LESSON CLXXIV.

Indolence and Intellectual Dissipation.-WIRT.

WHEREVER I see the native bloom of health and the genuine smile of content, I mark down the character as industrious and virtuous; and I never yet failed to have the prepossession confirmed on inquiry. So, on the other hand, wherever I see pale, repining and languid discontent, and hear complaints uttered against the hard lot of humanity, my first impression is, that the character from whom they proceed is indolent, or vicious, or both; and I have not often had occasion to retract the opinion.

There is, indeed, a class of characters, rather indolent than vicious, who are really to be pitied; whose innocent and captivating amusements, becoming at length their sole pursuits, tend only to whet their sensibility to misfortunes, which they contribute to bring on; and to form pictures of life so highly aggravated, as to render life itself stale and flat.

In this class of victims to a busy indolence, next to those who devote their whole lives to the unprofitable business of writing works of imagination, are those who spend the whole of theirs in reading them. There are several men and women of this description, in the circle of my acquaintance; persons, whose misfortune it is to be released from the salutary necessity of supporting themselves by their own. exertions, and who vainly seek for happiness in intellectual dissipation.

Bianca is one of the finest girls in the whole round of my acquaintance, and is now one of the happiest. But when I first became acquainted with her, which was about three years ago, she was an object of pity: pale, emaciated, nervous and hysterical, at the early age of seventeen, the days had already come, when she could truly say, she had no pleasure in them. She confessed to me, that she had lain on her bed, day after day, for months together, reading, or rather devouring, with a kind of morbid appetite, every novel that she could lay her hands on-without any pause between them, without any rumination, so that the incidents were all

conglomerated and confounded in her memory. She had not drawn from them all a single useful maxim for the conduct of life; but, calculating on the fairy world, which her authors had depicted to her, she was reserving all her address and all her powers for incidents that would never occur, and 1 characters that would never appear.

I advised her immediately to change her plan of life; to take the whole charge of her mother's household upon herself; to adopt a system in the management of it, and adhere to it rigidly; to regard it as her business exclusively, and make herself responsible for it; and then, if she had time for it, to read authentic history, which would show her the world as it really was; and not to read rapidly and superficially, with a view merely to feast on the novelty and variety of events, but deliberately and studiously, with her pen in her hand, and her note-book by her side, extracting, as she went along, not only every prominent event, with its date and circumstances, but every elegant and judicious reflection of the author, so as to form a little book of practical wisdom for herself. She followed my advice, and, when I went to see her again, six months afterwards, Bianca had regained all the symmetry and beauty of her form; the vernal rose bloomed again on her cheeks, the starry radiance shot from her eyes; and, with a smile which came directly from her heart, and spoke her gratitude more exquisitely than words, she gave me her hand, and bade me welcome.

In short, the divine denunciation, that in the sweat of his brow man should earn his food, is guarantied so effectually, that labor is indispensable to his peace. It is the part of wisdom, to adapt ourselves to the state of being in which we are placed; and, since here we find that business and industry are as certainly the pledges of peace and virtue, as vacancy and indolence are of vice and sorrow, let every one do, what is easily in his power-create a business, even where fortune may have made it unnecessary, and pursue business with all the ardor and perseverance of the direst necessity so shall we see our country as far excelling others in health, contentment and virtue, as it now surpasses them in liberty and tranquillity.

that

LESSON CLXXV.

Darkness.-BYRON.

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 chilled into a selfish prayer for light:

And they did live by watch-fires; 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 gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face:
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch.

A fearful hope was all the world contained :
Forests were set on fire; but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded, and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash, and all was black.
The brows of men, by the despairing light,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down,
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 looked 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 gnashed their teeth and howled. The wild birds shrieked,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes

Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food.

And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh :
The meagre by the meagre were devoured;
Even dogs assailed their masters—all, save one
and kept

And he was faithful to a corse,

The birds, and beasts, and famished 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 answered not with a caress-he died.

The crowd was famished 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 heaped 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 shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written fiend. 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 dropped,
They slept on the abyss without a surge:

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them; she was the universe.

LESSON CLXXVI

The Tiger's Cave :-An Adventure among the Mountains of Quito.-EDINBURGH LITERARY JOURNAL.

[Translated from the Danish of ELMQUEST, and the German of Doring.]

ON leaving the Indian village, we continued to wind round Chimborazo's wide base; but its snow-crowned head no longer shone above us in clear brilliancy, for a dense fog was gathering gradually around it. Our guides looked anxiously towards it, and announced their apprehensions of a violent storm. We soon found that their fears were well founded. The thunder began to roll, and resounded through the mountainous passes with the most terrific grandeur. Then came the vivid lightning; flash following flash-above, around, beneath, every where a sea of fire. We sought a momentary shelter in a cleft of the rocks, whilst one of our guides hastened forward to seek a more secure asylum. In a short time, he returned, and informed us that he had discovered a spacious cavern, which would afford us sufficient protection from the elements. We proceeded thither immediately, and, with great difficulty, and not a little danger, at last got into it.

When the storm had somewhat abated, our guides ventured out in order to ascertain if it were possible to continue our journey. The cave in which we had taken refuge, was so extremely dark, that, if we moved a few paces from the entrance, we could not see an inch before us; and we were