importunate companion to one of their *magnificent temples, where he gladly consigned him to the instructions of the priesthood.

5. The emotion which the stranger had betrayed when he received the first idea of death, was yet slight in comparison with that which he experienced as soon as he gathered, from the discourses of the priests, some notions of immortality, and of the alternative of happiness or misery in a future state. But this agony of mind was exchanged for transport, when he learned that, by the performance of certain conditions before death, the state of happiness might be secured. His eagerness to learn the nature of these terms, excited the surprise and even the contempt of his sacred teachers. They advised him to remain satisfied, for the present, with the instructions he had received, and defer the remainder of the discussion till to-morrow. "How!" ex

claimed the novice, say ye not that death may come at any hour? May it not come this hour? And what if it should come, before I have performed these conditions? Oh! withhold not the excellent knowledge from me a single moment!”

6. The priests, suppressing a smile at his simplicity, proceeded to explain their theology to their attentive auditor. But who can describe the ecstasy of his happiness, when he was given to understand the required conditions were, generally, of easy and pleasant performance, and the occasional difficulties, which might attend them, would entirely cease with the short term of his earthly existence. "If, then, I understand you rightly," said he to his instructors, "this event which you call death, and which seems in itself strangely terrible, is most desirable and blissful. What a favor is this which is granted to me, in being sent to inhabit a planet in which I can die!"

7. The priests again exchanged smiles with each other; but their ridicule was wholly lost on the tenraptured stranger. When the first transports of his emotion had subsided, he began to reflect with more uneasiness on the time he had already lost since his arrival. "Alas! what have I been doing?" exclaimed he. "This gold which I have been collecting, tell me, reverend priests, will it avail me any thing. when the thirty or forty years are expired, which you say I

may possibly sojourn in your planet?" "Nay," replied the priests, "but verily you will find it of excellent use so long as you remain in it.” "A very little of it will suffice me," replied he; "for consider how soon this period will be past. What avails it what my condition may be for so short a season? I will betake myself from this hour, to the grand concerns of which you have so charitably informed me.'

8. Accordingly, from that period, continues the *legend, the stranger devoted himself to the performance of those conditions on which, he was told, his future welfare depended; but, in so doing, he had an opposition to encounter wholly unexpected, and for which he was at a loss even to account. By thus devoting his chief attention to his chief interests, he excited the surprise, the contempt, and even the enmity of most of the inhabitants of the city; and they rarely mentioned him but with a term of reproach, which has been variously rendered in all the modern languages.

9. Nothing could equal the stranger's surprise at this circumstance; as well as that of his fellow-citizens' appearing, generally, so extremely indifferent as they did, to their own interest. That they should have so little prudence and forethought, as to provide only for their *necessities and pleasures, for that short part of their existence in which they were to remain on this planet, he could but consider as the effect of disordered intellect; so that he even returned their incivilities to himself with affectionate *expostulation, accompanied by lively emotions of compassion and amazement.

10. If ever he was tempted for a moment to violate any of the conditions of his future happiness, he bewailed his own madness with *agonizing emotions; and to all the invitations he received from others to do any thing inconsistent with his real interest, he had but one answer "Oh," he would say, "I am to die; I am to die!"

LXXVII.-A PSALM OF LIFE.

FROM LONGfellow.

1. TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

2. Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

3. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

4. Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

5. In the world's broad field of battle,
In the +bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

6. Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act-act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead.

7. Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Foot-prints on the sands of time.

8. Foot-prints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn *main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

9. Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

LXXVIII.—THE DREAM OF CLARENCE.

FROM SHAKSPEARE.

CLARENCE, prisoner in the Tower of London.
Enter BRAKENBURY.

Brakenbury. WHY looks your grace so heavily to-day?
Clarence. O. I have passed a miserable night,
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
That, as I am a Christian, faithful man.
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days,
So full of dismal terror was the time.

Brak. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you tell me.

Clar. Methought that I had broken from the Tower,

And was embarked to cross to Burgundy;

And, in my company, my brother Gloster;
Who, from my cabin, tempted me to walk

Upon the thatches; whence we looked toward England,
And tcited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befallen us. As we paced along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O then, methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
+Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's sculls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 't were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death,
To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

Clar. Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood

Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smothered it within my panting bulk;
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony?

Clar. O no; my dream was lengthened after life!
O, then began the tempest of my soul!

I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferry-man which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick;
Who cried aloud, "What scourge for *perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"
And so he vanished.

Then came wandering by

A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud:
"Clarence is come! false, fleeting, perjured Clarence !
That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury:

Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!”
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
+Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I, trembling, waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.

Brak. No marvel, my lord, that it affrighted you;
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.

Clar. O Brakenbury, I have done those things,
That now give evidence against my soul,
For Edward's sake; and see how he requites me!
O God! if my deep prayers can not appease thee,
But thou wilt be tavenged on my misdeeds,
Yet fexecute thy wrath on me alone:

O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!
I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me;

My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

Brak. I will, my lord: God give your grace good rest! [CLARENCE reposes himself on a chair.

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,

Makes the night morning, and the noontide night.