Or like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white-then lost forever; That flit ere you can point their place; V. PLEASURE.-YOUNG. GIVE Pleasure's name to naught but what has pass'd The tooth of Time; when past, a pleasure still; And doubly to be prized, as it promotes Our future, while it forms our present joy. Some joys the future overcast, and some Throw all their beams that way, and gild the tomb. VI. TIME NEVER RETURNS. MARK how it snows! how fast the valley fills, And the sweet groves the hoary garment wear; Shall melt the veil away, and the young green appear: But, when old age has on your temples shed Her silver frost, there's no returning sun: Swift flies our summer, swift our autumn's fled, When youth and love and spring and golden joys are gone. in the district of Kyle, on the 25th of January, 1759. He almost al ways wrote directly from nature. His poetry is replete with fire, humor, and pathos, combined with perfect simplicity and naturalness. His brightest effusions were born of his toils, aspirations, and sufferings. He died on the 21st of July, 1796.---1 An ni hi là' tion, destruction; act of reducing to nothing. VII. Ingratitude.-SHAKSPEARE. BLOW, blow, thou winter wind: thou art not so unkind Thy tooth is not so keen, because thou art not seen, Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky: thou dost not bite so nigh Though thou the waters warp, thy tooth is not so sharp As friend remember'd not. VIII. SEVERITY AND GENTLENESS.-GOLD PEN. WHILE slumber bound mine eyes, last night, And I saw in the vision fair, Now 'twas a dove that nestled there! THE quality of mercy is not strain'd; The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the fear and dread of kings? It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likèst God's, X. MAN.-YOUng. How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, Triumphantly distress'd! What joy, what dread, 'E the' re al, formed of ether or thin air; celestial; heavenly.— 'Miniature (min'e tùr), a representation of nature on a very small scale; likeness or picture. A What can preserve my life, or what destroy? Even silent night proclaims my soul immortal! 133. BLENNERHASSETT'S TEMPTATION. PLAIN man, who knew nothing of the curious transmutations' which the wit of man can work, would be very apt to wonder by what kind of legerdemain Aaron Burr3 had contrived to shuffle himself down to the bottom of the pack, as an ac'cessory, and turn up poor Blennerhassett as principal, in this treason. Who, then, is Aaron Burr, and what the part which he has borne in this transaction? He is its author, its projector, its active ex'ecuter. Bold, ardent, restless, and aspiring, his brain conceived it, his hand brought it into action. 2. Who is Blennerhassett? A native of Ireland, a man of letters, who fled from the storms of his own country, to find quiet in ours. On his arrival in America, he retired, even from the population of the Atlantic States, and sought quiet and solitude in the bosom of our western forests. But he brought with him taste, and science, and wealth; and "lo, the desert smiled!" Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery that Shenstone might have en 'Trans mu ta' tion, a change into another substance or form.- Legerdemain (lej er de mån'), sleight of hand; trick.- AARON BURR was born in Newark, N. J., February 5, 1756. His military talents secured for him the high position of lieutenant-colonel in the army of the Revolution; after which he acquired a prominent position as a great lawyer in New York, where he was made attorney-general in 1789. He was a member of the United States Senate from 1791 to 1797, where he was the leader of the republican party. He was made vice-president in 1800; killed ALEXANDER HAMILTON in a duel in 1804; was tried on a charge of treasonable designs against Mexico, at Richmond, Va, in 1807, of which he was finally acquitted; and died on Staten Island, September 14, 1836. His debauchery, and his unscrupulous conduct as a statesman, deprived him of all sympathy, and he left, accordingly, but an ill fame behind him -- WILLIAM SHENSTONE, a pleasing writer both of prose and verse. noted for his taste in landscape-gardening, was born in Shropshire, England, in 1714, and lied in 1763. ried, blooms around him. Music that might have charmed Calypso' and her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity, and innocence, shed their mingled delights around him. And, to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even beyond her sex, and graced with every accomplishment that can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love, and made him the father of several children. 3. The evidence would convince you, Sir, that this is but a faint picture of the real life. In the midst of all this peace, this innocence, and this tranquillity,-this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of the heart,-the destroyer comes. He comes to turn this paradise into a hell. Yet the flowers do not wither at his approach, and no monitory shuddering through the bosom of their unfortunate possessor warns him of the ruin that is coming upon him. A stranger presents himself. It is Aaron Burr. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts, by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. 4. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no designs itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guards before its breast. Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the state of Eden when the serpent entered its bowers! The prisoner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the open and unpractised heart of the unfortunate Blennerhassett, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart, and the objects of its affections. By degrees he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He breathes into it the fire of his own courage;—a daring and desperate thirst for glory; an ardor, panting for all the storm, and bustle, and hurricane of life. 1CALYPSO, a fabled nymph, who inhabited the island of Ogygia, on which ULYSSES was shipwrecked.- Banquet (bång' kwet). —3 Conquest (kong kwest). |