tunately its limits; so Sam, having expiated his of his poetry-quantity is out of the questionoffenses, was let out with the same polite ceremo-higher and more consummate than most of that nies with which he was let in. He departed a cotemporaneous with it. We think it is quite a wiser and a better spirit, and the bells had rest. We can not leave our subject without a few words of tribute to this muse, to which was destined a niche in the temple of our national literary fame, yet whose claims have hardly, in our humble opinion, been accurately or fully recognized. It wou'd be singular if this should be the case, for rarely did one sing under circumstances so felicitous and auspicious. It was surrounded by every prestige of wealth and society; embellished by every adjunct of art and expense. Those probationary strivings and hinderances of a long erata, the poet's "common lot," it never knew. This muse was one of fortune's spoilt children; but though petted, caressed, and flattered, it was not judiciously entertained. The favor it met with was partial rather than discriminating yielded profusely to the man, the celebrity of a circle, the scholar, connoisseur, and patron, the elegant and liberal host, rather than to the poet, who, perhaps, without all this Aladdin-like good fortune, might have had his special claim more specially considered, and his special fame more specially pronounced. Rogers took from the first the rank of an elegant poet. His Pleasures of Memory gave this to him, and Italy gave him no more. He lived in an epoch when poetic genius was strikingly in the ascendant, and he was eclipsed by many among his cotemporaries; yet we venture to doubt, were justice fully done, whether Rogers would not deservedly rank above some who, in the enthusiasm of the moment, were placed above him, and who, by the "influence of authority," keep their places. mistake to rest his claims upon the Pleasures of Memory. That poem represents, indeed, the musical ear, the fastidious taste, and the excellent skill in versification, which were its author's invariable characteristics-and let such have their due weight, they are grave and not too common claims, and if they do not announce the poet's inspiration, they certainly constitute the poet's art-but Italy is unmistakably a work of genius; there is the creative faculty, the picturesqueness, the charm, the fascination which never have another origin. It abounds in such exquisite pictures as mentally engrave themselves with a daguerreotype more glowing and vivid than the beautiful vignettes which embroider the margin. It is the perfection of animated word painting by a hand equally graceful and artistic, whether on groups or landscape. It is true that no attempt is made at breadth or distance; so much the better. It is unique painting, elaborate and concise; a series of highly finished cabinet pictures and enameled gems, each one rare enough to be set in a sultana's bracelet. In this pictorial power we recognize the hand of the true poet, nor is the painter's science of chiaro oscuro wanting. What rustic and joyous grouping! What quaint real life; what dark vistas into impenetrable shadows, such as no other country could perhaps afford in the same shifting and epic variety! Italy is a book Shakspearian in its character, partly on account of its size and picturesqueness, and partly in a je ne sais quoi, unless we call it enchantment, which assimilates genius in no way definably alike. We regard Italy in a utilitarian spirit, as Byron took the world by surprise, and made it the most exquisite of itineraries of the fairest and captive. His oriental romances, fervid and orig- most historic countries in the world; a handinal, full of passion, fascination, and power, not book-we are becoming superlatively prosaic— only made the noble author the hero of his times, of classic ruins, and joyous and sunny landscapes, but gave a tone to public taste itself. This tone and ancient way-marks, each with its legend, its was necessarily not of the highest character. tale of glory, patriotism, romance, or love, the Great, almost greatest, as Byron is as a poet, the noblest virtue and the darkest crimes-all this destandard he raised was not the highest. It gave signed, conceived, and executed in perfect keepto Moore, for instance, adoration brighter and ing with language that is ever tuneful and ever more transient than he might have won himself attuned to its subject; that can be graceful and under a severer discipline-a remark that may elegant, or rise to dramatic power, or sink to be illustrated by comparison of the works of By- sportive touches, at all times marked with symron himself. Childe Harold never excited half metry and ease, and always true to its constructhe furor of the romances—we mean among the tion, which is the old epigrammatic model, the crowd-and Rogers, in the midst of competitors pure type of finished and graceful brevity. We more dazzling and alluring, was quite as dispro- subscribe our belief that Samuel Rogers was a portionately appreciated. We do not mean to poet, who produced a book that realized its ideal, place Rogers on a poetic level with Byron, except is eminently beautiful, and has no counterpart in in some particulars; but we should call the quality, our language.-London Magazine. SELF-EDUCATION. BY RUFUS USHER. N delineating human character, writers have most commonly selected for their heroes those who have figured in some prominent character on the stage of life. Monarchs, princes, nobles, warriors, and heroes in every department of society, whose acts have rendered them famous in the annals of tradition or history, furnish the historian, poet, painter, critic, and caricaturist with their most attractive subjects. Even Shakspeare, that great unfolder of the human heart, has given the mighty of the earth a place among his chief actors. True it is, that the passions which are common to all, when brought into action where great interests are at stake, are aroused to a more intense hight, and for this reason are supposed to form the best examples for dramatic effect. The demands of the age have, however, in modern times turned the attention of writers to a class of subjects, in which more humble forms of life occupy a larger space. Sources of the deepest interest and of the purest enjoyment are now discovered in the retired walks of life with the same facility as the botanist finds his treasures in the solitary untrodden nooks of creation, or amid the entanglements of bush and brier. On the uncultivated hillock, where the peering sun but occasionally lets in a ray of his glory, do there spring up forms of most unearthly beauty. It must be admitted that an extensive knowledge of men and things quickens the mental perception; and travels into far lands furnish materials for the observer, which he would not dream of in his native fields or by his own fireside; but Cowper could write vivid descriptions of men and manners, and minutely dissect the beauties of nature without traveling the wide world over, and James Hogg could not understand why people could not write books without so much reading. The great difference between genius provided with all the great requisites of money, books, leisure, and society, added to the great advantage of traveling, and genius left amid the ordinary cares of life to pursue its way alone and unassisted, is, that perpetually passing images of beauty are reflected on the mind of the one from without, while the mind of the other reflects its own perception of loveliness on surrounding objects. The one has spread out before it a feast of rich viands from which it can select those suited to its taste, while the other goes in quest of mental food from every source within its reach. The mind having once acquired the power of thought and perception, can convert all objects, all periods, and all changes into sources of profound interest. Is there any spot of earth so rugged, so impervious to light and heat, or any climate so inclement or so barren as not to possess interest? If we dig into the depths of earth shut out from all that may delight the eye, wonders upon wonders still follow us into the deep, dark chasm. Every strata of earthly substance through which we pass is big with histories of the past, speaking to us in its sullen silence of periods in the eternity of time to which the date of our mortal race bears but a feeble comparison. Traces are there of forms and life with which the earth and ocean once teemed, which, after ages of duration, were crushed and extinguished by some huge convulsion of the mighty fabric, or changed by new combinations of matter. There come before us proofs of each succeeding order of creation, which, like mountain rising upon mountain in some gorgeous scene, take their places in the universal scheme, ascending from lower to higher, till that summit is attained which now forms the groundwork of this new and interesting theater of life. The grand educational process of the mind is the exercise of that keen perception or capacity which finds interest every-where and in every thing. This forms the great bulwark of intellectual liberty-its independence of place, time, circumstance, and condition; so that if shut out from the externally beautiful and attractive, the mind can still revel amidst scenes which the imaginative faculty has acquired the power to create. What heeds it where we stray or at what hour, if intent on finding objects of interest? Let us walk abroad even at mid-day, that most unpoetic of hours, when neither the lark's cheerful matin, nor the thrush's vesper hymn, can aid our imagination; when neither the freshness of heaven's new-born light, nor the pensiveness of the dying day can sober or elate the mental vision; yet is there enough at every step, in every sound, in every object, to rivet the attention and engross the understanding. Walk on observant, busied in the study of nature; watching every motion, marking every object, listening to every sound, and, hark! in the far distance, distant yet as the thunder when it breaks suddenly on the ear portentous of the coming storm-there is a strange, heavy, protracted sound, each moment growing louder and louder, and suddenly appears in the far valley a huge figure rolling swiftly onward with the fleetness of the race-horse, assuming the appearance of a flying car skimming the surface of the earth. O ye! our rude forefathers who rest beneath yon ivied tower, could ye but once arise to witness this ponderous machine rushing through the cornfields with the voice of thunder, amid clouds of smoke, and armed with fire, would ye believe that your children and your children's children were there, living, and yet flying through the earth, clothed with wings fleeter than the birds of air? No, ye would not, but would carry back to the invisible world tidings of the destroying angel traversing earth in his dreadful chariot of flame. As it rushes on through open fields and now through the wooded dell, how interesting it is to mark its curved course by the volume of white smoke that follows its onward way! We watch its progress till the last trace vanishes in the distance, and the last indistinct murmur dies away, and we find ourselves once more alone with nature; where the withered leaf, moved by the motion of some concealed creeping thing, speaks to the listening ear, and there comes a new charm, as though the curtain had fallen upon some exhausted scene and opened up a new vision of loveliness. The mind in its mysterious desires never waits for a season, or a favorite hour for the enjoyment of its mental food. It finds abundance in every period of existence at all times, at all hours. The blackest midnight darkness which envelops our couch gives interest enough to our rational powers. We awaken from our earliest slumber, and strangely indescribable is the first sensation we encounter between the state we have just left and that we have approached. The first effort of the mind is a confused, indistinct idea of existence, a feeling of animal life; and then a sudden and full recollection of what we are, and where we are, but in the place of the familiar objects we commonly perceive around us, there reigns an impenetrable darkness. The eyes unclose for the purpose of vision, but their vast faculties of perception are gone. The balls roll sightless in their socket, and vainly wander in search of objects which they are wont to greet on awaking. So useless are the organs of sense without the glorious counterparts of their existence. How strange, how solemn is this temporary destruction of the visual organ, and how it carries us up to the great Creator who pervades alike day and night, and makes both equally subservient to his purposes. Sometimes when the organ of sight is thus unvailed, the first object discerned is a glittering star peering through the casement from the immensity of space. And what on this theater of life among its most impressive wonders so wonderful as this-that the eye should behold an object removed millions of miles from the planet on which we dwell! Strange that through the whole of that vast vacuum we call space, nothing should intervene to hide from our sight those far-off regions of life and matter. How superior is nature in all her vast displays of grandeur to the efforts of human art! Watch the first symptom of approaching day; the first certainty of increasing light, how gradually it grows upon the sight. Objects familiar to the view close to our bedsides, not yet fully developed, assume appearances curious and fantastic, and with every passing moment adopt new and phantom shapes; and ever and anon mock our faculties of identity. The opposite house is at first a dark, shapeless mass only, separated from the general gloom by the glimmering light, which, peering above the roof, marks it as a thing having hight and proportion; while the trees assume form and lineament by the pervading light which marks their outline and separates one from another. But what a gorgeous panorama it is; still new views expanding on the vision till we find ourselves ushered into the presence of an endless diversity of beautiful and darling images, and the world of to-day becomes the world of yesterday. O how wisely has nature adapted her everchanging scenes of day and night, of storm and calm, of heat and cold, and good and ill, to a restless, change-loving being, such as man always was, and is, and ever will be! The mind only expands and ripens by the action of change. There is nothing permanent in its compositionthere is no point gained at which it desires to stay-it is ever passing on and leaves behind all that has been. We desire not spring with its budding leaves, and early flowers, and feeling of joyous hope, because we wish that spring should be an abiding time, nor would we wish to make an eternal dwelling in its garlanded bosom. No, it is that winter, with all its snug housed and carpeted enjoyments, have grown too common, too warm, for our fluctuating desires. The cheerful fireside, the evening parties, the concert, the play, the vast stores of literary and amusing knowledge, themselves a vast and unexplored world of variety, have ceased to satisfy the restless monitor within. Truly nature and man were formed for each other, not only because nature attracts the mind toward itself, not only because the mind is drawn involuntarily to the love and study of the sublime and beautiful, but that both involve in their very existence the elements of perpetual change. The very order of nature and the harmonies which it exhibits