change, the birthplace and the grave of so many cycles of organic life, it is but fair and legitimate to conclude that other and mightier changes yet await our planet, and that when the final fire has cleansed it from all its impurities it will rise again from its ruins, as it has done of old, prepared and fitted for higher and nobler forms of being in that never-ending series of metamorphoses with which futurity is pregnant. And then, perchance, the beings which in that far age are destined to occupy our renovated globe may be startled at disinterring from its womb the relics of a race of whose previous existence they had no history and no record, and linger with as much astonishment over the fossil remains of man, as man now lingers over those of the mammoth and the mastodon. The buried cities of modern Europe may then be disinterred in their ruined grandeur; the foundered ship with its imprisoned skeletons, and the embalmed navy, submerged for ten thousand years in its ocean bed; the battlefield, with its prostrate warriors, or the hallowed cemetery, with its relics of youth and age, crushed beneath their tablets of marble and their monuments of bronze; the priest may then be resuscitated with his crosier and his gown, and the monarch with his sceptre and his diadem. Noble indeed is the prerogative of the Christian. To stand amid all these changing forms of matter, to lift his head boldly to the threatening mountain peaks and the commingling elements, and to say unto them, Break, break around me if ye will; I am immortal, and defy your power." Why was the firmament made luminous with stars if not to keep man in the perpetual presence of the sublime and inspire him with aspirations for the infinite? Why was the earth clad with beauty, and the forest clothed with foliage, if not to give him constant revelations of the beautiful? Why was the air made resonant with sweet sounds, now reverberating with the boom and crash of tempests, and now pulsing with the myriad voices of the happy creatures which spend their tiny lives in one unceasing anthem, if not to reveal to man the harmony of the universe, and to point him to that mysterious afterwards, that full fruition of life of which this is but the gushing bud? "Oh, what a world is this! Change rising after change, cycle growing out of cycle, in majestic progress ever new and ever widening, like circles wreathed from the flame, enlarging as they rise, and finally lost in the empyrean. If all we see on earth or sky, if every sun and star in the universe be but a mirror wherein we behold the images of eternity, immortality, and God-if all this be but one phase of being, rolling onward evermore, what must be the Creator, the Preserver, the Guide of all? He at whose beckoning, flowers and stars came from nothingness, and again disappear; whose name amid all things is alone-EXISTENCE I AM THAT I AM— the All-encompasser, the All-sustainer, He who enwraps and holds all these gorgeous heavens, who, unassisted, uncounselled, unchanged and unchangeable for evermore, sustains the fabric of His own awful being? "Change and decay in all around I see ; * O Thou who changest not, abide with me!" Professor Nicholl. CHAPTER II. us. The Dawn of Summer. "Summer is ycomen in, Loud sing cuckoo ; Groweth seed And bloweth mead, And springeth the weed new. 'HUS sings the oldest English song extant, in a 66 measure which is its own music. The temperature of the air, however, is still mild, and in our climate sometimes too chilly; but when the season is fine the first days of June are perhaps the most delightful days of the year. The hopes of spring are realized, yet the enjoyment is but commenced; we have all summer before The cuckoo's two notes are now at what may be called their ripest, deep and loud; so is the hum of the bee. Little clouds lie in lumps of silver about the sky, and sometimes fall to complete the growth of the herbage. Yet we may now lie down on the grass or the flowery banks to read or write; the grasshoppers click around us in the warming verdure, and the fields and hedges are in full blossom with the clover, the still more exquisite bean, the pea, the blue and yellow nightshade, the foxglove, the mallow, the white briony, wild honeysuckle, and the flower of the hip, or wild rose, which blushes through all the gradations of red and white. The leaves of the hip, especially the young ones, are as beautiful as those of any garden rose. Towards evening the bat and the owl venture forth, flitting through the glimmering quiet; and at night the moon looks silveriest, the sky at once darkest and clearest; and when the nightingale as well as the other birds have done singing, you may hear the undried brooks of the spring running and panting through their leafy channels. "It ceased," says the poet, speaking of the sound of heavenly voices round a ship "It ceased, yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night There is a greater accession of flowers in this month than in any other. In addition to those of the last the garden sparkles with marigolds, golden rods, larkspurs, sunflowers, amaranths, carnations, pinks, ladies' slippers, annual stocks, campanulas, lupins, and wallflowers. Isaac Walton describes a delicious scene in spring: "Turn out of the way a little, good scholar, towards yonder high honeysuckle hedge. There we'll sit and sing while this shower falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant meadows. Look! under that broad beech-tree I sat down when I was last this way a fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow of that primrose hill. There I sat, viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea, yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble stones, which broke their waves and turned them into foam. And sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, while others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others craving comfort from the woollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat these and other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content that I thought, as the poet has so happily expressed it— "I was for that time lifted above earth, And possessed joys not promised in my birth.' As I left this place and entered into the next field a second pleasure entertained me. It was a handsome milkmaid, that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do; but she cast away all care and sang like a nightingale." What a refreshment it is to behold the green shades, the beauty and majesty of the tall and ancient groves; to ascend at times the fresh and healthful hills; to descend into the bosom of the valleys and the fragrant dewy meadows; to hear the music of birds, the murmur of bees, the falling of waters, the lowing of kine, and the bleating of sheep! What yearnings for the enjoyment of pure air and sunshine in fresh meadows are in the hearts |