ible, prayer should not surely be lightly rejected by those who contend that moral virtue is the summit of human perfection, nor should it be encumbered with such circumstances as must inevitably render it less easy and less frequent. It should be considered as the wings of the soul, and should be always ready, when a sudden impulse prompts her to spring up to God. We should not think it always necessary to be either in a church or in our closet, to express joy, love, desire, trust, reverence, or complacency, in the fervor of a silent ejaculation. Adoration, hope, and even a petition, may be conceived in a moment; and the desire of the heart may ascend, without words, to 'Him by whom our thoughts are known afar off." He, who considers himself as perpetually in the presence of the Almighty, need not fear that gratitude or homage can ever be ill timed, or that it is profane thus to worship in any ciscumstances that are not criminal.

There is no preservative from vice equal to this habitual and constant intercourse with God; neither does any thing equally alleviate distress, or heighten prosperity. In distress it sustains us with hope, and in prosperity it adds to every other enjoyment the delight of gratitude.

Let those, therefore, who have rejected religion, as they have given up incontestable advantages, try whether they cannot yet be recovered; let

them review the arguments by which their judgment has been determined, and see whether they compel the assent of reason; and let those who, upon this recollection, perceive that, though they have professed infidelity, they do indeed believe and tremble, no longer sacrifice happiness to folly, but pursue that wisdom 'whose ways are pleasantness and peace.'

ADDRESS TO LIGHT.

MILTON.

HAIL holy Light! offspring of Heaven, firstborn, Or of th' Eternal coeternal beam

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? before the sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes than to th' Orphean lyre
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,

Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare; thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more

Cease I to wander where the muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget
Those ther two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus prophets old;
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

ON SOCIAL AFFECTION.

DRAKE.

Suck, little wretch, whilst yet thy mother lives,
Suck the last drop her fainting bosom gives;
She dies, her tenderness outlasts her bre
And her fond love is provident in death.

WEBB.

THE exquisite and pathetic little picture of maternal tenderness exhibited in the motto of this sketch, is a lively proof of that intensity of feeling which binds our race in tenderness together. The same sweet sensations that glow through the closer ties of society, which pant in the bosom of the busband and the father, pervade likewise the whole mass of being; and, though weaker in proportion to the distance of propinquity, yet he cannot be called wretched, who receives or communicates the smallest portion of influence. From the impassioned feelings of the mother, to him who stands joyless on the verge of apathy, the tide of affection flows in a long devious course; clear, full, and vehement, it descends into the vale of life, where, after a short time, becoming tranquil and serene, it separates into many branches; and these, again dividing, wander in a thousand streams, dispensing, as they move along, the sweets of health and happiness. That no felicity exists independent of a susceptibility for these emotions, is a certain