The slow revolutions of years slowly added to its col lected energies and treasures; till, in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the form of living, commanding, irresistible eloquence. The world wonders at the manifestation, and says, "Strange, strange that it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, unprepared." But the truth is, there is no more a miracle in it, than there is in the towering of the pre-eminent forest-tree, or in the flowing of the mighty, and irresistible river, or in the wealth and waving of the boundless harvest.

THE OCEAN.-Byron.

Oh! that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted, can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be my ict.

2.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal

3.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin; his control. Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own; When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown

4.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals-
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator, the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war!

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

5.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee. Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

6.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

(Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime,

Dark heaving,) boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made! each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alɔne
7.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne like the bubbles, onward; from a boy,
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here

IMMORTALITY OF THE CHURCH.-Archbishop Spalding.

Amidst all this Babel-like confusion of dissent, an i this rapid tendency to dissolution among the sects, what of the Catholic Church? Is she waning in her fortunes, diminishing in her numbers, or losing her influence? Is her dissolution threatened? Is her vitality even imperilled? The answer rises instinctively to the lips of every candid man: she was never stronger, never more thoroughly alive, than she is at this very day. Her terrible conflicts of eighteen centuries-conflicts

which may continue for eighteen centuries more, should the world last so long-have left her more vigorous than ever. Her bishops were never before so numerous or devoted; her priests never more active or influential; her spirits never more buoyant; her face never more radiant. She sends her missionaries to the most remote confines of the earth and to the farthest off islands of the sea, with the same exuberant and hopeful zeal which marked the apostolic age; and her modern apostles still pant for, win, and wear the crown of martyrdom, with the same burning charity and the same abounding joy, as did their predecessors in the race of spiritual conquest in the halcyon days of her early history. In the often quoted language of Lord Macaulay :

2. "Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long duration is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon set foot on Britain--before the Frank had crossed the Rhine-when Grecian elo quence still flourished at Antioch-when idols were still worshipped in the Temple of Mecca. *** When we reflect on the tremendous assaults which she has survived, we find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish."

3. Yes; it is more than difficult, it is simply impossible that she should perish. He who said, "Heaven and earth may pass away, but My word shall not pass

away," bullt her securely upon a Rock, and He pledged His solemn word that "the gates of hell should not prevail against her." History shows the faithful fulfilment of this divine prophecy and promise. Its verdict was already foreshadowed in other prophetic words of the inspired Record: "And the rain fell, and the floods came, and they beat upon that House; AND IT FELL NOT, FOR IT WAS FOUNDED ON A ROCK." (See Matt. vii. 25.) This is the clue to the difficulty, the key of the position; with it all is clear, without it history were an inextricable labyrinth.

"Strong as the rock of the ocean, which stems

A thousand wild waves on the shore,"

she will stand unshaken amidst all the storms of the future, as she has nobly withstood all the storms of the past.

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE PAPACY.—Archbishop Spald ing.

Even from a human point of view, there is, perhaps, no more remarkable or magnificent spectacle in history than that presented by the long line of Roman Pontiffs. The golden chain of the succession stretches across the broad historic field, from St. Peter in the first century, to Pius IX. in the nineteenth; and not a link of it has been broken by the changes of time and the rude shocks of events, during more than eighteen centuries! Compared with this venerable line of bishops, the oldest ancestral and royal houses of Europe are but of