that beautiful island. A man in the Moon, may see Castle Island, the city of Boston, the ships in the harbor, the silver waters of our little Archipelago, all lying as it were at his feet. There you may be at once social and solitary; social, because you see the busy world before you, and solitary, because there is not a single creature on the island, except a few feeding cows, to disturb your repose.

I was there last summer, and was surveying the scene with my usual emotions, when my attention was attracted by the whirring wings of a little sparrow, whom, in walking, I had frightened from her nest. It may be necessary, perhaps, to tell some of the clerks in Washington-street, who, six months from the country, are apt to forget all the objects among which they were born and bred, that this bird always builds its nest on the ground. I have seen their nests in the middle of a corn-hill, curiously placed in the centre of the five green stalks, so that it was difficult, at hoeing time, to dress the hill without burying the nest. This sparrow had built her nest as usual on the ground, beneath a little tuft of grass, more rich and thick set than the rest of the herbage around it. I cast a careless glance at the nest, saw the soft down that lined its internal part, the four little speckled eggs which inclosed the parent's hope. I marked the cows that were feeding around it; and I came away without the least imagination that I should write a dissertation on the Bird's Nest in the Moon.

But our minds are strange things. That bird's nest has haunted me ever since. I could not but inquire why Providence, who inspires all animals with an unerring instinct, had not moved the foolish creature to build her habitation in a safer place. A multitude of huge animals were feeding around it, one tread of whose cloven feet would crush both bird and progeny into ruin. I could not but reflect on the precarious condition to which the creature had committed her most tender hopes. I was thinking how the interest of two beings, both created by the same high hand and supported by the same kind power, might cross each other, and neither of them know it, until the fatal moment when the feebler might be annihilated by the stronger power. A cow is seeking a bite of grass; she steps aside merely to gratify that idle appetite; she treads on the nest, and destroys the offspring of the defenceless bird. Thus, what is a trifle to one being is destruction to another.

Before I proceed any farther, I think proper to apprize the reader that I was in a right frame of mind to write a meditation on a broomstick; and, however much wits may sneer and critics condemn, I am determined to make something of my bird's nest.

As I came away from the island, I reflected that this bird's situation, in her humble defenceless nest, might be no unapt emblem of man in this precarious world of uncertainty and sorrow. We are impelled, by some of the tenderest instincts of our nature, to form the conjugal connection; the eye of some matchless beauty attracts our attention, and melts our hearts; we form the tender union, and we build our nest; committing to it the soft deposites of our gentlest affections. But where do we build this nest? Are we any wiser than the foolish bird? No-the nest is on the ground of terrestrial calamities, and a thousand invisible dangers are roving around. We are doubled in wedlock and multiplied in children, and stand but a broader mark for the cruel

arrows of death and destruction, which are shot from every side. What are diseases, in their countless forms, accidents by flood and fire, the seductions of temptation, and even half the human species themselves, but so many huge cows feeding around our nest, and ready, every moment, to crush our dearest hopes, with the most careless indifference, beneath their brutal tread? Sometimes, as we sit at home, we can see the calamity coming at a distance. We hear the breathing of the vast monster; we mark its wavering path-now looking towards us in a direct line-now capriciously turning for a moment aside. We see the swing of its dreadful horns, the savage rapacity of its brutal appetite; we behold it approaching nearer and nearer, and it passes by within a hair-breadth of our ruin, leaving us to the sad reflection that another and another are still behind. Poor bird! I feel no heart to condemn thy folly, but rather to weep over thy condition and my own. Our situations are exactly alike. Thy choicest comforts come entwined with pain; and no sooner is thy callow young developed, than thou feelest all the cares that distract a parent's heart. How often hast thou been driven from thy nest! How often hast thou fluttered thy wings in agony, and taken up the wail of sorrow, as if thy children were already lost. The careless step, so indifferent to another, was rapture or despair to thee.

A man must be a fool not to perceive that these remarks are written by a parent; and I am sure they are dictated by feelings, which none but a parent can understand. Well, then, let me tell the secret, and be as foolish as the best of them, since, in this hard age, none but a fool would have a feeling heart. The other evening I walked into the chamber where my children were sleeping. There was Nathan with the clothes half kicked down, his hands thrown carelessly over his head, tired with play, now resting in repose; there was little Sal with her balmy breath and her rosy cheeks, sleeping and looking like innocence itself. There was Lucy, who has just begun to prattle, and runs daily with tottering steps and lisping voice to ask her father to toss her into the air. [I solemnly wish, if these remarks are read by any youthful bachelor of forty, who boards and means to board all his days in Tremont House, that he would read not a syllable farther.] As I looked upon these sleeping innocents, I could not but regard them as so many little birds, which I must fold under my wing, and protect, if possible, in security in my nest. But when I thought of the huge cows that were feeding around them; the ugly hoofs that might crush them into ruin; in short, when I remembered the Bird's Nest in the Moon, I trembled and wept.

