When dire disease prepares her wrath
To pour in terror from above,
How gleams upon his gloomy path,

The glowing light of woman's love!
4. When all around is clear and bright,

And pleasure lends her fairest charm;
And man, enraptur'd with delight,

Feels, as he views, his bosom warm,
Why glows his breast with joy profuse,
And all his deeds, his rapture prove?
It is, because the scene he views

Through the bright rays of woman's love.
5. O woman! thine is still the power,
Denied to all but only thee,

To chase away the clouds that lower,
To harass life's eventful sea.
Thou light of man! his only joy,

Beneath a wide and boundless sky,

Long shall thy praise his tongue employ,
Sylph of the blue, and beaming eye!

LESSON X.

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

1. O THOU that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone: who can be a com panion of thy course?

2. The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains them selves decay with years: the ocean shrinks and grows again;

the moon herself is lost in the heavens; but thou art forever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course.

3. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunders roll and lightnings fly, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west.

4. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou wilt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth-age is dark and unlovely: it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills, the blast of the North is on the plains, the traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey.

LESSON XI.

WHERE IS THE SPIRIT-LAND?

MRS. HEMANS.

1. ANSWER me, burning stars of night!
Where hath the spirit gone,

That, past the reach of human sight,
E'en as a breeze, hath flown?
And the stars answer'd me,- 66 We roll
In light, and power on high;

But of the never-dying soul,

Ask things that cannot die!"

2. O many-toned, and chainless wind!
Thou art a wanderer free,

Tell me if thou its place canst find,
Far over mount and sea?

And the wind murmur'd in reply –
"The blue deep I have cross'd,
And met its barks, and billows high,
But not what thou hast lost!"

3. Ye clouds that gorgeously repose
Around the setting sun,

Answer! have ye a home for those
Whose earthly race is run?

The bright clouds answer'd,-"We depart,
We vanish from the sky;
Ask what is deathless in thy heart,
For that which cannot die!"

4. Speak, then, thou voice of God within!
Thou of the deep low tone
Answer me! through life's restless din,
Where hath the spirit flown?

And the voice answer'd,-" Be thou still!
Enough to know is given;

Clouds, winds, and stars their task fulfill,—
Thine is to trust in Heaven!"

LESSON XII.

PROGRESS OF THE MECHANIC ARTS.

WEBSTER.

1. THE slightest glance must convince us that mechanical power and mechanical skill, as they are now exhibited in Eu rope and America, mark an epoch in human history worthy of all admiration. Machinery is made to perform what has for merly been the toil of human hands, to an extent that aston ishes the most sanguine, with a degree of power to which no number of human arms is equal, and with such precision and

exactness, as almost to suggest the notion of reason and intelligence in the machines themselves.

2. Every natural agent is put unrelentingly to the task. The winds work, the waters work, the elasticity of metals works; gravity is solicited into a thousand new forms of action; levers are multiplied upon levers; wheels revolve on the peripheries of other wheels; the saw and the plane are tortured into an accommodation to new uses, and, last of all, with inimitable power, and with "whirlwind sound," comes the potent agency of steam.

3. In comparison with the past, what centuries of improvement has this single agent comprised, in the short compass of fifty years! Everywhere practicable, every where efficient, it has an arm a thousand times stronger than that of Hercules, and to which human ingenuity is capable of fitting a thousand times as many hands as belonged to Briareus. Steam is found in triumphant operation on the seas; and under the influence of its strong propulsion, the gallant ship,

"Against the wind, against the tide,

Still steadies, with an upright keel."

4. It is on the rivers, and the boatman may repose on his oars; it is on the highways, and begins to exert itself along the courses of land conveyance; it is at the bottom of mines, & thousand feet below the earth's surface; it is in the mill, and in the workshops of the trades. It rows, it pumps, it excavates, it carries, it draws, it lifts, it hammers, it spins, it weaves, it prints. It seems to say to men, at least to the class of artisans, "Leave off your manual labor, give over your bodily toil; bestow but skill and reason to the directing of my power, your and I will bear the toil- with no muscle to grow weary, no

nerve to relax, no breast to feel faintness."

5. What further improvements may still be made in the use of this astonishing power, it is impossible to know, and it

were vain to conjecture. What we do know is, that it has most essentially altered the face of affairs, and that no visible limit yet appears, beyond which its progress is seen to be impossi ble. If its power were now to be annihilated, if we were to miss it on the water and in the mills, it would seem as if we were going back to rude ages.

LESSON XIII.

TO MARY IN HEAVEN.

BURNS.

1. THOU lingering star, with less'ning ray,
That lov'st to greet the early morn,
Again, thou usher'st in the day,

My Mary, from my soul was torn.

2. O, Mary! dear departed shade!

Where is thy place of blissful rest?
Seest thou thy lover, lowly laid?

Hear'st thou the groans, that rend his breast?

3. That sacred hour can I forget,

Can I forget the hallow'd grove,

Where, by the winding Ayr we met,
To live one day of parting love!

4. Eternity will not efface

Those records dear, of transports past;
Thy image, at our last embrace!

Ah! little thought we, 'twas our last!

5. Ayr, gurgling, kissed his pebbly shore,

O'erhung with wild-woods' thick'ning green;

The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar,

Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene.