over a buried king and the chivalry of an empire. But on its farthest shore there was joy. A song of redemption was raised by Moses and the warrior thousands of Israel. The first loud stanzas rolled like thunder, or the sound of many waters, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. Then every image of sublimity and wonder was gathered up from the face of the seafrom the blast of the strong winds-from the ocean frozen into a wall of defence, then melted into a torrent of destruction—from the terror of the event on the dukes of Edom and the inhabitants of Palestine. The song of a nation dies away like a solemn echo upon the shore.But hark! the silver sound of timbrels strikes the ear, and a thousand daughters of Israel dance with graceful gestures on the sand, while with one sweet gush of harmony the response to the loud song of the warrior host rings along the ranks of loveliness-And Miram answered them, sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and the rider hath he thrown into the

sea.

Sinai was there-a terrible mountain on which Jehovah stood. Before its awful pyramid of flame and cloud stood the chosen tribes, brought thither, by God himself, borne as on eagle's wings. On the third day a thick cloud, like an impenetrable crown of darkness, capped the mountain; the thunder shook the rocks, and the lightnings blazed fearfully around; the sound of an unearthly trumpet swelled louder and louder, until heart and flesh and the inmost soul of man trembled under the strange and

searching roar. One man alone whose lofty forehead reflected back the quenchless flames ascends the mountain. The arms of the everlasting blackness inclose him round. The law was given. The mountain still was dreadful; the glory on its summit was like devouring fire. Here is a sublimity which earth cannot imitate-monarchy cannot ape-nor the time defying colors of genius and poetry paint. It is worthy of God.

Moses, the man of God, and the leader of Israel through forty years of sojourn in the shadow of a wilderness, came to the age of one hundred and twenty years with unwasted strength of body and undimmed lustre or eye. His last song is like that of a bird of Paradise, of a heavenly swan, whose dying strains breathe the soul of melody into the dull organs of death. He closes his song by a blessing upon each of the tribes-and the reader is surprised at the similarity of Joseph's blessing to that uttered by Jacob four hundred years before. To him, through Ephraim and Mannasseh, are again assigned the precious things of the heavens-the dew, and the deep, couching beneath-the sunny fruits, and the precious things lighted by the moon-the chief things of the ancient mountains, the precious things of the lasting hills. An untold glory still circles the head of him who was separated from his brethren. Horns of power are bequeathed him with which he is strangely to push the nations even to the world's end. Moses went to his God from Nebo-but never shall the grandeur of his character or of his poetry fade from the memory of man while time lasts or eternity treasures up the records of virtue.

What misty form comes up from the frosty bed of death, roused up in a monarch's evil day by a voice more potent than the incantations of witchcraft? It is Samuel. Pale and stiffened, with the drapery of the grave around him, his rayless eyes are fastened on a crown devoted to ruin. The tongue that ever uttered the truth in life speaks it solemnly in death. Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up from the grave's repose? *** tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me! Where? Saul, thy kingly form must trail the dust, and thy proud head lie low on Gilboa's mountain, when another sun shall look out again upon Palestine; and a better than thou shall pensively sing-how are the mighty fallen!

The long, dreamless sleep of the grave is grandly pictured by Job-or rather penciled with a sublimity of comparison which dries up the waters of the sea, and then points away to the departing heavens as the period of this dreary slumber-the end of death's dominion over humanity. As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and resteth not: till the heavens be no more they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.

In what composition of human authorship can there be found numbers as sweetly flowing or images as purely pastoral as those of David's :

The Lord is my Shepherd,

I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

But the task we have imposed upon ourselves of selecting specimens of biblical sublimity is a boundless one. The heart of the reader must gather, from the same sources whence we have drawn the few examples we have recorded, the full and inexhaustible materials for an emotion which shall expand its powers forever, and make it capacious of happiness. The book of Isaiah is an epic poem of unparalleled beauty, strength, and sublimity. If inspiration furnishes its awful subjects and lends the sound of its everlasting thunders, and the blackness of its eternal storms, genius furnishes the electric flash and illuminates the demonstrations of Omnipotent power; genius chastens the imagination that is glowing under the excitement of prophecy, and seeks the wide world over, and travels amidst the morning stars to find every image of natural grandeur with which to clothe the words and express the doings of God.

STONY POINT.

The scenery of the Hudson river hears nature's grandest imprint. The hand that framed an universe of worlds has thrown together along the banks of this noble stream a wild assemblage of rocks and mountains. The Palisades, as they are called, commence on the western side

stance.

of the Hudson, just above the Weehawk or Weehawken, and extend about twelve miles up the river. They are bold, abrupt demonstrations of omnipotence, moulded by Him whose power is not bounded by time or circumThe cannon of a thousand armies might roar out their ineffectual vengeance against this natural battery, which frowns over the broad bright stream at an elevation of from sixty to one hundred and fifty feet, and the parapet would laugh in scorn at the power of battle.

After the Palisades terminate, a country of hills and vales succeeds; the former rounded up like loaves of sugar, and the latter indented like dimples on the cheek of beauty. Occasionally, however, nature has projected into the stream one of her bold fronts- -a miniature formation of those hills of fear' which cast their sombre shadows across the pass of the highlands. One of these projections is Stony Point. It stands out in bold relief from the rural scenery just below, and challenges the attention of the passenger who has been relieved from the sublimity of the basaltic rocks of Palisades only to prepare him for a wilder development of nature's craniology. But the impressions which crowd into the spectator's mind in this region are not all derived from river, mountain, or valley,―tradition and history lend a melancholy glory to this revolutionary ground. On the right or eastern bank stretches away the celebrated ' neutral ground' throughout the entire extent of Westchester county, where regulars, cow-boys, Virginia horse, and continentals, whigs and tories, appeared and disappeared