Memories of kindness as they now exist, are recommended simply as sources of happiness. They are the "sweet influences or the "Pleiades," which we may °salubriously bind, for ourselves anú for

others.'

Keep fresh in your hearts the images of all who have shown you kindness, who have given you knowledge, who have sympathized in your sorrows, or aided you to overcome your errors. Speak often of them and of their generous acts. These exercises of thought are healthful to the mind, and have the same effect on the satisfactions of life, that the spirit of praise has on the progress of piety. If the memories of kindness are so sweet and salutary to ourselves, let us take pains to create them for others. The material of which they are made costs little, and is easily commanded. Pleasant looks, affectionate words, obliging deeds, courteous manners, are they not in the power of us all? These, with the tints of their quiet pencil, make unfading pictures in the gallery of life. The mind walks among them and finds solace.

Prepare some of these pictures for every one whom you know and love. Especially place one in the sanctuary of each child's heart with whom you are acquainted. It will be vivid when hoary hairs cover his temples. Long after you have yourself forgotten the slight favor, even after you are laid in the narrow house of silence, your name will linger on the lips of the indebted one, though greater services, if unaccompanied by kindness, may be buried in the gulf of oblivion.

There is great economy in giving pleasure to children. A trifling gift, a little kindness, goes a great way, and is long remembered. The habit of being made happy, nourishes the habit of making others so, and the husbandry of kindness reproduces itself.

The Rev. Sidney Smith has well said, that "childhood passed with a mixture of rational indulgence, under fond and wise parents, diffuses over the whole of life a coloring of calm pleasure, and, even in extreme old age, is the last remembrance that time can erase from the mind. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. Mankind are always the happier for having been once happy; so that, if you make them happy now, you make them so twenty years hence, through the memory of it. We are the happier throughout life, for having once made an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time among pleasant people; and it is more probably the recollection of their past joys, that contributes to render the aged so inattentive to passing events, carrying them back for enjoyment to a world that is past, and to scenes that can never again be restored."

Since the theory of kindness is so simple, yet so effective, my dear friends, cultivate its root in your own hearts, and entwine it around the

hearts of others. With the memory of your earthly benefactors, blend also the kindred spirit of praise to your greatest and best Friend.

Praise Him, amid the mysteries of his providence, those concealed footsteps of his infinite wisdom. Praise Him, when he causeth grief and tears, those medicines for the soul's earthliness. Praise Him for the light of every waking morn, for the shadow of every peaceful night, until the hush of the last evening cometh. Then, lift up the head and rejoice,

"For ob! eternity's too short
To utter all his praise!"

So let the spirit of love be inwrought with this fabric of clay, that where it falls, the soul may find itself at home among seraphs, having learned their 'lore while on earth. MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

CXCII.-GOD.

[FROM THE RUSSIAN OF DERZHAVINE.]

O THQU eternal One! whose presence bright
All space doth occupy, all motion guide;
Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight;
Thou only God! there is no God beside!
Being above all beings! Mighty One!

Whom none can comprehend and none explore;
Who fill'st existence with thyself alone:

Embracing all-supporting-ruling o'er-
Being whom we call God-and know no more!

In its sublime research, philosophy

May measure out the ocean deep-may count
The sands or the sun's rays-but, God! for thee
There is no weight nor measure:-none can mount
Up to thy mysteries; reason's brightest spark,
Though kindled by thy light, in vain would try
To trace thy counsels, infinite and dark:

And thought is lost êre thought can soar so high,
Even like past moments in eternity.

Thou from primeval nothingness didst call
First chaos, then existence;-Lord, on thee
Eternity had its foundation: all

Sprang forth from thee: of light, joy, harmony,

Sole origin: all life—all beauty thine.
Thy word created all, and doth create:
Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine.
Thou art, and wert, and shalt be glorious! great!
Light-giving, life-sustaining Potentate.

Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround,
Upheld by thee, by thee inspired with breath!
Thou the beginning with the end hast bound,
And beautifully mingled life and death!
As sparks mount upward from the fiery blaze,

So suns are born, so worlds spring forth from thee; And as the spangles in the sunny rays

Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry

Of heaven's bright army glitters in thy praise.

A million torches lighted by thy hand

Wander unwearied through the blue abyss: They own thy power, accomplish thy command, All gay with life, all eloquent with bliss. What shall we call them? Piles of crystal light— A glorious company of golden streamsLamps of celestial ether, burning bright—

Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams?— But thou to these art as the noon to night.

