can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven, when the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together? Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion, or fill the appetite of the young lions, when they couch in their dens, and abide in the covert to lie in wait? Who provided for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat.

THE LAST MAN.-CAMPBELL.

All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The sun himself must die,

Before this mortal shall assume

Its immortality!

I saw a vision in my sleep,

That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of time!

I saw the last of human mold,
That shall creation's death behold,
As Adam saw her prime!

The sun's eye had a sickly glare,
The earth with age was wan,
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man!
Some had expired in fight,—the brands
Still rusted in their bony hands;
In plague and famine some!
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all were dumb!

Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood,
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood
As if a storm passed by,

Saying, We are twins in death, proud sun,
Thy face is cold, thy race is run,

'Tis mercy bids thee go;
For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,
That shall no longer flow.

What though beneath thee man put forth
His pomp, his pride, his skill;
And arts that made fire, flood, and earth
The vassals of his will;-
Yet mourn I not thy parted sway,
Thou dim discrowned king of day:
For all those trophied arts
And triumphs that beneath thee sprang,
Healed not a passion or a pang
Entailed on human hearts.

Ev'n I am weary in yon skies

To watch thy fading fire;
Test of all sunless agonies,
Behold not me expire.
My lips that speak thy dirge of death-
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath
To see thou shalt not boast.

The eclipse of nature spreads my pall,-
The majesty of darkness shall

Receive my parting ghost!

This spirit shall return to Him

That gave its heavenly spark;
Yet think not, sun, it shall be dim

When thou thyself art dark!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine.

By Him recalled to breath,
Who captive led captivity,
Who robbed the grave of victory,—
And took the sting from death!

THE PLANETS.-TAYLOR.

The glass brings, for example, the disk of Jupiter before us; so that we may fix the eye on this side, or on the other, of his cloud-belted surface:-we clearly distinguish the forms of these wreaths of lurid vapor; or we catch the transit of one of his moons-follow the speck of shadow in its hasty course along the equator of the stupendous planet, very much in the same way in which we watch the shadow of a cloud, as it moves across the bosom of a distant sunny hill. Although the road thither baffles us in the attempt to mete it out into portions, we can just imagine ourselves to have achieved the passage, and to set foot upon that vast rotund; and can faintly conceive of the scene that would there present itself, where, athwart prodigious valleys (each capacious enough to receive an Atlantic, or through which the waves of all our oceans might quietly flow, as the Ganges glides in its bed,) the deep shadows of the overhanging mountains are flitting with giddy haste, from side to side; while the sun rushes through the ample skies to accomplish his five hours of day. Or we remain at our post of observation through the brief moments of night; and are dizzy while we gaze upon the shining multitude of moons and stars, that, bursting up from the horizon, chase each other with visible celerity, from east to west, like a routed host, hotly followed by the foe.

Thus, and with these aids which the telescope affords us, or which the imagination (authentically informed by facts) supplies, may we make a stage outward through the skies: nor are such efforts of the mind to be accounted vain and fantastic, like those waking dreams wherein we combine extravagant

images of things nowhere existing, and in themselves prepos terous: for we are now endeavoring to fix the faculty of conception upon objects that are palpable, and real, and which (remote as they may be) are as truly cognizable by the sight as are the cliffs of an adjacent continent. There is no extravagance in this attempt; but a real utility, inasmuch as an important lesson is obtained from the vivid impression of the extent of God's visible dominion. The same force of conception which has carried the mind to the orbit of Jupiter, will transport it to that of Saturn, where is seen a sombre splendor, suffused on all sides, less, apparently, from the distant and diminished sun, than from the broad surfaces of the adjacent rings, which almost blend night and day, by overshadowing the one, and illuminating the other. Or taking once again an adventurous flight, further than before, we reach the outermost limit of our system, and stand upon that vast and solitary planet which, as if guardian of the whole, slowly walks the rounds of the solar skies, while it fulfils its term of fourscore years and more. The sun has now shrunk almost to a comparison with the stars; or looks only like the chiefest and most resplendent of them so that the mild twilight of that noon does not quite exclude their rival radiance.

HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNY.COLERIDGE.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent Sea of Pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy chrystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

-

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came,)
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun