The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift, dark whirlwind, that uproots the woods,
And drowns the villages; when, at Thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities; who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of Thy power,
His pride, and lays is strifes and follies by!
Oh! from these sterner aspects of Thy face
Spare me and mine; nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad, unchain'd elements, to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, Thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of Thy works

Learn to conform the order of our lives.-BRYANT.

THE PARTHENON OF ATHENS.

Fair Parthenon! yet still must Fancy weep
For thee, thou work of nobler spirits flown.
Bright, as of old, the sunbeams o'er thee sleep
In all their beauty still-and thine is gone!
Empires have sunk since thou wast first revered,
And varying rites have sanctified thy shrine.
Mourn, graceful ruin! on thy sacred hill,

Thy gods, thy rites, a kindred fate have shared:
Yet art thou honor'd in each fragment still

That wasting years and barbarous hands have spared; Each hallow'd stone, from rapine's fury borne,

Shall wake bright dreams of thee in ages yet unborn.

HEMANS.

LESSON I.-INDIAN SUMMER.

1. WHEN was the red man's summer'?

2.

When the rose

Hung its first banner out'? When the gray rock,
Or the brown heath, the radiant kalmia clothed'?
Or when the loiterer by the reedy brooks

Started to see the proud lobelia glow

Like living flame'? When through the forest gleam'd The rhododendron' ? or the fragrant breath

Of the magnolia swept deliciously

O'er the half laden nerve'?

In fleeting colors wrote their own decay,

And leaves fell eddying on the sharpen'd blast

That sang their dirge'; when o'er their rustling bed
The red deer sprang', or fled the shrill-voiced quail,

Heavy of wing and fearful'; when, with heart
Foreboding or depress'd', the white man mark'd
The signs of coming winter': then began

The Indian's joyous season.

Then the haze,

Soft and illusive as a fairy dream',

Lapp'd all the landscape in its silvery fold.

3. The quiet rivers that were wont to hide

'Neath shelving banks', beheld their course betray'd By the white mist that o'er their foreheads crept', While wrapp'd in morning dreams', the sea and sky

4.

Slept 'neath one curtain', as if both were merged'
In the same element'. Slowly the sun,
And all reluctantly, the spell dissolved',
And then it took upon its parting wing
A rainbow glory.

Gorgeous was the time,
Yet brief as gorgeous. Beautiful to thee,
Our brother hunter', but to us replete
With musing thoughts in melancholy train.
Our joys, alas'! too oft were woe to thee';

Yet ah! poor Indian', whom we fain would drive

Both from our hearts, and from thy father's lands',

The perfect year doth bear thee on its crown',

And when we would forget', repeat thy name'.-MRS. SIGOURNEY.

LESSON II.-FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.

1. THE most plain and natural sentiments of equity concur with divine authority to enforce the duty of forgiveness. Let him who has never, in his life, done wrong, be allowed the privilege of remaining inexorable. But let such as are conscious of frailties and crimes consider forgiveness as a debt which they owe to others. Common failings are the strongest lesson of mutual forbearance. Were the virtues unknown among men, order and comfort, peace and repose, would be strangers to human life.

2. Injuries retaliated according to the exorbitant measure which passion prescribes would excite resentment in return. The injured person would become the injurer; and thus wrongs, retaliations, and fresh injuries would circulate in endless succession, till the world was rendered a field of blood.

3. Of all the passions which invade the human breast, revenge is the most direful. When allowed to reign with full dominion, it is more than sufficient to poison the few pleasures which remain to man in his present state. How much soever a person may suffer from injustice, he is always in hazard of suffering more from the prosecution of revenge. The violence of an enemy can not inflict what is equal to the torment he creates to himself by means of the fierce and desperate passions which he allows to rage in his soul.

4. Those evil spirits that inhabit the regions of misery are represented as delighting in revenge and cruelty. But all that is great and good in the universe is on the side of clemency and mercy. The almighty Ruler of the world, though for ages offended by the unrighteousness and insulted by the impiety of men, is "long-suffering and slow to anger."

5. His Son, when he appeared in our nature, exhibited, both in his life and his death, the most illustrious example of for giveness which the world ever beheld. If we look into the history of mankind, we shall find that, in every age, they who have been respected as worthy, or admired as great, have been distinguished for this virtue.

6. Revenge dwells in little minds. A noble and magnanimous spirit is always superior to it. It suffers not, from the injuries of men, those severe shocks which others feel. Collected within itself, it stands unmoved by their impotent assaults; and with generous pity, rather than with anger, looks down on their unworthy conduct. It has been truly said that the greatest man on earth can no sooner commit an injury, than a good man can make himself greater by forgiving it. BLAIR.

LESSON III.-PASSING AWAY.

1. WAS it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,
Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell,

JOHN PIERPONT.

That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,

And he his notes as silvery quite,

While the boatman listens and ships his oar,

To catch the music that comes from the shore'?
Hark! the notes, on my ear that play,
Are set to words': as they float, they say,
"Passing away'! passing away'!"

2. But no'; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach so mellow and clear';
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,

Striking the hour, that fill'd my car,
As I lay in my dream'; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow' of the stream of time'.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring,
That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing);

And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoyed it, she seem'd to say,
"Passing away'! passing away'

3. Oh, how bright were the wheels that told
Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow!

And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold,
Seemed to point to the girl below.

And, lo! she had changed'; in a few short hours,
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretch'd hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung,
In the fullness of grace and womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride

Yet then', when expecting her happiest day',
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
"Passing away'! passing away'!"

4. While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud on a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels,
That marched so calmly round above her,

Was a little dimmed, as when evening steals

Upon noon's hot face: yet one couldn't but love her,
For she look'd like a mother whose first babe lay,
Rock'd on her breast, as she swung all day;
And she seem'd in the same silver tone to say,
"Passing away! passing away'!"

5. While yet I looked', what a change there came'!
Her eye was quench'd', and her cheek was wan':
Stooping and staffed' was her wither'd frame',
Yet just as busily swung she on';

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust';
The wheels. above her were eaten with rust';

The hands that over the dial swept',

Grew crooked and tarnish'd, but on they kept';
And still there came that silver tone,

From the shriveled lips of the toothless crone-
Let me never forget to my dying day
The tone or the burden of her lay-

"Passing away! passing away'!"

LESSON IV. THE DREAM OF THE TWO ROADS.

1. It was New-Year's night; and Von Arden, having fallen into an unquiet slumber, dreamed that he was an aged man standing at a window. He raised his mournful eyes toward the deep blue sky, where the stars were floating, like white lilies, on the surface of a clear calm lake. Then he cast them on the earth, where few more hopeless beings than himself now moved toward their certain goal-the tomb.

2. Already, as it seemed to him, he had passed sixty of the stages which lead to it, and he had brought from his journey