THE imagination may best be educated by laying up a store of images, ready to present themselves when occasion requires, to enliven and instruct the mind. There are works of man fitted to furnish such lively figures. There is the statue, with the soul shining through the marble. There is the painting, setting before us historical incident and character, and rousing the soul to high sentiment, and energetic action. There is the grand cathedral, with its imposing towers, its pillar succeeding pillar, and arch upon arch, with the long perspective of the nave, and the withdrawing aisle. It is worth our pains to travel many a mile in order to furnish the

mind with such memories. But the works of God are still more replete than those of man with food for the fancy.

How beautiful an object is a tree growing with all its foliage, freely and fairly, on a sheltered lawn! How picthresque is the same tree in winter, so sharply defined by a frost-bound covering of snow! Now, the fancy is cultivated, and through it the meditative intellect, when, to use the language of Wordsworth, "Man, in his spirit communes with the forms of nature."

No one has wandered much among the lovelier or grander of nature's landscapes without witnessing scenes which can never be effaced from the tablet of the memory, but which are photographed there as by a sunbeam process. It may be a sweet valley, separated from all the rest of the world, and protected from all the storms of life, and in which repose visibly dwells. Or it may be a wide extended plain, and fields clothed with hedge-rows and scattered trees, and dotted over with well fed kine, which need only to bend their necks to find the herbage ready to meet them, and a river winding slowly through the midst of it, and lively villages with village churches on either bank;-Nature discloses hundreds of such scenes, to rebuke our peevishness, and subdue the soul into cheerfulness, as it beholds them and loves to recall them.

All that has a sharp point, or a sharp edge; all that has a ridge, or is rugged: all that is steep or perpendicular, is especially fitted to leave its sharply-defined image in the mind. The very Lombardy poplar helps to relieve the tame plain. The church-tower or spire fixes the whole village in the memory. The windmill, though not the most improved piece of machinery, and though the movements of its outstretched arms, as they forever pursue without overtaking each other, are somewhat awkward, is notwithstanding, a most picturesque object, as seen between us and the sky. The ship with its pointed masts and its white sails stretched out to the breeze, makes the bay on which it sails look more lively and interesting.

More imposing, there are the bold mountains which cleave the sky, and the sea-worn rocks which have faced a thousand storms, and are as defiant as ever. How placid does the lake sleep in the midst of them, sheltered by their overhanging eminences, and guarded by their turreted towers: heaven above looks down on it with a smile, and is seen reflected from its bosom. Grander still, there is the ocean always old, and yet ever new in its aspects; never changing, and yet ever changing; and the steep cliffs, with the sea-bird careering from peak to peak, and hoarsely chiding all human intruders into what it reckons as its own domains.

The faculty which God has given us is best educated by the contemplation of the scenes which God has placed around us. A

ramble among such scenes, at least once in our lives, or better still, once a year, when our large cities yield abundance of dust but refuse to give us breath, is as exhilarating to the mind as it is to the body, and the mental vigor fesulting will continue longer than the health of body; while the pictures there hung round the chamber of the mind will, as it were, be looking down upon us ever and anon, to relieve the tedium of our daily solicitude.

But the mind may be stocked with still nobler images. The highest part of man's nature is not the sentient, but the moral and spiritual. Those who would give the highest training to the mind, must furnish to it deeds of excellence, tales of heroism. There are characters brought under our notice in history and biography which transcend in grandeur the noblest objects in inanimate creation. The character of him who, in his infant years was exposed at the river's edge, is an object more deserving of our contemplation, than the Nile with all the antiquities on its banks. The loveliest of the mountains of Judah is not so interesting an object as the shepherd boy who there defended his flocks from the lion and the bear, and tuned his harp to the praises of God. Horeb itself, even the Mount of God, is not so sublime an object as the stern prophet who fled thither to seek communion with God. The ocean, in all its power of tempest, is not so grand an object as the Apostle Paul, so calm when the ship was driven up and down in Adria, so calm in the midst of the tumults of the people.

