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fices will lend undying lustre to the nation's archives and richer capacity to the nation's life. And yet these martyrs are remembered by name. Go visit the mourning homes of the landhomes of wealth and plenty, some of them, but richer now by the consecration of sacrifice. Many are homes of toil and obscurity, from which the right hand of support has been taken, or the youthful prop. Poor and obscure; but these, the unknown fallen, have names, and riches of solemn, tender memory. And what heralding on palatial wall more glorious than the torn cap and soiled uniforms that hang in those homes where the dead soldier comes no more? What aristocratic legend refers to a prouder fact than that which shall often be recited in the still summer field where he labored, and by the winter fireside where his place is vacant: "He fell in the great war for Union and for Freedom!"

Sleep, sleep, in quiet grassy graves, where the symbols that ye loved so well shall cover and spread over you- by day the flowers of red, white, and blue, and by night the constellated stars - while out of those graves there grows the better harvest of the nation and of times to come!

I

THE UNBELIEVER.

PITY the unbeliever

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one who can gaze upon the grandeur, and glory, and beauty of the natural universe, and behold not the touches of His finger, who is over, and with, and above all; from my very heart I do commiserate his condition.

The unbeliever! one whose intellect the light of revelation never penetrated; who can gaze upon the sun, and moon, and stars, and upon the unfading and imperishable sky, spread out so magnificently above him, and say all this is the work of chance. The heart of such a being is a drear and cheerless void. In him, mind -the god-like gift of intellect, is debased - destroyed; all a fearful chaotic labyrinth-rayless-cheerless —

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hopeless!

No gleam of light from heaven penetrates the blackness of the horrible delusion; no voice from the Eternal bids the desponding heart rejoice. No fancied tones from the harps of seraphim

arouse the dull spirit from its lethargy, or allay the consuming fever of the brain. The wreck of mind is utterly remediless; reason is prostrate; and passion, prejudice, and superstition have reared their temple on the ruins of his intellect.

I pity the unbeliever. What to him is the revelation from on high but a sealed book? He sees nothing above, or around, or beneath him that evinces the existence of a God; and he denies yea, while standing on the footstool of Omnipotence, and gazing upon the dazzling throne of Jehovah, he shuts his intellect to the light of reason, and denies there is a God.

IT SNOWS.

T snows!" cries the school-boy, "hurrah!" and his shout
Is ringing through parlor and hall,

While swift as the wing of a swallow, he's out,

And his playmates have answered his call:
It makes the heart leap but to witness their joy;
Proud wealth has no pleasure, I trow,

Like the rapture that throbs in the pulse of the boy,
As he gathers his treasures of snow:

Then lay not the trappings of gold on thine heirs,
While health and the riches of nature are theirs.

"It snows!" sighs the invalid, "ah!" and his breath
Comes heavy, as clogged with a weight;

While from the pale aspect of nature in death,
He turns to the blaze of his grate;

And nearer and nearer his soft-cushioned chair
Is wheeled toward the life-giving flame;
He dreads a chill puff of the snow-burdened air,
Lest it wither his delicate frame:

Oh! small is the pleasure existence can give,
When the fear we shall die only proves that we live!

"It snows!" cries the traveller, "ho!" and the word
Has quickened his steed's lagging pace;

The wind rushes by, but its howl is unheard,
Unfelt the sharp drift in his face;

For bright through the tempest his own home appeared,
Ay, through leagues intervened he can see;

There's the clear, glowing hearth, and the table prepared,
And his wife with her babes at her knee;

Blest thought! how it lightens the grief-laden hour,
That those we love dearest are safe from its power!

"It snows!" cries the belle, "dear, how lucky!" and turns From her mirror to watch the flakes fall;

Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns,
While musing on sleigh-ride and ball:

There are visions of conquests, of splendor, and mirth,
Floating over each drear winter's day;

But the tintings of hope, on this storm-beaten earth,
Will melt like the snow-flakes away:

Turn, turn thee to heaven, fair maiden, for bliss;
That world has a pure fount ne'er opened in this.

"It snows!" cries the widow, "O God!" and her sighs
Have stifled the voice of her prayer;

Its burden ye'll read in her tear-swollen eyes,
On her cheek sunk with fasting and care.
'Tis night, and her fatherless ask her for bread,

But "He gives the young ravens their food,"

And she trusts, till her dark hearth adds horror to dread,
And she lays on her last chip of wood.

