O there is sweetness in that hour!
So pure, so joyous, so serene!

And through the heart a 'witching power

Is breathed from every beauteous scene!
Mingling with each fond wish or thought,
With nature's holiest incense fraught;
Inspiring hope, or soothing fear,
Healing the smart of sorrow's tear;
And when with torturing doubts oppressed,
The struggling passions tear the breast,
Throwing o'er all a calm control,
Awakening love, the music of the soul!

O Nature! gentle nurse, and kind!
O handmaid of creative love!

Still teach my thirsting soul to find-
To feel where'er my footsteps rove,
In ocean's wild, unceasing flow,

Or streamlet rippling through the sod,-
In all we see and love below,

The warbling bird, the laboring bee,
The fragrant flower, the fruitful tree,
In all that's great, or good, or free,
The chastening wisdom of thy God!

Henry Larkin.

THE pleasure of a religious man is an easy and a portable pleasure; such an one he carries about in his bosom, without alarming either the eye or the envy of the world. A man putting all his pleasures into this one, is like a traveller

putting all his goods into one jewel; the value is the same and the convenience much greater. South.

AFFLICTIONS are like the test to gold; they prove and discover the truth and excellency of our virtues. Nelson.

VIRTUE Would be no virtue, or very slight, if it met with no trials to exercise, improve, or perfect it.

Dr. Waterland.

IN the pursuit of pleasure we pick up some stray flowers of wisdom, and when that pursuit is over, happiness will come at last to our prayers and help us to extract the honey which these flowers afford us.

Bulwer.

IN one whose fate it is to walk peaceably, though sometimes pensively, through the obscure bye-paths of life, it is an advantage to have a quickness in discovering every violet that springs up among brambles, and every rainbow that smiles through the tears of the sky. Mrs. Grant.

EVERY year of my life I grow more and more convinced, that it is wisest and best to fix our

attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false. Mrs. Child.

THE mind hath no horizon:

It looks beyond the eye and seeks for mind

In all it sees, or all it sees o'erruling. Montgomery.

POOR policy

It is to shun the few bright hours that come

Because more are absent from us.

Barry Cornwall.

BE lord of thy own mind;

The dread of evil is the worst of ills.

Half of the ills we hoard within our hearts

Are ills because we hoard them.

Ibid.

PERSONS unknown to each other advance with congenial tempers from good will into a sort of intimacy. There must, however, be a warmth of temperament, and even of imagination, to bring congeniality always to bear. Icicles may be frozen together, and seem apparently linked; but it is the warm sun which melts and amalgamates correspondent natures, so that they run into one another and appear individually the

same.

De Vere.

PHILOSOPHY may infuse stubbornness, but religion only can give patience.

Johnson.

THERE is something very beautiful and sublime, when we consider the universality of Christianity; how it enters into every relation of life; and wherever it operates it is always for good, and invariably leaves a blessing. But in order to this it must be enthroned in the centre of our being, since whatever is in the centre governs the entire system of man.

The subject of friendship, or the mutual association, into which we enter one with another, is immensely important. The heart of man, created for the reception of divine love, is such as to require objects to love, on which it can exercise its sympathies and its affections. The eye might as well be supposed to have no objects for its vision, as the heart no objects for its love; and according to the moral worth and dignity of the object loved, will be the elevation of the heart, and the nature of genuine friendship. If a man be placed in a distant isle, alone, and out of "humanity's reach," isolated from his species, his heart will nevertheless seek for objects which it will love. He will survey the mountains, which will awake in his soul emotions and sentiments of love; he will inscribe his name on the rocks and the trees as

mementoes of his affection; and he will seek to win the regard, and to soften the wild nature, of the animals around him, rather than be without objects on which to exercise the affections of his heart. In short, man is created for love and friendship.

All true friendship, like every other good thing, comes from heaven, and its sole origin is the Lord. We must first be friends with Him before we can be friends one with another. This must ever be considered the basis of true

and genuine friendship. "Ye are my friends if ye do whatever I command you;" these are the Lord's words, and it is plain that the covenant of friendship and love, between him and us, is the covenant of salvation. What does the Lord command us? He commands us to love one another, to do to others as we would they should do to us, to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, to pray for them who despitefully treat us and persecute us, to forgive even to seventy times seven, to learn meekness and lowliness of heart from Him, and universally keep his commandments, that we may enter into the life of his love and peace. This pure love is the essence of all friendship. It consequently follows that friendship is of the nature of the love from which it springs.

"Apex," Intellectual Repository.