influence, unseen, but daily felt, moulding and refining their young hearts, and preparing them for their future destiny. This was the father of Henry. He lived a life of ceaseless labor, yet a life of earnest, elevated piety. He was a dissenter from the established church, and consequently neither trammeled by its forms, nor restrained by his devotion to it as a part of the machinery of government. Yet he was in no sense a bigot. He condemned nothing that would bear the scrutiny of truth, merely because he found it in the company of error.

Perhaps no class of self-styled reformers really do so much injury to the cause they profess to espouse, as those who commence with a sweeping condemnation of all that are not professedly with them. There is much wisdom to be learned from the conduct of Christ, when his disciples informed him that they found one casting out devils in his name, and they forbade him because he followed not with them. The meek Teacher only informed them, that no one who would lightly esteem his name, could, through it, perform such miracles.

Mr. Vinton had carefully considered the foundation on which the christian system rested, and he knew that it was destined to overturn all man's selfishness, and to erect upon its ruins a kingdom of equality and brotherly love. So, when he saw the rich oppress the poor, or the poor envy the rich, he would pause and say, "I judge no man; but it is written, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.''

With such a teacher to investigate the foundation of all truth, what availed the time-honored dogmas of professors. He had made Henry his associate in the highest sense of the term he was his father. He had not simply imparted to him life, without teaching him the purpose for which it was given; but he had, from infancy up, taught him to investigate truth for himself.

To the Bible he had led him as the only pure fountain, and to its explanation he had brought no man's opinions. "Search for yourself, my son," he would say, "and take no man's judgment as the standard for your own. Pay due deference to the opinions of the wise, but remember that there is much truth that still remains to be searched out."

It was through such teaching as this, that the temptations of early youth had fallen so harmless at the feet of Henry, and his mind had exhibited the maturity of age. Now there was still another talisman. The memory of Alice seemed almost like a link between himself and the angels. As his character gradually expanded, the absorbing affections of his great heart were all centered upon her with an intensity that would have been fearful, had they not been, from the first, directed beyond the present state. He thought of her as all his own; but his, only as the angels might be, by a perfect sympathy in all their aims.

From the time of parting at Sir Arthur's, till the completion of his college course, he had not met her, nor had he thought it prudent to attempt to correspond with her, only through joint letters to her and her aunt; but each had been kept informed of the growth of the other's soul, and not a single link in the chain of perfect sympathy had been wanting. How proudly beat the heart of the fair girl, when, at the expiration of his college course, she learned that he had received the most distinguished honors, and it was predicted that he would one day take high rank in the department of letters. Then fluttered at her heart the hope that in this life even, there was bliss in store for her. She little realized then, the bitterness of the cup she was yet to press to her unresisting lips.

By appointment of aunt Anna, the three friends met once more at the conclusion of their college course - three noble manly forms, enshrining hearts great with the destiny of coming years.

George, the graceful, classic scholar, full of the poetry of life and thought; Robert, the somewhat stately, massive, statesman-like graduate, embodying even now the spirit of the future man, smooth, stern, and politic; Henry, the ardent, impulsive truth-seeker, reverencing God and humanity, but regarding old opinions as so much rubbish, serviceable only in decay, a sort of manure for the nourishment of a better growth. Such were the characters that, obedient to her affectionate solicitation, came again to greet the gentle-hearted "Aunt Anna," and to render back the gifts she had bestowed, enriched with the choicest thoughts of their college lives.

SONG OF THE STARS.

Selected.

W. C. BRYANT.

WHEN the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,

And the empty realms of darkness and death

Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath;
And orbs of beauty, and spheres of flame,
From the void abyss, by myriads came,
In the joy of youth, as they darted away,
Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rung;
And this was the song the bright ones sung:

"Away, away! through the wide, wide sky,-
The fair blue fields that before us lie,-
Each sun, with the worlds that round us roll,
Each planet, poised on her turning pole,
With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.

"For the source of glory uncovers his face,

And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides.
Lo, yonder the living splendors play;
Away, on our joyous path away!

"Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,

In the infinite azure, star after star,

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass!

How the verdure runs over each rolling mass!

And the path of the gentle winds is seen,

Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.

"And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,

How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower!

And the morn and the eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets, and shed their dews;

And, twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone, the night goes round!
"Away, away!-in our blossoming bowers,

In the soft air, wrapping these spheres of ours,
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, love is brooding, and life is born,
And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.

"Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres,
To weave the dance that measures the years.
Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent
To the farthest wall of the firmament,-
The boundless visible smile of Him,

To the vail of whose brow our lamps are dim."

EVEN human knowledge is permitted to approximate in some degree, and on certain occasions, to that of the Deity, its pure and primary source; and this assimilation is never more conspicuous, than when it converts evil into the means of producing its opposite good. What for instance appears at first sight to be so insurmountable a barrier to the intercourse of nations as the ocean; but science has converted it into the best and most expeditious means, by which they may supply their mutual wants, and carry on their most intimate communications. What so violent as steam? and so destructive as fire? What so uncertain as the wind? and so uncontrollable as the wave? Yet art has rendered these unmanageable things instrumental and subsidiary to the necessities, the comforts, and even the elegancies of life. What so hard, so cold, and so insensible as marble? Yet the sculpture can warm it into life, and bid it breathe an eternity of love. What so variable as color? so swift as light? or so empty as shade? Yet the pencil of a Raphael can give these fleeting things both a body and a soul; can confer upon them an imperishable vigor, a beauty that increases with age, and which must continue to captivate generations. In short, wisdom can draw expedient from obstacle, invention from difficulty, remedy from poison. In her hands, all things become beautiful by adaptment; subservient by their use; and salutary by their application.

THOUGHTS ON GENIUS.

Original.

IN In every human soul, exists the capacity for the perception of the beautiful; a passion that leaps up in exultant joy at the discovery of an object, delicate and harmonious in its structure. Yet all have not the power of giving graceful utterance to these emotions, so as to reproduce in others the sensations that thrill their own bosoms with a strange ecstacy.

There are those, however, to whom is given a power that seems capable of reproducing, and breathing the very breath of life into the beautiful forms received through this power into their own hearts. Their minds seem to have been illuminated with a light borrowed from the radiance of some higher sphere; and we involuntarily pause as we listen to the outpouring of their spirits, or stand entranced before the workmanship of their cunning fingers, and ask, in what far off realm we first listened to those tones, and looked upon those forms, that seem to have arisen at the command of the same primal Word that spake all things into existence.

Such is their power of bestowing the outward semblance of life upon every spiritual form which they conceive, that we are often led to inquire whether they have not borrowed a spark of divine fire from the altar continually burning before the central throne of the universe. This power, Genius alone bestows. The productions of those unendued with this mystery of life, are cold, dull forms of inanimate clay.

Yet all must have remarked the different grades of life which Genius bestows on its creations, a difference that the heart more readily than the head appreciates. In the creations that rise beneath the hand of some of her chosen artificers, we perceive only life in its lowliest forms. Following the great architect, Nature, some seem to bring forth only the cold gray rock; with others, we see their works exhibiting, as it were, only vegetable life-beautiful to the eye in form