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As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever.

Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.

LESSON XXIII.

The Grave a place of rest.—MACKENZIE.

THE grave is a place where the weary are at rest. How soothing is this sentiment, "The weary are at rest!" There is something in the expression which affects the heart with uncommon sensations, and produces a species of delight, where tranquillity is the principal ingredient. The sentiment itself is extensive, and implies many particulars : it implies, not only that we are delivered from the troubling of the wicked, as in the former clause, but from every trouble and every pain, to which life is subjected.

Those, only, who have themselves been tried in affliction, can feel the full force of this expression. Others may be pleased with the sentiment, and affected by sympathy. The distressed are, at once, pleased and comforted. To be delivered from trouble-to be relieved from power-to see oppression humbled*-to be freed from care and pain, from sickness and distress-to lie down as in a bed of security, in a long oblivion of our woes to sleep, in peace, without the fear of interruption-how pleasing is the prospect! how full of consolation!

*Prom, um'-bl'd.

The ocean may roll its waves, the warring winds may join their forces, the thunders may shake the skies,* and the lightnings pass, swiftly, from cloud to cloud: but not the forces of the elements, combined, not the sounds of thûnders, nor of many seas, though they were united into one peal, and directed to one point, can shake the security of the tomb.

The dead hear nothing of the tumult; they sleep soundly; they rest from their calamities upon beds of peace. Con ducted to silent mansions, they cannot be troubled by the rudest assaults, nor awakened by the loudest clamour. The unfortunate, the oppressed, the broken-hearted, with those that have languished on beds of sickness, rest here together: they have forgot their distresses; every sorrow is hushed, and every pang extinguished.

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Hence, in all nations, a set of names have arisen to convey the idea of death, congenial with these sentiments, and all of them expressive of supreme felicity and consolation. How does the human mind, pressed by real or imagined calamities, delight to dwell upon that awful event which leads to deliverance, and to describe and solicit it with the fairest flowers of fancy!

It is called the harbour of rest, in whose deep bosom the disastered mariner, who had long sustained the assaults of adverse storms, moors his wearied vessel, never more to return to the tossings of the wasteful ocean. It is called the land of peace, whither the friendless exile retires, beyond the reach of malice and injustice, and the cruelest arrows of fortune. It is called the hospitable house, where the weather-beaten traveller, faint with traversing pathless deserts, finds a welcome and secure repose.

There no cares molest, no passions distract, no enemies defame; there agonizing pain, and wounding infamy, and ruthless revenge, are no more; but profound peace, and calm passions, and security which is immoveable. "There

the wicked cease from troubling; there the weary are at rest! There the prisoners rest together! they hear not the voice of the oppressor! The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master!"

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LESSON XXIV.

On the custom of planting flowers on the graves of departed friends.-BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

To 'scape from chill misfortune's gloom,
From helpless age and joyless years;
To sleep where flowerets round us bloom;—
Can such a fate deserve our tears?

Since, in the tomb, our cares, our woes,
In dark oblivion buried lie,
Why paint that scene of calm repose
In figures painful to the eye?

To die!-what is in death to fear?
'Twill decompose my lifeless frame !
A Power, unseen, still watches near,
To light it with a purer
flame.

And, when anew that flame shall burn,
Perhaps the dust, that lies enshrined,
May rise, a woodbine, o'er my urn,
With verdant tendrils round it twined.

How would the gentle bosom beat,
That sighs at death's resistless power,
A faithful friend again to meet

Fresh blooming in a fragrant flower!

The love, that in my bosom glows,
Will live when I shall long be dead,
And, haply, tinge some budding rose
That blushes o'er my grassy bed.

O, thou who hast so long been dear,
When I shall cease to smile on thee,
I know that thou wilt linger here,
With pensive soul, to sigh for me.

Thy gentle hand will sweets bestow,
Transcending Eden's boasted bloom;
Each flower with brighter tints shall glow,
When Love and Beauty seek my tomb.

And, when the rose-bud's virgin breath
With fragrance fills the morning air,
Imagine me released from death,
And all my soul reviving there.

LESSON XXV.

Thoughts of a young man in the prospect of death.HENRY K. WHITE.

SAD, solitary Thought, who keep'st thy vigils,
Thy solemn vigils, in the sick man's mind,
Communing lonely with his sinking soul,
And musing on the dubious glooms that lie
In dim obscurity before him,-thee,
Wrapped in thy dark magnificence, I call
At this still, midnight hour, this awful season,
When, on my bed, in wakeful restlessness,
I turn me, wearisome. While all, around,
All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness,
I only wake to watch the sickly taper
Which lights me to my tomb.-Yes, 'tis the hand
Of death I feel press heavy on my vitals,
Slow-sapping the warm current of existence.
My moments now are few.-The sand of life
Ebbs fastly to its finish.-Yet a little,
And the last fleeting particle will fall,
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented.
Come, then, sad Thought, and let us meditate,
While meditate we may.-There's left us now
But a small portion of what men call time,
To hold communion; for, even now, the knife,
The separating knife, I feel divide

The tender bond that binds my soul to earth.
Yes, I must die-I feel that I must die;

And though, to me, life has been dark and dreary,
Though hope, for me, has smiled but to deceive,
And disappointment marked me as her victim,
Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me,
As I contemplate the dim gulf of death,
The shuddering void, the awful blank-futurity.

Ay, I had planned full many a sanguine scheme
Of earthly happiness-romantic schemes,
And fraught with loveliness :-and it is hard
To feel the hand of death arrest one's steps,
Throw a chill blight o'er all one's budding hopes,
And hurl one's soul untimely to the shades,
Lost in the gaping gulf of blank oblivion.
Fifty years hence, and who will hear of Henry?
O, none :-another busy brood of beings
Will shoot up in the interim, and none

Will hold him in remembrance. I shall sink
As sinks a stranger in the crowded streets
Of busy London:-some short bustle's caused,
A few inquiries, and the crowds close in,
And all's forgotten. On my grassy grave
The men of future times will careless tread,
And read my name upon the sculptured stone;
Nor will the sound, familiar to their ears,
Recall my vanished memory. I did hope
For better things:-I hoped I should not leave
The earth without a vestige. Fate decrees
It shall be otherwise,-and I submit.

Henceforth, O world, no more of thy desires!
No more of hope!-the wanton, vagrant hope!
I abjure all.-Now other cares engross me,
And my tired soul, with emulative haste,
Looks to its God, and plumes its wings for heaven.

LESSON XXVI.

The Grave.-BERNARD Barton.

I LOVE to muse, when none are nigh,
Where yew tree branches wave,
And hear the winds, with softest sigh,
Sweep o'er the grassy grave.

It seems a mournful music, meet
To soothe a lonely hour;

Sad though it be, it is more sweet
Than that from Pleasure's bower.

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