a course wholly untried; but a warrior, whose sword only left its sheath when the first law of our nature commanded it to be drawn; and a ruler who, having tasted of supreme power, gently and unostentatiously desired that the cup might pass from him, nor would suffer more to wet his lips than the most solemn and sacred duty to his country and his God required!

To his latest breath did this great patriot maintain the noble character of a captain, the patriot of peace; and a statesman, the friend of justice.

THE LIGHT OF INTELLECT.

Magnificent indeed, was the material creation, when, suddenly blazing forth in mid space, the new-born sun dispelled the darkness of the ancient night. But infinitely more magnificent is it when the human soul rays forth its subtler and swifter beams; when the light of the senses irradiates all outward things, revealing the beauty of their colors, and the exquisite symmetry of their proportions and forms; when the light of reason penetrates to their invisible properties and laws, and displays all those hidden relations that make up all the sciences; when the light of conscience illuminates the moral world, separating truth from error, and virtue from vice. The light of the newly-kindled sun, indeed was glorious. It struck upon all the planets, and waked into existence their myriad capacities of life and joy. As it rebounded from them, and showed their vast orbs all wheeling, circle beyond circle, in their stupendous courses, the sons of God shouted for joy.