Yes! as a drop of water in the sea,

All this magnificence in thee is lost;

What are ten thousand worlds compared to thee?
And what am I, then? Heaven's unnumbered host,
Though multiplied by myriads, and arrayed

In all the glory of sublimest thought,
Is but an atom in the balance, weighed

Against thy greatness-is a cipher brought Against infinity! What am I, then?—Naught!

Naught!-But the effluence of thy light divine,
Pervading worlds, hath reached my bosom too;
Yes! in my spirit doth thy spirit shine,

As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew.
Naught!-but I live, and on hope's pinions fly
Eager toward thy presence; for in thee
I live, and breathe, and dwell: aspiring high,
Even to the throne of thy divinity.

Thou art! directing, guiding all.--Thou art!
Direct my understanding then to thee;
Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart:
Though but an atom 'mid immensity,
Still I am something, fashioned by thy hand!
I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth,
On the last verge of mortal being stand,

Close to the realms where angels have their birth,
Just on the boundaries of the spirit-land!

The chain of being is complete in me;

In me is matter's last gradation lost,
And the next step is spirit,-deity!

I can command the lightning, and am dust!
A monarch, and a slave! a worm, a god!

Whence came I here, and how? so marvelously
Constructed and conceived! unknown? this clod
Lives surely through some higher energy?
For from itself alone it could not be!

Creator, yes! thy wisdom and thy word
Created me, thou source of life and good!
Thou Spirit of my spirit, and my Lord!
Thy light, thy love, in their bright plenitude
Filled me with an immortal soul, to spring
Over the abyss of death, and băde it wear
The garments of eternal day, and wing

Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere,
Even to its source-to thee-its Author there.

O thought ineffable! O vision blest!

Though worthless our conceptions all of thee,
Yet shall thy shadowed image fill our breast,
And waft its homage to the Deity.
God! thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar;
Thus seek thy presence-Being wise and good!
Midst thy vast works, admire, obey, adore!
And when the tongue is eloquent no more,
The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude.

JOHN BOWRING.

CXCIII.-ONE NICHE THE HIGHEST.

THE scene opens with a view of the great Natural Bridge in Virginia. There are three or four lads standing in the channel

below, looking up with awe to that vast arch of unhewn rocks, which the Almighty bridged over those everlasting butments, "when the morning stars sung together." The little piece of sky spanning those measureless piers is full of stars, although it is mid-day.

It is almost five hundred feet from where they stand, up those perpendicular bulwarks of limestone, to the key-rock of that vast arch, which appears to them only of the size of a man's hand. The silence of death is rendered more impressive by the little stream that falls from rock to rock down the channel. The sun is darkened, and the boys have unconsciously uncovered their heads, as if standing in the presence-chamber of the Majesty of the whole earth.

At last this feeling begins to wear away; they begin to look around them; they find that others have been thêre before them. They see the names of hundreds cut in the limestone butments. A new feeling comes over their young hearts, and their knives are in their hands in an instant. 'What man has done, man can do," is their watchword, while they draw themselves up, and carve their names a foot above those of a hundred full-grown men who have been there before them. They are all satisfied with this feat of physical exertion, except one, whose example illustrates perfectly the forgotten truth, that there is no royal road to intellectual eminence. This ambitious youth sees a name just above his reach-a name that will be green in the memory of the world, when those of Alexander, °Cæsar, and oBonaparte shall be lost in oblivion. It was the name of Washington.

Before he marched with Braddock to that fatal field, he had been there, and left his name a foot above all his predecessors. It was a glorious thought of the boy to write his name side by side with that of the great father of his country. He grasped his knife with a firmer hand, and clinging to a little jutting crag, he cuts a gain into the limestone, about a foot above where he stands; he then reaches up and cuts another for his hands.

'Tis a dangerous adventure; but as he puts his feet and bands into those gains, and draws himself up carefully to his full length, he finds himself a foot above every name chronicled in that mighty wall. While his companions are regarding him with concern and admiration, he cuts his name in rûde capitals, large and deep into that flinty album.

His knife is still in his hand, and strength in his sinews, and a new-created aspiration in his heart. Again he cuts another niche, and again he carves his name in larger capitals. This is not enough. Heedless of the entreaties of his companions, he cuts and climbs again. The gradations of his ascending scale grow wider apart. He measures his length at every gain he cuts. The voices of his friends wax weaker and weaker, till their words are finally lost on his

ear.