THE DEATH OF THOMAS CLARKSON.

Not for ourselves, our sad hearts fill,"The slave hath lost a friend."

When he was friendless, on his chain
Fell the great Clarkson's eye;
And in that hour, he vowed to gain
His brother's cause, or die!

He went forth an enthusiast boy—
He fought an earnest man—
He conquered-and laid down in joy,
As only Christians can.

We thank Thee, Father! that on earth
Thy servant staid so long;
Thou gave his noble purpose birth,
And made his spirit strong.

Glory to Thee! his wayside seed,

In Faith and Patience sown,

Has blossomed for the bondman's need;
Glory to Thee alone!

And all o'er England's rich domain,

His spirit hath begot,

For her crushed poor, for Want, and Pain
Friends, and they know it not.

Beside the forge, and at the loom,

Amid the factory's din,

Where little children weave their doom,
His lineage looks in.

Around the labourer's cold hearth,

Where Want hath cast out Love,

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Where misery hath conquered Mirth,
Unseen his offspring move.

With hearts his life hath warmed, they come
With steady souls and brave,

To lift a clear voice for the dumb,

To succour and to save.

We mourn him not! he did not go,
His great heart was not stilled,
Till all the streams that from it flow,

Had with his life been filled.

Philadelphia, 11th Mo. 1846.

Bumility.

THE loaded bee the lowest flies-
The richest pearl the deepest lies-
The stalk the most replenished,
Doth bow the most its modest head;
And thus humility we find,
The mark of every master mind.
The highest gifted, lowliest bends;
And merit meekest condescends;
And shuns the fame that fools adore,
The puff that makes a feather soar.

E. L. JR.

Principle of Life.

ARE we without passing into extravagance, entitled to assume that Forces, which enter so essentially into the constitution of our Earth, are not confined within its conditions? Take in il. lustration the vast power of gravity. Before Science raised the veil from the distant, we knew it only in the fact of the fall of a stone, or in the roundness of a drop of water: now we have followed it through the complex motions of the Moon, and through the order of the entire system. It pursues the Comets through the abysses; it governs the orbits of the double and triple stars; it guides the Sun in his path through the skies; aye, and even those stupendous evolutions of firmaments, during which the stars congregate into dazzling clusters, or arrange themselves in galaxies. Boundless the sphere of this Force; and shall an Energy yet nobler, more subtle, probably with a root much more profound, be fancied so weak, so feeble, so dependent on circumstances, that only in our world, or some one like it, it is free to work out its wonderful products? Look at its history in that very Earth. In the chalk cliffs, in caverns unseen by the Sun, in marshes that to Man are desolation and death, Life yet teems and rejoices-its forms growing in adaptation to their conditions. Long ages ago the odd Kilobite swarmed in our oceans, and the large-eyed Ichthyosaur dashed through their waters. These are gone, but plastic Nature, ever forming with ceaseless activity, has by the most mysterious of her actions, brought up new forms to play their parts among her vast scenes. Through Space as through Time, she is doubtless working; and with all their joys and sorrows-evolving far mightier results than dead, inorganic worlds. I see this in the blush of the morning which beams on all these globes, and there too, awakens the glad creatures from their repose. I see it in the downfall of evening, that speaks of refreshment from toil. I see it in the progress of the Earth, and

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in its course, through much conflict, towards perfection; for its rocks and stones, tell not only of change, but of the struggles of its creatures to become linked to something higher :-Yes, ye Worlds, wondrous and innumerable, that shine aloft, and shower around us your many mystic influences,—ye, too are the abodes of sentience suited to your conditions; ay, and of Intelligence, different, far different from ours, and in states of approach to the Divinity of all possible gradations; but of which every constituent every creature of whatever kind—is pressing outward like the bud in Spring, and stretching with longings that are unutterable, towards the Infinite and the Eternal.

Is the Moon younger-so to speak-than the planet she attends? Is that strange and anomalous crateriform surface, a picture of what our own world once was; and shall our midnight Luminary, after the travail of innumerable ages, pass from her primitive ruggedness to the condition of a globe carpeted all over by the most wondrous products of organization? Who indeed shall limit the prolificness of the Universe, or disbelieve its onward tendencies? Capacious indeed that awful duration which its history is ordained to fill! I have spoken of chronological epochs which mark steps in the evolving of those energies which now predominate in the earth;—the rise, viz: of successive mountain chains, marking successive periods whose magnitude is akin to the intervals which divide us from the fixed stars; but in presence of what I now advert to, even spaces like these become the incidents of a special era in the course of far loftier changes. The Moon in contrast with the Earth, and these few intimations from our world's deepest visible antiquity, speak of a stupendous process of evolution, to which Agencies of Upheaval are themselves subjected; we see these energies in phase, passing duly from one mode of manifestation to another; and it is only within the instant belonging to one of these phases, that we have succeeded in placing a few milestones to mark the flow of time. And even if we join the Moon to the Earth, consolidating for the

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moment their two structures, so that we read them as consecutive chapters-how trifling the extent, after all, to which we may have penetrated among the destinies of either globe! To fix the absolute beginnings of their history, to cut off all anterior infinitudes, by hypothesis of molten planets and recent refrigeration, might indeed be pleasing to an insect's vanity, and consolatary to its weakness; but no such barrier has ever been successful,voices of profound tone crossing always from its further side, and proclaiming how unfathomable is the Universe! Nevertheless, let man labour in peace! The Omnipotent Hand is accompanied by the Omniscient Eye; nor is there height so stern, or darkness so profound, that the meanest breathing creature shall be withdrawn therein from the guardianship of Eternal Benefi

cence.

Strange indeed the thoughts with which, in presence of such speculations, we must gaze on these brilliant skies! even that jewellery of midnight—a birth, a thing of yesterday, a step in the awful march of the visible and sensible picturings of the purposes of the Eternal Spirit! Realize for a moment the position of a tenant of a hut on the banks of the mighty Amazon at one of its great bendings; tell him that the waters, whose opposite bank his vision can scarce reach, are not an immense lake with appointed boundaries, but that born of rills among mountains that are unseen, and ever increasing in depth and potency, they roll downwards until a whole continent is passed, and then mingle and lose themselves with an ocean engirdling the wide Earth with its everlasting waves. So, in the view of these high cosmogonies, seem to roll on the gorgeous stellar developments; whose limits no eye can now see; rising among the past depths of time in some hidden purpose of God; rolling onward as the ages flow, and augmenting as the mighty river, until the boundary of Time is reached, and their course ends among the quietude of Eternity!

NICHOL.