prove the feelings, as well as to increase the reflective habits; and it tends, therefore, to the attainment of that which in itself tends immediately and directly to improve the character and conduct of a nation.

It tends to increase prudence and prudential habits, and to amend and improve the human feelings. The ancients have described the effects of education in far better language, and much more happily, than I can do:-" emollit mores nec sinit esse feros."

APTITUDE OF YOUTH FOR KNOWLEDGE.

It is not the less true, because it has been oftentimes said, that the period of youth is by far the best fitted for the improvement of the mind, and the retirements of a college almost exclusively adapted to much study. At your enviable age, every thing has the lively interest of novelty and freshness; attention is perpetually sharpened by curiosity; and the memory is tenacious of the deep impressions it thus receives, to a degree unknown in after-life; while the distracting cares of the world, or its beguiling pleasures, cross not the threshold of these calm retreats; its distant noise and bustle are faintly heard, making the shelter you enjoy more grateful; and the struggles of anxious mortals, embarked upon that troublous sea, are viewed from an eminence the security of which is rendered more sweet by the prospect of the scene below. Yet a little while, and you too will be plunged into those waters of bitterness, and will cast an eye of regret, as now I do, upon the peaceful regions you have quitted forever. Such is your lot as members of society; but it will be your own fault if you look back on this place with repentance or with shame; and be well assured that whatever time-ay, every hour -you squander here on unprofitable idling will then rise up against you, and be paid for by years of bitter but unavailing regrets. Study, then, I beseech you, so to store your minds with the exquisite learning of former ages, that you may always possess within yourselves sources of rational and refined enjoyment, which will enable you to set at naught the grosser pleasures of sense, whereof other men are slaves; and so imbue yourselves with the sound philosophy of later days, forming yourselves to the virtuous habits which are its legitimate offspring, that you may walk unhurt through the trials which await you, and may look down upon the ignorance and error that surround you, not with lofty and supercilious contempt, as the sages of old times, but with the vehement desire of enlightening those who wander in darkness, and who are by so much the more endeared to us by how much they want our assistance.

Address to the Glasgow Students.

THE SCHOOLMASTER AND Tthe conqueror.

But there is nothing which these adversaries of improvement are more wont to make themselves merry with than what is termed the "march of intellect;" and here I will confess that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect, expression. It is little calculated to describe the operation in question. It does not picture an image at all resembling the proceedings of the true friends of mankind. It much more resembles the progress of the enemy to all improvement. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of war," -banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamentations for the slain. Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution; he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with any thing like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable, than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won.

Such men-men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind I have found, laboring conscientiously, though perhaps obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them, and shared their fellowship, among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomitably active French; I have found them among the persevering, resolute, industrious Swiss; I have found them among the laborious, the warm-hearted, the enthusiastic Germans; I have found them among the high-minded, but enslaved, Italians; and in our own country, God be thanked, their numbers everywhere abound, and are every day increasing. Their calling is high and holy; their fame is the property of nations; their renown will fill the earth in after-ages, in proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each one of those great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course,-awaits in patience the fulfilment of the promises, and, resting from his labors, bequeaths his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, commemorating "one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy."

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER, 1790

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (better known by the assumed name of "Barry Cornwall") was born in 1790,-educated at Harrow,-studied law,-admitted to the bar in 1831,-and for many years was one of the Commissioners of Lunacy," but resigned in 1860. His Dramatic Scenes, and other Poems, # published in 1819; and was followed by Mirandola, a tragedy; Marria Colonna; The Flood of Thessaly, and other Poems; A Sicilian Story, &e. E that by which he is now best known, and will be by posterity, is his Engi Songs, and other Poems; for he may fairly be considered one of the best (some say the best) of our modern English song-writers. His tragedies and larg poems add but little to his fame.1

A PAUPER'S FUNERAL.

It is a chilling thing to see-as I

Have seen a man go down into the grave
Without a tear, or even an alter'd eye:

Oh, sadder far than when fond women rave,

Or children weep, or aged parents sigh,

O'er one whom art and love doth strive to save
In vain: man's heart is soothed by every tone
Of pity, saying, "He's not quite alone."

