philosophers and boasters of wisdom, but by the comparatively weak and foolish, is the great means of renovating the world. This truth we indeed regard as 'the power of God unto salvation.' But let none imagine, that its chosen temple is an uncultivated mind, and that it selects as its chief organs, the lips of the unlearned. Religious and moral truth is indeed appointed to carry forward mankind; but not as conceived and expounded by narrow minds, not as darkened by the ignorant, not as debased by the superstitious, not as subtilized by the visionary, not as thundered out by the intolerant fanatic, not as turned into a drivelling cant by the hypocrite. Like ail other truths, it requires for its full reception and powerful communication, a free and vigorous intellect. Indeed, its grandeur and infinite connections demand a more earnest and various use of our faculties than any other subject. As a single illustration of this remark, we may observe, that all moral and religious truth may be reduced to one great and central thought, Perfection of Mind; a thought which comprehends all that is glorious in the Divine nature, and which reveals to us the end and happiness of our own existence.

We believe, that a literature, springing up in our own country would bear new fruits, and, in some respects, more precious fruits, than are elsewhere produced. We know that our hopes may be set down to the account of that national vanity, which, with too much reason, is placed by foreigners among our besetting sins. But we speak from calm and deliberate conviction. We are inclined to believe, that, as a people, we occupy a position, from which the great subjects of literature may be viewed more justly than from those which most other nations hold. Undoubtedly we labor under disadvantages. We want the literary apparatus of Europe; her libraries, her universities, her learned institutions, her race of professed scholars, her spots consecrated by the memory of sages, and a thousand stirring associations, which hover over ancient nurseries of learning. But the mind is not a ⚫ local power. Its spring is within itself, and under the inspiration of liberal and high feeling, it may attain and worthily express nobler truth than outward helps could reveal.

The great distinction of our country, is, that we enjoy some peculiar advantages for understanding our own nature. Man is the great subject of literature, and juster and profounder views of man may be expected here, than elsewhere.

In Europe, political and artificial distinctions have, more or less, triumphed over and obscured our common nature. In Europe, we meet kings, nobles, priests, peasants. How much rarer is it to meet men; by which we mean, human beings conscious of their own nature, and conscious of the utter worthlessness of all outward distinctions, compared with what is treasured up in their own souls. Man does not value himself as man. It is for his blood, his rank, or some artificial distinction, and not for the attributes of humanity, that he holds himself in respect. The institutions of the old world all tend to throw obscurity over what we most need to know, and that is, the worth and claims of a human being. We know that great improvements in this respect are going on abroad. Still the many are too often postponed to the few. The mass of men are regarded as instruments to work with, as materials to be shaped for the use of their superiors. That consciousness of our own nature, which contains, as a germ, all noble thoughts, which teaches us at once self-respect and respect for others, and which binds us to God by filial sentiment and hope, this has been repressed, kept down by establishments founded in force; and literature, in all its departments, bears, we think, the traces of this inward degradation. We conceive that our position favors a juster and profounder estimate of human nature. We mean not to boast, but there are fewer obstructions to that moral consciousness, that consciousness of humanity, of which we have spoken. Man is not hidden from us by as many disguises as in the old world. The essential equality of all human beings, founded on the possession of a spiritual, progressive, immortal nature, is, we hope, better understood; and nothing, more than this single conviction, is needed to work the mightiest changes in every province of human life and of human thought.

HINDOO HYMN.

To the spirit of God, called Naravena, i. e., 'moving on the water.'

Gen. i. 2.

SPIRIT of spirits! Who through every part

Of space expanded and of endless time,

Beyond the stretch of laboring thought sublime,

Badst uproar into beauteous order start;

Before Heaven was, Thou art;

Ere spheres beneath us roll'd, or spheres above,
Ere earth in firmamental ether hung,

Thou sat'st alone; till through thy mystic love
Things unexisting to existence sprung,
And grateful descant sung:-

What first impell'd thee to exert thy might?
Goodness unlimited. What glorious light
Thy power directed? Wisdom without bound.
What proved it first? O! guide my fancy right.
Oh, raise from cumbrous ground

My soul, in rapture drown'd;

That fearless it may soar on wings of fire,
For thou who only know'st, thou only canst inspire.
Omniscient Spirit! whose all-ruling power

Bids from each sense bright emanations beam;
Glows in the rainbow; sparkles in the stream;
Smiles in the bud; and glistens in the flower,
That crowns each vernal bower;

Sighs in the gale; and warbles in the throat

Of every bird that hails the bloomy spring,
Or tells his love in many a liquid note,

Whilst envious artists touch the rival string,
Till rocks and forests ring;

Breathes in rich fragrance from the sandal grove,
Or where the precious musk-deer playful rove,
In dulcet juice from clustering fruits distils,
And burns salubrious in the tasteful clove;
Soft banks and verd'rous hills

Thy present influence fills;

In air, in floods, in caverns, woods and plains,
Thy will enlivens all; thy sovereign spirit reigns.

Blue crystal vault and elemental fires

That in ethereal fluid blaze and breathe; Thou tossing main, whose snaky branches wreathe, This pensile globe with intertwisted gyres; Mountains, whose radiant spires

Presumptuous rear their summits to the skies

And blend their emerald hues with sapphire light, Smooth meads, and lawns, that glow with varying dyes, Of dew-bespangled leaves and blossoms bright, Hence!-vanish from my sightDelusive pictures, unsubstantial shows!

My soul absorbed, one only Being knows,
Of all perceptions one abundant source,
Whence every object every moment flows;
Suns hence derive their force,

Hence planets learn their course:—
But suns and fading worlds I view no more;
God only I perceive:-God only I adore.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

THE sad and solemn night
Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious hosts of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires:
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and round the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen they follow in his flaming way:
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud,

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wreck'd mariner, his

Fixes his steady gaze,

compass lost,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

THE FLYING FISH,

An Emblem of Christian Virtue.
WHEN I have seen thy snowy wing
O'er the blue wave at evening spring,
And give those scales, of. silver white,
So gaily to the eye of light,
As if thy frame were form'd to rise
And live amid the glorious skies;
O! it has made me proudly feel
How like thy wing's impatient zeal
Is the pure soul, that scorns to rest
Upon the world's ignoble breast,
But takes the plume that God has given,
And rises into light and heaven!

But when I see that wing so bright
Grow languid with a moment's flight,
Attempt the paths of air in vain,
And sink into the waves again,
Alas! the flattering pride is o'er:
Like thee, awhile, the soul may soar;
But erring man must blush to think,
Like thee, again, the soul may sink!
O virtue! when thy clime I seek,
Let not my spirit's flight be weak;
Let me not, like this feeble thing,
With brine still dropping from its wing,