A WOODEN RUIN.

A MODERN Wooden ruin is of itself the least interesting, and, at the same time, the most depressing object imaginable. The massive structures of antiquity that are everywhere to be met with in Europe, exhibit the remains of great strength, and, though injured and defaced by the slow and almost imperceptible agency of time, promise to continue thus mutilated for ages to come. They awaken the images of departed generations, and are sanctified by legend and by tale. But a wooden ruin shows rank and rapid decay, concentrates its interest on one family, or one man, and resembles a mangled corpse, rather than the monument that covers it. It has no historical importance, no ancestral record. It awakens not the imagination. The poet finds no inspiration in it, and the antiquary no interest. It speaks only of death and decay, of recent calamity,

and vegetable decomposition. The very air about it is close, dank, and unwholesome. It has no grace, no strength, no beauty, but looks deformed, gross and repulsive.

Halliburton.

AND yet perhaps 'tis best

That she should die with all the sunshine on her, And all the benedictions of the morning,

Before this affluence of golden light

Shall fade into a cold and clouded gray,

Then into darkness.

Longfellow.

THE veil which covers from our sight the events of succeeding years, is a veil woven by the hand of mercy.

CONSOLATION.

THE loved, but not the lost!

Oh, no! they have not ceased to be,
Nor live alone in memory.

'Tis we who still are toss'd

O'er life's wild sea,-'tis we who die;
They only live, whose life is immortality.

The loved, but not the lost!

Why should our ceaseless tears be shed O'er the cold turf that wraps the dead, As if their names were cross'd

From out the Book of Life? Ah, no!

'Tis we who scarcely live, who linger here below.

The loved, but not the lost!

In heaven's own panoply array'd,

They met the conflict undismay'd,

They counted well the cost

Of battle now their crown is won,

Our sword is scarce unsheath'd,

begun.

Have they not pass'd away

our warfare just

From all that dims the tearful eye,

From all that makes the ceaseless sigh; From all the pangs that prey

On the bereaved heart, and most

What conscience dares not say,

not the lost !"

This is the woe of woes!

The one o'er-mastering agony;

To watch the sleep of those who die, And feel 'tis not repose.

But they who join the heavenly host,

Why should we mourn for them,

not the lost?

The spirit was but born,

The loved,

but

the loved, but

The soul unfetter'd, when they fled

From earth, the living — not the dead,

Then, wherefore, should we mourn?

We, the wan-driven, the tempest-toss'd,

When shall we be with them, the loved, but not

the lost?

Dale.

THE COURSE OF THE THAMES.

WITHIN two miles of Cirencester is the source of the

Thames

a clear fountain, in a little rocky dell,

known by the name of Thames Head. This is the

little infantine stream

so great a giant when it

What reflections we might

Truly, the course of

arrives at its full growth. make upon human affairs in general, from the mere sight of this oozing well; what a homily we might preach upon this text the small beginnings of great things, and what encouragement might be held out to humble genius from it. a river bears no bad comparison with the career of an able man, who makes his own fortune in the world. How slight is his beginning! Yet, how full of confidence he runs on in his career, dashing over some obstacles, and turning round others - obliged to take a tortuous course, that his waters may not be changed into an inland lake, or be dispersed in ponds over a marshy country; and that he may arrive at the sea