WIT AND BEAUTY.

The Author of the Life of Gouverneur Morris, thus introduces him, when he graduated as Bachelor of Arts.

IN selecting for the exercise of his unfledged powers the theme of Wit and Beauty, our youthful orator was actuated more perhaps by a spirit of adventurous experiment common at his age, than by the dictates of a mature judgment. Be this as it may, he acquitted himself with credit, and won the applause of his auditory, both grave and gay, who saw, or imagined they saw, the fairest promise of the rich fruits of manhood in these buds and blossoms of young fancy and aspiring genius in a boy of sixteen. A copy of this performance is preserved among his papers. Amidst an exuberance of metaphors and rhetorical flourishes, which usually make so large an ingredient in commencement orations, there are not wanting ideas and modes of thought, that would have graced a maturer intellect.

The exordium contains an apology for his subject, and is adroitly constructed. 'Long had I debated with myself,' he begins, ‘on what subject to address so learned and polite an audience. Pedantically to discuss some knotty point of the schools would be, if not disagreeable, at least dry, insipid, and uninteresting; it would be the retailing of other men's opinions, and endeavoring to explain what I am little acquainted with to those who are well informed. For certainly at a time where law shines forth in its meridian glory, and divinity sprouts up promiscuously on all sides, no sophisms can darken the light of natural equity, nor will our moral duties be obscured or unpractised. Endeavoring therefore to place them in a fairer light, would be to cast a veil over their perfections. A lighter subject may indeed be acceptable to those, who, like myself, are in the early spring of life; but with those in whom sober autumn has repressed the understanding, blunted the passions, and refined the taste, it may not perhaps be so well received. Yet when I consider that the lenity and candor of those, to whom I have the honor of addressing myself, are equal to their learning and judgment, I am the more easily incited to submit this performance to their mild consideration, and to descant upon wit and beauty.'

Having thus begun, he proceeds to the thread of his dis

course, and first of all speaks of the characteristics, power, and advantages of wit. This choice gift, is one of heaven's best boons to social man; it makes the charm of an agreeable companion, it enlivens conversation, promotes innocent mirth, and banishes that sable fiend, melancholy, the restless haunter of our inmost thoughts. It is the two-edged sword of the poet and moralist. 'It gilds the bitter pill of satire, it entices us to read, and compels us to reform. Faults, which escape the grasp of justice, and hide behind the bulwarks of the law, which, like Proteus, change into a thousand shapes and baffle the researches of wisdom, these it strips of their borrowed plumes, and shows in their native deformity. Whilst the understanding, in teaching and enforcing the duties of morality, fetters vice in a chain of reason, wit boldly rushes on, plies the lash, and goads the monster from her den.' But wit is said to be capricious, and its darts to be thrown without discrimination or mercy. This is a mistake. The instrument is confounded with the agent. Wit is harmless, but like every other strong weapon, it may be wielded to mischievous ends. Wit is a soothing balm, but a malignant temper may convert it into a deadly poison. Wit is cheerful, sunny, and serene, but a morose spirit may enshroud it in a mantle of darkness, and make it an object of terror, and even a source of suffering. Such are the abuses of wit, but not its aims and character.

In touching upon beauty, the second topic of his discourse, the young orator is more flighty and less pointed. His prevailing idea, however, is a good one, that the forms of beauty, as they exist in the physical and moral world, have been the chief means of civilizing the human race, and bringing man into a state of social order and happiness. He is not satisfied with the notions of certain theorists on this subject. 'Philosophers, who find themselves already living in society, say, that mankind first entered into it from a sense of their mutual wants. But the passions of barbarians must have had too great an influence over their understandings to render this probable. They, who were in prime of life, would never have been persuaded to labor for such as were passed, or had not arrived at that state; and even if they consented to do it, yet the love of liberty, so natural to all, must have prevented both old and young from giving up the right of acting as they pleased, and from suffering themselves to be controlled by the will of another. Besides, reason, unassist

ed by beauty, would never have smoothed away that savage ferocity, which must have been an inseparable bar to their union.'

This doctrine of the power of beauty to subdue the savage nature of man admits of wide illustration. In the material world all beautiful forms are suited to move the kinder feelings and softer emotions. The heavens with their splendid garniture of celestial orbs, the earth clad in its robe of verdure ever varied in the colors and shapes it assumes, the wide blue sea reflecting from its tranquil bosom the images of the heavenly hosts, that keep watch over its midnight slumbers, these and the myriads of animated semblances of beauty that people air, earth, and ocean, are so many sources of enjoyment, and so many calls on the gratitude and devotion of man. These are the objects of his contemplative thoughts, the themes of his musing hours, and where contemplation dwells the passions are silent, and the social principle is most easily diffused and cultivated.