are all the result of change. The elements, though severally retaining an ex istence, restless and unsettled, are ever changing their form and condition; forming new combinations, and annihilating the mode of their previous existence. What is the history of the planetary system, and doubtless of all other systems, but one of ever-continuous change; huge masses of matter now progressing from order to disorder, and now again from disorder growing into loveliness and perfectibility; perhaps to be again revolutionized and remodeled eternally in the mathematical cycles of their duration! And what is the history of man through the few succeeding centuries over which his biography extends! Not one page is there in the chronicles of his being but tells of change, onward, ever onward changechange in the development of his intellectual and social character-now a groveling, untutored, unclothed animal, now a civilized, cultivated, creative, half-godlike intelligence. Equally big with change is the fate of nations. Babylon, and Tyre, and ancient Greece have shared a fate but common to the world. Nations rise but to fall, and they fall for others to rise on the common ruin. And individual life, what is it from the cradle to the tomb but one perpetual series of change-one perpetual round of physical, moral, and intellectual progression and retrogression ! See that helpless babe whose morbid features scarcely assume the distinctiveness of human individuality, yet in a few weeks only do we witness the rapid growth of its physical frame and of its perceptive powers. It has commenced a journey, during which there is no pause, no cessation. The place and scenery through which we travel to-day will be left behind to-morrow and will never be seen again but by the aid of memory. And O, memory! how dost thou betray us into error! How fondly do we fancy in our recollections of the past, that we travel over the same ground again, where we strayed in early days! True, there is a power in memory to recall facts and images, and to restore to us old localities, but, alas! the pure, unsullied joys of early years, the glorious hopes and promises of a sunny future, and the realization of youthful pleasures can never be recalled in their purity and intensity by the most ardent efforts of the imagination. The mental as well as the physical powers are ever changing, and how can it be otherwise? As the frame emerges from infancy to youth, and from youth to manhood, the mental development which marks each successive stage passes away also, and gives birth to new forms of thought. We strive perpetually to call from past existence its dearest though faded delights, and we half fancy that old feelings are revived within us, but in sober reality, that which has been never returns. Was memory a thousand times stronger than it is, we could never a second time realize by-gone feelings, because the constitutional functions which at any period of our lives were the springs of our physical and mental life, have become so changed that they can not again act in the same capacity. Could memory restore to manhood the feelings and experience of youth, it would be reversing the order of nature, which carries every thing onward. Youth would be taking the place of manhood, and manhood the place of boyhood, and life would consequently retrograde from its ordinary course. To see, to know, to feel again what is past, in all its original intensity, would be no less than a subversion of the order of nature. It would be a real palpable miracle. We pass on from scene to scene, happy sometimes as the bee passing from flower to flower, but like that summer-day charmer, we can not from the same flower extract the honey twice. We may pass indeed from scene to scene, enjoying sweet after sweet, and we may pluck full many a fragrant flower, but never, never can we pluck the same a second time. We gather it, enjoy it, and it dies. This is no error of nature. Memory recalls facts, and scenes, and data sufficiently clear for all the practical purposes of life, while the mind, ever new, seeks and finds in every succeeding change of its existence new resources equivalent to its changing desires. To resuscitate any former condition of mind, and to embody in our mental exercises only what we or others have before thought or felt, would be to suspend the faculty for new discoveries, new facts, and new feelings, a tendency not likely to emanate from the laws governing intellectual existence. A perception of facts and principles pervades all minds, however varying may be the capacity to follow them in detail. The perception of beauty is a faculty as universal as mind itself. The simplest rustic who goes forth to his labor on a summer morning, whether or not his thoughts may be directed to any particular object, is, nevertheless, conscious that a glorious scene surrounds him. The feelings of his physical frame are elated to a hight of enjoyment scarcely related to the dull vacuity pervading his existence amid the gloom of a wintery day. The life of living light and beauty has penetrated his inward life and touched it with sensations allied to a higher humanity. He may not with a painter's eye watch the