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For, not unmark'd in Heaven's impartial plan,
Shall man, proud worm, contemn his fellow-man!
For you, whose temper'd ardor long has borne
Untired the labor, and unmoved the scorn;
In Virtue's fasti be inscribed your fame,
And utter'd yours with Howard's honor'd name;
Friends of the friendless-Hail, ye generous band!
Whose efforts yet arrest Heaven's lifted hand,
Around whose steady brows, in union bright,
The civic wreath and Christian's palm unite:
Your merit stands, no greater and no less,
Without, or with the varnish of success:
But seek no more to break a nation's fall,
For ye have saved yourselves-and that is all.
Succeeding times your struggles, and their fate,
With mingled shame and triumph shall relate;
While faithful History, in her various page,
Marking the features of this motley age,
To shed a glory, and to fix a stain,

Tells how you strove, and that you strove in vain.

YE ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH.

Salt of the earth, ye virtuous few,
Who season human-kind;

Light of the world, whose cheering ray
Illumes the realms of mind:

Where Misery spreads her deepest shade,
Your strong compassion glows:
From your blest lips the balm distils,
That softens mortal woes.

By dying beds, in prison glooms,
Your frequent steps are found;
Angels of love! you hover near,
To bind the stranger's wound.

You wash with tears the bloody page
Which human crimes deform:

When vengeance threats, your prayers ascend,
And break the gathering storm.

As down the summer stream of vice
The thoughtless many glide;
Upward you steer your steady bark,
And stem the rushing tide.

Where guilt her foul contagion breathes,
And golden spoils allure;
Unspotted still your garments shine-

Your hands are ever pure.

Whene'er you touch the poet's lyre,
A loftier strain is heard;

Each ardent thought is yours alone,
And every burning word.

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Yours is the large expansive thought,

The high heroic deed;

Exile and chains to you are dear

To you 'tis sweet to bleed.

You lift on high the warning voice,
When public ills prevail;
Yours is the writing on the wall
That turns the tyrant pale.

And yours is all through History's rolls
The kindling bosom feels;

And at your tomb, with throbbing heart,
The fond enthusiast kneels.

In every faith, through every clime,
Your pilgrim steps we trace;

And shrines are dress'd, and temples rise,
Each hallow'd spot to grace;

And pans loud, in every tongue,
And choral hymns resound;

And lengthening honors hand your name
To time's remotest bound.

Proceed! your race of glory run,
Your virtuous toils endure!

You come, commission'd from on high,
And your reward is sure.

REGINALD HEBER, 1783-1826.

REGINALD HEBER, the son of the Rev. Reginald Heber, was born at Malpas, in Cheshire, on the 21st of April, 1783. His youth was distinguished by a precocity of talent, docility of temper, a love of reading, and a veneration for religion. The eagerness, indeed, with which he read the Bible in his early years, and the accuracy with which he remembered it, were quite remarkable. After completing the usual course of elementary instruction, he entered the University of Oxford in 1800. In the first year he gained the university prize for Latin verse, and in 1803 he wrote his poem of "Palestine," which was received with distinguished applause. His academical career was brilliant from its commencement to its close. After taking his degree, and gaining the university prize for the best He returned the English prose essay, he set out, in 1805, on a continental tour. following year, and in 1807 "took orders," and was settled in Hodnet, in Shrop

"Such a poem, composed at such an age, has indeed some, but not many, parallels in our language. Its copious diction, its perfect numbers, its images so well chosen, diversified so happily, and treated with so much discretion and good taste, and, above all, the ample know. ledge of Scripture and of writings illustrative of Scripture displayed in it-all these things might have seemed to bespeak the work of a man who had been long choosing and begun late,' rather than of a stripling of nineteen."-Quarterly Review, xxxv. 451

HEBER.

shire, where for many years he discharged the duties of his large parish with the 181 most exemplary assiduity.'

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In 1809 he married, and in the same year published a series of hymns, "appropriate for Sundays and principal holidays of the year." In 1812, he commenced "Dictionary of the Bible," and published a volume of "Poems and Translations," the translations being chiefly from Pindar. After being advanced to two or three ecclesiastical preferments, in 1822 he received the offer of the bishopric of Calcutta, made vacant by the death of Dr. Middleton. Never, it is believed, did any man accept an office from a higher sense of duty. He was in the possession of affluence-had the fairest prospects before him-and had recently built at Hodnet a parsonage-house, combining every comfort with elegance and beauty. But his exalted piety considered this call as a call from Heaven, from which he might not shrink, and he resolutely determined to obey the summons. Accordingly, in 1823, he embarked for India, where he arrived in safety, "with a field before him that might challenge the labors of an apostle, and, we will venture to say, with as much of the spirit of an apostle in him as has rested on any man in these latter days." Indeed, he was peculiarly well qualified to fill this high and responsible station, as well by his amiable and conciliatory temper as by his talents, learning, and zeal in the cause of Christianity. He entered with great earnestness upon his duties, and had already made many long journeys through his extensive field of labor, when he was suddenly cut off by an apoplectic fit, which seized him while bathing, at Tritchinopoli, on the 3d of April, 1826.

