3. Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain, Shot through vast masses of enormous weight? Who bid brute matter's restive lump assume Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly? Has matter innate motion? Then each atom, Asserting its indisputable right

To dance, would form an universe of dust.

Has matter none?-then whence these glorious forms
And boundless flights, from shapeless and repos'd?
Has matter more than motion? Has it thought,
Judgment and genius? Is it deeply learn'd
In mathematics? Has it fram'd such laws,
Which, but to guess, a Newton made immortal?
If art to form, and council to conduct,
And that with greater far than human skill,
Reside not in each block-a GODHEAD reigns—
And if a GOD there is-that GoD how great!

LESSON CXLIII.

To-morrow.-COTTON.

1. TO-MORROW, didst thou say? Methought I heard Horatio say, To-morrow. Go to I will not hear of it-To-morrow! 'Tis a sharper, who stakes his penury

Against thy plenty-who takes thy ready cash,

And pays thee nought, but wishes, hopes, and promises The currency of idiots-injurious bankrupt,

That gulls the easy creditor!-To-morrow!

It is a period no where to be found

In all the hoary registers of Time,

Unless perchance in the fool's calendar.

2. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society With those who own it. No, my Horatio,

Tis Fancy's child, and Folly is its father;

Wrought of such stuff as dreams are, and as baseless
As the fantastic visions of the evening.

But soft, my friend-arrest the present moment:
For be assur'd they all are arrant tell-tales:
And though their flight be silent, and their path
Trackless, as the wing'd couriers of the air,
They post to heaven, and there record thy folly.
Because, though station'd on th' important watch,

Thou, like a sleeping, faithless sentinel,
Didst let them pass unnotic'd, unimprov'd.
And know, for that thou slumb'rest on the guard,
Thou shalt be made to answer at the bar
For every fugitive: and when thou thus
Shalt stand impleaded at the high tribunal
Of hood-wink'd Justice, who shall tell thy audit?
3. Then stay the present instant, dear Horatio,
Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings.

"Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious Than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain.

O! let it not elude thy grasp; but, like

The good old patriarch* upon record,

Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.

LESSON CXLIV. 4

Vanity of Power and Misery of Kings.-SHAKSPEARE.
1. No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs:
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so,-for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own, but death;
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

2. For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been depos'd, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd ;-

3.
For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,-

-

* See Genesis, chap. xxxii. 24-30,

As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and humor'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and-farewell king!
4. Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,

For you have but mistook me all this while :
I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends :-Subjected thus,

How can you say to me--I am a king?

LESSON CXLV.

Darkness.-BYRON.

1. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished,—and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless-and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went-and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

2. And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.

3. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them; some lay down

Lord George Gordon Byron, an English nobleman, distinguished as a poet. He was born in London, Jan. 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, in April, 1824, while assisting the Greeks in their glorious struggle for freedom

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd.

4
The wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:
5. And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought-and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the

pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails-men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh.
6. The meagre by the meagre were devour'd;
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts, and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.

7. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies; they met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage; they raked up,

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands 'The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died—.
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend.

8.
The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd

They slept on the abyss without a surge—

9. The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave The moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd: Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the universe.

LESSON CXLVI.

Hannibal to Scipio Africanus, at their interview preceding the Battle of Zama.t

1. SINCE fate has so ordained it, that I, who began the war and who have been so often on the point of ending it by a complete conquest, should now come of my own motion, to ask a peace--I am glad that it is of you, Scipio, I have the fortune to

Hannibal, a celebrated Carthaginian, and one of the greatest generals of antiquity, was born 252 years B. C. At 9 years of age, his father, Hamilcar, made him swear on the altar, eternal enmity to Rome. At 25 years of age, he took upon him the command of the army, and having conquered the Roman forces in Spain, he led his army over the Pyrenees and Alps into Italy. Here he gained many important victories; and during sixteen years conquered every army which the Romans sent against him. At the end of this time, the Romans sent an army into Africa, under the command of Scipio, and the Carthaginians called Hannibal out of Italy to defend his own country. He was defeated by Scipio at the battle of Zama, and was obliged to flee his country. He led a wandering life at the courts of Antiochus and Prusias, in Asia, and at last destroyed himself by poison, when he was about to be delivered into the hands of the Romans, B. C. 182, aged 70.

The battle of Zama was fought 196 years B. C. in which the Carthaginians were totally defeated, and an end put to the second Punic War. The three wars between Rome and Carthage were called Punic Wars. The first Punic War commenced 264 years B. C. and lasted 23 years. The second commenced 218 years B. C. and lasted 22 years. The third commenced 149 years B. C. and lasted 3 years; when Carthage was entirely destroyed, 146 years B. C.