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He shares it with a bounteous hand and scatters blessings round.

The treasure sent is rightly spent, and serves the end designed,

When held by nature's gentleman, the good, the just, the kind.

He turns not from the cheerless home, where sorrow's offspring dwell;

He'll greet the peasant in his hut-the culprit in his cell.

He stays to hear the widow's plaint of deep and mourning love,

He seeks to aid her lot below, and prompt her faith above.

The orphan child, the friendless one, the luckless, or

the poor,

Will never meet his spurning frown, or leave his bolted

door;

His kindred circles all mankind, his country all the

globe

An honest name his jewelled star, and truth his ermine robe.

He worships God with inward zeal, and serves him in each deed;

He would not blame another's faith nor have one martyr bleed;

Justice and mercy form his code; he puts his trust in Heaven;

His prayer is, "If the heart mean well, may all else be forgiven !"

Though few of such may gem the earth, yet such rare gems there are,

Each shining in his hallowed sphere as virtue's polar

star.

Though human hearts too oft are found all gross, corrupt, and dark,

Yet, yet some bosoms breathe and burn; lit by Promethean spark,*

There are some spirits nobly just, unwarped by pelf or pride,

Great in the calm, but greater still when dashed by adverse tide,

They hold the rank no king can give, no station can disgrace.

Nature puts forth her gentleman, and monarchs must give place.

LESSON LIX.

THE OLD OAK.

The following beautiful lines, by G. P. MORRIS, of New York, have been consecrated by music as well as by poetry. Happy would it be if the taste and love for natural beauty, so feelingly inculcated in thi poem, could be indelibly impressed upon every American heart. The useless sacrifice of noble trees, and the neglect to plant and cultivate them, are peculiar faults of our countrymen.

Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.
'Twas my forefather's hand
That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand;
Thy axe shall harm it not!

That old familiar tree,

Whose glory and renown

* Among the fables of antiquity, is one which says that Prometheus made the first man and woman of clay, and animated them by fire stolen from heaven. He was worshipped by the Athenians.

Are spread o'er land and sea,

And would'st thou hack it down?
Woodman, forbear thy stroke!

Cut not its earth-bound ties;
Oh, spare that aged oak,
Now towering to the skies!

When but an idle boy

I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy,
Here, too, my sisters played.
My mother kissed me here,
My father pressed my hand;
Forgive this foolish tear,—
But let that old oak stand!

My heart-strings round thee cling,
Close as thy bark, old friend!
Here shall the wild bird sing,

And still thy branches bend.
Old tree! the storm still brave!
And, woodman, leave the spot,
While I've a hand to save,
Thy axe shall harm it not.

LESSON LX.

THE FIRST CHURCH.

The author of the following beautiful lines is unknown to the Editor, who took them from the Christian Register. The young pupil may need to be told that a Fane is a religious temple, and the word Catholic means universal.

Your voiceless lips, oh flowers, are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,
Suggesting to our fancy numerous teachers

From loneliest nook.

'Neath cloistered boughs each floral bell that swingeth
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth
A call to prayer-

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column,
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,
But to that fane most catholic and solemn
Which God hath planned :

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Those quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply,
Its choir, the winds and waves-its organ, thunder,
Its dome, the sky.

There, amid solitude and shade, I wander
Through the green aisle, and stretched upon the sod,
Awed by the silence, reverently ponder
The ways of God.

LESSON LXI.

MY AUNT.

The following satire upon prevalent modes of education, as well as upon that foolish affectation which endeavors to wipe out the lines that Time writes on all his children alike, was written by Dr. HOLMES. The good humor of his satire must reconcile to it even those who in common language are called "the sufferers."

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone;

I know it hurts her, though she looks
As cheerful as she can;

Her waist is ampler than her life,
For "life is but a span."

My aunt, my poor deluded aunt!

Her hair is almost gray;

Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell?

Her father, grandpapa! forgive
This erring lip its smiles,-
Vowed she would make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.

He sent her to a stylish school;
'Twas in her thirteenth June;
And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon."

They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;

They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins ;

O, never mortal suffered more

In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back;
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track ;)

"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,

"What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!"

9*

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