“ But here at the altar, when life joins life, the pair come throbbing up to the holy man, whispering the deep promise that arms each other’s heart, to help on in the life-struggle of care and duty. The beautiful will be there, borrowing new beauty from the scene. The gay and thoughtless, with their flounces and frivolities, will look solemn for once. Youth will come to gaze upon the object of its secret yearnings; and age will totter up to hear the words repeated that to their own lives had given the charm. Some will weep over it as if it were a tomb, and some laugh over it as if it were a joke ”

“ Thy will be done on earth.
Thou madest the earth, as well as planets seven,
Thy name be blessed here
As ’tis in heaven.
Nothing we have to use, or debts to pay,
Except Thou give it us.
Give us this day
Wherewith to clothe us, wherewith to be fed,
For without Thee we want
Our daily bread.
We want, but want no faults, for no day passes
But we do sin.
Forgive us our trespasses.
No man from sinning ever free did live
Forgive us, Lord, our sins,
As we forgive.
If we repent our faults, Thou ne’er disdain’st us ”

“ EVE’S LEGEND. Men were never perfect; yet the three brethren Veres were ever esteemed, respected, revered, even when the rest, whether the select few, whether the mere herd, were left neglected.
The eldest’s vessels seek the deep, stem the element, get pence; the keen Peter, when free, wedded Hester Green,—the slender, stern, severe, erect Hester Green. The next, clever Ned, less dependent, wedded sweet Ellen Heber. Stephen, ere he met the gentle Eve, never felt tenderness: he kept kennels, bred steeds, rested where the deer fed, went where green trees, where fresh breezes, greeted sleep. ”

“ Why is it that the rainbow and cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass off to leave us 847to muse on their loveliness? Why is it the stars which hold their festival around the midnight throne, are set above the grasp of our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their unapproachable glory? And, finally, why is it that the bright forms of human beauty are presented to our view and taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of our affections to flow back in Alpine torrents upon our hearts? We were born for a higher destiny than earth. ”

“ The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe;
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
The impartial judge between the high and low.
Sir Philip Sidney. While I am asleep I have neither fear nor hope, neither trouble nor glory, and blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts; the food that appeases hunger; the drink that quenches thirst; the fire that warms cold; the cold that moderates heat; and lastly, the general coin that purchases all things; the balance and weight that makes the shepherd equal to the king, and the simple to the wise.—Sancho Panza. ”

“ Kingdom Satanic falls, but Thine shall rise.
Come let Thine empire, O Thou Holy One,
Thy great and everlasting will be done.
Will God make known his will, his power display?
Be it the work of mortals to obey.
Done is the great, the wondrous work of love;
On Calvary’s cross he died, but reigns above;
Earth bears the record in Thy holy word.
As heaven adores Thy love, let earth, O Lord;
It shines transcendent in the eternal skies,
Is praised in heaven—for man, the Saviour dies. ”

“ A grand army of teachers, authors, artists, schoolmasters, professors, heads of colleges—have been through ages carrying on war against ignorance; but no triumphal procession has been decreed to it, nor spoils of conquered provinces have come to its coffers; no crown imperial has invested it with pomp and power. In lonely watch-towers the fires of genius have burned, but to waste and consume the lamp of life, while they gave light to the world. ”

“ Johnson:—
Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a dead language, it will always live.
Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled,
But still fought on, nor knew that he was dead. Shakspeare has not only shown human nature as it is, but as it would be found in situations to which it cannot be exposed.
Turn from the glittering bribe your scornful eye,
Nor sell for gold what gold can never buy. These observations were made by favor of a contrary wind. ”

“ I never contemplate the history of navigation of the ocean by steam, but it seems to illustrate to me in the most striking manner the slow steps by which a great movement advances for generations, for ages, from the first germ,—then, when the hour is come, the rapidity with which it rushes to a final consummation. Providence offered this great problem of navigating the ocean by steam to every civilized nation almost on the globe. ”

“ It accompanied warriors to the field and victims to the scaffold!
There is no national air that will compare with the Marseillaise in sublimity and power: it embraces the soft cadences full of the peasant’s home, and the stormy clangor of silver and steel when an empire is overthrown; it endears the memory of the vine-dresser’s cottage, and makes the Frenchman, in his exile, cry, “La belle France!” forgetful of the sword, and torch, and guillotine, which have made his country a spectre of blood in the eyes of nations. ”

“ One day, when only some slices of ham smoked upon the table, with a supply of camp-bread, Diedrich said to De Lisle, in sad serenity, “Plenty is not found at our meals. But no matter: enthusiasm is not wanting at our civic festivals, and our soldiers’ hearts are full of courage. We have one more bottle of Rhine wine in the cellar. Let us have it, and we’ll drink to liberty and the country. Strasbourg will soon have a patriotic fête, and De Lisle must draw from these last drops one of his hymns that will carry his own ardent feelings to the soul of the people.” ”

“ But round all that royal splendor lies a nation enslaved and ruined; there are people robbed of their rights—communities laid waste—faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and well-nigh destroyed—nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the world are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the king ties in diamonds round his mistress’s white neck. ”

