should be improved, for we have a journey before us, and if we linger by the way, the time in which it is to be performed, will pass, and while we are yet unhoused, or unsheltered in the wilderness, the sun will set, and the shadows of night will fall upon us. Middle age is a time of action, and it is important to lay up knowledge and wisdom in youth, that we may act well and wisely in these after days. Old age is the evening, or the winter of life. It is dimmed with the shadows of coming night, or chilled by the frost of coming death. Yet it is not a period from which we should shrink, unless, indeed, we have wasted our time, and made no preparation against the season that is to follow. The following fable was written by Cowper, and the moral, or meaning of it, is this; let no person be envious or jealous of another. We know, indeed, that flowers never speak or quarrel, as they are represented to do in this fable; but it is a pleasant mode of showing the folly and wickedness of that strife which the meaner passions above alluded to, may create. WITHIN the garden's peaceful scene Appeared two lovely foes, Aspiring to the rank of queen, The lily and the rose, The rose soon redden'd into rage, And, swelling with disdain, LIFE, DEATH AND ETERNITY. A SHADOW moving by one's side, That is, yet is not, though descried. Like skies beneath the stream: A dark, inevitable night, A blank that will remain ; A gulf where pathway never led A thing we know not, yet we dread, — The vaulted void of purple sky That stretches from the dazzled eye, A day that comes without a noon - THE LEAF. Ir came with spring's soft sun and showers, It drank the same clear dews with them. But its companions pass'd away, The leaf now yielded to the blast, And on the rushing stream was cast. Far, far it glided to the sea, And whirled and eddied wearily, Till suddenly it sank to rest, And slumber'd in the ocean's breast. Thus passes like the leaves away, But soon we part, and one by one, |