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, Upon her eyry' nods the erne2, The deer has sought the brake; So darkly glooms yon thunder-cloud, 2. Is it the thunder's solemn sound 3. I see the dagger-crest of Mar3, 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, 5. There breathed no wind their crests to shake, 10 Their vaward scouts no tidings bring, Nor spy a trace of living thing, 11 Save when they stirred the roe ; 6. The lake is passed, and now they gain Before the Trosachs' 12 rugged jaws; 7. At once there rose so wild a yell Within that dark and narrow dell, For life! for life! their flight they ply; Onward they drive, in dreadful race, Before that tide of flight and chase 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 And closely shouldering side to side We'll drive them back as tame." 9. Bearing before them, in their course, Above their tide each broadsword bright Each targe1 was dark below; 10. I heard the lance's shivering crash, |