4. Mechanics, servants, farmers, and so forth,
Are copy-paper, of inferior worth;

Less prized, more useful, for your desk +decreed;
Free to all pens, and prompt at every need.

5. The wretch, whom tavarice bids to pinch and spare,
Starve, cheat, and *pilfer, to enrich an heir,

Is coarse brown paper, such as peddlers choose
To wrap up wares which better men will use.

+

6. Take next the miser's contrast, who destroys
Health, fame, and fortune, in a round of joys.
Will any paper match him? Yes, throughout,
He's a true sinking-paper, past all doubt.

7. The retail politician's anxious thought

Deems this side always right, and that stark naught;
He foams with censure; with tapplause, he raves;
A dupe to rumors, and a tool of knaves;
He'll want no type, his weakness to proclaim,
While such a thing as foolscap has a name.

8. The hasty gentleman, whose blood runs high,
Who picks a quarrel, if you step *awry,
Who can't a jest, a hint, or look endure;
What is he? What? Touch-paper to be sure.

9. What are our poets, take them as they fall,

Good, bad, rich, poor, much read, not read at all?
Them and their works, in the same class you'll find;
They are the mere waste-paper of mankind.

10. Observe the maiden, innocently sweet;

She's fair white paper, an unsullied sheet;
On which the happy man, whom fate ordains,
May write his name, and take her for his pains.

11. One instance more, and only one, I'll bring; 'Tis the great man, who scorns a little thing; Whose thoughts, whose deeds, whose maxims are his own, Formed on the feelings of his heart alone. True, genuine, royal-paper, is his breast; Of all the kinds most precious, purest, best.

CXXXVIII.-INFLUENCE OF NATURAL SCENERY.

1. WHATEVER leads the mind *habitually to the Author of the universe; whatever mingles the voice of nature with the inspiration of the Gospel; whatever teaches us to see in all the changes of the world, the varied goodness of Him, in whom " we live, and move, and have our being," brings us nearer to the spirit of the Savior of mankind. But it is not only as encouraging a sincere devotion, that these reflections are favorable to Christianity; there is something, moreover, *peculiarly allied to its spirit in such observations of external

nature.

2. When our Savior prepared himself for his temptation, his agony, and death, he retired to the wilderness of Judea, to inhale, we may venture to believe, a holier spirit amid its solitary scenes, and to approach to a nearer *communion with his Father, amid the sublimest of his works. It is with similar feelings, and to worship the same Father, that the Christian is permitted to enter the temple of nature, and, by the spirit of his religion, there is a language infused into the objects which she presents, unknown to the worshiper of former times. To all, indeed, the same objects appear, the same sun shines, the same heavens are open; but to the Christian alone it is permitted to know the Author of these things; to see his spirit "move in the breeze, and blossom in the spring;" and to read, in the changes that occur in the material world, the varied expression of eternal love. It is from the influence of Christianity, accordingly, that the key has been given to the signs of nature. It was only when the spirit of God moved on the face of the deep, that order and beauty were seen in the world.

3. It is, accordingly, peculiarly well worthy of observation, that the beauty of nature, as felt in modern times, seems to have been almost unknown to the writers of antiquity. They described, occasionally, the scenes in which they dwelt; but, if we except Virgil, whose gentle mind seems to have anticipated, in this instance, the influence of the Gospel,— never with any deep feeling of their beauty. Then, as now, the citadel of Athens looked upon the evening sun, and her

temples flamed in his setting beam; but what Athenian writer ever described the matchless glories of the scene? Then, as now, the silvery clouds of the Ægean sea rolled round her ✦verdant isles, and sported in the azure vault of heaven; but what Grecian poet has been inspired by the sight?

4. The Italian lakes spread their waves beneath a cloudless sky, and all that is lovely in nature was gathered around them; yet, even Eustace tells us, that a few detached lines is all that is left in regard to them by the Roman poets. The Alps themselves,

"The palaces of nature, whose vast walls

Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned eternity in icy halls

Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls

The avalanche-the thunderbolt of snow,'

even these, the most glorious objects which the eye of man can behold, were regarded by the ancients with sentiments only of dismay or horror; as a barrier from hostile nations, or as the dwelling of barbarous tribes. The torch of religion had not then lightened the face of nature; they knew not the language which she spoke, nor felt that holy spirit, which, to the Christian, gives the sublimity of these scenes.

5. There is something, therefore, in religious reflections on the objects or the changes of nature, which is peculiarly fitting in a Christian teacher. No man will impress them on his heart without becoming happier and better, without feeling warmer gratitude for the beneficence of nature, and deeper thankfulness for the means of knowing the Author of this beneficence which revelation has afforded. "Behold the lilies of the field," says our Savior; "they toil not, neither do they spin yet, verily I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these." In these words, we perceive the deep sense which he entertained of the beauty even of the minutest works of nature. If the admiration of external objects is not directly made the object of his *precepts, it is not, on that account, the less allied to the spirit of religion; it springs from the revelation which he has made, and grows with the spirit which he inculcates.

6. The cultivation of this feeling, we may suppose, is

*purposely left to the human mind, that man may be induced to follow it from the charms which *novelty *confers; and the sentiments which it awakens are not expressly enjoined, that they may be enjoyed as the spontaneous growth of our own imagination. While they seem, however, to spring up unbidden in the mind, they are, in fact, produced by the spirit of religion; and those who imagine that they are not the fit subject of Christian instruction, are ignorant of the secret workings, and finer analogies, of the faith which they profess.

CXXXIX.-THE VOICE OF SPRING.
FROM MRS. HEMANS.

1. I COME, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o'er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the *primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I

pass.

2. I have breathed on the south, and the chestnut flowers
By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
And the ancient graves and the fallen +fanes,
Are veiled with wreaths on Italia's plains;
But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or of the tomb.

3. I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy north,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth,
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,

And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,

And the moss looks bright where my foot hath been.

4. I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay, in the starry time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
Where the dark fir-branch into †verdure breaks.

5. From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain,
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,

They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.

6. Come forth, O ye children of gladness! come!
Where the violets lie, may be now your home.
Ye of the rose-lip, and dew-bright eye,

And the bounding footstep, to meet me, fly!
With the lyre, and the *wreath, and the joyous +lay,
Come forth to the sunshine; I may not stay.

7. Away from the dwellings of care-worn men,
The waters are sparkling in grove and glen;
Away from the chamber and silent hearth,
The young leaves are dancing in breezy mirth;
Their light stems thrill to the wild-wood strains,
And youth is abroad in my green †domains.

8. But ye! ye are changed since ye met me last!
There is something bright from your features passed!
There is that come over your brow and eye

Which speaks of a world, where the flowers must die!
Ye smile! but your smile hath a dimness set;
O what have ye looked on, since last we met?

9. Ye are changed, ye are changed! and I see not here
All whom I saw in the vanished year:

There were graceful heads with their ringlets bright,
Which tossed in the breeze, with a play of light;
There were eyes, in whose glistening laughter lay
No faint remembrance of dull decay.

10. There were steps that flew o'er the cowslip's head,
As if for a banquet all earth were spread;

There were voices that rung through the sapphire sky,
And had not a sound of mortality!

Are they gone? Is their mirth from the mountains passed?
Ye have looked on death, since ye met me last!

11. I know whence the shadow comes o'er you now,
Ye have strewn the dust on the sunny brow!
Ye have given the lovely to earth's embrace,
She hath taken the fairest of beauty's race;
With their laughing eyes, and their *festal crown,
They have gone from among you, in silence, down!