LESSON NINETY-FIRST

Matrimonial Auction.

The Babylonians had a law, which was also followed by the Heneti, an Illyrian people, and by Herodotus thought to be one of their best, which ordained, that when girls were of a marriageable age, they were to repair at a time to a place where the young men likewise assembled. They were then sold by the public crier, who first disposed of the most beautiful one. When he had sold her, he put up others to sale, according to their degrees of beauty.

The rich Babylonians were emulous to carry off the finest women, who were sold to the highest bidders. But as the young men who were poor, could not aspire to have fine women, they were content to take the ugliest, with the money which was given with them; for when the crier had sold the handsomest, he ordered the ugliest of all the women to be brought, and inquired if any one was willing to take her with a small sum of money. Thus she became the wife of him who was most easily satisfied; and thus the finest women were sold, and from the money which they brought, small fortunes were given to the ugliest, and to those who had any bodily deformity.

A father could not marry his daughter as he pleased; nor was he who bought her allowed to take her home without giving security that he would marry her. But after the sale, if the parties were not agreeable to each other, the law enjoined that the purchase money should be restored. The inhabitants of any of their towns were permitted to buy wives at these auctions.

LESSON NINETY-SECOND.

Man and Woman.

Man is the rugged lofty pine,

That frowns on many a wave-beat shore,
Woman's the slender graceful vine,
Whose curling tendrils round it twine,
And deck its rough bark sweetly o'er.

Man is the rock whose towering crest
Nods o'er the mountain's barren side,
Woman's the soft and mossy vest,
That loves to clasp its sterile breast,
And wreaths its brow in verdant pride.

Man is the cloud of coming storm,
Dark as the raven's murky plume;
Save where the sunbeam, light and warm,
Of woman's soul, and woman's form,
Gleams brightly o'er the gathering gloom.

Yes, lovely sex, to you 't is given,
To rule our hearts with angel sway,
Blend with each wo a blissful leaven,
Change earth into an embryo heaven,
And sweetly smile our cares away.

LESSON NINETY-THIRD.

Filial Piety.

l'he great law of nature has implanted in every hu-. nn breast, a disposition to love and revere those to wom we have been taught from our earliest infancy tu look up for every comfort, convenience, and pleasue in life. While we remain in a state of depend

ence on them, this impression continues in its full force; but certain it is, that it has a tendency to wear off, as we become masters of ourselves; and hence the propriety of those laws by which, in the institution of different nations, it has been attempted to guard against a degeneracy into filial ingratitude and disobedience.

"Honor thy father and thy mother," was the command of the divine author of the Jewish dispensation. "That thy days may be long in the land," is the peculiar reward which he promises to those who obey the solemn injunction. And as he has been pleased to express his approbation of a steady adherence to this law, by singular marks of favor, so also did he punish the breach of it, by exemplary displeasure; death was the only expiation for this offence. Nor have the Jews been the only nation who have looked upon disobedience to parents as worthy of capital punishment.

In China, let a son become ever so rich, and a father ever so poor, there is no submission, no point of obedience, that the latter cannot command, or that the former can refuse. The father is not only absolute master of his son's estate, but also of his children; whom, whenever they displease him, he may sell to strangers. When a father accuses his son before a mandarin, there needs no proof of his guilt; for they cannot believe that any father can be so unnatural as to bring a false accusation against his own son.

But, should a son be so insolent as to mock his father, or arrive at such a pitch of wickedness as to strike him, all the province, where this shameful act of violence is committed, is alarmed; it even becomes the concern of the whole empire; the emperor himself judges the criminal. All the mandarins near the place, are turned out of their posts, especially those in the town where he lived, for having been so negligent in their instructions; and all the neighbors are reprimanded, for neglecting, by former punishments, to

put a stop to the wickedness of the criminal, before it arrived at such flagitiousness.

With respect to the unhappy wretch himself, they cut him into a thousand pieces, burn his bones, rase the house in which he lived, as well as those houses which stand near it, and sow the ground with salt, as supposing that there must be some hopeless depravity of manners in a community to which such a monster belonged.

The filial duty is the same with the prince and the peasant in China; and the emperor, every new year's day, pays a particular homage to his mother, in the palace; at which ceremony, all the great officers of the state assist.

The Persians, according to Herodotus, held the crime of domestic rebellion in nearly as much detestation as the Chinese, but they treated it after a more refined manner. They looked on the striking, or slaying of a father, as an impossible offence; and, when an action of the kind happened, adjudged that the offender could not be the son of the party injured or slain, but must have been surreptitiously imposed on him as such.

Cicero observes, that Solon, the wise legislator of Athens, had provided no law against parricide; and that, being asked why he had not, he answered, "that to make laws against, and ordain punishments for, a crime that had been never known or heard of, was the way to introduce it, rather than prevent it."

In Rome, no less than six hundred years from the building of the city had elapsed, before so much as a name for the crime of parricide was known amongst them. The punishment ordained for the first who stained his hands with the blood of the author of his being, was, that he should be scourged till he was flayed, then sown up in a sack, together with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and so thrown headlong to the bottom of the sea.

It is a great stain on the character of the more recent ages of the world, that the crime should ever have become of less rare occurrence; yet in nothing, perhaps, have the ways of God to man been more signally justified, than in the punishment which has sooner or later followed all deviations from filial love and duty. So proverbial, indeed, has this become, as to make any particular illustration of the fact wholly unne

cessary.

LESSON NINETY-FOURTH.

The rising Moon.

The moon is up! how calm and slow
She wheels above the hill!
The weary winds forget to blow,
And all the world lies still.

The wayworn travellers with delight
The rising brightness see,
Revealing all the paths and plains,
And gilding every tree.

It glistens where the hurrying stream
Its little rippling heaves;
It falls upon the forest shade,
And sparkles on the leaves.

So once on Judah's evening hills,
The heavenly lustre spread;
The gospel sounded from the blaze,
And shepherd's gazed with dread.

And still that light upon the world
Its guiding splendor throws;
Bright in the opening hours of life,
And brighter at the close.