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LOVE AND FAITH.

BY LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

I thank my heavenly Father for every manifestation of human love. I thank him for all experiences, be they sweet or bitter, which help me to forgive all things, and to enfold the whole world with blessing. What shall be our reward,' says Swedenborg, for loving our neighbour as ourselves in this life? That when we become angels, we shall be enabled to love him better than ourselves.' This is a reward pure and holy; the only one, which my heart has not rejected, whenever offered as an incitement to goodness. It is this chiefly which makes the happiness of lovers more nearly allied to heaven, than any other emotions experienced by the human heart. Each loves the other better than himself; each is willing to sacrifice all to the other-nay, finds joy

load. He went, and returned in due time with empty cannisters; and this he continued to do for several days. The house bells in Madrid are usually so constructed that you pull downward to make them ring. The peasant afterward learned that his sagacious animal stopped before the door of every customer, and after waiting what he deemed a sufficient time, pulled the bell with his mouth. If affectionate treatment will thus idealize the jackass, what may it not do? Assuredly there is no limit to its power. It can banish crime, and make this earth an Eden.

The best tamer of colts that was ever known in Massachusetts, never allowed whip or spur to be used; and the horses he trained never needed the whip. Their spirits were unbroken by severity, and they obeyed the slightest impulse of the voice or rein, with the most animated promptitude; but rendered obedient to affection, their vivacity was always restrained by graceful docility. He said it was with horses as with children; if accustomed to beating, they would not obey without it. But if

therein. This it is that surrounds them with a golden atmosphere, and tinges the world with rosecolour. A mother's love has the same angelic cha-managed with untiring gentleness, united with conracter; more completely unselfish, but lacking the charm of perfect reciprocity.

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in that one word, LOVE. It is the divine vitality that every where produces and restores life. To each and every one of us it gives the power of working miracles, if we will.

sistent and very equable firmness, the victory once gained over them, was gained for ever.

In the face of all these facts, the world goes on manufacturing whips, spurs, the gallows, and chains; while each one carries within his own soul a divine substitute for these devil's inventions, with which he might work miracles, inward and outward, if he would. Unto this end let us work with unfaltering faith. Great is the strength of an individual soul,

Love is the story without an end, and angels throng to hear; true to its high trust ;-mighty is it even to the re

The word, the king of words, carved on Jehovah's heart.'

From the highest to the lowest, all feel its influence, all acknowledge its sway. Even the poor, despised donkey is changed by its magic influence. When coerced and beaten, he is vicious, obstinate, and stupid. With the peasantry of Spain, he is a petted favourite, almost an inmate of the household. The children bid him welcome home, and the wife feeds him from her hands. He knows them all, and he loves them all, for he feels in his inmost heart that they all love him. He will follow his master, and come and go at his bidding, like a faithful dog; and he delights to take the baby on his back, and walk him round, gently, on the greensward His intellect expands, too, in the sunshine of affection; and he that is called the stupidest of animals becomes sagacious. A Spanish peasant had for many years carried milk into Madrid to supply a set of customers. Every morning, he and his donkey, with loaded panniers, trudged the well-known round. At last, the peasant became very ill, and had no one to send to market. His wife proposed to send the faithful old animal by himself. The panniers were accordingly filled with cannisters of milk, an inscription, written by the priest, requested customers to measure their own milk, and return the vessels; and the donkey was instructed to set off with his

demption of a world.

A German, whose sense of sound was exceedingly acute, was passing by a church, a day or two after he had landed in this country, and the sound of music attracted him to enter, though he had no knowledge of our language. The music proved to be a piece of nasal psalmody, sung in most discordant fashion; and the sensitive German would fain have covered his ears. As this was scarcely civil, and might appear like insanity, his next impulse was to rush into the open air, and leave the hated sounds behind him. But this too I feared to do,' said he, lest offence might be given; so I resolved to endure the torture with the best fortitude I could assume; when lo! I distinguished amid the din, the soft clear voice of a woman singing in perfect tune. She made no effort to drown the voices of her companions, neither was she disturbed by their noisy discord; but patiently and sweetly she sang in full, rich tones: one after another yielded to the gentle influence; and before the tune was finished, all were in perfect harmony.'

I have often thought of this story as conveying an instructive lesson for reformers. The spirit that can thus sing patiently and sweetly in a world of discord, must indeed be of the strongest, as well as the gentlest kind. One scarce can hear his own soft

voice amid the braying of the multitude; and ever | Lo, I am tall and strong, well skilled to hunt, and anon comes the temptation to sing louder than Patient of toil and hunger, and not yet they, and drown the voices that cannot thus be forc- Have seen the danger which I dared not look ed into perfect tune. But this were a pitiful expe- Full in the face; what hinders me to be riment; the melodious tones, cracked into shrillness; A mighty Brave and Chief among my kin?" would only increase the tumult. So, taking up his arrows and his bow, As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly on, Until he gained the wigwams of his tribe, Where, choosing out a bride, he soon forgot,

Stronger, and more frequently, comes the temptation to stop singing, and let discord do its own wild work. But blessed are they that endure to the endsinging patiently and sweetly, till all join in with | In all the fret and bustle of new life, loving acquiescence, and universal harmony prevails, without forcing into submission the free discord of a single voice.

This is the hardest and the bravest task, which a true soul has to perform amid the clashing elements of time. But once has it been done perfectly, unto the end; and that voice, so clear in its meekness, is heard above all the din of a tumultuous world; one after another chimes in with its patient sweetness, and, through infinite discords, the listening soul can perceive that the great tune is slowly coming into harmony.

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The happy hunting-grounds await me, green
With change of spring and summer through the year;
But, for remembrance, after I am gone,
Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake:
Weakling he is and young, and knows not yet
To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow;
Therefore of both your loves he hath more need,
And he, who needeth love, to love hath right;
It is not like our furs and stores of corn,
Whereto we claim sole title by our toil,
But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts,
And waters it, and gives it sun, to be
The common stock and heritage of all:
Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that yourselves
May not be left deserted in your need."

Alone, beside a lake, their wigwam stood,
Far from the other dwellings of their tribe;
And, after many moons, the loneliness
Wearied the elder brother, and he said,

Why should I dwell here all alone, shut out
From the free, natural joys that fit my age?

The little Sheemah and his father's charge.

Now when the sister found her brother gone,
And that, for many days, he came not back,
She wept for Sheemah more than for herself;
For Love bides longest in a woman's heart,
And flutters many times before he flies,
And then doth perch so nearly, that a word
May lure him back, as swift and glad as light;
And Duty lingers even when Love is gone,
Oft looking out in hope of his return;
And, after Duty hath been driven forth,
Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all,
Warming her lean hands at the lonely hearth,
And crouching o'er the embers, to shut out
Whatever paltry warmth and light are left,
With avaricious greed, from all beside.
So, for long months, the sister hunted wide,
And cared for little Sheemah tenderly;
But, daily more and more, the loneliness
Grew wearisome, and to herself she sighed,
"Am I not fair? at least the glossy pool,
That hath no cause to flatter, tells me so;
But, O, how flat and meaningless the tale,
Unless it tremble on a lover's tongue!
Beauty hath no true glass, except it be
In the sweet privacy of loving eyes."
Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the lore
Which she had learned of nature and the woods,
That beauty's chief reward is to itself,
And that the eyes of Love reflect alone
The inward fairness, which is blurred and lost
Unless kept clear and white by Duty's care.
So she went forth and sought the haunts of men,
And, being wedded, in her household cares,
Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgot
The little Sheemah and her father's charge.

But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge,
Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart,
Thinking each rustle was his sister's step.
Till hope grew less and less, and then went out,
And every sound was changed from hope to fear.
Few sounds there were :- -the dropping of a nut,
The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream,
Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's cheer,
Heard at long intervals, seemed but to make

The dreadful void of silence silenter.

Soon what small store his sister left was gone,

And, through the Autumn, he made shift to live
On roots and berries, gathered in much fear
Of wolves, whose ghastly howl he heard ofttimes,
Hollow and hungry, at the dead of night.
But Winter came at last, and, when the snow,
Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues o'er hill and plain,
Spread its unbroken silence over all,
Made bold by hunger, he was fain to glean,
(More sick at heart than Ruth, and all alone,)
After the harvest of the merciless wolf,
Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and gaunt, yet feared
A thing more starving than himself;

Till, by degrees, the wolf and he grew friends,
And shared together all the winter through.

Late in the Spring, when all the ice was gone,
The elder brother, fishing in the lake,
Upon whose edge his father's wigwam stood,
Heard a low moaning noise upon the shore :
Half like a child it seemed, half like a wolf,
And straightway there was something in his heart
That said, "It is thy brother Sheemah's voice."
So, paddling swiftly to the bank, he saw,
Within a little thicket close at hand,

A child that seemed fast changing to a wolf,
From the neck downward, gray with shaggy hair,
That still crept on and upward as he looked.
The face was turned away, but well he knew
That it was Sheemah's, even his brother's face.
Then with his trembling hands he hid his eyes,
And bowed his head, so that he might not see
The first look of his brother's eyes, and cried,

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·O, Sheemah! O, my brother, speak to me! Dost thou not know me, that I am thy brother? Come to me, little Sheemah, thou shalt dwell With me henceforth, and know no care or want!" Sheemah was silent for a space, as if 'T were hard to summon up a human voice, And, when he spake, the sound was of a wolf's: "I know thee not, nor art thou what thou say'st; I have none other brethren than the wolves, And, till thy heart be changed from what it is, Thou art not worthy to be called their kin." Then groaned the other, with a choking tongue, "Alas! my heart is changed right bitterly; 'T is shrunk and parched within me even now!" And, looking up fearfully, he saw Only a wolf that shrank away and ran, Ugly and fierce, to hide among the woods.

This rude, wild legend hath an inward sense, Which it were well we all should lay to heart; For have not we our younger brothers, too, The poor, the outcast, and the trodden down, Left fatherless on earth to pine for bread? They are ahungered for our love and care, It is their spirits that are famishing, And our dear Father, in his Testament, Bequeathed them to us as our dearest trust,

Wherefore we shall give up a straight account.
Woe, if we have forgotten them, and left
Those souls that might have grown so fair and glad,
That only wanted a kind word from us,
To be so free and gently beautiful,—
Left them to feel their birthright as a curse,
To grow all lean, and cramped, and full of sores,
And last,-sad change, that surely comes to all
Shut out from manhood by their brother-man,
To turn mere wolves, for lack of aught to love!

Hear it, O England! thou who liest asleep
On a volcano, from whose pent-up wrath,
Already some red flashes, bursting up,
Glare bloodily on coronet and crown
And gray cathedral looming huge aloof,
With dreadful portent of o'erhanging doom!
Thou Dives among nations! from whose board,
After the dogs are fed, poor Lazarus,
Crooked and worn with toil, and hollow-eyed,
Begs a few crumbs in vain!

I honour thee
For all the lessons thou hast taught the world,
Not few nor poor, and freedom chief of all;
I honour thee for thy huge energy,

Thy tough endurance, and thy fearless heart:
And how could man, who speaks with English words,
Think lightly of the blessed womb that bare
Shakspeare and Milton, and full many more
Whose names are now our earth's sweet lullabies,
Wherewith she cheers the infancy of those
Who are to do her honour in their lives?
Yet I would bid thee, ere too late, beware,
Lest, while thou playest off thine empty farce
Of Queenship to outface a grinning world,
Patching thy purple out with filthy rags,
To make thy madness a more bitter scoff,
Thy starving millions,-who not only pine
For body's bread, but for the bread of life,
The light which from their eyes is quite shut out
By the broad mockery of thy golden roof,—
Should turn to wolves that hanker for thy blood.
Even now their cry, which, o'er the ocean-stream,
Wanders, and moans upon the awe-struck ear,
Clear-heard above the sea's eternal wail,
But deeper far, and mournfuller, than that,
(For nought so fathomless as woe unshared,)
Hath learned a savage meaning of the wolf,
Whose nature now half-triumphs in the heart
Of the world-exiled and despairing Man.

And thou, my country, who to me art dear
As is the blood that circles through my heart,
To whom God granted it in charge to be
Freedom's apostle to a trampled world,
Who shouldst have been a mighty name to shae
Old lies and shams, as with a voice from Heaven,
Art little better than a sneer and mock,
And tyrants smile to see thee holding up

Freedom's broad Ægis o'er three million slaves!
Shall God forget himself to honor thee?
Shall justice lie to screen thine ugly sin?
Shall the eternal laws of truth become
Cobwebs to let thy foul oppression through?
Shall the untiring Vengeance, that pursues,
Age after age, upon the sinner's track,
Roll back his burning deluge at thy beck?

Woe! woe! Even now I see thy star drop down,
Waning and pale, its faint disc flecked with blood,
That had been set in heaven gloriously,
To beacon Man to Freedom and to Home!
Woe! woe! I hear the loathsome serpent hiss,
Trailing, unharmed, its slow and bloated folds
O'er the lone ruins of thy Capitol !

I see those outcast millions turned to wolves,
That howl and snarl o'er Freedom's gory corse,
And lap the ebbing heart's-blood of that Hope,

Genius, even in its faintest scintillations, is the inpired gift of God--a solemn mandate to its owner to go forth and labour in his sphere, to keep alive the sacred fire among his brethren, which the heavy and polluted atmosphere of this world is forever threatning to extinguish. Woe to him, if he neglect this mandate-if he hear not its still small voice. Woe to him if he turn this inspired gift into the servant of his evil or ignoble passions; if he offer it at the shrine of vanity, or if he sell it for a piece of money. D'ISRELI.

The influence of Coleridge, like that of Bentham, extends far beyond those who share in the peculiarities of his philosophical or religious creed. He has been the great awakener in this country of the spirit of philosophy, within the bounds of tradition

Which would have made our earth smile back on al opinions. He has been, almost as truly as Ben

heaven,

A happy child upon a happy mother,

From whose ripe breast it drew the milk of life.

But no, my country! other thoughts than these Befit a son of thine: serener thoughts Befit the heart which can, unswerved, believe That wrong already feels itself o'ercome, If but one soul have strength to see the right, Or one free tongue dare speak it. All mankind Look, with an anxious flutter of the heart, To see thee working out thy glorious doom. Thou shalt not, with a lie upon thy lips, Forever prop up cunning despotisms, And help to strengthen every tyrant's plea, By striving to make man's deep soul content With a half-truth that feeds it with mere wind. God judgeth us by what we know of right, Rather than what we practise that is wrong, Unknowingly; and thou shalt yet be bold To stand before Him, with a heart made clean By doing that He taught thee how to preach. Thou yet shalt do thy holy errand; yet, That little Mayflower, convoyed by the winds And the rude waters to our rocky shore, Shall scatter Freedom's seed throughout the world, And all the nations of the earth shall come, Singing, to share the harvest-home of Truth.

Have you traced the cause and consequence of that under current of opinion which is slowly, but surely sapping the foundations of empires? Have you heard the low booming of that mighty ocean which approaches, wave after wave, to break up the dykes and boundaries of ancient power?

Mrs. Jameson's Visits and Sketches.

tham,

66

the great questioner of things established:" By Bentham, beyond all others, men have been led to ask themselves, in regard to any ancient or received opinion, Is it true? And by Coleridge, what is the meaning of it? The one took his stand outside the received opinion, and surveyed it as an entire stranger to it: the other, looked at it from within, and endeavoured to see it with the eyes of a believer in it; to discover by what apparent facts it was at first suggested, and by what appearances it has ever since been rendered credible.

Bentham judged a proposition true or false, as it accorded or not with the result of his inquiries; and did not search very curiously into what might be meant by the proposition, when it obviously did not mean what he thought true.

With Coleridge on the contrary, the very fact that any doctrine had been believed by thoughtful men, and received by whole nations or generations of mankind, was a part of the problem to be solved, was one of the phenomena to be accounted for. And as Bentham's short and easy method of referring all to the selfish interests of aristocracies, or priests, or lawyers, or some other species of impostors, could not satisfy a man who saw so much farther into the complexities of human intellect and feelings-he considered the long or extensive prevalence of any opinion as a presumption that it was not altogether a fallacy; that, to its first authors, at least, it was the result of a struggle to express in words something which had a reality to them, though not perhaps to many of those who have since received the doctrine as mere tradition. The long duration of a belief, he thought, is at least proof positive of an adaptation in it to some portion or other of the human mind; and if on digging down to the root, we do not find, as is generally the case, some truth, we shall find some natural want or requirement of human nature which the doctrine in question is fitted to satisfy among which wants, the instincts of self

ishness and of credulity have a place, but by no means an exclusive one. Thus, Bentham continually missed the truth which is in the traditional opinions, and Coleridge, that which is not of them. But each found much of what the other missed.

Critique on Coleridge's writings.

*

lamp-light-and be wafted away in perfume and praise. As surely as the human thought has power to fly abroad over an expanse of a thousand years, it has need to rest on that far shore and meditate"where now are the flatteries and vanities, and cumpetitions which seemed so important in their duty? Where are the ephemeral reputations, the glow-worm ideas, the gossamer sentiments which the impertinent voice of Fashion, pronounced immortal and divine? The deluge of oblivion has swept over them all, while the minds which were really immortal and divine, are still there, forever singing as they shine' in the firmament of thought, and mirrored in the deep of ages out of which they rose."

Literary Lionism.

We talk of the world, of fate, of chance, and mischance, often in a very bad humour. But how much of this world have we seen?-how much have we not seen? How much can-will-we not see for sheer indolence and blindness? I have seen wonders

The true scholar will feel that the richest romance, the noblest fiction that was ever woven, the heart and soul of beauty, lies enclosed in human life. Itself of surpassing value, it is also the richest material for his creations. He must bear his share of the common load. He must work with men in houses, and not with their names in books. His needs, appetites, talents, affections, accomplishments, are keys that open to him the beautiful museum of human life. Why should he read it as an Arabian tale, and not know in his own beating bosom its sweet and smart? Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and lendings and losses, out of sickness and pain, out of wooing and worship-to-day in this most frivolous and godless of cities, ping, out of travelling and voting and watching and caring, out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws. Let him not slur his lesson; let him learn it by heart. Let him endeavour exactly, bravely, and cheerfully, to solve the problem of that life which is set before him; and this by punctual action, and not by promises and dreams. Literary Lionism.

Many are the thousands who have let the man die within them from cowardly care about meat and drink, and a warm corner in this great asylum of safety, whose gates have ever been thronged by the multitude who cannot appreciate the free air and open heaven. And many are the hundreds who have let the poet die within them, that their complacency may be fed, their vanity intoxicated, and themselves securely harboured in the praise of their immediate neighbours. Few, very few are there who, noble in reason," and conscious of being "infinite in faculties," have faith to look before and after; faith to go on, to reverence the dreams of their youth; faith to appeal to the god-like human mind yet unborn. Among the millions who are now thinking and feeling on our own soil, is it not likely that there is one who might take up the song of Homer, one who might talk the night away with Socrates, one who might be the Shakespeare of an age, when our volcanoes shall have become regions of green pasture and still waters, and new islands shall send forth human speech from the midst of the sea?

What are such men about? If one is pining in want, rusting in ignorance, or turning from angel to devil under oppression, it is too probable that another may be undergoing extinction in drawing rooms-surrendering his divine faculties to wither in

Berlin. What lives in women whom I found in the lowest, grass-grown, neglected, hovels! How different is every thing among the lower classes from what the wise in this world have published, printed, read, and believed! God alone knows how much real, simple-minded, sterling honesty and truth He has sent into the world. Blessed be his name that he has given me eyes to see it. RAHEL.

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