Luther outstripped in elevation the highest of the Saxon Alps. The stern purity of John Calvin awes me more than Mont Blanc clothed in ice and snow. Cranmer towers higher than the Derby Peak. John Knox impresses me more than Ben Nevis ever did. The stalwart men of the days of the Puritans comport themselves with a loftier miēn than the stateliest of our stately oaks. I should like much to see the bananas, the bread-fruit tree, and tree-ferns of the Islands of the Pacific, but I may get greater good by reading the life of the martyr of Erromango. I could wish to visit those most interesting countries which Dr. Livingstone has disclosed to the civilized world; but when prevented from this, I may feel my soul inspirited by learning how such a man periled his life in order to carry the Gospel to the ignorant heathen. Let the mind of youth be stored with such tales, whether taken from inspired or uninspired biographies. That nation is truly a noble one whose history presents to its youth-to inspire them with patriotism-the examples of men who endured sufferings in order to accomplish great and good ends. That church is to be revered as truly an apostolic one, which can show martyrs who bled in defence of the truth.

REV. JAMES McCASH.

CXXXIV.-WHERE ARE THE DEAD?

WHERE are the mighty ones of ages påst,
Who o'er the world their inspiration cast,—
Whose memories stir our spirits like a blast?—
Where are the dead?

Where are old empire's sinews snapped and gone?
Where is the Persian? Mede? Assyrian?

Where are the kings of Egypt? Babylon ?

Where are the dead?

Where are the mighty ones of Greece? Where be
The men of Sparta and Thermopyla?

The conquering Macedonian, where is he?—

Where are the dead?

Where are Rome's founders? Where her chiefest son, Before whose name the whole known world bowed down,Whose conquering arm chased the retreating sun?—

Where are the dead?

Where's the bard-warrior king of Albion's state,

A pattern for earth's sons to emulate,—

The truly, nobly, wisely, goodly great?

Where are the dead?

Where is Gaul's hero, who aspired to be

A second Cæsar in his mastery,

To whom earth's crowned ones trembling bent the knee?—

Where are the dead?

Where is Columbia's son, her darling child,
Upon whose birth Virtue and Freedom smiled,-
The Western Star, bright, pure, and undefiled?—
Where are the dead?

Where are the sons of song, the soul inspired,-
The 'bard of Greece, whose muse (of heaven acquired),
With admiration ages past has fired,-

The classic dead?

Where is the fa'ery minstrel? and, oh! where
Is that lone bard who dungeon °gyves did bear,
For his love song breathed in a princess' ear,-—
The gentle dead?

Where is the poet who in death was crowned,-
Whose clay-cold temples laurel chaplets bound,
Mocking the dust,--in life no honor found.—
The insulted dead?

Greater than all,—an earthly sun enshrined,-
Where is the king of bards? where shall we find
The Swan of Avon,-monarch of the mind,-
The mighty dead?

Did they all die, when did their bodies die,
Like the brute dead passing for ever by?
Then, wherefore was their intellect so high,—
The mighty dead?

Why was it not confined to earthly sphere,-
To earthly wants? If it must perish here,
Why did they languish for a bliss more dear,-
The blessed dead?

All things in nature are proportionate:

Is man alone in an imperfect state,

He who doth all things rule and regulate?—

Then, where the dead?

If here they perished, where their being's °germ,—

Here, where their thoughts, their hopes, their wishes term,Why should a giant's strength propel a worm?—

The dead? the dead?

There are no dead! The forms, indeed, did die,
That cased the ethereal beings now on high:
'Tis but the outward covering is thrown by :-
This is the dead!

The spirits of the lost, of whom we sing,
Have perished not; they have but taken wing,-
Changing an earthly for a heavenly spring:

There are the dead!

Thus is all nature perfect. Harmony
Pervades the whole, by His all-wise decree,
With whom are those, to vaзt infinity,

We misname dead.

ANONYMOUS.