A city terrible-but doomed Bowed-scathed--and struck with death-- With red volcanic breath ;-- Like swelling ocean-founts, The lava in its fearful sport Jerusalem-sublime in gloom With lighted mountains shone, Which burnt--and left her lone! But, as the blasted city fell Fate's wizard sisters wove their spell Unbroken-even now. 'Twas blood that sealed Judea's doom The cross had dug a nation's tomb- MAN OF PLEASURE. THE man of pleasure generally disregards religion and affects to despise it in others. This view of a subject so important arises from a cause less sincere than high spirited minds would willingly admit-it is the result, less of irreligious feelings or malice against the truth than of a paltry spirit of imitation. One of the first lessons taught in the schools of fashion, is, that religion is heavy, hypocritical, stupid, morose, and either from entire thoughtlessness, or a wish to cherish a view according to such teachings, a settled course of action is entered upon, which permits and even authorises constructive contempt of the pure principles of mental happiness. It is but strict justice to this large class of our fellow beings to believe them at heart of sounder principles than their exterior deportment implies. But, haply, over these reflections from the pen of a sincere friend to humanity no man or woman of pleasure may pause-and sigh to regain what has been lost in the vortex of a mis-named life of enjoyment. The balance of argument is in favor of one side of the question at issue, because almost every advocate for religion knows what the happiness of earth-born pleasure was as well as feels what heaven-born tranquility now is. The unripe youth who never trod the path of virtue long enough to have become a worshipper at its shrine, and never sincerely sought the tranquil pleasures that flow up from the wells of salvation before he became a dweller on the enchanted ground of worldliness, is incompetent to judge of christianity; while every christian can read his heart and sum the exact amount of its permanent happiness or despair, he cannot fathom the deeps of heavenly joy. Cultivated taste recoils from the undigested remarks which the worlding must of necessity make when religion is his theme; science disdains the inaccuracy which distinguishes such common-place observations on the hidden things of a divine philosophy; polished manners are put to the blush by the effrontery of supposing the mighty dead as well as the accomplished and intellectual millions of the living advocates of a happy christianity to be enthusiasts, idiots, or hypocrites ;-and christians themselves should ever avoid associating or identifying human infirmity, or intellectual weakness with the ennobling and heart-expanding emotion of religious happiness. The history of mind which belongs to the man of pleasure is a brief one; its outlines may be hastily given. The moral and innocently upright standard of action set up in early youth is first weakened by doubts, and then destroyed by adverse deeds. A life of pleasure cannot be sustained without the baseness of deception. It cannot be carried out to its full excess without alienating the heart towards temperate pleasure, and moral restraints. It is one of the distinctive characteristics of mind to seek with increasing avidity what it has partly attained. Thus one acquisition in knowledge arms the mind with an increased power and sharpened avidity for a second and more magnificent acquirement; and one trespass on human or moral rights sends the hungry mind to grasp for more with a miser's wretchedness. The christian moralist meets the argument raised in favor of worldly pleasure, from the usual cheerfulness of its devotees, with an assertion that this surface of apparently innocent hilarity, and the play of the spirits are deceptive, and do not indicate the real amount of solid enjoyment. It is like the playful, glassy sporting of a laughing sea, while just below, the tremendous contortions of a whirlpool, which fasten themselves to the flinty cliffs *11 a thousand fathoms down, are curling in angry vehemence for the gallant ship that shall dance over those too smooth waters. It would be a picture too dark for our pencil were we required to portray the hollowness of all which sin and uncontrolled passion promise, and all they dress up in the gorgeous colors of deception. Under the severe inspections of truth, whole armies of seemingly glorious beings would resemble the haggard multitudes that pour from the gates of a long beleaguered and famished city; famishing, indeed, for the lasting enjoyments of the heart, these thousands, under the pale light of torches, seek for food, on selfish and darkened and sterile plains. One picture drawn from life will be enough. A form beautiful enough for a seraph enters the mazy dance, and floats like a fragrant exhalation of grace and loveliness through the palpitating ranks of youthful fashion. The worship of this being is its own self; its enthusiastic and love-inspired eyes are lighted only by the glow of self admiration; it would, to increase its own perfection of beauty, throw a shade on all around-and, that it might breathe before a higher assembly the intoxicating airs of a more exquisite elysium of flattery, would spread a mortal paleness on every face around-a blight of deformity or death. Imagine one hundred of these beings in one of those halls where art excludes nature, and the ravishing tones of music seem to breathe oblivion to human woes, and a requiem to vindictive or selfish passions, and here see each being regarding itself as the star of intense admiration, and regarding every other only as a satellite to reflect its own transcendant lustre, and, otherwise, of no account in creation-and you have an idea of the true state of the world of pleasure. The shrewd man of pleasure is so well convinced of the justness of the estimate which christianity puts upon the devotees of earthly grandeur, that he places, if possible, less confidence in such grades of character than the christian does. Ask the Chesterfields of any age or country how much they believe in the thousands of warm and plausible pretensions of eternal friendship, which they hourly hear; the lip curled in scorn will give the answer. Enviable state of human being where the rich robes of splendor veil only aching bosoms-where kisses only betray-and volumes of honeyed phraseology are thrown out by treacherous tongues, and not believed by a single listener! But heavier charges rest against the man of pleasure than that he is unhappy and insincere. The worship of the God of this world is not without its thousands of victims offered up in the freshness of youth, and lost to honor, sincerity and eternal life. Were I to count the possessions of a professed man of pleasure, I would say the villa embowered with shrubbery, the willow and the, pride of India, is his-the rooms of state are his-the soft lascivious lute and harp and viol are his-the crimson curtains that blush around guilty scenes the imposing trappings of royality are too often his own. But he has other tenements. The slave ship, freighted deep with human woe, is his—the lazar house-the sepulchral hospital the low-vaulted prison-the house of infamythe storm invaded cottage, the wretched abode of groans and hopeless want-the house of the widow when her only |