1.

LESSON XCVII.

THE ALPS.

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

PROUD monuments of God! sublime

Among the wonders of His mighty hand;

With summits soaring in the upper sky,

Where the broad day looks down with burning eye;
Where gorgeous clouds in solemn pomp repose,
Flinging rich shadows on eternal snows:
Piles of triumphant dust, ye stand alone,
And hold, in kingly state, a peerless throne!

2. Like olden conquerors, on high ye rear
The regal ensign and the glittering spear:
Round icy spires the mists, in wreaths unrolled,
Float ever near, in purple or in gold;
And voiceful torrents, sternly rolling there,
Fill with wild music the unpillared air.

What garden or what hall, on earth beneath,

Thrills to such tones as o'er the mountains breathe?

3. There, through long ages past, those summits shone
When morning radiance on their state was thrown;
There, when the summer-day's career was done,
Played the last glory of the sinking sun;
There, sprinkling luster o'er the cataract's shade,
The chastened moon her glittering rainbow made;
And, blent with pictured stars, her luster lay
Where to still vales the free streams leaped away.

4. Where are the thronging hosts of other days,
Whose banners floated o'er the Alpine ways;

Who, through their high defiles, to battle wound,
While deadly ordnance stirred the hights around?
Gone, like the dream that melts at early morn
When the lark's anthem through the sky is borne;
Gone, like the wrecks that sink in ocean's spray;
And chill Oblivion murmurs, "Where are they?"

5. Yet "Alps on Alps" still rise; the lofty home
Of storms and eagles, where their pinions roam:
Still round their peaks the magic colors lie,
Of morn and eve, imprinted on the sky;

And still, while kings and thrones shall fade and fall,
And empty crowns lie dim upon the pall,-
Still shall their glaciers flash, their torrents roar,
Till kingdoms fail, and nations rise no more.

LESSON XCVIII.

DESIRE TO BE REMEMBERED.

FORGOTTEN! How harshly that word grates upon the

ear! With what icy coldness it falls on the heart! How we shrink from the thought, that, ere long, all memory of us will have faded from the minds of men; that there will be a time, when, of all who love us now, or who ever will love us, not one will be left to tell that we existed; when, of those who may dwell in the places we now occupy, not one will recognize a vestige of any thing we ever did, or that we ever lived!

2. TO BE FORGOTTEN!-oh! fearful thought! It is this which makes us linger when we say farewell; it is this which nerves the heart and strengthens the arm when the

horrid din of war shuts out the memory of dear associations; and this wrings the life-blood from that heart, and causes the arm to fall powerless. It is this which bears up against discouragements those who would mount to Fame's highest pinnacle, there to inscribe a name which shall live long after they themselves have passed away. A NAME!— what a slight token of remembrance for the giant minds of earth to bequeath! A NAME! when the form, the countenance, shall have a place in the memory of none!

3. We all love to cherish the thought that we shall not be forgotten, that we shall not be dead to others, when the warm pulsations of our hearts have ceased; that "dumb forgetfulness" will not bind our memories in the chains of silence. We can all designate some in our immediate presence, in whose surviving thoughts our love, ourselves, would gladly dwell. Assured of this, and who would not

"Leave the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind"?

But it may not be. When our eyes are stamped with the seal of death, some few faithful ones will mourn our loss, some bitter tears be shed over our graves, and, in a little while, we shall be forgotten.

4. There are those, however, and not a few, who have won an earthly immortality by their thoughts and deeds. To these, though their forms have faded from the eye of Time, and their monuments been fanned to dust by his wing,—to these it has never been said, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." They live, love, and are loved, as when the earth was gladdened by their actual presence. We have felt their spirits breathing into and mingling with ours, when the world looked dark, and all has become bright again.

5. With a prophetic tone their voices have rung in our ears, rousing us from dull torpor and senseless slumber to high thought and holy purpose. No: they are not dead; they are not forgotten! Aspirer after fame, wouldst thou leave some traces on the shores of Time, over which the waves of oblivion shall dash with all their fury in vain'? Wouldst thou be lulled to thy last sleep with the sweet consciousness that thou wilt not be forgotten'? If so, "go thou and do likewise."

6. A little star shining so soothingly, whispering peace to the rebellious heart, and hope to the desolate, were the decree of the Almighty to go forth that its light must be extinguished, would long afterwards be seen by us, twinkling and cheering as ever. So with the great and good of earth. The light which hovers around their pathway, can not grow dim, though we consign their bodies to the tomb, until Time's course is fully run; and even then it will shine as brightly as ever, in a holier, a purer land than this. In that land, also, it is our hope that the severed ties of nature and of friendship will be reunited. There we shall see those whom we have loved, and there forgotten is a forbidden word.

LESSON XCIX.

1 MIL' TON. See note, page 107.

2 KLOP STOCK,

Friedrich, a celebrated German poet, was born in Prussian Saxony, 1724, and died 1803. He devoted himself entirely to literature. His greatest work was the sacred epic called "The Messiah." He made himself respectably known also by philological writings.

3 OLD MORTALITY, a character and the title of a novel by Sir Walter Scott. The name is said to have been a sobriquet popularly conferred upon Robert Patterson, a religious itinerant of the later half of the last cen

tury, the traditions concerning whom are related in the story, and who is described as a solitary, frequenting country church-yards, and the graves of the Covenanters, in the south of Scotland, and whose occupation consisted in clearing the moss from the gray tombstones, renewing with his chisel the half-defaced inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of death with which the monuments were adorned.

PLA TO, an illustrious Grecian philosopher, who taught the immortality of the soul and the beauty of goodness, was born at Athens 429 years before Christ, and died in his 80th year. He was the disciple of Socrates. His system of philosophy is known as the Platonic.

• AD' DI SON, JOSEPH, one of the most elegant writers in English literature, was born in 1672, and died in 1719.

THE

THE DESIRE OF REPUTATION.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.

desire of an honored name exists in all. It is an original principle in every mind, and lives often when every other generous principle has been obliterated. It is the wish to be known and respected by others, to extend the knowledge of our existence beyond our individual consciousness of being, to be remembered, at least, for a little while after we are dead. Next to the dread of annihilation, we dread the immediate extinction of our names when we die. We would not have the earth at once made level over our graves; we would not have the spot where we sleep at once forgotten; we would not have the last traces of our existence at once obliterated from the memory of the living world.

2. We need not go into an argument to prove that this desire exists in the human soul. Any one has only to look into his own heart to find it always there in living power, and in controlling influence. We need not ask you to cast your eyes upon the pages of history to see the proofs, that the desire has found a home in the heart of man. We need not point you to the distinguished heroes, orators, and poets of the past or modern times; nor need we attempt