with an utter insensibility to the opinion of the world; and we are willing to believe, also, that, were it not for this, the form and profession of Christianity would be more frequently outraged than it now is, by those who secretly detest it.

And now, after all these acknowledgments, what new merit is conceded to our favorite passion? After it has done its utmost, it can only quicken the energies of the mind, restrain sometimes the other passions, afford occasional aid to the cause of order and propriety, soften some of the asperities of social intercourse, and perhaps keep the sinner from open and hardened profligacy. But it cannot purify the affections, melt the hardness of the heart, and break its selfishness, or elevate its desires to the region of purity and peace.

We have seen that this regard to human estimation, though a principle of universal, I had almost said of infinite influence, is confined to very narrow limits in the Gospel of Christ. Is there nothing, then, provided to supply the place of so powerful an agent in the formation of the human character? Is there nothing left to awaken the ambition of the Christian, to rouse him from sloth and universal indifference, to call forth the energies of his mind, and to urge him forward in the career of holiness? Yes, if we will listen to the language of an apostle, whose history proclaims that his passions were not asleep, that his emulation was not quenched by the profession of Christianity, and whose spirit ever glowed with a most divine enthusiasm,-I say, if we listen to him, we shall find that there is enough to stimulate all the faculties of the soul, and, finally, to satiate the most burning thirst of glory. Yes, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.' Yes, our whole progress here, through all the varieties of honor and of dishonor, of evil report and of good report, is a spectacle to angels and to men. We are coming into 'an innumerable company of angels, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to God, the Judge of all.'

These have been the spectators of our course, and from such we are to receive glory, and honor, and immortality.

GRANDEUR OF ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.

It was a pleasant evening in the month of May; and my sweet child, my Rosalie, and I had sauntered up to the castle's top to enjoy the breeze that played around it, and to admire the unclouded firmament, that glowed and sparkled with unusual lustre from pole to pole. The atmosphere was in its purest and finest state for vision; the milky way was distinctly developed throughout its whole extent; every planet and every star above the horizon, however near and brilliant or distant and faint, lent its lambent light or twinkling ray to give variety and beauty to the hemisphere; while the round, bright moon-so distinctly defined were the lines of her figure, and so clearly visible even the rotundity of her form-seemed to hang off from the azure vault, suspended in midway air; or stooping forward from the firmament her fair and radiant face, as if to court and return our gaze.

We amused ourselves for some time, in observing through a telescope the planet Jupiter, sailing in silent majesty with his squadron of satellites along the vast ocean of space between us and the fixed stars; and admired the felicity of that design, by which those distant bodies had been parcelled out and arranged into constellations; so as to have served not only for beacons to the ancient navigator, but, as it were, for landmarks to astronomers at this day; enabling them, though in different countries, to indicate to each other with ease, the place and motion of those planets, comets and magnificent meteors, which inhabit, revolve, and play in the intermediate space.

We recalled and dwelt with delight on the rise and progress of the science of astronomy; on that series of astonishing discoveries through successive ages, which display, in so strong a light, the force and reach of the human mind; and on those bold conjectures and sublime reveries, which seem to tower even to the confines of divinity, and denote the high destiny to which mortals tend:-that thought, for instance, which is said to have been first started by Pythagoras, and which modern astronomers approve; that the stars which we call fixed, although they appear to us to be nothing more than large spangles of various sizes glittering on the same concave surface, are, nevertheless, bodies as large as our sun, shining, like him, with original and not reflected light, placed at in

calculable distances asunder, and each star the solar centre of a system of planets, which revolve around it as the planets belonging to our system do around the sun; that this is not only the case with all the stars which our eyes discern in the firmament, or which the telescope has brought within the sphere of our vision, but, according to the modern improvements of this thought, that there are probably other stars, whose light has not yet reached us, although light moves with a velocity a million times greater than that of a cannon ball; that those luminous appearances, which we observe in the firmament, like flakes of thin, white clouds, are windows, as it were, which open to other firmaments, far, far beyond the ken of human eye, or the power of optical instruments, lighted up, like ours, with hosts of stars or suns; that this scheme goes on through infinite space, which is filled with thousands upon thousands of those suns, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid motion, yet calm, regular and harmonious, invariably keeping the paths prescribed to them; and these worlds peopled with myriads of intelligent beings.

One would think that this conception, thus extended, would be bold enough to satisfy the whole enterprise of the human imagination. But what an accession of glory and magnificence does Dr. Herschel superadd to it, when, instead of supposing all those suns fixed, and the motion confined to their respective planets, he loosens those multitudinous suns themselves from their stations, sets them all into motion with their splendid retinue of planets and satellites, and imagines them, thus attended, to perform a stupendous revolution, system above system, around some grander, unknown centre, somewhere in the boundless abyss of space!and when carrying on the process, you suppose even that centre itself not stationary, but also counterpoised by other masses in the immensity of spaces, with which, attended by their accumulated trains of

'Planets, suns, and adamantine spheres

Wheeling unshaken through the void immense,'

it maintains harmonious concert, surrounding, in its vast career, some other centre still more remote and stupendous, which in its turn- "You overwhelm me,' cried Rosalie, as I was laboring to pursue the immense concatenation;-'my mind is bewildered and lost in the effort to follow you, and

finds no point on which to rest its weary wing.'-'Yet there is a point, my dear Rosalie the throne of the Most High. Imagine that the ultimate centre, to which this vast and inconceivably magnificent and august apparatus is attached, and around which it is continually revolving. -Oh! what a spectacle for the cherubim and seraphim, and the spirits of the just made perfect, who dwell on the right hand of that throne, if, as may be, and probably is the case, their eycs are permitted to pierce through the whole, and take in, at one glance, all its order, beauty, sublimity and glory, and their ears to distinguish that celestial harmony, unheard by us, in which those vast globes, as they roll on in their respective orbits, continually hymn their great Creator's praise!'

THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.

I WOULD not always reason.
The straight path
Wearies us with its never-varying lines,
And we grow melancholy. I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me. She should be my counsellor,
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers,
And there are motions, in the mind of man,
That she must look upon with awe. I bow
Reverently to her dictates, but not less
Hold to the fair illusions of old time—
Illusions that shed brightness over life,
And glory over nature. Look even now,
Where two bright planets in the twilight meet,
Upon the saffron heaven,-the imperial star
Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn
Pours forth the light of love. Let me believe,
Awhile, that they are met for ends of good,
Amid the evening glory, to confer

Of men and their affairs, and to shed down

Kind influences. Lo! their orbs burn more bright,
And shake out softer fires! The great earth feels
The gladness and the quiet of the time.

Meekly the mighty river, that infolds

This mighty city, smooths his front, and far
Glitters and burns even to the rocky base
Of the dark heights that bound him to the west;
And a deep murmur, from the many streets,
Rises like a thanksgiving. Put we hence
Dark and sad thoughts awhile-there's time for them
Hereafter on the morrow we will meet,
With melancholy looks to tell our griefs,
And make each other wretched; this calm hour,
This balmy, blessed evening, we will give
To cheerful hopes and dreams of happy days,
Born of the meeting of those glorious stars.

Enough of drought has parched the year, and scared
The land with dread of famine. Autumn, yet,
Shall make men glad with unexpected fruits.
The dog-star shall shine harmless; genial days
Shall softly glide away into the keen

And wholesome cold of winter; he that fears
The pestilence, shall gaze on those pure beams,
And breathe, with confidence, the quiet air.

Emblems of Power and Beauty! well may they
Shine brightest on our borders, and withdraw
Towards the great Pacific, marking out
The path of empire. Thus, in our own land,
Ere long, the better Genius of our race,
Having encompassed earth, and tamed its tribes,
Shall sit him down beneath the farthest west,
By the shore of that calm ocean, and look back
On realms made happy.

Light the nuptial torch,
And say the glad, yet solemn rite, that knits
The youth and maiden. Happy days to them
That wed this evening!-a long life of love,
And blooming sons and daughters! Happy they
Born at this hour, for they shall see an age
Whiter and holier than the past, and go

Late to their graves. Men shall wear softer hearts,
And shudder at the butcheries of war,

As now at other murders.

Hapless Greece!

Enough of blood has wet thy rocks, and stained