Besides the works of Bishop Heber already mentioned, there was published, after his death, "Parish Sermons at Hodnet," in two volumes, and a "Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay," in two volumes. A number of his sermons, and charges to his diocese, were published during his life; and from these we select the following, from a sermon delivered at the consecration of a church near Benares, upon

NATIONS RESPONSIBLE TO GOD.

If the Israelites were endowed, beyond the nations of mankind, with wise and righteous laws, with a fertile and almost impregnable territory, with a race of valiant and victorious kings, and a God who (while they kept his ways) was a wall of fire against their enemies round about them; if the kings of the wilderness did them homage, and the lion-banner of David and Solomon was reflected at once from the Mediterranean and the Euphrates-it was that the way of the Lord might be made known by their means upon earth, and that the saving health of the Messiah might become conspicuous to all nations.

1"While incumbent of Hodnet, Heber had an opportunity of affording the world an illustrious example of the highest intellectual culture and the finest natural taste being made perfectly compatible with the most faithful discharge of the humblest religious and moral duties the instruction of the ignorant, the reproof of the erring, the visitation of the sick, and the consolation of the bereaved; and, in his leisure moments, he there also took delight in pouring out his feelings in snatches of sacred verse."-D. M. MOIR.

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It has pleased the Almighty that the nation to which we ourselves belong is a great, a valiant, and an understanding nation; it has pleased Him to give us an empire on which the sun never sets-a commerce by which the remotest nations of the earth are become our allies, our tributaries, I had almost said our neighbors; and by means (when regarded as human means, and distinct from his mysterious providence) so inadequate, as to excite our alarm as well as wonder the sovereignty over these wide and populous heathen lands. But is it for our sakes that he has given us these good gifts, Are we not rather and wrought these great marvels in our favor?

set up on high in the earth, that we may show forth the light by which we are guided, and be the honored instruments of diffusing those blessings which we ourselves enjoy, through every land where our will is law, through every tribe where our wisdom is held in reverence, and in every distant isle which our winged vessels visit? If we value, then, (as who does not value?) our renown among mankind; if we exult (as who can help exulting?) in the privileges which the providence of God has conferred on the British nation; if we are thankful (and God forbid we should be otherwise) for the means of usefulness in our power; and if we love (as who does not love?) our native land, its greatness and prosperity, let us see that we, each of us in his station, are promoting to the best of our power, by example, by exertion, by liberality, by the practice of Christian justice and every virtue, the extension of God's truth among men, and the honor of that holy name whereby we are called. There have been realms before as famous as our own, and (in relation to the then extent and riches of the civilized world) as powerful and as wealthy, of which the traveller sees nothing now but ruins in the midst of a wilderness, or where the mariner only Nineveh once reigned finds a rock for fishers to spread their nets. over the east; but where is Nineveh now? Tyre had once the commerce of the world; but what is become of Tyre? But if the repentance of Nineveh had been persevered in, her towers would have stood to this day. Had the daughter of Tyre brought her gifts to the temple of God, she would have continued a queen

ever.

for

THE STREAM OF LIFE.

grassy

Our boat at

Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. first glides down the narrow channel, through the playful murmurborder. The ing of the little brook and the winding of its trees shed their blossoms over our young heads, the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to our young hands; we are happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly at the beauties around us-but the stream hurries on, and still our hands are empty.

Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated by the moving picture of enjoyment and industry passing before us; we are excited by some short-lived disappointment. The stream bears us on, and our joys and our griefs are alike left behind us. We may be shipwrecked, but we cannot be delayed; whether rough or smooth, the river hastens toward its home, till the roar of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of its waves is beneath our feet, and the land lessens from our eyes, and the floods are lifted up around us, and we take our leave of earth and its inhabitants, until of our farther voyage there is no witness save the Infinite and Eternal.

The poems of Bishop Heber are distinguished as chaste, pleasing, and elegant compositions, and there are passages in his "Palestine" which pass from the magnificent almost into the sublime. But his "Hymns" have been by far the most popular of his productions,-the favorites in the Christian church among all denominations. Indeed, in purity and elevation of sentiment, in simple pathos, in deep fervor and eloquent earnestness, it would be difficult to find any thing superior to them in the range of sacred lyric poetry.

PALESTINE.

Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn,
Mourn, widow'd queen! forgotten Sion, mourn!
Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne,
Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone?
While suns unbless'd their angry lustre fling,

And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring?
Where now thy pomp, which kings with envy view'd?
Where now thy might, which all those kings subdued?
No martial myriads muster in thy gate,

No suppliant nations in thy Temple wait,

No prophet-bards, thy glittering courts among,
Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song;
But lawless Force, and meagre Want are there,
And the quick-darting eye of restless Fear,
While cold Oblivion, 'mid thy ruins laid,
Folds his dank wing beneath the ivy-shade.

THE ISRAELITES DELIVERED FROM THEIR OPPRESSORS.

Oh! welcome came the morn, where Israel stood

In trustless wonder by the avenging flood!
Oh! welcome came the cheerful morn, to show
The drifted wreck of Zoan's pride below!
The mangled limbs of men-the broken car-
A few sad relics of a nation's war;
Alas! how few! Then, soft as Elim's well,
The precious tears of new-born freedom fell.

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