It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a new era commences in human affairs. This era is distinguished by free representative governments, by entire religious iberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and an unconquerable spirit of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community, such as has been before altogether unknown and unheard of. America, America, our country, our own dear and native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune and by fate, with these great interests. If they fall, we fall with them; if they stand, it will be because we have upholden them.

Let us contémplate, then, this connexion, which binds the prosperity of others to our own; and let us manfully discharge all the duties which it imposes. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path. WASHINGTON is in the clear upper sky. stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumination, let us walk the course of life, and, at its close, devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent of us all, to the Divine Benignity.

These other

LESSON CXXXIII.

Education a Life-Business.-FRANCIS.

WHEN young men, and especially young ladies, have completed their course of instruction at the schools, how often do we hear it said, that they have finished their education! And it would really seem, as if this expression were understood to be literally and exactly true. But it is a great error. The whole process, if it has been well and wisely conducted, has only served to enable the young to go on with

the work of educating themselves, when they are released from the restraints of pupilage,-to put into their possession the means of purifying their taste, of correcting and settling their views, of cultivating the powers of reasoning and imagination, of strengthening and enlarging their habits of thought,-in short, of elevating and refining their whole mental and moral nature.

The education, which is gradually gathered amidst the realities of life, in the discharge of daily duties, and in the application of knowledge and principles to the obligations and wants of our situation, is one of an exalted kind, for which all the training of early days is but preparatory. Such an education, it is manifest, must be a life-business; it can never come to a close, while opportunities and means are possessed. I believe, we are not aware of the mischief, that may be and has been done to the young, by giving them the impression, that when the period of school discipline ceases, they have completed the cultivation of their minds, and their preparation for the engagements of life.

What must be the effect of such an impression, at a time when the passions are usually growing into full strength, and the reason is unpractised to separate good from evil,-when temptations, the most numerous and alluring, are crowding around the opening path of mature life,—when the dreams of hope have just taken a definite form, sufficient to be cherished with even more than the fondness of childhood,—and when the world beckons on the youthful adventurer, with all the solicitations of pleasure and ambition! Then, if ever, is the time not to stop the work of guarding and improving the mind and the principles, but to carry it on with more vigor and a keener sense of its importance.

Education finished! Why, we might as well talk of goodness, or wisdom, or religion being finished. Especially will this appear to be true, when we extend our views farther, and consider that the whole of life is but an education for eternity; that our existence here is but a state of pupilage, in which we are to acquire characters and habits that will rise with us from the grave, and be our joy or our shame hereafter. The mighty mind of a Newton was but in its childhood here on earth; for the successive stages of man's existence, are

designed to be so many successive stages of advancement and improvement. The education of the moral and intellectual agent begins in infancy, and goes on through subsequent degrees, till it is carried out and perfected in the upper world. At each portion of the grand progress, some error, or vice, or folly, may be dropped; and the soul may grow wiser, and stronger, and purer, as she travels on, till she becomes meet to receive the stainless spirit of light and truth, and acquires a full affinity for the heavenly wisdom of the better world.

LESSON CXXXIV.

Parrhasius.-WILLIS.

"Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, amongst those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man; and, when he had him at his house, put him to death with extreme torture and torment, the better, by his example, to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was then about to paint.”—Burton's Anat. of Mel.

THE golden light into the painter's room.
Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And, in the soft and dewy atmosphere,
Like forms and landscapes magical, they lay.
The walls were hung with armor, and about,
In the dim corners, stood the sculptured forms
Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away
Fell the grotesque, long shadows, full and true,
And, like a veil of filmy mellowness,
The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.

Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully

Upon his canvass.

There Prometheus lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus,
The vulture at his vitals, and the links

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;
And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows wild

Forth with its reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,

Were like the winged god's, breathing from his flight.

"Bring me the captive now!

My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift;
And I could paint the bow

Upon the bended heavens, around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.

"Ha! bind him on his back!

Look! as Prometheus in my picture here—
Quick-or he faints!-stand with the cordial near!
Now bend him to the rack!

Press down the poisoned links into his flesh!
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

"So-let him writhe! How long

Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!

How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

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'Pity' thee! So I do!

I pity the dumb victim at the altar;
But does the robed priest for his pity falter?
I'd rack thee, though I knew

A thousand lives were perishing in thine:
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

"Hereafter!' Ay, hereafter!

A whip to keep a coward to his track!
What gave Death ever from his kingdom back
To check the skeptic's laughter?

Come from the grave to-morrow, with that story,
And I may take some softer path to glory.

"No, no, old man; we die

E'en as the flowers, and we shall breathe away
Our life upon the chance wind, e'en as they :
Strain well thy fainting eye;

For, when that bloodshot quivering is o'er,
The light of heaven will never reach thee more.

"Yet there's a deathless name,—

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And, like a steadfast planet, mount and burn;
'And though its crown of flame

Consumed my brain to ashes as it won me,
By all the fiery stars! I'd pluck it on me.

"Ay, though it bid me rifle

My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst;
Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first;
Though it should bid me stifle

The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild;—

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All, I would do it all,

Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot;
Thrust foully in the earth to be forgot.

O heavens! but I appal

Your heart, old man! forgive-Ha! on your lives,
Let him not faint!-rack him till he revives!

"Vain, vain; give o'er! His eye

Glazes apace.

He does not feel you now

Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow.
Gods! if he do not die

But for one moment-one- -till I eclipse
Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!

Shivering! Hark! he mutters

Brokenly now-that was a difficult breath-
Another? Wilt thou never come, O Death?
Look! how his temple flutters!

Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!

He shudders-gasps-Jove help him-so-he's dead."