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THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD.-BINNEY.

If the reputation of the living were the only source from which the honor of our race is derived, the death of an eminent man would be a subject of immitigable grief. It is the lot of few to attain great distinction, before death has placed them above the distorting medium through which men are seen by their contemporaries. It is the lot of still fewer to attain it by qualities which exalt the character of our species. Envy denies the capacity of some, slander stigmatizes the principles of others, fashion gives an occasional currency to false pretensions, and the men by whom the age is hereafter to be known, are often too much in advance of it to be discernible by the common eye. All these causes combine to reduce the stock of living reputation as much below the real merits of the age, as it is below the proper dignity of man; and he who should wish to elevate his spirit by great examples of wisdom, of genius, and of patriotism, if he could not derive them from the illustrious dead, would have better reason than the son of Philip to weep at the limits which confined him. To part with the great and good from a world which thus wants them, and not to receive thereafter the refreshing influence of their purified and exalted fame, would be to make death almost the master of our virtue, as he appears to be of our perishable bodies.

The living and the dead are, however, but one family, and the moral and intellectual affluence of those who have gone before, remains to enrich their posterity. The great fountain of human character lies beyond the confines of life, where the passions cannot invade it. It is in that region, that among innumerable proofs of man's nothingness, are preserved the records of his immortal descent and destiny. It is there the spirits of all ages, after their sun is set, are gathered into one firmament, to shed their unquenchable light upon us. It is in the great assembly of the dead, that the philosopher and the patriot, who have passed from life, complete their benefaction to mankind, by becoming imperishible examples of virtue.

Beyond the circle of those private affections which cannot choose but shrink from the inroads of death, there is no grief then for the departure of the eminently good and wise. No tears but those of gratitude should fall into the graves of such as are gathered in honor to their forefathers. By their now unenvied virtues and talents, they have become a new posses

sion to their posterity, and when we commemorate them, and pay the debt which is their due, we increase and confirm our own inheritance.

FLOWERY STYLE.

SACRED LITERATURE.-GRIMKE'.

The traveler who stands at the well-spring of some mighty river, illustrious alike in the verse of the poet, and the roll of the historian, looks in imagination, down its "monarchy of waters," to contemplate all the variety of its fortunes, amid the wilderness of nature, and the habitations of man. He beholds in its course, the humble cottage of the peasant, and the splendid palace of opulence and rank; the rural scenery of field, and orchard, and meadow, or the garden of fashion, glittering with its "wilderness of lamps;" the hamlet or the village, "when unadorned adorned the most," and the ancient city, enriched by the treasures of every clime, embelished with the creations of every art, and glorious in its power, magnificence, and wealth. The astronomer lifts his eye from the narrow boundary of the visible horizon, and the diminutive forms which decorate the surface of the earth, to the heavens above, and gazes with the intelligence of philosophy, and the enthusiasm of poetry, on the serenity of its azure depths, on its wandering orbs, on the bickering flame of its comets, or the pure light of its host of stars. His soul expands and rises in its conceptions of the grandeur, wisdom, benevolence of God, and worships, in aspirations of praise and gratitude, at the mercyseat of the invisible Creator. As he contemplates the miracles of worlds innumerable, and of a boundless universe, his thoughts are exalted and purified, and he is filled with amazement, at the marvelous system of the visible universe, and with joy and gratitude at the eternal destiny, and still more glorious attributes of the human soul.

The traveler, when he looks on the river, arrayed in the sublime, the wonderful, the fair, in the works of nature and of art, beholds the image of classic literature. The astronomer who

views the heavens with the science which comprehends, and the taste which admires, contemplates in that glorious personification of the unseen God, the sublimity, beauty, and variety of sacred literature. Classic literature stands, like the statue of Prometheus, graceful in its beauty, majestic in its power. But sacred literature is the ever-living fire, that descends from heaven, instinct with life, immortal, universal. That is the mausoleum of departed nations, splendid yet desolate; and bearing an inscription written indeed, "in the kingly language of the mighty dead." This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven; its record is the book of life, spotless and eternal; its penmen are prophets, apostles, and martyrs; its ministering servants are cherubim and seraphim, the angel and the arch-angel.

THE POETICAL ASPECT OF VISIBLE NATURE.-MONTGOM

ERY.

"Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven!"

