NEW-YORK, DECEMBER, 1838.

Original.

CANA OF GALILEE.

BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

WHAT & blessed power of the mind is that which associates events and feelings with things-which steals with a melody upon the heart, as the South wind breathes upon a bed of half-open flowers, bringing out its hoarded memories and enlinking thoughts even as the breeze rifles them of the perfume and the dew which but for it might be shed faintly from their delicate urns! How often the sight of a book which we have read with some dear friend-a rose whose withered petals have been cherished, because the life was lavished upon a beloved bosom of a card, containing a familiar autograph-the tones of a favorite air-the bird-song which we have heard years before among the mossy nooks and the green hollows which children love to haunt as butterflies love the Summer air! How often each or any of these will awaken the sleeping poetry of the heart to those thoughts which purify and elevate,-which partake of the gentle affections which link us to each other, and of the more sublime and lofty worship which is not of earth.

gination is aroused; it can almost hear the waters of that sacred and solitary well gurgling and rushing up from its pebbled bottom as they did more than eighteen hundred years ago, when the cool element was drawn thence to fill the six water-pots which were made the instruments of that first and most beautiful miracle ever vouchsafed by our Lord. The mind is all awake. It follows the bearers from the only well to be found even to this day, in Cana of Galilee, to the festival, where Christ appeared a partaker not a rebuker of innocent mirth, and which he sanctioned, not only by his own presence, but by the presence of his apostles also. It sees the goblets empty and the smile dying away from the lip of the bridegroom, as a sense of his scant hospitality presents itself. It pictures the sympathy of Mary the mother, and it can almost feel the waters blush to wine beneath the Saviour's gaze of tranquil power.

A train of thought has been kindled, and it will not expire here. It follows the great being on whom it has centred, through every act of his life. Retrospectively it sees Him

"Where his birth-place was a stable,
And the humble hay his bed."

A light from the star which led the wise men in their Would you feel the sweet and holy force of associa-pilgrimage, is shed abroad in the soul, and it offers up tion, lay your hand over the few words which give a ti- incense not of frankincense and myrrh, but of a prayertle to the plate before you. What is it? A beautiful ful and chastened spirit. engraving, truly; as a well-executed specimen of art, the eye might dwell upon it with pleasure, for there is a truth and beauty in the grouping and in the extreme distance, well worthy of admiration. But with all this, it is but a pretty engraving. A cluster of houses scarcely more than a village, a mountain sleeping in the mist, and a group of figures gathered about a well with waterpots of a strange form, and garments which we easily recognize as peculiar to the East. It appeals pleasantly to the taste, but the heart takes no share in the sensation created. Remove your hand! What is it now? Does not your heart leap as if a stream of sunshine had suddenly flashed through it? Is that print the same to you that it was a moment since? Is there no poetry aroused by the associations which crowd upon you with the sight of those few words? If not, religion even as a sentiment, has never whispered within your heart. If sweet and holy feelings do not come to you, as waters gush from a newly-open fountain, read no further; this page is not for such as live only in the present; it will have no meaning to them! To those who feel, an invisible and sublime spirit has all at once sanctified that print, the real is mingled imperceptibly with the ideal. The paper and the graver's art is forgotten; a picture is before the mind shadowed by an atmosphere of holiness; it has been sancified by the footsteps of our blessed Saviour, made holy by his first miracle. The ima

The life of Christ presents in itself a succession of sublime pictures, every one blending in tint and harmony with the other, till a perfect character is formed. Nothing is wanting, nothing is overdone; we must believe in its truth because the most vivid imagination fails to pourtray any thing so perfect. The ideal of the most lofty mind stands rebuked by the calm, gentle, unobtrusive majesty of the real. Search for a character of similar consistency any where among the haunts of men, and is it to be found? Shakspeare, with his vast conception and almost superhuman knowledge of the heart; he who could pourtray a Hamlet and create an Ariel, has he ever conceived of a being so consistent, so human, and yet so Godlike? Milton, whose mind seemed to comprehend Heaven and exalt earth, with all his sublimity and depth of thought, has conceived of nothing that can approach to a character like that of Christ. If the imagination of master minds like these has failed to pourtray perfection like his, where else in the realms of thought shall we seek? Where shall we look for it among the ideal?-where among the real? Turn to the records of the past. Let the great men of by-gone ages appear in review before the mind. Men, who have wrenched diadems from annointed brows, and have lavished them abroad as if they had been garlands of withered flowers-whose footsteps have shaken the foundation of empires, and whose power has been felt