THE STILLING OF THE WATERS.

BY JOSEPH L. CHESTER.

'Twas midnight on the waters, and there rode
A slender bark upon the swelling flood:
The moon and stars had vanished from the sky,
And tempest-nourished winds were hurrying by,
Bestowing in their wild and wayward wrath,
Sad, fearful desolation in their path.

The waves were tossed in mountains to the sky,
And danger banished sleep from every eye;
The thunder roared tempestuously loud,

And lightnings broke from out the surcharged cloud.
It was a time to fear, as tossed to heaven

The slender sails by furious winds were riven.
It was a time to fear, and those who stood
Upon the vessel, when they saw the flood
Come on in angry majesty, were bowed
In agony. The seamen wept aloud,
And lifted up their voices, tuned to grief,
TO HIM that was their Master and their Chief.
He heard not, for he lay in gentle sleep,
And heeded not the terrors of the deep;
He rested sweetly, and there dwelt a smile
Upon his holy lips that might beguile
The cares and sorrows of the world away;
He had been wearied by a toilsome day,
The rich dark locks were curled upon his brow,
The flush upon his cheek was deep'ning now-
He stirred, and whispered some delightful word-
'Twas like the music of a fairy bird-
And then a smile came on, as if a gleam
Of heaven might mingle with his midnight dream..
Might not the Saviour dream, and smile to see,
Although in vision, what his end would be ?
They came and woke him. As he ope'd his eyes,
There beamed a radiance, as if from the skies:
"Save, Lord, we perish!" was their fearful cry,
While glancing upwards to the angry sky,

It was enough: the Saviour gently rose,

And kindly bid his followers calm their woes.

'Peace, peace, be still!" The rolling waves were stayed,

The storms were over, and the winds allayed.

Peace, troubled soul! The Saviour bids thee rest,

And calm the tumult raging in thy breast;

Into thy heart let his sweet smile descend,

For he will be thy brother and thy friend!

GOD IN HISTORY.

THE ruins of kingdoms! The relics of mighty empires that were! The overthrow or decay of the master-works of man is, of all objects that enter the mind, the most afflicting. The highwrought perfection of beauty and art seems born but to perish; and decay is seen and felt to be an inherent law of their being. But such is the nature of man, that even while gazing upon the relics of unknown nations, which have survived all history, he forgets his own perishable nation in the spectacle of enduring greatness.

We know of no spectacle so well calculated to teach human humiliation, and convince us of the utter fragility of the proudest monuments of art, as the relics which remind us of vast populations that have passed from the earth, and the empires that have crumbled into ruins. We read upon the ruins of the past the fate of the present. We feel as if the cities of men were built on foundations beneath which the earthquake slept, and that we abide in the midst of the same doom which has already swallowed so much of the records of mortal magnificence. Under such emotions, we look on all human power as foundationless, and view the proudest nations of the present as covered only with the mass of their desolation.

The Assyrian empire was once alike the terror and wonder of the world, and Babylon was perhaps never surpassed in power and gorgeous magnificence. But where is there even a relic of Babylon now, save on the faithful pages of Holy Writ? The very place of its existence is a matter of uncertainty and dispute. Alas! that the measure of time should be doomed to oblivion; and that those who first divided the year into months, and invented the zodiac itself, should take so sparingly of immortality as to be, in the lapse of a few centuries, confounded with natural phenomena of mountain and valley.

Who can certainly show us the site of the tower that was "reared against heaven?" Who were the builders of the pyramids that have excited so much the astonishment of modern nations?

Where is Rome, the irresistible monarch of the east, the terror of the world? Where are the proud edifices of her glory, the fame of which has reached even to our time in classic vividness? Alas, she, too, has faded away in sins and vices. Time has swept his unsparing scythe over her glories, and shorn this prince of its towering diadems.

"Her lonely columns stand sublime,

Flinging their shadows from on high,
Like dials which the wizard Time
Hath raised, to count his ages by."

Throughout the range of our western wilds, down in Mexico, Yucatan, Bolivia, &c., travellers have been able to discover the most indisputable evidences of extinct races of men highly skilled in learning and the arts, of whom we have no earthly record, save the remains of their wonderful works which time has spared for our contemplation. On the very spot where forests rise in unbroken grandeur, and seem to have been explored only by their natural inhabitants, generation after generation has stood, has lived, has warred, grown old and passed away; and not only their names, but their nation, their language has perished, and utter oblivion has closed over their once populous abodes. Who shall unravel to us the magnificent ruins of Mexico, Yucatan, and Bolivia, over which hangs the sublimest mystery, and which seem to have been antiquities in the day of Pharaoh? Who were the builders of those gorgeous temples, obelisks, and palaces, now the ruins of a powerful and highly cultivated people, whose national existence was probably before that of Thebes or Rome, Carthage or Athens? Alas! there is none to tell the tale; all is conjecture, and our best information concerning them is derived only from uncertain analogy.