This is one of those rapturous apostrophes of the author of Childe Harold, which occasionally burst, in fine phrensy, from the impassioned poet, like oracles from the lips of the Pythoness; unconsciously uttered, and seeming, from their very boldness and obscurity, to convey more meaning than intelligible words could express. Had the noble bard been asked what he himself intended by this extraordinary phrase, to make it clear, might have cost him more labor in vain, than he was wont to expend, who seldom did labor in vain, (though he often did worse,) for he generally achieved what he attempted, whether it were good or evil. Without inquiring what prompted the idea to that wayward mind, which, in the context, is about consulting them as the rulers of human destinies,-there is a sense in which, I think, "the stars" may truly and intelligibly be styled "the poetry of heaven." How?-Not, certainly, on account of their visible splendor; for the gas-lamps of a single street of this metropolis outshine the whole hemisphere on the clearest winter-evening: nor on account of their beautiful configurations; for the devices chalked on the floor of a fashionable ball-room, to the mere animal eye, would be more captivating. It is from causes having affinity to mind, not matter,—to truth, not semblance,-that the stars may indeed be called the poetry of heaven. Among these may be mentioned the time

of their appearance, in the solitude, silence, and darkness of night; their motion, with one consent, from east to west, each kept in its place; so slow as not to be perceptible, except by comparison, at intervals, yet accomplishing an annual revolution of the heavens, by points actually gained on their apparent nocturnal journeys: again, by our knowledge that they have had existence from the foundation of the world, when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" by their use in the firmament,-being placed there "for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years" to man. "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?" said the Lord, speaking out of the whirlwind to Job: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons ?"-Here shines out, indeed, "the poetry of heaven;" and here we may hearken to the true "music of the spheres:"

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But in a peculiar, and, to myself at least, an intensely interesting view, the stars are "the poetry of heaven." mon with the sun and moon, they are the only unchanging and actual objects which all eyes that were ever opened to the light, and lifted to the sky, have seen precisely as we see them, and precisely as they shall be seen by posterity to the end of time. Rivers stray from their channels; mountains are shattered by earthquakes, undermined by waters, or worn by the stress of elements; forests disappear, and cities rise upon their place; cities, again, are tumbled into ruins; all the works of man perish like their framer; and on those of nature herself, throughout the habitable globe, is written Mutability. The entire aspect of the earth, whether waste or cultivated, peopled or solitary, is perpetually undergoing transformation. Shakspeare says, "No man ever bathed twice in the same river." It may as truly be said, though the process is slower, that no two generations dwelling successively on one spot, however marked its general features might be, ever beheld the same local objects, in the same color, shape, and character. The heavenly bodies alone appear to us the identical luminaries, in size, lustre, move

ment, and relative position, which they appeared to Adam and Eve in paradise, when,

"at their shady lodge arrived, both stood,

Both turned, and under open sky adored

The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven.
Which they beheld, the moon's resplendent globe,

And starry pole."

They appear to us the same as they did to Noah and his family,
when they descended from the ark into the silence of an un-
peopled world; and as they did to the builders of Babel, when
the latter projected a tower whose top should reach heaven.
They appear to us in the same battle-array as they were seen
by Deborah and Barak, when " the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera;" in the same sparkling constellations as they
were seen by the Psalmist, compelling him to exclaim," When
I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and
the stars which thou hast ordained, Lord! what is man that
thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest
him?" Once more,-and, Oh! how touching is the thought!
-the stars, the unchanging stars, appear to us with the same
placid magnificence as they were seen by the Redeemer of the
world, when, "having sent the multitude away, he went up into.
a mountain apart to pray; and when evening was come he was
there alone," and "continued all night in prayer to God."

"Cold mountains and the midnight air
Witnessed the fervor of his prayer;
The desert his temptations knew,
His conflict and his victory too."

The stars, then, have been the points where all that ever lived have met; the great, the small, the evil, and the good; the prince, the warrior, statesman, sage; the high, the low, the rich, the poor; the bond and the free; Jew, Greek, Scythian, and Barbarian every man that has looked up from the earth to the firmament, has met every other man among the stars, for all have seen them alike, which can be said of no other images in the visible universe! Hence, by a sympathy neither affected nor overstrained, we can at pleasure bring our spirits into nearer contact with any being that has existed, illustrious or obscure, in any age or country, by fixing our eyes-to name no other-on the evening or the morning star, which that individual must have beheld a hundred and a hundred times,

"In that same place of heaven where now it shines,"

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