Poor sufferer! that sorrow thy God only knows;
'Tis a most bitter lot to be poor when it snows!

THE

WOMAN'S INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER.

HE domestic fireside is the great guardian of society against the excesses of human passions. When man, after his intercourse with the world — where, alas! he finds so much to inflame him with a feverish anxiety for wealth and distinction - retires, at evening, to the bosom of his family, he finds there a repose for his tormenting cares. He finds something to bring him back to human sympathies. The tenderness of his wife, and the caresses

of his children, introduce a new train of softer thoughts and gentler feelings. He is reminded of what constitutes the real felicity of man; and, while his heart expands itself to the influence of the simple and intimate delights of the domestic circle, the demons of avarice and ambition, if not exorcised from his breast, at least for a time relax their grasp. How deplorable would be the consequence if all these were reversed; and woman, instead of checking the violence of these passions, were to employ her blandishments and charms to add fuel to their rage! How much wider would become the empire of guilt! What a portentous and intolerable amount would be added to the sum of the crimes and miseries of the human race!

But the influence of the female character on the virtue of man is not seen merely in restraining and softening the violence of human passions. To her is mainly committed the task of pouring into the opening mind of infancy its first impressions of duty, and of stamping on its susceptible heart the first image of its God. Who will not confess the influence of a mother in forming the heart of a child? What man is there who cannot trace the origin of many of the best maxims of his life to the lips of her who gave him birth? How wide, how lasting, how sacred is that part of woman's influence! Who that thinks of it, who that ascribes any moral effect to education, who that believes that any good may be produced, or any evil prevented by it, can need any arguments to prove the importance of the character and capacity of her who gives its earliest bias to the infant mind? Again: the Gospel reveals to us a Saviour, invested with little of that brilliant and dazzling glory with which conquest and success would array him in the eyes of proud and aspiring man; but rather as a meek and magnanimous sufferer, clothed in all the mild and passive graces, all the sympathy with human woe, all the compassion for human frailty, all the benevolent interest in human welfare, which the heart of woman is formed to love; together with all that solemn and supernatural dignity which the heart of woman is formed peculiarly to feel and to reverence. To obey the commands, and aspire to imitate the peculiar virtues of such a being, must always be more natural and easy for her than for man.

So, too, it is with that future life which the Gospel unveils, where all that is dark and doubtful in this shall be explained;

where penitence, and faith, and virtue shall be accepted; where the tear of sorrow shall be dried, the wounded bosom of bereavement be healed; where love and joy shall be unclouded and immortal. To these high and holy visions of faith, I trust that man is not always insensible; but the superior sensibility of woman, as it makes her feel more deeply the emptiness and wants of human existence here, so it makes her welcome, with more deep and ardent emotions, the glad tidings of salvation, the thought of communion with God, the hope of the purity, happiness, and peace of another and a better world.

In this peculiar susceptibility of religion in the female character, who does not discern a proof of Heaven's benignant care of the best interest of man? How wise it is that she, whose instructions and example must have so powerful an influence on the infant mind, should be formed to own and cherish the most sublime and important of truths! The vestal flame of piety, lighted up by Heaven in the breast of woman, diffuses its light and warmth over the world; and dark would be the world if it should ever be extinguished and lost.

THE BELL OF THE ATLANTIC.

The steamboat Atlantic, plying between Norwich, in Connecticut, and New York, was wrecked on an island near New London. Many of the passengers were on their way to join in the celebration of the annual Thanksgiving in New England. The bell of this boat, supported by a portion of the wreck, continued for many days and nights to toll as if in mournful requiem of the lost.

NOLL, toll, toll, thou bell by billows swung;

Толы

And, night and day, thy warning words repeat with mourn-
ful tongue!

Toll for the queenly boat, wrecked on yon rocky shore!
Sea-weed is in her palace-halls: she rides the surge no more.

Toll for the master bold, the high-souled and the brave,
Who ruled her like a thing of life amid the crested wave!
Toll for the hardy crew, sons of the storm and blast,

Who long the tyrant ocean dared; but it vanquished them at last.

Toll for the man of God, whose hallowed voice of prayer
Rose calm above the stifled groan of that intense despair!

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