ever-varying hues and tints of a gorgeous eastern sky; nor with a poet's ear drink in the music of the towering lark's matin song; nor may he see embodied in the wide expanse of hill and dale a perpetual feast for the mental voluptuary. No-the details of these glories may be hidden from his contracted vocabulary of nature's STRAY THOUGHTS. BY PROF. W. G. W. LEWIS. water flowing from the rock is pure, so is language, but a ray of his divine light penetrates Sruth. The gurgling fountain gives charac deeply into the mysterious dreamings. From low to high ascends this all-pervading sense of beauty in the outward world. One loves to gaze in rapt devotion on the blue waters of the mighty deep as they stretch onward far as eye can traverse the boundless distance. Another delights to revel in some gorgeous scenery that meets his view from the secluded eminence, and without the attraction of any particular object to drink in at a draught its sublimity as a connected whole. Another loves to gaze on the starry heavens, and amid the still beauty of night contemplate the immensity and mystery of interminable space. Another prefers to seize on some captivating object and watch its wonderful endowments in all the details of its existence. It may be a flower, a bird, an insect, or even a creature belonging to some anterior order of nature, whose being and habits are attested by the very stones on which we tread. So universal are the objects of interest, that we have only to cast a glance on the expanse of earth and the mind seizes on a motive, and feels a new impulse acting within. If the first object that meets the gaze be but a wall surmounted with a covering of earth, yet is it not devoid of interest. It hems in some hallowed spot of earth where human footsteps are ever pacing to and fro, and shuts in from the public eye the daily walks of domestic life. Where is the cottage, humble. though it be, but has been the scene of great events, of intense feeling, of glorious hopes, and of agonizing fears? It may have been the scene of a new-born life, and of ghastly death-it may have witnessed the warring elements of good and evil battling for the mastery-it may have been the play-ground of happy childhood, and the home of innocent beauty. Where is an object but links itself to human sympathies, or calls something back from the far depths of memory? The rough hewn stile that marks the village pathway, may have become indelibly fixed in the memory of human beings. The first vow of earthly love may have been plighted on that rural seat, and that quiet retreat which forms the rendezvous of the village youth, may be stored in many a bosom as a memento of enjoyments long past. There is no desert so barren, no situation so bleak and joyless, but the mind by the laws of association can convert into a paradise, abounding with food for memory, or resources for thought. ter to the stream which flows down the mountain side, or through the valley. He who pollutes the fountain-head, poisons the stream. So he who stirs up the sediment in the well where many come to drink, commits a grievous crime. But he who casts into the pellucid springs of Truth the foul sediment of Error and Falsehood, Deceit or Sophistry, commits a more heinous crime than the other. For the rock will purge away the corruption, or the sediment will sink again to the bottom of the well. But when the foulness of Sin is cast into the waters of Truth, it will oftentimes defile its purity for centuries. He who ruins the fountain ruins what is necessary for man's existence. He who corrupts Truth would fain tarnish the brightest gem in the crown of the Almighty. Pythagoras says that the only way in which a man can approach in resemblance to God, is to do good and love Truth-which Truth is called by Plato the veritable soul of God, as being his very essence. And this noble thought is amply verified by holy writ, which says, in sublime simplicity, "God is Truth;" while the teacher of a higher morality than that of either of the old sages, claims his divinity when he says, "I am the Truth." There is, then, so much of the divine in Truth, that it is a mark of the possible elevation of humanity, that it seeks after it, and loves it when found. As the noble Sydney said, "“He that finds Truth without loving her, is like a bat, which, though it have eyes to discern that there is a sun, hath so evil eyes that it can not behold the sun." It is as nourishing to the soul as water is to the body, and the soul without Truth, wandering in darkness, must suffer the agony of fatal thirst, and die. And as the wild son of the desert longs for the wells, and leaps with delight at the far-off prospect of the green oasis which proves its existence and plentiful supply, so does the honest Christian mind yearn after Truth, and drink with still greater rapture of the wells of salvation. The happiness of each one of us is secured by a life of virtue. And whatever it may be that promotes the welfare of man as an individual, or as a social being, must be of the most paramount importance to us all. Whoever, therefore, aspires to the office of a moral teacher, either as a writer, or instructor, or by example, uses every means to |