Thêre, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich, with forty pounds a year;
Remote from town he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place;
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.

His house was known to all the vagrant train,
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain;
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, how no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claim allowed;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his side, and talked the night away;
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,

And quite forgot their vices in their woe;

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And even his failings leaned to virtue's side;
But in his duty prompt at every call,

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all:
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed,
The reverend champion stood. At his control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;
Comfort came down, the trembling wretch to raise
And his last faltering accents whispered praise.
At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.

The service past, around the pious man,
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;
Even children followed, with endearing wile,
And plucked his gown, to shâre the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed,

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed,
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and raidway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

LXV.-PUNISHMENT OF MORRIS, THE SPY.

Ir was under the burning influence of revenge that the wife of MacGregor commanded that the hostage exchanged for her husband's safety should be brought into her presence. I believe her sons had kept this unfortunate wretch out of her sight, for fear of the consequences; but if it was so, their humane precaution only postponed his fate. They dragged forward at her summons a wretch already half dead with terror, in whose agonized features I recognized to my horror and astonishment my old acquaintance Morris.

He fell prostrate before the female chief with an effort to clasp her knees, from which she drew back, as if his touch had been pollution, so that all he could do in token of the extremity of his humiliation, was to kiss the hem of her plaid. I never heard entreaties for life poured forth with such agony of spirit. The ecstasy of fear was such, that, instead of paralyzing his tongue, as on ordinary occasions, it even rendered him eloquent, and, with cheeks pale as ashes, hands compressed in agony, eyes that seemed to be taking their last look of all mortal objects, he protested, with the deepest oaths, his total ignorance of any design on the life of Rob Roy, whom he swore he loved and honored as his own soul.

In the inconsistency of his terror, he said, he was but the agent of others, and he muttered the name of Rashleigh.-He prayed but for life-for life he would give all he had in the world;-it was but life he asked-life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations; -he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of the lowest caverns of their hills.

It is impossible to describe the scorn, the loathing, and contempt, with which the wife of MacGregor regarded this wretched petitioner for the poor boon of existence.

"I could have bid you live," she said, "had life been to you the same weary and wasting burden that it is to me-that it is to every noble and generous mind.—But you-wretch! you could creep through the world unaffected by its various disgraces, its ineffable miseries, its constantly accumulating masses of crime and sorrow,—you could live and enjoy yourself, while the noble minded are betrayed,-while nameless and birthless villains tread on the neck of the brave and long descended,—you could enjoy yourself, like a butcher's dog in the shambles, battening on garbage, while the slaughter of the brave went on around you! This enjoyment you shall not live to partake of; you shall die, base dog, and that before yon cloud has passed over the sun."

She gave a brief command in Gaelic to her attendants, two of whom seized upon the prostrate suppliant, and hurried him to the brink of a cliff which overhung the flood. He set up the most piercing and dreadful cries that fear ever uttered-I may well térm them dreadful, for they haunted my sleep for years afterwards. As the murderers, or executioners, call them as you will, dragged him along, he recognised me even in that moment of horror, and exclaimed, in the last articulate words I ever heard him utter, “O, Mr. Osbaldistone, save me!-save me!”

I was so much moved by this horrid spectacle, that, although in momentary expectation of sharing his fate, I did attempt to speak in his behalf, but, as might have been expected, my interference was sternly disregarded. The victim was held fast by some, while others binding a large heavy stone in a plaid, tied it round his neck, and others again eagerly stripped him of some part of his dress. Half naked, and thus manacled, they hurried him into the lake, there about twelve feet deep, drowning his last death shriek with a loud halloo of vindictive triumph, over which, however, the yell of mortal agony was distinctly heard.

The heavy burden splashed in the dark blue waters of the lake, and the Highlanders, with their pole-axes and swords, watched an instant, to guard, lest, extricating himself from the load to which he was attached, he might struggle to regain the shore. But the knot had been securely bound; the victim sunk without effort; the waters. which his fall had disturbed, settled calmly over him, and the unit of that life, for which he had pleaded so strongly, was for ever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

LXVI. THE SAILOR.

A SAILOR ever loves to be in motion,

Roaming about, he scarce knows where, or why;

IIe looks upon the dim and shadowy ocean

As home; abhors the land; and e'en the sky, Boundless and beautiful, has naught to please, Except some clouds, which promise him a breeze.

He is a child of impulse and of passion,

Loving his friends, and generous to his foes,
And fickle as the most ephemeral fashion,
Save in the cut and color of his clothes,
And in a set of phrases, which on land
The wisest head could never understand.

That ever flowed from any human lip,
And whether in his prayers, or at a jest,

Uses the terms for managing a ship;
And even in death would order up the helm,
In hope to clear the "undiscovered realm."

In calms, he gazes at the sleeping sea,

Or seeks his lines and sets himself to angling, Or takes to politics, and, being free

Of facts and full of feeling, falls to wrangling: Then recollects a distant eye and lip,

And rues the day on which he saw a ship.

Then looks up to the sky to watch each cloud,
As it displays its faint and fleeting form,
Then o'er the calm begins to mutter loud,
Declaring he'd exchange it for a storm,
Tornado, any thing-to put a close

To this most dead, monotonous repose.

An order given, and he obeys, of course,

Though 'twere to run his ship upon the rocksCapture a squadron with a boat's crew forceOr batter down the massive granite blocks Of some huge fortress with a swivel, pike, Pistol, aught that will throw a ball or strike.

He never shrinks, whatever may °betide;
His weapon may be shivered in his hand,
His last companion shot down at his side,
Still he maintains his firm and desperate stand--
Bleeding and battling-with his colors fast

As nail can bind them to his shattered mast.

Such men fall not unmourned-thêir winding sheet
May be the ocean's deep, unresting wave;
Yet o'er their grave will wandering winds repeat
The dirge of millions for the fallen brave;
While each high deed survives in holier trust
Than those consigned to mound or marble bust.

I love the sailor-his eventful life

His generous spirit-his contempt of danger-
His firmness in the gale, the wreck, and strife;
And though a wild and reckless ocean ranger—
God grant he make that port, when life is o'er,
Where storms are hushed, and billows break no more.
REV. WALTER COLTON.

LXVII.-MORAL OBLIGATION.

WHEN creation began we know not. There were angels and there was a place of angelic habitation, before the creation of man, and of the world destined for his residence; and even amongst these pure spiritual essences, there had been a rebellion, and a fall. How long these spirits had existed, and how many other orders of being besides it is vain for us to conjecture; for conjecture could lead to nothing surer than itself. But of one thing we are certain ;—that how far back soever we suppose the commencement of creation carried,―let it be, not only beyond the actual range (if a definite range it can be said to have) of the human imagination, but even beyond the greatest amount of ages that figures, in any way combined could be made to express; still there was an eternity preceding, -an eternity, from which this unimaginable and incompatible duration has made not the minutest deduction; for it is the property of eternity, that it can neither be lengthened by the addition nor shortened by the subtraction, of the longest possible periods of time.

Before the commencement of creation, therefore,―before the fiat of Omnipotence which gave being to the first dependent existence, and dated the beginning of time,-in infinite and incomprehensible solitude, yet in the boundless self-sufficiency of his blessed nature, feeling no want, and no dreariness, Jehovah had, from eternity, existed alone!

There is something awfully sublime in this conception of Deity. Our minds are overwhelmed, when we attempt to think of infinite space, even as it is replenished with its millions of suns and their attendant systems of inhabited worlds :-but still more, are they