Long have I looked upon that door

And watched, and still, and still there's room-
And many a guest has entered in-

But still the loved ones do not come.
Send forth thy messengers again

Or ere they close that fatal gate;
There yet is room-0 bid them try

If haply they may find them yet-
While others seat them at thy side,

And sing their carols o'er thy feast,
Here let me stand in suppliant guise,

A grateful, but a mourning guest.
And O forgive-again forgive!

If bidden to honour so undue,
I cannot sit me down in peace,

"Till those I love are welcomed too.

THE HARP.
Say, shall the harp so often heard

From forth the exile's tent,
Where mourning spirits guile with song.

Their hours of banishment

Whose deep, and melancholy wires,

By sin, by sorrow wrung, Reverbrate every touch of woe

As if they loved the song

Say, shall the harp of poesy

That sorrow loves so much,
When joy would pass his finger there,

Not answer to the touch ?

What joy? O such as Angels share
Above

yon arch of Heaven
The wand'riog, doubting soul return'd,

And welcom'd, and forgiven

The sun, so long, so darkly veil'd
In midnight's blackest shroud,

U.pont

O if there be upon my harp

One string that joy may claim,
In silence it has slept too long

Wake it with Jesus' name

And let the musick of its voice

Be like the Sky-Lark's lay,
When, many a sunless hour pass’d,

He hails returning day

Or rather let it be like that

Which spirits sing in Heaven,
When whispers reach them from the earth,

Of mortal sins forgiven.

HYMN.

My heart was weary, faint, and sad,

And heavy stole the hours;
I found but briars on a path

That once was strew'd with flow'rs.

I would have drunk the opiate draught

The world had giv'n before :
But dry and emptied was the bowl

The world could fill no more.

On the cold pillow of the tomb

I would have laid my head;
But Heaven, even to my prayer,

Denied the earthy bed.

Was Heav'n regardless of the prayer?

Oh no! From stores above,
It shed its grace upon my heart,

And told me, "God is love!'

Such love, as soothes my soul to peace,

And gave me back to bliss,
By promise of eternal joy,

In fa worlds than this.
VOL. VII.

F

MY AIN FIRE-SIDE.
0, I hae seen great anes, and been in great ha's,
'Mang lords and 'mang ladies a' covered wi' braws;
At feasts made for princes, wi' princes I've been,
Whar the great shine o' splendour bas dazzled my een.
But a sight sae delightfu’ I trow I ne'er 'spied,
As the bonny blythe blink o' my ain fire-side,

My ain fire-side, my ain fire-side,
Oh, cheering's the blink o' my ain fire-side!

Ance mair, Guid be thankit! by my ain heartsome ingle,
Wi' the friends o' my youth I cordially mingle:
Nae form to compel me to seem wae or glad,
I may laugh when I'm merry, and sigh when I'm sad;
Nae fausehood to dreed, and nae malice to fear,
But truth to delight me, and friendship to chear.
Of a' roads to happiness that ever were tried,
There's nane half sae sure as ane's ain fire-side,

Ane's ain fire-side, ane's ain fire-side,
Oh, happiness sits by ane's ain fire-side.

When I draw in my stool on my cozie hearth-stane,
My heart loups sae light, I scarce kent for my ain ;
Care's flown on the winds—its clean out o' sight,
Past sorrows they seem but as dreams o' the night;
I hear but kent voices-kent faces I see,
And mark fond affection glint saft frae ilk ee.
Nae fleechings o' flattery-nae boastings o' pride,
'Tis heart speaks to heart, at ane's ain fire-side ;

My ain fire-side, my ain fire-side,
Oh! there's nought to compare to my ajn fire-side.

SUPPOSED ELIZABETH HAMILTON.

Roinans v. 2.

COME, O my soul, and for a while retreat

From this poor world, and raise thy thoughts on high : Come and bow down before Jehovah's feet,

And lift to Him thy supplicating eye; And watch till thou his beaming glory see, Shine from between the cherubim "on thee.

This is the hour of prayer and of peace ;

Thy season of refreshment and of rest;
Thine hour of liberty and sweet release

From tumult and confusion-season blest :
For blest above all seasons must that be,
In which thy God holds fellowship with thee.

Come, O my soul, for here the living stream

Is bearing silently its blessed wave;
Here, while rejoicing in Emanuel's beam,

Thou mayest freely drink and freely have;
And thus renew thy strength until thou see
Fair Salem's gates thrown wide to welcome thee.

Upon her golden palaees abides

The glory of God's everlasting light;
While through her groves perpetually glides

The river of ineffable delight;
And there my soul thine eyes shall surely see,
That rest of wbieh this gives the pledge to thee.

VERITA.

LETTERS TO A YOUNG LADY

ON LEAVING SCHOOL.

LETTER THE FOURTEENTH.

DEAR M.,

I ACCEDE most willingly to your wish for more advice respecting the class of books I so strongly recommended to you under the general name of Biography. There is no sort of reading of which our supply is so abundant and so efficient-if I may take the liberty of including in the term all that I meant to include in the recom. mendation from the biography of the monarch whose narrative is the history of the world at the time in which he lives, to the Horæ Solitariæ of the obscure recluse, whose existence the world wots nothing of, till his bosom's history is found among his relicks, and given to

the publick for whom it was not intended, the most exquisite morceau of stolen truth-a' treasure of which the intrinsic value is attested by the eagerness with which it is received. In pointing out to you some works of this class, the difficulty is rather to choose than to find them. I conclude that your course of historical reading has comprised such works as Robertson's and some of Voltaire's separate reigns, which though bearing an individual name, rather class with history than biography. We pass them over. . But there is still a class of Biography bordering on historick reading, and giving a far deeper insight into it than any history--such of older days are Plutarch's Lives-of middle times Roscoe's Lorenzo de Medici, Leo X., &c. &c.; thence passing on to recent times, Miss Aikin's Elizabeth and James, Coxe's Duke of Marlborough and Sully, and innumerable others, that may be comprised in the class I would call historic biography. Approaching to these are the memoirs more personal, yet of a publick character, such as Colonel Hutchinson, Lord W. Russell, M-Creagh's Melville and Knox, Tomline's Life of Pitt, Bishop Hall and his Times, and numbers of like character. The interest rather increases than diminishes as it becomes more exclusively individual, and the claim to attention is for what they were independently of who they where. Such are Walton's Lives, Southey's Biographies of Nelson, Wesley, &c. But there are memoirs more interior still than these-call them Memoirs, Journals, Remains, Lettersmit matters not they are genuine biography-those tomes invaluable in which the heart has told for itself what no one could tell for it-where sorrow has registered its tears, and folly its absurdities, and genius its conceits, and piety its trials, and vice its bitterness, and wisdom its insufficiency, and holiness its blisstill there remains no secret of the human character undisclosed, and no consequences of action unproclaimed; by the which we might all, if we would, bé convicted, and enlightened, and forewarned, of all that is within us, and