As in the theatre of natural existence, so in the world of art, the forms of beauty are at once the indications and the causes of melioration, refinement, and the social progress. What are the fine arts, what are the arts of life, but proofs of this position?. What are sculpture, architecture, painting, what the thousand varied combinations of taste and elegance, which serve for the ornaments and convenience of the social state, but so many demonstrations of the same fact? They divest man of his savage attributes, and bring him under the influence of his milder nature. Moral beauty comes to the same result. Virtue is beautiful, vice deformed; the one refines, purifies, expands, elevates; the other debases and degrades; the one promotes good faith, order, and tranquillity in society; the other perfidy, misrule, and confusion; the one is a cheerful attendant on happiness, the other is leagued with misery. Such is the power of beauty in nature, in art, and the soul of man. The speaker does not forget to enlarge on female beauty and its all conquering influence, and here he draws upon his classical erudition, and the records of history, and talks of heroes, and conquerors, and the downfall of empires, the youthful king of Macedon, and of others, who laid the spoils of a captive world at beauty's feet.' But enough has been said to give some idea of this first effort in the departments of composition and eloquence, in which he afterwards became so successful and eminent.

IMPERISHABLE WEALTH.

SHALL man, to sordid views confined,

His powers unfold,

And waste his energy of mind
In search of gold?

Rise, rise, my soul, and spurn such low desires,
Nor quench in grovelling dust heaven's noblest fires.
For what are all thy anxious cares,

Thy ceaseless toil?

For what, when roars the wind, thy fears
Lest in the broil

When bursting clouds and furious waves contend,
Thy bark rich freighted all engulf'd descend.

Fraught with disease to-morrow comes,
And bows thy head;

From treasured heaps and splendid domes
Thy thoughts recede:

The dream is o'er: then kiss the chastening rod,
That points the road to virtue and to God.

Seek thou, my soul, a nobler wealth,
And more secure:-

Content and peace, the mind's best health,
And thoughts all pure;

And deeds benevolent, and prayer, and praise,
And deep submission to Heaven's righteous ways.

IMPORTANCE

Of Intellectual and Religious Cultivation.

ONE of the great mistakes which men commit in ordering the plan of their lives, is, that they seek excellence in the cultivation of too few of their powers and faculties, and happiness from access to too few sources of pleasure. A certain provision for the corporeal wants of our nature, is indeed, indispensable to enjoyment and even to existence. The pursuit of these objects, constitutes not the task, but the happiness of the human race. No wise man, who knows the constitution of human nature, would wish to alter this

man.

condition of things in the least. No wise man, who knows the springs of human happiness, would wish to make the acquisition of the means of living at all easier than it is. The world is constituted in this respect, in perfect wisdom. Endowed as man is, with a freedom of the will, and of consequence with the power of growing illimitably worse, impressed also with an irresistible inclination to activity, it is only his wants which can keep him in the path of duty. The industrious, is the only worthy, virtuous or truly happy Let God's first command be fulfilled; let man go forth to subdue and replenish the earth, let the wilderness and the solitary place be glad for him, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose; let the earth be fully cultivated even to the utmost extent of its capacities; nay, let his industry even encroach upon the bounds of old ocean, and win back the inroads her swelling waves have made; let commerce spread her wings on every sea, and bind in one vast community of mutual wants and mutual aids, all the nations of the earth; let the arts go on to flourish till every human want be amply supplied; let not only the necessaries but the conveniences and the luxuries of life, be brought within the reach of even the humblest industry, integrity and virtue; there would be nothing in all this, inconsistent with man's highest and best interests. This is not what we would censure. What we maintain, is that he must not think when these corporeal wants are satisfied, that all his capacities are filled. There are wants of his spiritual nature, and pleasures of course, arising from the satisfaction of them; there are capacities of happiness in his mind, in his soul, which are boundless and immortal. Let him not then, when his corporeal nature is full, still labour to heap upon that which can contain no more, but let him rather turn his attention to his spiritual interests. For what is man, when you have taken away his spiritual nature and capacities; his piety; his communion with God; his expectation, his preparation for immortality; his intellectual cultivation; his acquaintance with the universe and himself; his benevolence; his pleasure in the society of his fellows; and his delight in doing and receiving good; his affections extending his being to many, and becoming as it were, a part of their existence and vitality; his sentiments; his delight in the beautiful, his rapture in the true, his exultation in the good and pure, his wide reaching sympathies, and his undying hopes? What is man without all these, but