But why weep? Is there not a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow? It is very possible, that the nest which I saw was not in so precarious a condition as it appeared to be. Perhaps some providential instinct led the bird to build her fragile house in the ranker grass, which the kine never bite, and, of course, on which they would not be likely to tread; perhaps some kind impulse may guide that species so as not to tread even on a bird's nest. At any rate, chance might lead to an escape. I have never heard, and I despair now of ascertaining the important fact, that the nest I saw was actually crushed by the foot of a cow. Perhaps the joyful mother saw her young expand their wings, and inherit their paternal air; perhaps the progeny of those

very eggs are now singing in the groves around Boston. There is a merciful God, whose care and protection extend over all his works, who takes care of the sparrow's children and of mine.

I think I have read somewhere, that, if a man wishes to learn to pray, he must go to sea; but, with all due submission to the author of this wise remark, I think we should rather say-Let him be married and have a family of children. It is almost impossible to be an infidel with a little progeny rising round you. If Hume could have seen a little lisping girl, come and climb his knees and address him as a father-"Papa, who made all things?" he would have almost involuntarily answered-God. If a man wishes to learn to pray for protection during the night, let him go, as I have done, and see his children asleep, and remember the pestilence that walks in darkness. Let him experience the feelings of an anxious father, bending over the sleeping forms of his tender children, and conscious of the thousand dangers, seen and unseen, that hover around their defenceless heads. It was over her dear little sleeping infants,-if she had any,— I imagine, that Mrs. Barbauld penned the following beautiful remarks: If prayer were not enjoined to the perfection it would be permitted to the weakness of our nature. We should be betrayed into it, if we thought it sin; and pious ejaculations would escape our lips, though we were obliged to preface them with-God forgive me for praying!"

A family of children walking amidst a thousand dangers, and often escaping, is one of the most striking proofs of a particular Providence that ever met my mind. To talk about the general laws of nature, immutable and unbendible to the interposing will of the Deity! Away with such metaphysical trash; it is just fit for old bachelors to write. Until I had children, I never knew what the Scriptures meant, when they say that the very hairs of our head are all numbered. I was once standing in a public road, and saw a team of three yokes of oxen and a horse, moving very fast along the road without a driver. A little child was standing in the road directly before the wagon, with no time for escaping. The whole train of cattle passed directly over the child, throwing it down, and apparently crushing it into jelly. Every spectator thought it dead; its life was not worth a pin's fee; the anxious mother ran to rescue her offspring; but, alas, too late; and her piercing shrieks spoke her despair. But lo, when the little urchin was picked up, instead of being found a corpse, as was by all expected, its roguish smile seemed to say that it regarded the event as a good joke, which it would willingly see repeated. Every one of the beasts, though moving so rapidly, had contrived to shun the child; and this event, together with the Bird's Nest in the Moon, have convinced me, that verily there is a God, and that he governs the world by a particular providence.

I have often thought it was unfortunate that some of the great geniuses, who have undertaken to enlighten the world by their infidelity, were not married men. It would have done more to help them to digest the venom of their spleen, than all the long volumes of rejoinders which have been written by metaphysical theologians. For, to say nothing of the powerful smiles of a woman, when that woman is your wife, reflecting and beaming the very benevolence of a creating God, there are some things in a married life, which are enough

to overthrow the faith of the most stubborn infidel, that ever apportioned his incredulity to his ignorance. I myself was rather inclined to infidelity when I was first married. But the smiles of the honeymoon softened me, and I bought a Bible to lie in our parlor. When my wife first sent me after the doctor, at midnight, my faith began to waver; and I was absolutely staggered when I heard the new-born infant cry. As I looked on the little miracle, I was ashamed, and renounced my former faith; and every new prattler, that has risen around me, has made me a better Christian. I now actually read the Bible with my children, and we pray over it. I sometimes tell my former companions in infidelity, when they try to flout me out of my religion, that they are welcome to our old belief-to all its wisdom and all its comforts. They are old bachelors still.

And no wonder that such an unnatural life should lead to such an absurd faith. Hume was an old bachelor, and every page of his philosophy smells of his folly. Hobbs was an old bachelor, and so was Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Jeremy Bentham, and Tom Paine. I have always thought it a thousand pities, that Madamoiselle Curchod did not wind her chains more effectually around Gibbon's heart. I imagine that Cupid, the little god of love, might have expelled a great deal of Paganism, and perhaps infidelity, from the pages of his splendid history. Some, to be sure, will be infidels in the bosom of wedlock, as some would be fools in the very palaces of Solomon. But this is not the order of nature. Her virtuous instincts lead to truth.

In that beautiful dialogue which Plato has written, in which he describes the closing scene in the life of Socrates, Plato makes his master Socrates, in the course of the discussion, attempt to account for the existence of scepticism; and he traces it to the same cause as that which produces misanthropy. He thinks that men of rash judgements. and irritable tempers, when they have once confided in a character, superficially virtuous, and have found themselves deceived, pass a judgement on the whole species, and spend the rest of their lives in revenging their disappointment by railing at mankind. In like manner, he supposes, that when a hasty mind has been deceived by an apparent demonstration and afterwards discovers that the demonstration is false, it loses its confidence in all reasoning, and views all things in the universe as floating, like the waters of the Euripus, without order and without end. Such a man is των τε ὄντων τῆς ἀληθείας segein, deprived of the certainty of real existence, and imputes to reason the darkness of his own mind.

I have generally noticed that infidelity and misanthropy have an affinity for each other, and are often combined in the same heart. But how is a man to avoid misanthropy? No man ever became a misanthrope under the smiles of an affectionate wife, and surrounded by a family of ruddy children. These are tender chains, which connect us with the universe; they bind us in harmony with our species; they lead us to feel our need of a higher protector,--to see the glory and the goodness, and therefore to believe in the existence of God.

When a man is once on a wrong track, every step he takes only leads him so much farther out of the way. God, when he built the world, designed to pack men together in families; and it is the only

way in which you can throw the human species together, without impairing their principles and endangering their virtue. A man goes

into a splendid city, he becomes too licentious, or too lazy, or too proud to establish a family. He passes his time among the rubicund inmates of a fashionable boarding-house. He spends his evenings at the theatre or billiard-table. He rails at women, and hates children, because he only knows the vilest of the sex, and has never seen a child which was his own. His affections become warped, his heart is insulated; and, because he has lost his humanity, he has never found his religion. O how I should like, before such a fellow goes to his lonely grave, and his rotten carcass manures the ground, to throw into his narrow heart, one straw from my Bird's Nest in the Moon! G.

POETS AND PROPERTY.

NO. II.

In pursuing this subject, which is an interesting one to the lover of literature, I hope I shall be pardoned for dispensing with any exact chronological order. The facts are all that is necessary; and, if they are gathered together from different ages and countries, I cannot perceive why they are not as potent and indisputable, as if presented consecutively as to time. Poets have flourished in all centuries. St. Paul quoted them to the men of Athens; and touch where you will, on any country or period of history, and you will find the bard, the minstrel, the minnesinger, the trouvere, the improvisatore-the ever-living and influential genus vatum.

We may properly return to Greece for numerous cases of fortunate poets, and first, for that of the sublime and forcible Pindar. We see in him the popular and honored celebrator of the eminent Olympic games, in which the flower of the country, and even the monarchs themselves competed. His various poems, celebrating the Olympic. victors, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian, are familiar to every scholar. He was caressed in all his time, and lived, according to all that may be gathered from history respecting him, in the possession of much comfort and liberal fortune. It was given to his own eyes to see magnificent statues erected to his honor, and to experience, wherever he bent his footsteps, the plaudits of his countrymen. This was the destiny allotted to the son of an humble flute-player. His genius probably saved him from the profession of his father, a calling difficult to practice, and by no means lucrative. He chose the lyre, instead of the flute; otherwise his mind might have been wasted in the breath of music, and he might have passed his life, discoursing on a pipe, and governing its melodious ventages with his finger and thumb.

I may here be allowed to mention, what I accidentally omitted in the sketch of Homer,-namely, that no historical assertion, of oral authority, is more disputable than the alleged indigence of that great bard. The most plausible authority for such an allegation may be found in Ovid, whose imagination was as reckless as that of any ancient