· this paper in his hand; and he made me know that I was to read it to you over his grave. I now obey him. My sons, if you will let my bones lie quiet in the grave, near the dust of your mother, depart not from my burial till, in the name of God and Christ, you promise to love one another as you used to do. Dear boys, receive my blessing." " Some turned their heads away to hide the tears that needed not to be hidden, and when the brothers had released each other from a long and sobbing embrace, many went up to them, and, in a single word or two, expressed their joy at this perfect reconcilement. The brothers themselves walked away from the church-yard, arm in arm with the minister to the manse. On the following Sabbath, they were seen sitting with their families in the same pew, and it was observed that they read together off the same Bible when the minister gave out the text, and that they sang together, taking hold of the same psâlm-book. The same psalm was sung, (given out at their own request,) of which one verse had been repeated at their father's grave; a larger sum than usual was on that Sabbath found in the plate for the poor, for Love and Charity are sisters. And ever efter, both during the peace and the troubles of this life, the hearts of the brothers were as one, and in nothing were they divided. LESSON CXX. Lines written in a Highland Glen.-WILSON. To whom belongs this valley fair, The heavens appear to love this vale, By that blue arch, this beauteous earth, Seems bound unto the sky. Oh! that this lovely vale were mine- There would unto my soul be given, And thoughts would come of mystic mood, And did I ask to whom belonged Are joint heirs of the whole! Yea! long as Nature's humblest child Earth's fairest scenes are all his own, LESSON CXXI. The young Herdsman.-WORDSWORTH. FROM early childhood, even, as hath been said, From his sixth year, he had been sent abroad In summer to tend herds: such was his task Thenceforward till the latter day of youth. O, then, what soul was his, when on the tops Of the high mountains, he beheld the sun Rise up and bathe the world in light! He lookedOcean and earth, the solid frame of earth, And ocean's liquid mass beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. A Herdsman, on the lonely mountain tops Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind, And whence they flowed;-and from them he acquired LESSON CXXII. The Shipwreck.-WILSON. -HER giant form O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm, Mid the deep darkness white as snow! The main she will traverse for ever and aye. Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast! -Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour is her last. Five hundred souls in one instant of dread Are hurried o'er the deck; And fast the miserable ship Becomes a lifeless wreck. Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock, Her planks are torn asunder, And down come her masts with a reeling shock, And a hideous crash like thunder. Her sails are draggled in the brine That gladdened late the skies, And her pendant that kissed the fair moonshine Down many a fathom lies. Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues Gleamed softly from below, And flung a warm and sunny flush O'er the wreaths of murmuring snow, To the coral rocks are hurrying down, An hour before her death; And sights of home with sighs disturbed The hum of the spreading sycamore To the dangers his father had passed; And his wife-by turns she wept and smiled, -He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll, Like a struggling dream at break of day. No image meets my wandering eye, But the new-risen sun and the sunny sky. Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapor dull While a low and melancholy moan Mourns for the glory that hath flown. LESSON CXXIII. Dr. Slop and Obadiah, meeting.-STERNE. IMAGINE to yourself, a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Dr. Slop, of about four feet and a half, perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honor to a sergeant in the horse-guards. Such were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, which—if you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, (and if you have not, I wish you would ;)—you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred. Imagine such a one, for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling through the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty color-but of strengthalack! scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.-They were not. Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a *Pron. săr'-gent. |