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3. What a multitude of thoughts crowd upon the mind in the contemplation of such a scene! How much of the future, even in its far-distant reaches 2, rises before us with all its persuasive realities! Take but one little, narrow space of time, and how affecting are its associations! Within the flight of one half century, how many of the great, the good, and the wise will be gathered here!

4. How many in the loveliness of infancy, the beauty of youth, the vigor of manhood, and the maturity of age, will lie down here, and dwell in the bosom of their mother earth! The rich and the poor, the gay and the wretched, the favorites of thousands, and the forsaken of the world, the stranger in his solitary grave, and the patriarch surrounded by the kindred of a long lineage! How many will here bury their brightest hopes, or blasted expectations! How many bitter tears will here be shed! How many agonizing sighs will here be heaved! How many trembling feet will cross the pathways, and, returning, leave behind them the dearest objects of their reverence or their love!

5. And if this were all, sad indeed, and funereal, would be our thoughts; gloomy indeed would be these shades, and desolate these prospects.

6. But thanks be to God-the evils which He permits have their attendant mercies, and are blessings in disguise. The bruised reed will not be utterly laid prostrate. The wounded heart will not always bleed. The voice of consolation will spring up in the midst of the. silence of these regions of death. The mourner will revisit these shades with a secret, though melancholy pleasure. The hand of friendship will delight to cherish the flowers and the shrubs that fringe the lowly grave or the sculptured monument. The earliest beams of the morning will play upon these summits with a refreshing cheerfulness, and the lingering tints of evening hover on them with a tranquillizing glow.

7. Spring will invite hither the footsteps of the young by its opening foliage, and autumn detain the contemplative by its latest bloom. The votary of learning and science will here learn to elevate his genius by the holiest studies. The devout will here offer up the silent tribute of pity, or the prayer of gratitude. The rivalries of the world will here drop from the heart; the spirit of forgiveness will gather new impulses; the selfishness of avarice will be checked; the restlessness of ambition will be rebuked; vanity will let fall its plumes; and pride, as it sees "what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue," will acknowledge the value of virtue as far, immeasurably far, beyond that of fame.

8. But that which will be ever present, pervading these shades like the noonday sun, and shedding cheerfulness around, is the consciousness, the irrepressible consciousness, amidst all these lessons of human mortality, of the higher truth, that we are beings, not of time, but of eternity; that "this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality;" that this is but the threshold and starting point of an existence, compared with whose duration the ocean is but as a drop - nay, the whole creation an evanescent quantity.

I DÖŵN. A tract of poor, naked, hilly 3 LIN'E-AGE. Descendents in a direct land.

2 REACH'ES.

Extent; extension; 4 EV-A-NES'CENT. Vanishing; fleet

spaces of considerable extent.

line.

ing; transitory.

XL.-A BATTLE IN THE HIGHLANDS.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

[This lesson is from "The Lady of the Lake," a narrative poem.] 1. THERE is no breeze upon the fern, No ripple on the lake,

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Upon her eyry' nods the erne2,

The deer has sought the brake;
The small birds will not sing aloud,
The springing trout lies still,

So darkly glooms yon thunder-cloud,
That swathes, as with a purple shroud,
Benledi's distant hill.

2. Is it the thunder's solemn sound
That mutters deep and dread,
Or echoes from the groaning ground
The warrior's measured tread?
Is it the lightning's quivering glance
That on the thicket streams,
Or do they flash on spear and lance
The sun's retiring beams?

3. I see the dagger-crest of Mar3,
I see the Moray's' silver star,
Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war,
That
up the lake comes winding far!
To hero bound for battle strife

Or bard of martial lay,

"Twere worth ten years of peaceful life, One glance at their array.

4. Their light-armed archers far and near Surveyed the tangled ground; Their centre ranks, with pike and spear,

A twilight forest frowned;

Their barbéd horsemen, in the rear,

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5. There breathed no wind their crests to shake,
Or wave their flags abroad;
Scarce the frail aspen seemed to quake,
That shadowed o'er their road.

10

Their vaward scouts no tidings bring,
Can rouse no lurking foe,

Nor spy a trace of living thing,

11

Save when they stirred the roe ;
The host moves, like a deep-sea wave,
Where rise no rocks its pride to brave,
High-swelling, dark, and slow.

6. The lake is passed, and now they gain
A narrow and a broken plain

Before the Trosachs' 12 rugged jaws;
And here the horse and spearmen pause,
While, to explore the dangerous glen,
Dive through the pass the archer-men.

7. At once there rose so wild a yell

Within that dark and narrow dell,
As all the fiends from heaven that fell,
Had pealed the banner-cry of hell!
Forth from the pass in tumult driven,
Like chaff before the wind of heaven,
The archery appear:

For life! for life! their flight they ply;
And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry,
And plaids and bonnets waving high,
And broadswords flashing to the sky,
Are maddening in the rear.

Onward they drive, in dreadful race,
Pursuers and pursued;

Before that tide of flight and chase
How shall it keep its rooted place,

The spearmen's twilight wood?

8. "Down, down," cried Mar, "your lances down! Bear back both friend and foe!"

Like reeds before the tempest's frown,

13

That serried 13 grove of lances brown
At once lay levelled low;

And closely shouldering side to side
The bristling ranks the onset bide.
"We'll quell the savage mountaineer
As their tinchell1 cows the game!
They come as fleet as forest deer,

We'll drive them back as tame."

9. Bearing before them, in their course,
The relics of the archer force,
Like wave with crest of sparkling foam,
Right onward did Clan-Alpine come.

Above their tide each broadsword bright
Was brandishing like beam of light,

Each targe1 was dark below;
And with the ocean's mighty swing,
When heaving to the tempest's wing,
They hurled them on the foe.

10. I heard the lance's shivering crash,
As when the whirlwind rends the ash;
I heard the broadsword's deadly clang,
As if a hundred anvils rang;
But Moray wheeled his rearward rank
Of horsemen on Clan-Alpine's flank 16;
"My banner-man advance!

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