had made him a better judge of the practicability of this exploit than I was. 14. Still, there was hope that he would relinquish this design as desperate. This hope was quickly at an end. He sprung, and his fore-legs touched the verge of the rock on which I stood. In spite of ve'hement exertions, however, the surface was too smooth and too hard to allow him to make good his hold. He fell, and a piercing cry, uttered below, showed that nothing had obstructed his descent to the bottom. C. B. BROWN. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN, the first American who chose literature as a profession, was born in Philadelphia on the 17th of January, 1771, and died the 22d of February, 1810. He was a gentle, unobtrusive enthusiast, who, though he resided principally in cities, passed a large portion of his life as a recluse. He lived in an ideal, and had little sympathy with the actual world. He had more genius than talent, and more imagination than fancy. His works, which were rapidly written, are incomplete, and deficient in method. Though he disregarded rules, and cared little for criticism, his style was clear and nervous, with little ornament, free of affectations, and indicated a singular sincerity and depth of feeling. "Wieland, or the Transformed," the first of a series of brilliant novels by which Brown gained his enduring reputation, was published in 1798. It is in all respects a remarkable book. Its plot, characters, and style are original and peculiar. The novel from which the above extract was taken is entitled, Edgar Huntley, the Memoirs of a Somnambulist." The scene is located near the forks of the Delaware, in Pennsylvania. Clithero, the sleep-walker, has become insane, and has fled into one of the wild mountain fastnesses of Norwalk Edgar Huntley, when endeavoring to discover his retreat, meets with the adventure described above. This description is written with a freedom, minuteness, and truthfulness to nature, that render it fearfully interesting and effective 66 40. NATURE'S TEACHINGS. 1. THE Seasons came and went, and went and came, THE To teach men gratitude; and as they pass'd, Gave warning of the lapse of time, that else Had stolen unheeded by. The gentle flowers 2. With arm in arm the forest rose on high, And, on the rugged mountain-brow exposed, Stood, lifting high his mighty arm, and still To courage in distress exhorted loud. The flocks, the herds, the birds, the streams, the breeze, 3. Mercy stood in the cloud, with eye that wept 4. In dreams and visions, sleep instructed much. A tongue, that ever said-Man! think of God! Think of thyself! think of eternity! Fear God, the thunders said; Fear God, the waves. Fear God, deep loudly answer'd back to deep. POLLOK. ROBERT POLLOK was born in 1799, in Renfrewshire, Scotland, where his father was a small farmer. After receiving the usual elementary education, he entered, at the age of nineteen, on a five years' course of study in the University of Glasgow. His ambitious and energetic poem, "Course of Time," appeared in the spring of 1827, and speedily obtained a popularity which it is not likely soon to lose. Its deeply religious character recommended it to serious persons; and it was admired by critics for the many flashes of original genius which light up the crude and unwieldy design, and atone for the narrow range of thought and knowledge, as well as for the stiff pomposity that pervades the diction. A few of its passages are strikingly and most poetically imaginative, and some are beautifully touching. Immediately after the publication of his poem, he was admitted as a preacher in the United Secession Church. He died of consump tion in September of the same year, before the age of thirty. TH 4 41. WORK. HERE is a perennial' nobleness, and even sacredness, in work.' Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish,' mean, is in communication with Nature: the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations which are truth. 2. Blessèd is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it! How, as a free flowing channel, dug and tōrn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows!-draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! 3. Labor is life; from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence, breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, "self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as work fitly begins. Knowledge! the knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly, thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic vor'ticēs," till we try it and fix it. Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone." 2 6 Per en' ni al, literally, through or beyond a year; hence, enduring; lasting perpetually.- Work (werk).—3 Måm' mon ish, relating to Mammon, the Syrian god of riches. The word here implies mercenary, or procured by means of money.—Truth (tröth).—5 Root. Hy pôth' e sis, a proposition or principle assumed for the purpose of argument; a supposition.- Logic vor' ti cès, intricate logical arguments. Vortices (vår' ti sez), whirlpools. 5 4. Older than all preached gospels' was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, for-ever-enduring gospel: work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active mcthod, a force for work;-and burns like a painfully smoldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent' facts around thee! What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable, obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder, there is thy eternal enemy: attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered. 5. But, above all, where thou findest ignorance, stupidity, brute-mindedness-attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The highest God, as I understand it, does audioly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear He, even He, with his unspoken voice, is fuller than any Sīnāi thunders, or syllabled speech of whirlwinds; for the SILENCE of deep eternities, of worlds from beyond the morning stars, does it aot speak to thee? The unborn ages; the old graves, with their long-moldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry-do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all space and all time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work. 6. All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true Gos' pel, good news, hence the four books which relate the history of the Saviour are called gospels; divine truth.- In e råd' i ca ble, that cannot be uprooted or destroyed.—3 Be nåf' i cent, doing good; abounding in acts of goodness; charitable. Im me thỏd' ic, having no method; without systematic arrangement, order, or regularity.- Ar' a ble, fit for tillage or plowing; plowed; productive.— Si' nå¿, a mountain of Arabia Petræa, famous in Scripture. Height above the sea, 7,497 feet. hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler' calculations, Newton' meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroism, martyrdoms-up to that agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not "worship," then I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. 66 7. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Com plain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow-workmen there, in God's eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving: sacred band of the immortals, cel stial body-guard of the empire of mind. Even in the weak hunan memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of Time! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind—as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, "WITH IT, MY SON, OR UPON IT!" Thou, too, shalt return home, in honor to thy far-distant home, in honor; doubt it not-if in the battle thou keep thy shield! Thou, in the eternities and deepest death-kingdoms, art not an alien;3 thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain. THOMAS CARLYLE. THOMAS CARLYLE, the eminent essayist, reviewer, and historian, was born at Middlebie, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1796. He received the rudiments of a classical education at a school in Annan, a town about sixty miles south of Edinburgh. At the University of Edinburgh, which he entered at the age of seventeen, he was distinguished for his attainments in mathematics. For some years after leaving the university, he supported himself by teaching, and writing for booksellers. He is the author of various works and translations-"Life of Schiller," ," "Sartor Resartus," 1836; "The French Revolution," a history in three volumes, 1837; "Chartism," 1839; "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays," from reviews and magazines, in 5 vols., 1839; "Hero Worship," a series of lectures, 1JOHN KEPLER, a distinguished mathematician, and astronomer, was born at Wiel, in Wirtemberg, on the 21st of December, 1571, and died November 5th, o. s., 1631.- ISAAC NEWTON, a celebrated mathematician and natural philosopher, was born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, on the 25th of December, 1642, o. s., and died the 20th March, 1727.- Alien (ål' yen), a foreigner who has not been naturalized; a stranger. Denizen (dên' e zn), a naturalized foreigner. |