first death, for its causes are all engendered in the life of the body. Unlike the first, it is a death which all men do not die. Unlike the first, it is a death from which there is a way of escape. And yet there are more who are terrified with the first death, unimportant as it is, than there are who fear the second, though it includes every wo. And almost all men attempt to fly from the first, though they know it to be impossible; while few take pains to avoid the last, though it is within their ability to do so.

The first death, then, is invested with complete power over all men. It withers human strength, it respects not human authority. Rank is not exempt from it, art cannot elude, riches cannot bribe, eloquence cannot soften, nor But with that second and can even virtue overcome it.

far more dreadful death, it is not so. There are those over whom it hath no power. Any one may join their number. There is no mystery, no hardship, in the terms of the blessed exemption. All may read, all may comply with them. They arise from the nature of the second death. For as nothing but vice and disobedience towards God can affect the life of the spirit, and invest the second death with its power, so it is righteousness only, and the healthful fruits of religion, which can defy and render it powerless. "In the way of righteousness there is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death." So little is the first death considered, and so little account of it is made, in many parts of Scripture, that we are told, in some of its sublimest strains, that the believer in Jesus, the true Goodness carries with it Christian," shall never die." the eternal principles of life, deeply engrafted into its conIt is stitution; so that it cannot lose it, nor part with it. the good, the benevolent, the pious, and the pure, to whom life is promised; and on such "the second death has no power."

In the sight of men they die; and so far there is indeed But this but one event to the righteous and the wicked. is only the first, the corporeal death; and in all essential respects they live.

Posthumous Influence of the Wise and Good.—NORTON.,

THE relations between man and man cease not with life. The dead leave behind them their memory, their example, and the effects of their actions. Their influence stil! abides with us. Their names and characters dwell in our thoughts and hearts. We live and commune with them in their writings. We enjoy the benefit of their labours. Our institutions have been founded by them. We are surrounded by the works of the dead. Our knowledge and our arts are the fruit of their toil. Our minds have been formed by their instructions. We are most intimately connected with them by a thousand dependencies. Those whom we have loved in life are still objects of our deepest and holiest affections. Their power over us remains They are with us in our solitary walks; and their voices speak to our hearts in the silence of midnight. Their image is impressed upon our dearest recollections, and our most sacred hopes. They form an essential part of our treasure laid up in heaven. For, above all, we are sepa rated from them but for a little time. We are soon to be united with them. If we follow in the path of those we have loved, we too shall soon join the innumerable company of the spirits of just men made perfect. Our affections and our hopes are not buried in the dust, to which we commit the poor remains of mortality. The blessed retain their remembrance and their love for us in heaven; and we will cherish our remembrance and our love for them while on earth.

Creatures of imitation and sympathy as we are, we look around us for support and countenance even in our virtues. We recur for them, most securely, to the examples of the dead. There is a degree of insecurity and uncertainty about hving worth. The stamp has not yet been put upon it, which precludes all change, and seals it up as a just object of admiration for future times. There is no service which a man of commanding intellect can render his fellow creatures better than that of leaving behind him an unspotted example. If he do not confer upon them this benefit; if he leave a character dark with vices in the

in each of these great departments of nature have been arranged and assorted.

When we pass from the works of nature, in which all the delineations are perfectly accurate, and appear to be otherwise only from the imperfection of the eye which surveys them, to the institutions of man, in which the obscurity arises as well from the object itself, as from the organ by which it is contemplated, we must perceive the necessity of moderating still further our expectations and hopes from the efforts of human sagacity. Experience has instructed us, that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces, the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches. Questions daily occur, in the course of practice, which prove the obscurity that reigns over these subjects, and which puzzle the greatest adepts in political science.

Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other, adds a fresh embarrassment. The use of words is to express ideas. Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctively and exclusively appropriated to them. But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every com plex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas. Hence it must happen, that, however accurately objects may be discriminated in themselves, and however accurately the discrimination may be considered, the definition of them may be rendered inaccurate by the inaccuracy of the terms in which it is delivered. And this unavoidable inaccuracy must be gres ter or less, according to the complexity and novelty of the objects defined. When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated.

Here, then, are three sources of vague and incorrect definitions;-indistinctness of the object, imperfection of the organ of perception, inadequateness of the vehicle of ideas. Any one of these must produce a certain degree of obscurity. The convention, in delineating the boundary between the federal and state jurisdictions, must have experienced the full effect of them all.

Would it be wonderful if, under the pressure of all these difficulties, the convention should have been forced into some deviations from that artificial structure and regular symmetry, which an abstract view of the subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on a constitution planned in his closet or in his imagination? The real wonder is, that so many difficulties should have been surmounted; and surmounted with unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candour to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it the finger of that Almighty Hand, which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

· Reflections on the Battle of Lexington.-EDWARD EVERETT.

Ir was one of those great days, one of those elemental occasions in the world's affairs, when the people rise and act for themselves. Some organization and preparation had been made; but, from the nature of the case, with scarce any effect on the events of that day. It may be doubted, whether there was an efficient order given the whole day to any body of men as large as a regiment. It was the people, in their first capacity, as citizens and as freemen, starting from their beds at midnight, from their firesides, and their fields, to take their own cause into their own hands. Such a spectacle is the height of the moral sublime; when the want of every thing is fully made up by the spirit of the cause; and the soul within stands in place of discipline, organization, resources. In the prodigious

which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot, which must be forever dear to us, and our posterity. We wish, that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where the first great battle of the revolu tion was fought. We wish, that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish, that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish, that labor may look up here, and be proud, in the midst of its toil. We wish, that, in those days of disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come on us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hither, and be assured that the foundations of our national power still stand strong. We wish, that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedi cated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and glory of his country. Let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of morning gild it, and parting day linger and play upon its summit.

Albums and the Alps.-BUCKMINSTER.

You find, in some of the rudest passes in the Alps, homely inns, which public beneficence has erected for the convenience of the weary and benighted traveller. In most of these inns albums are kept to record the names of those, whose curiosity has led them into these regions of barrenness, and the album is not unfrequently the only book in the house. In the album of the Grand Chartreuse, Gray, on his way to Geneva, recorded his deathless name, and left that exquisite Latin ode, beginning, “O! tu severi