Dash then away the fruitless tear,
And rush in pleasure's mad career;
To mirth devote this niggard span,
This little dateless life of man;

Mock self-control, grave wisdom spurn,
And, heedless, seek the destined urn.

Ah, skeptic! why wilt thou essay
To rend the balm of life away?
To plant with goads the path of toi,
To strew with thorns a barren soil,
To shroud with cold and rayless gloom,
Our weary journey to the tomb?

Think'st thou the power that spread the skies,
So just, beneficent, and wise,

Hath man's unbounded powers bestowed,
Merely for earth's fallacious good?
Oh, pause! a spirit answers, No,
For boundless joy, or boundless wo.

Look up, and let thy doubtful eye
Sparkle at immortality;

Rend from thy soul its abject chain,
Thy "Maker in thy mind retain,"

And bid it love that hope sublime,

Which soars o'er mists and wrecks of time.

LESSON EIGHTY-NINTH.

Settlement of Virginia.

While the foundation of a new settlement was laid in the north, the Virginian colony was making rapid progress in the south. Eleven ships, which had sailed the preceding year from England, arrived at Virginia, with twelve hundred and sixteen persons for

settlement. Nearly one thousand colonists were settled there, previous to this accession.

One of the methods adopted for the increase of their number, if not the most delicate, was perhaps the most politic. The enterprising colonists being generally destitute of families, Sir Edward Sandays, the treasurer, proposed to the Virginian company to send over a freight of young women, to become wives for the planters.

The proposal was applauded; and ninety girls, "young and uncorrupt," were sent over in the ships that arrived this year; and, the year following, sixty more, handsome, and well recommended to the company for their virtuous education and demeanor.

The price of a wife, at first, was one hundred pounds of tobacco; but, as the number became scarce, the price was increased to one hundred and fifty pounds, the value of which in money, was three shillings per pound. This debt for wives, it was ordered, should have the precedency of all other debts, and be first recoverable.

Besides the transportation of reputable people, the king commanded the treasurer and council of the Virginian company, to send to Virginia a hundred dissolute persons, to be delivered to them by the knight marshal; and they were accordingly sent over, as servants. The early custom of transporting vicious and profligate people to that colony, as a place of punishment and disgrace, though designed for its benefit, yet became, ultimately, prejudicial to its growth and prosperity.

This part of America was visited by the English in the year 1584, and derived its name from the following circumstance. On the return of the visiters, they gave such splendid descriptions of the beauty and fertility of the country, and of the mildness of the climate, that Elizabeth, delighted with the idea of occupying so fine a territory, bestowed on it the name of Vir

ginia, as a memorial that this happy discovery was made under a virgin queen. Here the first English colony in America was planted in the year 1585.

Twenty years after this first attempt to settle a colony in Virginia, not an Englishman was to be found in all the territory. The first permanent colony on the Virginian coast arrived in the year 1607, under a patent from King James.

LESSON NINETIETH.

The Happy Man.

I envy not the proud their wealth,
Their equipage and state;
Give me but innocence and health,
I ask not to be great.

I, in this sweet retirement, find
A joy unknown to kings,
For sceptres, to a virtuous mind,
Seem vain and empty things.

Great Cincinnatus, at his plough,
With brighter lustre shone,
Than guilty Cæsar e'er could show,
Though seated on a throne.

Tumultuous days and restless nights,
Ambition ever knows,

A stranger to the calm delights
Of study and repose.

Then, free from envy, care, and strife,
Keep me, ye powers divine!

And pleased, when ye demand my life,
May I that life resign!

LESSON NINETY-FIRST

Matrimonial Auction.

The Babylonians had a law, which was also followed by the Heneti, an Illyrian people, and by Herodotus thought to be one of their best, which ordained, that when girls were of a marriageable age, they were to repair at a time to a place where the young men likewise assembled. They were then sold by the public crier, who first disposed of the most beautiful one. When he had sold her, he put up others to sale, according to their degrees of beauty.

The rich Babylonians were emulous to carry off the finest women, who were sold to the highest bidders. But as the young men who were poor, could not aspire to have fine women, they were content to take the ugliest, with the money which was given with them; for when the crier had sold the handsomest, he ordered the ugliest of all the women to be brought, and inquired if any one was willing to take her with a small sum of money. Thus she became the wife of him who was most easily satisfied; and thus the finest women were sold, and from the money which they brought, small fortunes were given to the ugliest, and to those who had any bodily deformity.

A father could not marry his daughter as he pleased; nor was he who bought her allowed to take her home without giving security that he would marry her. But after the sale, if the parties were not agreeable to each other, the law enjoined that the purchase money should be restored. The inhabitants of any of their towns were permitted to buy wives at these auctions.

LESSON NINETY-SECOND.

Man and Woman.

Man is the rugged lofty pine,

That frowns on many a wave-beat shore,
Woman's the slender graceful vine,
Whose curling tendrils round it twine,
And deck its rough bark sweetly o'er.

Man is the rock whose towering crest
Nods o'er the mountain's barren side,
Woman 's the soft and mossy vest,
That loves to clasp its sterile breast,
And wreaths its brow in verdant pride.

Man is the cloud of coming storm,
Dark as the raven's murky plume;
Save where the sunbeam, light and warm,
Of woman's soul, and woman's form,
Gleams brightly o'er the gathering gloom.

Yes, lovely sex, to you 't is given,
To rule our hearts with angel sway,
Blend with each wo a blissful leaven,
Change earth into an embryo heaven,
And sweetly smile our cares away.

l'he great law of nature has implanted in every hunn breast, a disposition to love and revere those to w.om we have been taught from our earliest infancy to look up for every comfort, convenience, and pleasue in life. While we remain in a state of depend