Here the warm heart of youth

Was wooed to temperance and to truth;
Here hoary age was found,

By wisdom and by reverence crowned.
No great, but guilty fame

Here kindled pride, that should have kindled shame.
These chose the better, happier part,

That poured its sunlight o'er the heart,

That crowned their homes with peace and health,
And weighed Heaven's smile beyond earth's wealth;
Far from the thorny paths of strife

They stood, a living lesson to their race,

Rich in the charities of life,

Man in his strength, and woman in her grace; In purity and love their pilgrim road they trod, And, when they served their neighbor, felt they served their God."

LESSON CLXI.

Summer Noon.-WILCOX.

A SULTRY noon, not in the summer's prime,
When all is fresh with life, and youth, and bloom,
But near its close, when vegetation stops,
And fruits mature stand ripening in the sun,
Soothes and enervates, with its thousand charms,
Its images of silence and of rest,

The melancholy mind. The fields are still;
The husbandman has gone to his repast,
And, that partaken, on the coolest side
Of his abode, reclines in sweet repose.
Deep in the shaded stream the cattle stand,
The flocks beside the fence, with head's all prone,
And panting quick. The fields, for harvest ripe,
No breezes bend in smooth and graceful waves,
While with their motion, dim and bright by turns,

The sunshine seems to move; nor e'en a breath
Brushes along the surface with a shade

Fleeting and thin, like that of flying smoke.
The slender stalks their heavy, bended heads
Support, as motionless as oaks their tops.

O'er all the woods the topmost leaves are still; E'en the wild poplar leaves, that, pendent hung By stems elastic, quiver at a breath,

Rest in the general calm. The thistle down,
Seen high and thick, by gazing up beside
Some shading object, in a silver shower
Plumb down, and slower than the slowest snow,
Through all the sleepy atmosphere descends;
And where it lights, though on the steepest roof,
Or smallest spire of grass, remains unmoved.
White as a fleece, as dense, and as distinct
From the resplendent sky, a single cloud
On the soft bosom of the air becalmed,
Drops a lone shadow, as distinct and still,
On the bare plain, or sunny mountain's side;
Or in the polished mirror of the lake,
In which the deep reflected sky appears
A calm, sublime immensity below.

LESSON CLXII.

Summer Wind.-BRYANT.

It is a sultry day; the sun has drank
The dew that lay upon the morning grass;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the fir
And interrupted murmur of the bee,
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize

Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover drops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.
But far, in the fierce sunshine, tower the hills,
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds,
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven,—
Their bases on the mountains-their white tops
Shining in the far ether,-fire the air

With a reflected radiance, and make turn
The gazer's eye away.

For me, I lie
Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,
Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind
That still delays its coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?

O come, and breathe upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,
The pine is bending his proud top, and now,
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes !
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves!
The deep, distressful silence of the scene

Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds
And universal motion.

He is come,

Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings
Music of birds and rustling of young boughs,
And sound of swaying branches, and the voice
Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs
Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers,
By the road-side and the borders of the brook,
Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew
Were on them yet; and silver waters break
Into small waves, and sparkle as he comes.

LESSON CLXIII.

Fashionable Follies.-FLINT'S WESTERN REVIEW.

THERE are in the United States one hundred thousand young ladies, as Sir Ralph Abercrombie said of those of Scotland, "the prettiest lassies in a' the world," who know neitner to toil nor spin, who are yet clothed like the lilies of the valley,-who thrum the piano, and, a few of the more dainty, the harp,-who walk, as the Bible says, softly,-who have read romances, and some of them seen the interior of theatres,-who have been admired at the examination of their high school, who have wrought algebraic solutions on the black board,-who are, in short, the very roses of the garden, the attar of life,-who yet,-horresco referens,—can never expect to be married, or, if married, to live without -shall I speak, or forbear ?-putting their own lily hands to domestic drudgery.

We go into the interior villages of our recent wooden country. The fair one sits down to clink the wires of the piano. We see the fingers displayed on the keys, which, we are sure, never prepared a dinner, nor made a garment for her robustious brothers. We traverse the streets of our own city, and the wires of the piano are thrummed in our ears from every considerable house. In cities and villages, from one extremity of the Union to the other, wherever there is a good house, and the doors and windows betoken the presence of the mild months, the ringing of the piano wires is almost as universal a sound, as the domestic hum of life within.

We need not enter in person. Imagination sees the fair one, erect on her music stool, laced, and pinioned, and reduced to a questionable class of entomology, dinging at the wires, as though she could, in some way, hammer out of them music, amusement and a husband. Look at her taper and cream-colored fingers. Is she a utilitarian? Ask the fair one, when she has beaten all the music out of the keys, Pretty fair one, canst talk to thy old and sick father, so as to beguile him out of the headache and rheumatism? Canst

write a good and straight forward letter of business? Thou art a chemist, I remember, at the examination; canst compound, prepare, and afterwards boil, or bake, a good pudding? Canst make one of the hundred subordinate ornaments of thy fair person? In short, tell us thy use in existence, except to be contemplated, as a pretty picture? And how long will any one be amused with the view of a picture, after having surveyed it a dozen times, unless it have a mind, a heart, and, we may emphatically add, the perennial value of utility ?"

It is a sad and lamentable truth, after all the incessant din we have heard of the march of mind, and the interminable theories, inculcations and eulogies of education, that the present is an age of unbounded desire of display and notoriety, of exhaustless and unquenchably burning ambition; and not an age of calm, contented, ripe and useful knowledge, for the sacred privacy of the parlor. Display, notoriety, surface and splendor,-these are the first aims of the mothers; and can we expect that the daughters will drink into a better spirit? To play, sing, dress, glide down the dance, and get a husband, is the lesson; not to be qualified to render his home quiet, well-ordered and happy.

It is notorious, that there will soon be no intermediate class between those who toil and spin, and those whose claim to be ladies is founded on their being incapable of any value of utility. At present, we know of none, except the little army of martyrs, yclept school-mistresses, and the still smaller corps of editorial and active blue-stockings. If it should be my lot to transmigrate back to earth, in the form of a young man, my first homages in search of a wife would be paid to the thoughtful and pale-faced fair one, surrounded by her little, noisy, refractory subjects, drilling her soul to patience, and learning to drink of the cup of earthly discipline, and, more impressively than by a thousand sermons, tasting the bi terness of our probationary course, in teaching the young idea how to shoot. Except, as aforesaid, schoolmistresses an blues, we believe, that all other damsels, clearly within the purview of the term lady, estimate the clearness of their title precisely in the ratio of their useless

ness.