The edge of adverse circumstance, and turn
Into their contraries the petty plagues
And hindrances with which they stand beset.
In early youth, among my native hills,
I knew a Scottish Peasant who possessed
A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground;
Masses of every shape and size, that lay
Scattered about under the mouldering walls
Of a rough precipice; and some, apart,
In quarters unobnoxious to such chance,

As if the moon had showered them down in spite.
But he repined not. Though the plough was scared
By these obstructions, 'round the shady stones
A fertilising moisture,' said the Swain,

Gathers, and is preserved; and feeding dews
And damps, through all the droughty summer day
From out their substance issuing, maintain
'Herbage that never fails: nò grass springs up
'So green, so fresh, so plentiful, as mine!'
But thinly sown these natures; rare, at least,
The mutual aptitude of seed and soil
That yields such kindly product. He, whose bed
Perhaps yon loose sods cover, the poor Pensioner
Brought yesterday from our sequestered dell
Here to lie down in lasting quiet, he,
If living now, could otherwise report

Of rustic loneliness: that grey-haired Orphan—
So call him, for humanity to him

No parent was-feelingly could have told,
In life, in death, what solitude can breed
Of selfishness, and cruelty, and vice;
Or, if it breed not, hath not power to cure.
--But your compliance, Sir! with our request

My words too long have hindered."

Undeterred,

Perhaps incited rather, by these shocks,
In no ungracious opposition, given
To the confiding spirit of his own

Experienced faith, the reverend Pastor said,
Around him looking; "Where shall I begin?
Who shall be first selected from my flock
Gathered together in their peaceful fold ?"
He paused-and having lifted up his eyes
To the pure heaven, he cast them down again
Upon the earth beneath his feet; and spake :-

"To a mysteriously-united pair

This place is consecrate; to Death and Life,
And to the best affections that proceed
From their conjunction; consecrate to faith
In him who bled for man upon the cross;
Hallowed to revelation;
To reason's mandates; and the hopes divine
Of pure imagination;-above all,

and no

less

To charity, and love, that have provided,
Within these precincts, a capacious bed
And receptacle, open to the good
And evil, to the just and the unjust;
In which they find an equal resting-place:
Even as the multitude of kindred brooks

And streams, whose murmur fills this hollow vale,
Whether their course be turbulent or smooth,
Their waters clear or sullied, all are lost
Within the bosom of yon crystal Lake,
And end their journey in the same repose!

And blest are they who sleep; and we that know, While in a spot like this we breathe and walk, That all beneath us by the wings are covered Of motherly humanity, outspread

And gathering all within their tender shade,
Though loth and slow to come! A battle-field,
In stillness left when slaughter is no more,
With this compared, makes a strange spectacle!
A dismal prospect yields the wild shore strewn
With wrecks, and trod by feet of young and old
Wandering about in miserable search

Of friends or kindred, whom the angry sea
Restores not to their prayer! Ah! who would think
That all the scattered subjects which compose
Earth's melancholy vision through the space
Of all her climes-these wretched, these depraved,
To virtue lost, insensible of peace,

From the delights of charity cut off,

To pity dead, the oppressor and the opprest;
Tyrants who utter the destroying word,
And slaves who will consent to be destroyed-
Were of one species with the sheltered few,
Who, with a dutiful and tender hand,
Lodged, in a dear appropriated spot,

This file of infants; some that never breathed
The vital air; others, which, though allowed
That privilege, did yet expire too soon,
Or with too brief a warning, to admit
Administration of the holy rite

That lovingly consigns the babe to the arms
Of Jesus, and his everlasting care.

These that in trembling hope are laid apart;
And the besprinkled nursling, unrequired

Till he begins to smile

upon

the breast

That feeds him; and the tottering little-one
Taken from air and sunshine when the rose
Of infancy first blooms upon his cheek;

The thinking, thoughtless, school-boy; the bold youth
Of soul impetuous, and the bashful maid.
Smitten while all the promises of life

Are opening round her; those of middle age,
Cast down while confident in strength they stand,
Like pillars fixed more firmly, as might seem,
And more secure, by very weight of all
That, for support, rests on them; the decayed
And burthensome; and lastly, that poor few
Whose light of reason is with age extinct;
The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last,
The earliest summoned and the longest spared—
Are here deposited, with tribute paid
Various, but unto each some tribute paid;
As if, amid these peaceful hills and groves,
Society were touched with kind concern,

And gentle 'Nature grieved, that one should die;'
Or, if the change demanded no regret,

Observed the liberating stroke—and blessed.

And whence that tribute? wherefore these regards? Not from the naked Heart alone of Man (Though claiming high distinction upon earth As the sole spring and fountain-head of tears, His own peculiar utterance for distress Or gladness)-No," the philosophic Priest Continued, "'tis not in the vital seat Of feeling to produce them, without aid From the pure soul, the soul sublime and pure ;

With her two faculties of

eye

and ear,

The one by which a creature, whom his sins
Have rendered prone, can upward look to heaven;
The other that empowers him to perceive

The voice of Deity, on height and plain,
Whispering those truths in stillness, which the WORD,
To the four quarters of the winds, proclaims.
Not without such assistance could the use
Of these benign observances prevail :

Thus are they born, thus fostered, thus maintained;
And by the care prospective of our wise
Forefathers, who, to guard against the shocks
The fluctuation and decay of things,
Embodied and established these high truths
In solemn institutions:-men convinced
That life is love and immortality,

The being one, and one the element.
There lies the channel, and original bed,
From the beginning, hollowed out and scooped
For Man's affections-else betrayed and lost,
And swallowed up 'mid deserts infinite!
This is the genuine course, the aim, and end
Of prescient reason; all conclusions else
Are abject, vain, presumptuous, and perverse.
The faith partaking of those holy times,
Life, I repeat, is energy of love
Divine or human; exercised in pain,
In strife, and tribulation; and ordained,
If so approved and sanctified, to pass,
Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy."