the past and present, unless sobriety preserve it and direct it to useful ends?

Parents and teachers, I call upon you as the guardians of the yet uninformed mind, will you hold out to the young a literature that shall strengthen their growing capacities, or one that shall unfit them for all the practicable duties of life? You hold in your hands the most valuable of all earthly trusts, no less than the character of this whole nation. On you devolves the responsibility of making us a virtuous and a happy people. Look to the public and private library, look to the drawing room and the school book; guard well the sanctuary of your household that it may present no inducements to tempt the young from a pure and sober life. Select for those committed to your care, for their companions in study, works to which they may assimilate their minds without detriment to their morals. As they progress in education, infuse still more into their youthful minds the love of a literature chaste in thought and refined in language. Let them find in Milton and Pollock, the companions of their thoughtful, serious hours; let them find in Young, the soother of an afflicted spirit; let them rise with Cowper "on an angel's wing amid the music of his grateful piety." Associating with Bacon "the great confidant of nature," they will learn to despise the pitiful abortions of Boz; seated at the feet of Locke, "whose pure philosophy only taught him to adore its source," they

will see and feel that Bulwer is the foe of God and man. The literature of such men as these gives strength to the moral courage, soundness to the intellectual energy, and dignity to the character of man. Its empire is co-extensive with the empire of thought; and when temperance shall have finished its work, they shall rise to the true distinction of their merit, and their influence be felt on every mind.

"HIGHER STILL!"

BY MISS L. B. MARBLE.

IN looking back upon the records of past ages, we sometimes smile at the wild theories by which man, fettered by ignorance and superstition, has sought to penetrate the mysteries of his own being; and yet, perhaps there is not in all the wealth that History brings us, a more glorious legacy. Other events may teach lessons of political wisdom; the success of different modes of government, the effects ever wrought upon the human mind by certain causes, but these show at once, that the course of that mind, however turned aside by stern, untoward circumstance is, and must be, upward. Though the wings of angelic purity were folded when the last sad farewell was taken of Paradise, they yet remain, and thrusting aside the burden that would rest upon them here, are struggling upward to be spread in the far-off unending future of Eternity. It is to that future, that the soul of man has ever sprung, when oppressed with the weariness of a life, too little marked by holiness, too deeply imbued with sin. The poor Gymnosophist of India, the Astrologer of Egypt, the Philosopher of Greece, each felt the same assurance

of a light burning within, though dim and obscured with mystery. Each sought, feeling the body indefinitely connected with, and obscuring that light, by inflicting upon it torture and degradation, to increase the brilliancy of that with which it was so strangely allied. Thus various uncouth theories were formed; superstition and blind credulity called to their aid the inspiration of external agencies, and all the beautiful and striking phenomena of nature were interpreted as the manifestations of innumerable, invisible powers. These theories, as those formed without the assistance of Revelation and enlightened reason must ever do, often led to crime and misery. Yet, bowing to the wisdom that controls the universe, they may not be blotted from the records of past events, but remain to prove, (while perhaps their immediate effects excite our commiseration or regret,) the original, glorious birthright of the soul.

Yet with reason as its guide, with that knowledge in its grasp for which the heathen sage sought a life-time, what has ever satisfied the longing soul, bidding it cease its aspirations and "be still?" As if haunted with the dim presentiment of some greater, more exalted life, in which its powers shall be unfettered and free, it scorns that narrow philosophy which would reason away its existence, and number all its finely-strung energies and emotions, all its deep wrought hopes and aspirings among the things that have been. Nay, its exist

ence is in the future; the past has been but the unfolding of its infancy, the present is the step whereon it stands looking afar.

In this view, the world around becomes as the text-book of the soul, to which it awakes from its cradle slumbers to con for threescore and ten years, lessons of gentle, but firm assurance of a less limited, an unending after-life. The physical, the moral, and the intellectual worlds are before it, each sending forth the same whisperings of promise. Who may set himself down there, content only with the present, wilfully blinding his eyes and murmuring in his very supineness, "There is nothing higher?" He beholds the vegetable creation, after it has ministered for a season to the wants and luxuries of man, changing and passing away by a power that he cannot comprehend, and murmurs unwillingly, "so passes man," and then he sleeps. But when the spring comes again and rekindles the vital spark that seemed extinct, there comes no voice to his ear, whispering "there is even a mightier than the resurrection of the flowers." He sees the beauty of firm and truthful character, founded upon that noble charity which forgiveth an enemy; and yet he thinks not of the beauty of that character when it shall have cast aside the weariness of a sinful nature, to delight only in holiness. He beholds the triumph of intellect, passing from earth, and telling with prophetic precision the path of the very stars, yet fails to