everlasting love! I am often weary of reading, and weary of hearing in thee alone is the sum of my desire! Let all teachers be silent, let the whole creation be dumb before thee, and do thou only speak unto my soul! The more a man is devoted to internal exercises, and advanced in singleness and simplicity of heart, the more sublime and diffusive will be his knowledge. A spirit pure, simple, and constant, is not like Martha, "distracted and troubled with the multiplicity of its employments," however great; because, being inwardly at rest, it seeketh not its own glory in what it does, but "doth all to the glory of God": for there is no other cause of perplexity and disquiet, but an unsubdued will, and unmortified affections. A holy and spiritual mind, by reducing them to the rule and standard of his own mind, becomes the master of all his outward acts; he does not suffer himself to be led by them to the indulgence of inordinate affections that terminate in self, but subjects them to the unalterable judgment of an illuminated and sanctified spirit. No conflict is so severe as his who labors to subdue himself; but in this we must be continually engaged, if we would be strengthened in the inner man, and make real progress towards perfection. Indeed, the highest perfection we can attain to in the present state, is alloyed with much imperfection; and our best knowledge is obscured by the shades of ignorance; "we see through a glass darkly:" an humble knowledge of thyself, therefore, is a more certain way of leading thee to God, than the most profound investigations of science. Science, however, or a proper knowledge of the things that belong to the present life, is so far from being blamable considered in itself, that it is good, and ordained of God; but purity of conscience, and holiness of life, must ever be preferred before it: and because men are more solicitous to learn much, than to live well, they fall into error, and receive little or no benefit from their studies. But if the same diligence was exerted to eradicate vice and implant virtue, as is applied to the discussion of unprofitable questions, and the "vain strife of words"; so much daring wickedness would not be found among the common ranks of men, nor so much licentiousness disgrace those who are eminent for knowledge. Assuredly, in the approaching day of universal judgment, it will not be inquired what we have read, but what we have done; not how eloquently we have spoken, but how holily we have lived. Tell me, where is now the splendor of those learned doctors and professors, whom, while the honors of literature were blooming around them, you so well knew, and so highly reverenced? Their emoluments and offices are possessed by others, who scarcely have them in remembrance: the tongue of fame could speak of no name but theirs while they lived, and now it is utterly silent about them: so suddenly passeth away the glory of human attainments! Had these men been as solicitous to be holy as they were to be learned, their studies might have been blessed with that honor which cannot be sullied, and that happiness which cannot be interrupted. But many are wholly disappointed in their hopes both of honor and happiness, by seeking them in the pursuit of "science falsely so called"; and not in the knowledge of themselves, and the life and service of God: and choosing rather to be great in the eyes of men, than meek and lowly in the sight of God, they become vain in their imaginations, and their memorial is written in the dust. He is truly good, who hath great charity; he is truly great, who is little in his own estimation, and rates at nothing the summit of worldly honor: he is truly wise, who "counts all earthly things but as dross, that he may win Christ": and he is truly learned, who hath learned to abandon his own will, and do the will of God. FRANCIS SCOTT KEY FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. Born in Frederick County, Maryland, August 9, 1780; died in Baltimore, January 11, 1843. Author of "The Star-Spangled Banner," which was in part written during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, near Baltimore, by the British fleet, the poet being at the time a British prisoner on shipboard. -- THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER O SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, 'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner! - O, long may it wave And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution! No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a Nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto, "In God is our trust;" And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, an English historian. Born at Taunton, Devonshire, England, August 5, 1809; died in London, January 2, 1891. Author of "Eothen, or Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East," "The Invasion of the Crimea, its Origin and an Account of its Progress." "Eothen" is the outcome of seven years' work, during which time it was thrice rewritten. His "Crimean War" is one of the most vivid and picturesque of narratives. This was kept in hand by the author during thirtytwo years for elaboration. (From "EOTHEN") THE PYRAMIDS I WENT to see and to explore the Pyramids. I Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the forms of the Egyptian Pyramids, and now, as I approached them from the banks of the Nile, I had no print, no picture before me, and yet the old shapes were there; there was no change: they were just as I had always known them. straightened myself in my stirrups, and strived to persuade my understanding that this was real Egypt, and that those angles which stood up between me and the West were of harder stuff, and more ancient than the paper pyramids of the green portfolio. Yet it was not till I came to the base of the great Pyramid, that reality began to weigh upon my mind. Strange to say, the bigness of the distinct blocks of stones was the first sign by which I attained to feel the immensity of the whole pile. When I came, and trod, and touched with my hands, and climbed, in order that by climbing I might come to the top of one single stone, then, and almost suddenly, a cold sense and understanding of the Pyramid's enormity came down, overcasting my brain. Now try to endure this homely, sick-nursish illustration of the effect produced upon one's mind by the mere vastness of the great Pyramid. When I was very young (between the ages, I believe, of three and five years old), being then of delicate health, I was often in time of night the victim of a strange kind of mental oppression. I lay in my bed perfectly conscious, and with open eyes, but without power to speak or to move, and all the while my brain was oppressed to distraction by the presence of a single and abstract idea - the idea of solid immensity. It seemed to me in my agonies, that the horror of this visitation arose from its coming upon me without form or shape that the close presence of the direst monster ever bred in hell would have been a thousand times more tolerable than that simple idea of solid size; my aching mind was fixed and riveted down upon the mere quality of vastness, vastness, vastness; and was not permitted to invest with it any particular object. If I could have done so, the torment would have ceased. When at last I was roused from this state of suffering, I could not of course in those days (knowing no verbal metaphysics, and no metaphysics at all, except by the dreadful experience of an abstract idea) —I could not of course find words to describe the nature of my sensations; and even now I cannot explain why it is that the forced contemplation of a mere quality, distinct from matter, should be so terrible. Well, now my eyes saw and knew, and my hands and my feet informed my understanding, that there was nothing at all abstract about the great Pyramid it was a big triangle, sufficiently concrete, easy to see, and rough to the touch; it could not of course affect me with the peculiar sensation I have been talking of, but yet there was something akin to that old nightmare agony in the terrible completeness with which a mere mass of masonry could fill and load my mind. And Time too; the remoteness of its origin, no less than the enormity of its proportions, screens an Egyptian pyramid from the easy and familiar contact of our modern minds. At its |