I saw a pauper once, when I was young,

Borne to his shallow grave: the bearers trod
Smiling to where the death-bell heavily rung;

And soon his bones were laid beneath the sod:
On the rough boards the earth was gayly flung;
Methought the prayer which gave him to his God
Was coldly said;-then all, passing away,
Left the scarce-coffin'd wretch to quick decay.

It was an autumn evening, and the rain

Had ceased a while, but the loud winds did shriek,
And call'd the deluging tempest back again;

The flag-staff on the churchyard tower did creak,
And through the black clouds ran a lightning vein.
And then the flapping raven came to seek
Its home: its flight was heavy, and its wing
Seem'd weary with a long day's wandering.

sorrows, and tender pity, and mild and boly resignation. The character of his poetry is to soothe and melt and delight; to make us kin! and thoughtful and imaginative; to purg away the dregs of our earthly passions by the refining fires of a pure imagination; and !! lap us up from the eating cares of lite, it visions so soft and bright as to sink like morn ing dreams on our senses, and at the same time so distinct, and truly fashioned upon the eternal patterns of nature, as to hold their

1"If it be the peculiar province of poetry to give delight," says Lord Jeffrey, "this author should rank very high among our poets; and, in spite of his neglect of the terrible passions, he does rank very high in our estimation. He has a beautiful fancy and a beautiful diction, and a fine ear for the music of verse, and great tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He seems, moreover, to be altogether free from any tincture of bitterness, rancor, or jealousy, and never shocks us with atrocity, or stiffens us with horror, or confounds us with the dread-place before our eyes long after they have ful sublimities of demoniacal energy. His soul, on the contrary, seems filled to overflowing with images of love and beauty, and gentle

again been opened on the dimmer scenes of the world."-Edinburgh Review, xxxiv. 449. Read, also, same, xxxiii. 144.

Touch us gently, Time!

A PETITION TO TIME.

Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently, as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream!
Humble voyagers are We,
Husband, wife, and children three,-
(One is lost,-an angel, fled
To the azure overhead!)

Touch us gently, Time!
We've not proud nor soaring wings;
Our ambition, our content,

Lies in simple things.
Humble voyagers are We,
O'er life's dim unsounded sea,
Seeking only some calm clime:
Touch us gently, gentle Time!

A PRAYER IN SICKNESS.

Send down thy wingéd angel, God!
Amid this night so wild;

And bid him come where now we watch,
And breathe upon our child!

She lies upon her pillow, pale,
And moans within her sleep,
Or wakeneth with a patient smile,
And striveth not to weep.

How gentle and how good a child
She is, we know too well,
And dearer to her parents' hearts
Than our weak words can tell.

We love, we watch throughout the night,
To aid, when need may be;

We hope, and have despair'd, at times;
But now we turn to Thee!

Send down thy sweet-soul'd angel, God!
Amid the darkness wild,

And bid him soothe our souls to-night,
And heal our gentle child!'

THE SEA.

The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions round;

It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies,

Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the sea!--I'm on the sea!

I am where I would ever be,

With the blue above, and the blue below,

And silence wheresoe'er I go:

If a storm should come, and awake the deep,

What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

1 And his daughter Adelaide Anne was healed, and became one of the sweetest sacred lyrie poets of the nineteenth century.

I love, oh, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou'west blasts do blow.
I never was on the dull tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born!
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise roll'd,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outery wild
As welcomed to life the ocean child!

I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sigh'd for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wild unbounded sea!

THE STORMY PETREL.

A thousand miles from land are we,
Tossing about on the roaring sea;
From billow to bounding billow cast,
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast:
The sails are scatter'd abroad like weeds,
The strong masts shake like quivering reeds,
The mighty cables, and iron chains,

The hull, which all earthly strength disdains,
They strain and they crack, and hearts like stone
Their natural hard, proud strength disown.

Up and down! Up and down!

From the base of the wave to the billow's crown,

And amid the flashing and feathery foam
The stormy Petrel finds a home,—

A home, if such a place may be

For her who lives on the wide wide sea,

On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,

And only seeketh her rocky lair

To warm her young, and to teach them spring
At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!

O'er the deep! O'er the deep!

Where the whale and the shark and the sword-fish sleep, Outflying the blast and the driving rain,

The Petrel telleth her tale-in vain;

For the mariner curseth the warning bird

Who bringeth him news of the storms unheard!