is gone.

presented itself to our view. The gardens and the groves,how are they changed! The deep verdure of their leaves The many-colored woodland, which, but a few weeks since, was arrayed in a uniform and lively green, now presents a gaudier show indeed, but one of which all the hues are sickly, and are all but the various forms of death. In the garden, the brown and naked stalk has succeeded to the broad blossoms of summer, as they had, but lately, to the young leaves and swelling buds of spring. The orchards, that, but a few short months ago, were white with promise, and that loaded with perfume the very winds that visited them, are now resigning their faded leaves and their mellow fruit.

The wayfaring man, who contemplates these changes, that present themselves to his eye, in Nature's dress, cannot be insensible that her voice has also changed. To his ear there is something more religious in the whisper of the winds, something more awful in their roar; and even the waters of the brook have changed their tone, and go by him with a hollower murmur. And how soon shall all these things be changed again! The course of the stream shall be checked. Its voice shall be stifled by the snows, in which the earth shall wrap herself, during her long and renovating sleep of winter.

In these respects the fashion of the world passeth away, we will not say with every year, but with each successive season of every year. Their general effect is moral and highly salutary. In them all we hear a voice, which speaks to us what we may not, and what we cannot, speak to one another. They are full of the gentle, but faithful admonitions of a parental Providence, who would remind us by the changes, which we so often see going on around us, that we, too, shall all be changed." Yet these are changes in the fashion of this world, which, from their very frequency, lose a part of their effect. The fashions which pass away with the departing seasons, we know, will be brought back again, when the same seasons return; and those scenes, which we know will be again presented, we believe that we shall live to witness and enjoy.

But there are alterations in the fashion of the world, which time is more slow in producing, and which, when we

witness them, are more striking, more melancholy, and of more abiding influence. Who will doubt this? for who has not felt it? and who is he that has ever felt, and has now forgotten it? Surely not you, my friend, who, by the appointments of an overruling Providence, have been compelled to spend your days as a stranger and a pilgrim in the earth. Did you, in your young manhood, leave your home among the hills, the scenes and the companions of your youthful sports, or of your earliest toils? Were you long struggling with a wayward fortune, in distant lands, or in seas that rolled under the line, or that encircled the poles in their cold embrace? Did sickness humble the pride of your manhood, or did care whiten your temples before the time?

How often, in your wanderings, did the peaceful image of your home present itself to your mind! How often did you visit that sacred spot, in your dreams by night! and how faithful to your last impressions was the garb in which, when you were far away, your long forsaken home arrayed itself! The fields and the forests that were around it, underwent no change in their appearance to your imagination. The trees, that had given you fruit or shade, continued to give the same fruits and the same shade to the inmates of your paternal dwelling; and even in those objects of filial or fraternal affection, no change appeared to have been wrought by time, during your long absence.

But when, at length, you return, how different is the scene, that comes before you in its melancholy reality, from that which you left in your youth, and of which a faithful picture has been carried near to your heart, in all your wanderings! Those who were once your neighbors and school-fellows, and whom you meet, as you come near to your father's house, either you do not recognize, or you are grieved that they do not recognize you.

The woods, which clothed the hills around, and in which you had often indulged the vague, but delicious anticipations of childhood, have been cleared away; and the stream that once dashed through them, breaking their religious silence by its evening hymn, and whitening, as it rushed through their shade, "to meet the sun upon the upland lawn," now creeps faintly along its contracted channel, through fields

that have been stripped of their golden harvest, and through pastures embrowned by a scorching sun. The fruit trees are decayed. The shade trees have been uprooted by a storm, or their hollow trunks and dry boughs remain, venerable, but mournful witnesses to the truth, that the fashion of this world passeth away.

More melancholy still are the witnesses that meet you as you enter your father's house. She, on whose bosom you hung in your infancy, and whom you had hoped once more to embrace, has long been sleeping in the dark and narrow house. Your father's form, how changed! Of the locks that clustered around his brow, how few remain! and those few, how thin! how white! His full toned and manly voice has lost its strength, and trembles as he inquires if this is indeed his son. The sister, whom you left a child, is now a wife, and a mother; the wife of one whom you never knew, one who looks upon you as a stranger, and one towards whom it is impossible for you to kindle up a brother's love, now that you have found so little in the scenes of your childhood, to satisfy the affectionate anticipations with which you returned to them.

While you are contemplating these melancholy changes, and the chill of disappointment is going through your heart, the feeling comes upon you, in all its bitterness, that the mournful ravages, which time has wrought upon the scenes and the objects of your attachment, will not, and cannot be repaired by time, in any of his future rounds. Returning years can furnish you with no proper objects for the fresh and glowing affections of youth; and even if those objects could be furnished, it is too late, now, for you to feel for them the correspondent affection. The song of your mountain-stream can never more soothe your ear. The grove that you loved shall invite you to meditation and to worship no more. Another may, indeed, spring up in its place; but you shall not live to see it. It may shade your grave; but your heart shall never feel its charm.

Your affections are robbed of the treasures, to which they clung so closely and so long, and that forever. The earth, where it had appeared most lovely, is changed. The things that were nearest to your heart, have changed with it.

The

fashion in which the world was arrayed, when it took hold on you with the strongest attachment, has passed away; its mysterious power to charm you has fled; all its holiest enchantments are broken, and you feel that nothing remains as it was, but the abiding outline of its surface-its valleys, where the still waters find their way, and the stern visage of its everlasting hills.

LESSON XIV.

The same, concluded.

NOR does the fashion of the world pass away, in regard to the ever-varying appearances of its exterior alone, its vegetable productions, that flourish and fade with every year, or those that endure for ages beyond the utmost limit of animal life. It is, indeed, an eloquent commentary upon the apostle's remark, to see the oak, that shaded one generation of men after another, even before it had attained its maturity, and, in the fulness of its strength, had stretched forth its giant arms over many succeeding generations, yield to decay at last, and fall, of its own weight, after having gloried in its strength for centuries.

It is an eloquent commentary, to see the fashion of those things passing away, in which the proudest efforts of human skill or human power have been displayed; to see the curious traveller inquiring and searching upon the banks of the Euphrates for the site of ancient Babylon, or measuring the huge masses of rock, that composed the temple of the sun at Palmyra, or digging in the valley of the Nile, to bring to light the stupendous relics of ancient architecture, that have, for thousands of years, been buried in the sands of the desert.

It is even an eloquent exposition of the apostle's remark, to see the towers that were raised by the power of feudal princes, and the abbeys and cathedrals that were the scenes of monastic devotion, now that they are crumbling and falling away, their tottering walls curtained with ivy, and the

bird of night, the only tenant of those forsaken abodes of a stern despotism, and of a still more stern superstition.

But not the products of the earth, nor yet the works of man, alone change and pass away. In many particulars, the great mass of earth itself is liable to change, and has been moulded into different forms. Hills have been sunk beneath the depths of the sea, and the depths of the sea, in their turn, have been laid bare, or thrown up into stupendous mountains. Of most of these wonderful changes, it is true, history gives us no account. But that they have occurred, the deep places of the earth, its hardest rocks, its gigantic hills, alike bear witness.

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Many of us have seen, with our own eyes, those creatures, that were once passing through the paths of the seas,' taken from their marble beds in the mountain's bosom, hundreds of miles from those bars and doors, within which the sea is now shut up, and by which its proud waves are now stayed we cannot say forever stayed; for the regions of the earth, that, by one mighty convulsion, have been rescued from the deep, may, by other mighty convulsions, be given back to its dominion; and those rich plains, that are now the theatre of vegetative life and beauty, may, in time, be sunk under the weltering deep, as other fertile plains have been before them.

'In a moral, not less than in a physical sense, the fashion of this world passeth away. The passions of mankind, it is true, remain the same in their general character; but in different ages and nations, under different systems of morals, philosophy and religion, they are subjected to a very different discipline, and are directed towards different objects. But, if we except his general moral nature, what is there in man, in which the caprices of fashion are not continually displayed?

If, then, the beauties of the year are so fading, and its bounties so soon perish; if the loveliest scenes of nature lose their power to charm, and a few revolving years break the spell, that binds us to those whom we love best; if the very figure of the earth is changed by its own convulsions;