DEATH OF WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ., OF VIENNA, N. Y. WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ., of Vienna, was among the first who joined the Methodist Episcopal Church in these parts, and has for a number of years filled the place of steward on Western circuit. Some time last spring he began to decline in health, but was able to do business until autumn, and was not confined to his room many weeks before his death. I often asked him, while he was able to ride out, whether he had any doubts of his acceptance with God, and always received an answer in the negative. As he drew nearer his end, his peace "flowed like a river." One day, after having finished all his temporal concerns, he said to a brother in the church, "I have had many happy meetings with my brethren, but this is the happiest day of my life;" intimating that be

had now nothing more to do than to die and enter into rest. Whenever he was asked the state of his mind, if he said nothing, he never failed to show, by a heavenly smile, that he understood the nature of the question, and that his soul was happy. Prayer to God and singing his praise were now his meat and drink. He often said that there was no cloud on his mind-that he had a clear sky-that he had not a doubt of future felicity. The day before his departure presented to us, who were present with him, one of those scenes which mortal language never described. After some time spent in prayer, he requested us to sing: we sung "Saints entering paradise," and, "On Jordan's stormy banks I stand," &c. His soul was full: he smiled--he looked up--heaven

beamed on his countenance; and he seemed to be preparing his pinions for the third heaven. A goodly number were present; all were moved; some wept aloud. My mind was never so sensibly struck with that passage of Dr. Young, "The chamber where the good man meets his fate," &c.

January 2, 1825, sabbath morning about daybreak, his happy soul took its flight, leaving the marks of its felicity on the clay tenement left behind; and leaving a widow and six children to mourn the loss of one of the best of husbands, and one of the best of fathers. J. BAKER.

POETRY.

From the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
AFAR IN THE DESERT. -A REVERIE.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent bush-boy alone by my side:-
When the ways of the world oppress the heart,
And I'm tired of its vanity, vileness, and art;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And the shadows of things that have long since
fled,

Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead-
Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon-
Day dreams that departed ere manhood's noon-
Attachments by fate or by falsehood reft-
Companions of early days lost or left-
And my native land! whose magical name
Thrills to my heart like electric flame:
The home of my childhood; the haunts of my
prime;

All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time
When the feelings were young, and the world

was new,

Like the fresh bowers of paradise opening to
view!-

All-all-now forsaken, forgotten, or gone-
And I a lone exile-remembered of none-
My high aims abandoned-and good acts undone
Aweary of all that is under the sun-

With that sadness of heart which no stranger
may scan,

I fly to the deserts afar from man.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent bush-boy alone by my side-
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and
strife;

And the proud man's frown, and the base man's
fear;

And the scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear; And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,

Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy-
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are
high,

And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh—
Oh, then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the desert alone to ride!

There is a rapture to vault on the champing steed,
And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand,
(The only law of the desert land ;)
But 'tis not the innocent to destroy,
For I hate the huntsman's savage joy.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent bush-boy alone by my side-
Away-away-from the dwellings of men,
By the wild deer's haunt, and the buffalo's glen;
By valleys remote, where the oribi plays;
Where the nhu, and gazelle, and the hartebeest

graze :

And the gemsbok and eland unhunted recline

By the skirts of grey forests o'ergrown with wild vine;

And the elephant browses at peace in his wood;
And the river-horse gambols unscared in the
flood;

And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will
In the vley, where the wild ass is drinking his
fill.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent bush-boy alone by my side--
O'er the brown Karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
In fields seldom freshened by moisture or rain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste;
And the vulture in circles wheels high overhead,
Greedy to scent and to gorge on the dead;
And the grisly wolf and the shrieking jackall
Howl for their prey at the evening fall;
And the fiend-like laugh of hyænas grim
Fearfully startles the twilight dim.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,

! With the silent bush-boy alone by my side-
Away-away-in the wilderness vast,
Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the restless Coranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan;
A region of emptiness, howling, and drear,
Which man hath abandoned through famine and

fear;

Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
And the bat flitting forth from his cleft in the
stone;

Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And the bitter melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the Salt lake's brink.
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with ozier'd sides:
Nor reedy pool, nor mossy fountain,
Nor rock, nor tree, nor misty mountain,
Are found-to refresh the wearied eye:
But the barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the black horizon round and round,
Without a living sight or sound,

Tell to the heart, in its pensive mood,
That this, at length-is solitude.

And here while the night winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Sinai's cave alone,
And feel as a moth in the Mighty Hand
That spread the heavens and heaved the land,--
A "still small voice" comes through the wild,
(Like a father consoling his fretful child,)
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear-
Saying "Man is distant but God is near.”
Interior of South Africa.

E.S.

Reva Sohn Hannah. Companion of the late Representative from the British. to the American General Conference.

Entered according to act of Congress the
N Bangs & I Emory of the State

- up in the ashes of ..

All this, and more that might be sam,

the way of virtue. We want not so much means of knowing what we ought to do, as wills to do that which we know. But yet all that knowledge which is separated from an inward acquaintance with virtue and goodness, is of a far different nature from that which ariseth out of a true living sense of them, which is the best discerner thereof, and by which alone we know the true perfection, sweetness, energy, and loveliness of them, and all that which can no more be known by a naked demonstration, than colours can be perceived of a blind man by any definition which he can hear of them.

And further, the clearest notions of truth that shine in the souls of the common sort of men, are extremely clouded if they be not accompanied with that answerable practice that might VOL. VIII. May, 1825.

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