emphasis to every pious bosom the holy lessons of humility and gratitude. The God who sitteth above, and presides in high authority over all worlds, is mindful of man; and though at this moment his energy is felt in the remotest provinces of creation, we may feel the same security in his providence as if we were the objects of his undivided care.

It is not for us to bring our minds up to this mysterious agency. But such is the incomprehensible fact, that the same Being, whose eye is abroad over the whole universe, gives vege tation to every blade of grass, and motion to every particle of blood which circulates through the veins of the minutest ani mal; that, though his mind takes into its comprehensive grasp immensity and all its wonders, I am as much known to him as if I were the single object of his attention; that he marks all my thoughts; that he gives birth to every feeling and every movement within me; and that, with an exercise of power which I can neither describe nor comprehend, the same God, who sits in the highest heaven, and reigns over the glories of the firmament, is at my right hand to give me every breath which I draw and every comfort which I enjoy.

149.-THANATOPSIS.

W. C. BRYANT.

To him who, in the love of nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language. For his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

When thoughts

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart-
Go forth unto the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around-
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-
Comes a still voice:

Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course. Nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

'Thine image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone; nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world-with kings,
The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre.

The hills,

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty; and the complaining brooks,

That make the meadow green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of Man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce;
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings; yet-the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom! Yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come,
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The bowed with age, the infant in the smiles

And beauty of its innocent age cut off-
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those, who, in their turn, shall follow them.

So live, that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves

To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

150.—THE LITTLE STOW-AWAY.

A YOUNG HERO.

“A.", ay, sir; they're smart seamen enough, no doubt, them Dalmaans, and reason good, too, seein' they man half the Austrian navy; but they're not got the seasonin' of an Englishman, put it how yer will!"

I was standing on the upper deck of the Austrian Lloyd steamer, looking my last upon pyramidal Jaffa, as it rises up in terrace after terrace of stern gray masonry against the lustrous evening sky, with the foam-tipped breakers at its feet. Beside me, with his elbow on the hand-rail, and his short pipe between his teeth, lounged the stalwart chief-engineer, as thorough an Englishman as though he had not spent two-thirds of his life abroad. He delighted to get hold of a listener, who— as he phrased it—“ had been about a bit."

"No; they ain't got an Englishman's seasonin',” he continues, pursuing his criticism of the Dalmatian seamen; "and what's more, they ain't got an Englishman's pluck neither not when it comes to a real scrape.'

"Can no one but an Englishman have any pluck, then?' asked I, laughing.

66

Well, I won't just go for to say that; o' course a man as is a man 'ull have pluck in him all the world over. I've seed a Frencher tackle a shark to save his messmate; and I've seed a Rooshan stand to his gun arter every man in the battery, barrin' himself, had been blowed all to smash. But, if yer come to that, the pluckiest fellow as ever I seed warn't a man at all!"

"What was he, then? a woman?"

'No, nor that neither; though, mark ye, I don't go for tc

say as how women ain't got pluck enough too—some on 'em at least. My old 'ooman, now, saved me once from a lubber of a Portigee as was just a-goin' to stick a knife into me, when she cracked his nut with a handspike. (You can hear her spin the yarn yourself, if you likes to pay us a visit when we get to Constantinople.) But this un as I'm a talkin' on was a little lad not much bigger'n Tom Thumb, only with a spirit of his own as ud ha' blowed up a man-o'-war a'most. Would ye

like to hear about it?"

I eagerly assent; and the narrator, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, folds his brawny arms upon the top of the rail, and commences as follows:

"Bout three years ago, afore I got this berth as I'm in now, I was second-engineer aboard a Liverpool steamer bound for New York. There'd been a lot of extra cargo sent down just at the last minute, and we'd had no end of a job stowin' it away, and that ran us late o' startin'; so that, altogether, you may think, the cap'n warn't in the sweetest temper in the world, nor the mate neither; as for the chief-engineer, he was an easy-goin' sort of a chap, as nothing on earth could put out. But on the mornin' of the third day out from Liverpool, he cum down to me in a precious hurry, lookin' as if somethin' had put him out pretty considerably.

"Tom,' says he, 'what d'ye think? Blest if we ain't found a stow-away. (That's the name you know, sir, as we gives to chaps as hides theirselves aboard outward-bound vessels, and gets carried out unbeknown to everybody.)

did

"The dickens you have?' says I. "Who is he, and where yer find him?'

"Well, we found him stowed away among the casks for❜ard; and ten to one we'd never ha' twigged him at all, if the skipper's dog hadn't sniffed him out and begun barkin'. Sitch a little mite as he is, too! I could ha' most put him in my baccy-pouch, poor little beggar! but he looks to be a goodplucked un for all that.'

"I didn't wait to hear no more, but up on deck like a sky-rocket; and there I did see a sight, and no mistake. Every man-Jack o' the crew, and what few passengers we had aboard, was all in a ring on the fo'c'stle, and in the middle was the fust-mate, lookin' as black as thunder. Right in front of him, lookin' a reg'lar mite among them big fellers, was a little bit o' a lad not ten-year old—ragged as a scarecrow, but with bright, curly hair, and a bonnie little face o' his own, if it hadn't been so woful thin and pale. But, bless yer soul! to

see the way that little chap held his head up, and looked about him, you'd ha' thought the whole ship belonged to him. The mate was a great hulkin' black-bearded feller with a look that 'ud ha' frightened a horse, and a voice fit to make one jump through a key-hole; but the young un warn't a bit afeard-he stood straight up, and looked him full in the face with them bright, clear eyes o' his'n, for all the world as if he was Prince Halferd himself. Folk did say arterwards"-lowering his voice to a whisper-"as how he comed o' better blood nor what he seemed; and, for my part, I'm rayther o' that way o' thinkin' myself; for I never yet seed a common street-Harab-as they calls them now-carry it off like him. You might ha' heerd a pin drop, as the mate spoke.

"Well, you young whelp,' says he, in his grimmest voice, 'what's brought you here?'

"It was my step-father as done it,' says the boy, in a weak little voice, but as steady as could be. 'Father's dead, and mother's married again, and my new father says as how he wont have no brats about eatin' up his wages; and he stowed me away when nobody warn't lookin', and guv me some grub to keep me goin' for a day or two till I got to sea. He says I'm to go to Aunt Jane, at Halifax; and here's her address.' And with that, he slips his hand into the breast of his shirt, and out with a scrap o' paper, awful dirty and crumpled up, but with the address on it, right enough.

"We all believed every word on't, even without the paper; for his look, and his voice, and the way he spoke, was enough to show that there warn't a ha'porth o' lyin' in his whole skin. But the mate didn't seem to swallow the yarn at all; he only shrugged his shoulders with a kind o' grin, as much as to say, 'I'm too old a bird to be caught by that kind o' chaff;' and then he says to him, 'Look here, my lad; that's all very fine, but it won't do here—some o' these men o' mine are in the secret, and I mean to have it out of 'em. Now, you just point out the man as stowed you away and fed you, this very minute; if you doan't, it'll be the worse for you!'

"The boy looked up in his bright, fearless way (it did my heart good to look at him, the brave little chap!) and says, quietly, 'I've told you the truth; I ain't got no more to say.

"The mate says nothin', but looks at him for a minute as if he'd see clean through him; and then he faced round to the men, lookin' blacker than ever. 'Reeve a rope to the yard!' he sings out loud enough to raise the dead; 'smart, now!'

"The men all looked at each other, as much as to say, 'What