4.

5.

Anon,

The lightnings glared more fiercely, burning round
The glowing offing with unwonted stay,

As if they linger'd o'er the dark abyss,
And rais'd its vail of horror, but to show

Its wild and tortured face. And then, the winds
Held oft a momentary pause,

As spent with their own fury; but they came
Again with added power; with shriek and cry,
Almost unearthly, as if on their wings,
Pass'd by the spirit of the storm.

They heard,

Who rode the midnight mountain-wave; the voice
Of death was in that cry unearthly. Oft,
In the red battle had they seen him stride
The glowing deck, scattering his burning hail,
And breathing liquid flame, until the winds,
The very winds grew faint, and on the waves
Rested the columned smokes; but on that night
He came with tenfold terrors; with a power
That shook at once heaven, earth; his ministers
Of vengeance round him, the great wind, the sea,
The thunder, and the fatal flash! Alas!
Day dawn'd not on the mariner; ere morn,
The lightning lit the seaman to his grave,
And the fierce sea-dog feasted on the dead!

REGINALD HEBER, late Bishop of Calcutta, was born in 1783, and died suddenly at Trichinopoli, in 1826. Heber is truly a Christian poet, and a spirit of affectionate piety pervades all his writings.

1. LIFE bears us on, like the current of a mighty river. Our boat, at first, glides down the narrow channel, through the playful murmurings of the little brook, and the windings of its happy border. The trees shed their blossoms over our young heads; the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to our hands; we are happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; but the stream hurries us on, and still our hands are empty.

2. Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, and amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated by the moving picture of enjoyment and industry which passes before us; we are excited by some short-lived success, or depressed and made miserable by some equally short-lived disappointment. But our energy and our dependence are both in vain. The stream bears us on, and our joys and our griefs are alike left behind us; we may be shipwrecked, but we can not anchor; our voyage may be hastened, but it can not be delayed; whether rough or smooth, the river hastens toward its home, till the roaring of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of the waves is beneath our heel, and the land lessens from our eyes, and the floods are lifted up around us, and we take our last leave of the earth, and its inhabitants; and of our further voyage there is no witness but the Infinite and Eternal.

3. And do we still take so much anxious thought for future days, when the days which have gone by have so strangely and so uniformly deceived us? Can we still so set our hearts on the creatures of God, when we find, by sad experience, that the Creator only is permanent? Or shall we not rather lay aside every weight, and every sin which doth most easily beset us, and think ourselves henceforth as wayfaring persons only, who have no abiding inheritance but in the hope of a better world, and to whom even that world would be worse than hopeless, if it were not for our Lord Jesus Christ, and the interest we have obtained in his mercies?

CHARLES SPRAGUE was born in Boston in 1791, and was a son of one of the veterans of the Boston Tea-tax Memory. In his leisure moments he has written some admirable poems, among which are Curiosity, Shakspeare Ode, Centennial Ode, The Winged Worshipers, The Family Meeting, etc.

We are all here!
Father, mother,

Sister, brother,

All who hold each other dear.

Each chair is fill'd: we're all at home`:

Even they, the dead-though dead", so dear, Fond Memory, to her duty true,

Brings back their faded forms to view.
How life-like through the mist of years,
Each well-remember'd face appears!
We see them as in times long past,
From each to each kind looks are cast;
We hear their words, their smiles behold,
They're round us, as they were of old-
We are all here.

COLISEUM; (pro. Col-i-se/-um,) the ruins of an ancient building at Rome.

1. On the eighth of November, from the highland, about fourteen miles distant, I first saw Rome`; and although there is something very unfavorable to impression in the expectation that you are to be greatly impressed, or that you ought to be, or that such is the fashion; yet Rome is too mighty a name to be withstood by such or any other influences. Let you come upon that hill in what mood you may`, the scene will lay hold upon you as with the hand of a giant. I scarcely know how to describe the impression, but it seemed to me, as if something strong and stately, like the slow and majestic march of a mighty whirlwind, swept around those eternal towers; the storms of time, that had prostrated the proudest monuments of the world', seemed to have left their vibrations in the still and solemn air; ages of history passed before me; the mighty procession of nations`, kings`, consuls`, emperors, empires`, and generations, had passed over that sublime theater. The fire, the storm, the earthquake, had gone by; but there was yet left the still small voice like that, at which the prophet "wrapped his face in his mantle."

2. I went to see the Coliseum by moonlight. It is the monarch, the majesty of all ruins; there is nothing like it. All the associations of the place, too, give it the most impressive character. When you enter within this stupendous circle of ruinous walls and arches, and grand terraces of masonry, rising one above another, you stand upon the arena of the old gladiatorial combats and Christian martyrdom`; and as you lift your eyes to the vast amphitheater, you meet, in imagination, the eyes of a hundred thousand Romans, assembled to witness these bloody spectacles. What a multitude and mighty array of human beings; and how little do we know in modern times of great assemblies! One, two, and three, and at its last enlargement by Constantine, more than three hundred thousand persons could be seated in the Circus Maximus!

3. But to return to the Coliseum`; we went up under the conduct of a guide, upon the walls and terraces, or embankments which supported the ranges of seats. The seats have long since disappeared`; and grass overgrows the spots where the pride, and power, and wealth, and beauty of Rome sat down to its barbarous entertainments. What thronging life was here then! What voices, what greetings, what hurrying footsteps upon the staircases of the eighty acres of entrance! and now, as we picked our way carefully through the decayed passages, or cautiously ascended some moldering flight of steps, or stood by the lonely walls-ourselves silent, and, for a wonder, the guide silent, too—there was no sound here but of the bat, and none came from without, but the roll of a distant carriage or the convent bell from the summit of the neighboring Esquiline.

4. It is scarcely possible to describe the effect of moonlight upon this ruin. Through a hundred lonely arches, and blackened passage-ways, it streamed in, pure, bright, soft, lambent, and yet distinct and clear, as if it came there at once to reveal, and cheer, and pity the mighty desolation. But if the Coliseum is a mournful and desolate spectacle as seen from within-without, and especially on the side which is in best preservation, it is glorious. We passed around it; and, as we looked upward, the moon shining through its appeared as if it were the

arches, from the opposite side, it coronet of the heavens, so vast was it-or like a glorious crown upon the brow of night.

5. I feel that I do not and can not describe this mighty ruin. I can only say that I came away paralyzed, and as passive as a child. A soldier stretched out his hand for "un dono," as we passed the guard; and when my companion said I did wrong to give, I told him that I should have given my cloak, if the man had asked it. Would you break any spell that worldly feeling or selfish sorrow may have spreadover your mind, go and see the Coliseum by moonlight.