“ If falsities in our American history can creep upon us whilst our eyes are open to surrounding evidence, is it to be wondered at that there are so many contradictions and so many myths in the history of Rome? The very name America is a deception, a fraud, and a perpetuation of as rank injustice as ever stained the annals of human events. It is to be hoped that the time will yet come when Columbus shall receive his due. When that millennial day arrives which will insist on calling things by their right names, the battle of Bunker’s Hill will be called the battle of Breed’s Hill. ”

“ As for temples and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for he has made a grid-iron and a frying-pan in verse, that, besides the likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise made by these utensils! When he was a captain, he made all the furniture of his horse, from the bit to the crupper, the beaten poetry, every verse being fitted to the proportion of the thing, with a moral allusion to the sense of the thing: as the bridle of moderation, the saddle of content, and the crupper of constancy ”

“ Witness the following. Byron says:—
If, after all, there should be some so blind
To their own good this warning to despise,
Led by some tortuosity of mind
Not to believe my verse and their own eyes,
And cry that they the moral cannot find,
I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies;
Should captains the remark, or critics make,
They also lie too—under a mistake.
Don Juan, Canto I. Shelley, in his translation of the Magico Prodigioso of Calderon, makes Clarin say to Moscon:—
You lie—under a mistake—
For this is the most civil sort of lie
That can be given to a man’s face. ”

“ Such pain as mine can never sleep!—
Zounds! as I live, another’s gone!
For unrequited love brings grief,—
A needle, wife, and bring your scissors.
232And Pity’s voice gives no relief—
The child! good Lord! he’s at my razors!
No balm to case the troubled heart,—
Who starched this bosom? I declare
That writhes from hate’s envenomed dart!—
It’s enough to make a parson swear!
When faith in man is given up—
How plaguey shiftless are some women!
Then sorrow fills her bitter cup—
I’ll have to get my other linen. ”

“ LAUDATORY. Following the inscription to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, on the Cairn at Balmoral, is the following quotation from the Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 13, 14.
He being made perfect in a short time,
Fulfilled a long time:
For his soul pleased the Lord;
Therefore hasted He to take
Him away from among the wicked.
Could he disclose who rests below,
The things beyond the grave that lie,
We more should learn than now we know.
But know no better how to die.
Dust to its narrow house beneath,
Soul to its place on high;
They that have seen thy look in death,
No more may fear to die. ”

“ I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, “that the world knows nothing of its great men,” but there are forms of greatness, or at least excellence, which “die and make no sign;” there are martyrs that miss the palm but not the stake, heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.
FUTURITY. “Life is sweet,” said Sir Anthony Kingston to Bishop Hooper at the stake, “and death bitter.” “True, friend,” he replied, “but consider that the death to come is more bitter, and the life to come is more sweet.” ”

“ It seems that a past, so calm and pure as yours, should expire with a kindred sweetness about it,—that flowers and music, kind friends and earnest words, should consecrate the hour when a sentiment is passing into a sacrament.
The three great stages of our being are the birth, the bridal, and the burial. To the first we bring only weakness—for the last we have nothing but dust! ”

“ Upon death’s purple altar now,
See where the victor-victim bleeds:
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:—
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust. THE COMMON HERITAGE.
There is no death: what seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian
Whose portal we call Death.—Longfellow. There is—says the author of Euthanasy—no universal night in this earth, and for us in the universe there is no death. What to us here is night coming on, is, on the other side of the earth, night ending, and day begun. ”

“ Indeed, Luther did not hesitate to say that, after theology, music was the first of arts. “Music,” said he, “is the art of the prophets: it is the only art which, like theology, can calm the agitation of the soul and put the devil to flight.” Next to music, if not before it, Luther loved children and flowers. The great, gnarled man had a heart as tender as a woman’s. Calvin studied in his bed. Every morning, at five or six o’clock, he had books, manuscripts, and papers carried to him there, and he worked on for hours together. ”

“ Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his mistress, Aurora von Königsmarck, is the loveliest, the wittiest creature; his diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he passes through the great gallery where Villars and Vendome, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. ”

“ It is no answer to say that the victims of intellectual toil, broken down in health and fortune, have counted their work a privilege and joy. As well deny the martyr’s sacrifice because he has joyed in his integrity. And many of the world’s intellectual benefactors have been martyrs. Socrates died in prison as a public malefactor; for the healing wisdom he offered his people, deadly poison was the reward. Homer had a lot, so obscure at least, that nobody knew his birthplace; and, indeed, some modern critics are denying that there ever was any Homer. ”

“ None of those mistakes which the science of each succeeding age discovered in the books preceding; above all, none of those absurdities which modern astronomy indicates in such great numbers in the writings of the ancients,—in their sacred codes, in their philosophy, and even in the finest pages of the fathers of the Church,—not one of these errors is to be found in any of our sacred books. Nothing there will ever contradict that which, after so many ages, the investigations of the learned world have been able to reveal to us on the state of our globe, or on that of the heavens. ”