How forcibly do these wonderful revolutions, which overturn the master-works of man, and utterly dissolve his boasted knowledge, remind us that God is in them all! Wherever the eye is turned, to whatever quarter of the world the attention is directed, there lie the remains of more powerful, more advanced, and more highly skilled nations than ourselves, the almost obliterated records of the mighty past. How seemingly well-founded was the delusion, and indeed how current even now, that the discovery of Columbus first opened the way for a cultivated people in the "new world." And yet how great reason is there for the conclusion, that while the country of Ferdinand and Isabella was yet a stranger to the cultivated arts, America teemed with power and grandeur; with cities and temples, pyramids and mounds, in comparison with which the buildings of Spain bear not the slightest resemblance, and before which the relics of the old world are shorn of their grandeur!

All these great relics of still greater nations, should they not teach us a lesson of humiliation, confirming, as they do, the truth that God is in history which man cannot penetrate? If the historian tells us truly that a hundred thousand men, relieved every three months, were thirty years in erecting a single Egyptian pyramid, what conclusion may we not reasonably form of the antiquities of our own continent, which is almost by way of derision, one would suppose, styled the "new world?"

UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE.

"I have seen an end of all perfection."-BIBLE.

I'VE looked upon the sky serene, with its unsullied hue,
I've looked on this etherial vault, and loved its heavenly blue;
But soon, ah! soon, o'er this bright scene, a gath'ring gloom is spread,
And my sad heart, but now so gay, is filled with solemn dread.

I've seen the sun, proud king of day, careering in his might,
Smiling upon all nature fair, and beaming with delight;
But soon his gilded chariot wheels sink slowly down the west,
And a bright train of fleeting clouds attend him to his rest.

I've gazed upon the lofty oak-I loved its majesty—
The ivy twined about his trunk, in graceful modesty;
But sere and withered are its leaves, its branches have decayed-
The mighty monarch of the wood low in the dust is laid.

I've gazed upon the mountain bird, I've watched its airy flight-
I've heard the rushing of its wing, I've seen its eye of light-
The fowler shot! alas! 'tis dead-a cold and lifeless thing;
And is it thus ye fell, proud bird, bird of the lofty wing?

I've seen the gallant warrior press amidst the battle's rage,
Thirsting for glory and renown-a name on history's page!—
He charges on-the vict'ry 's his, the clarion swells the lay-
Alas! alas! he falls! he falls! as die the notes away.

And O! I've seen earth's fairest flower, the loveliest of the dell,
With a mind of spotless white, pure as the lily's bell;

I've seen this bright one pass away, as fading hues of even,

To her home of light beyond the skies, her resting-place in heaven.

And is it thus ye fade, Old Earth; thus, thus, thy glories fly?

The fairest thing upon thy face created thus to die?

Turn, weary one; let not thy thought to this poor world be given;
Nor let it ever be forgot-thy better home 's in heaven.

Boz well remarks that a cheerful woman may be of great assistance to her husband in business, by wearing a cheerful smile continually upon her countenance. A man's perplexities and gloominess are increased a hundred fold, when his "better half" moves about with a continual scowl upon her brow. A pleasant, cheerful wife, is a rainbow set in the sky, when her husband's mind is tossed with storms and tempests; but a dissatisfied wife, in the hour of trouble, is like one of those fiends who delight to torture lost spirits.

WESTERN PRAIRIES.

NOT the least remarkable features in the Great Western Valley are the Prairies, which are found in every direction over the face of its vast territory. They are of two kinds, the swelling or rolling, and the level or flat. The former consists of undulating fields, broken into swells or reaches of various lengths and breadths, extending sometimes to an altitude of sixty or seventy feet. Between these swells are sloughs, or sloos," which are generally marshy, and in many instances contain small lakes or pools, and some, which are dry, exhibit the appearance of funnels, and answer a similar purpose in carrying off water into the caverns beneath, the existence of which is indicated by the soil above. The flat prairies are plains of rich alluvion, grown with long lank grass, and occasionally presenting a lake, and often studded here and there with groves of the wild crab-apple, and clusters of forest trees, that look like emerald isles in a sea of waving green.

The Prairies are of various extent, from one mile to hundreds of miles. The largest are in the far-off West, the home of the buffalo and the red hunter. Wherever they are partly cultivated, as most of them are, in the "States," and where the annual fires are discontinued, they soon grow up with timber. The soil is, with very few exceptions, entirely alluvial, and yields immense crops of Indian corn and other coarse grain. When they exist in the neighborhood of settlements, they afford excellent pasturage for horses and cattle, and fine ranges for swine, and are traversed by herds of deer, the number of which increases near the plantations, when not in too close proximity, as their greatest enemies, the black and prairie wolves, decrease as cultivation advances. Wild turkeys, ducks, prairie fowls or grouse, and quails and rabbits, also abound on the prairies, and afford great amusement to sportsmen. Numerous other animals, as the gopher, the opossum, the racoon, etc., etc., are found in them, or on their borders.

The wayfarer over these wide savannahs will sometimes be startled by a sound as of hounds on the hunt, and anon a noble "buck of ten tines" will leap past him, followed by a pack of hungry wolves, yelping as they run in hot pursuit; but he will look in vain for the sportsmen of the field: he can but fancy that invisible hunters, "horsed on the viewless couriers of the air," are tracking their game, and urging the wild chase. Some theorists believe the Prairies to have been very anciently the beds of lakes or of the sea. This opinion finds arguments in the allnvious character of their soil, and in the marine shells, which