The gloom with which we invest every thing connected with this step from one existence to another, reveals, plainly enough, the weakness, or at least the indistinctness, of our faith in immortality. If we indeed believed that they who have gone from us are as truly living, loving, and sentient beings as ourselves, we could not hang the heavens with black as we do. It would be more consonant with Christian faith to have the hearse garlanded with flowers, and supported by golden-winged angels pointing upward.

Of all the absurd customs handed down to us from benighted ages, few appear to me so irrational and unchristian as that of wearing mourning for those mortals who have passed into immortality. The torture of attending to new garments when the heart is really weighed down with sorrow, the mockery of assuming them when it is not, the additional strength it gives to the idea of separation, which is only apparent, not real, and the practical denial to our children of that cheerful faith which we attempt to teach them by our maxims, are strong reasons why mourning should be abolished. That the poor cannot afford it, ought to be a sufficient reason to kind and sympathizing hearts; for a custom intended to express affection and respect for our lost ones is not a mere matter of pride, it comes home to the heart. To be sure, it is no standard of respect for the departed, but, while the world chooses so to consider it, it will always occasion a pang to be compelled to non-conformity by poverty. Under the influence of a high and serene faith, it becomes easy for all classes to renounce this absurd and inconvenient custom. Thousands, of various sects, already begin to marvel why it has so long been allowed to cast its gloomy shadow over an enlightened age. "We wear no black garments," say the friends of the excellent Henry G. Chapman, "for they would ill express our feelings."

Popular modes of speech are likewise wrong on this important subject. If we want our children to be impressed with a lively faith in immortality, we should not speak of people as dead, but as passed into another mode of existence. The body should be regarded as a

suit of cast-off clothes, which the wearer has outgrown, consecrated, indeed, by the beloved being that used them for a season, but of no value within themselves.

Canova, in his monument to the Stuarts, in St Peter's at Rome, has restored the lovely Grecian image, and represented death as a serene and beautiful youth. The approach of a more cheerful faith is likewise indicated by the increasing tendency to place the cast-off" timegarments" of our beloved ones in the midst of blooming flowers, and gentle streams. Protestant ideas of death have been strikingly more gloomy than those of Catholics, if they are fairly indicated by their customs. I have never known how to account for this, except by the fact that there is not such a feeling of separation between those who live on this side the rainbow-bridge and those who live on the other. The masses said for the dead, the prayers to saints to help their passage through the intermediate state, which they call purgatory, and the affectionate custom of daily placing wreaths and baskets of flowers on the tomb-all these keep alive a feeling of nearness between the living and those called dead.

A friend of mine, walking on the beach at Brazil, overtook a coloured woman with a tray upon her head. Being asked what she had to sell, she lowered the tray, and with reverent tenderness uncovered it: it was the lifeless form of her babe, covered with a neat white robe, with a garland round the head, and flowers within the little hands, that lay clasped upon its bosom. "Is that your child?" said the traveller. "It was mine a few days ago," she replied; "but the Madonna has it for her little angel now. "How beautifully you have laid it out!" said he. She answered cheerfully, 66 Ah, what is that to the bright wings it wears in heaven."

Thanks, thanks for the light that falls from that other world on this. Let us no longer cast between us and it the ghastly shadow of a skeleton. Let our customs, as well as our occasional sermons, teach the little ones whom we train for immortality, that nothing but the garment lies in the grave. "He is not here; he is risen."National Anti-Slavery Standard; New York.

LINES ON THE DEATH OF DR CHANNING.

WITTEN ON READING HIS LAST PUBLICATION, THE
NOX ADDRESS.

Is this thy last? And is thy spirit fled?
Art thou indeed, then, numbered with the dead?
And can it be that thou so soon art gone
To final rest? thou pure and holy one!
Shall we, alas! no more with joy unroll
The fresh outpouring of thy gifted soul?
Shall listening throngs no more, alas! rejoice
To hear the winning accents of thy voice?
And must thy sacred pen now useless lie,
No more to lift the enraptured soul on high?
No more to chase away the clouds of sin,
Of ignorance and error from within;
Illume the darkened soul with heavenly ray,
Or cheer the lonely pilgrim's devious way?
No more to battle with oppression's might,
And 'midst a frowning world uphold the right?
Oh! it was fitting thy last thoughts should be,
Sacred to truth, to Love, to Liberty!

He is not dead! Oh no, he reigns above;
In the blest mansions of eternal love.
And though his presence here we share no more
Still, still the lesson of his life's not o'er,*
Nor can it be, while on his written page
Glows the pure spirit of the saint and sage-
The guide of youth, the stay of tutored age-

No, "God be thanked for books!" which, he hath said,
"Are voices from the distant and the dead!'—
He still shall live, his lessons still impart,
T'expand the mind and purify the heart.
We are his debtors, may we e'er improve,
And use aright, his legacy of love!
Oh, may we follow in the path he trod,
Which leads to peace, to purity, to God.

* "The lesson of his life is o'er."

Hymn written for the funeral of Dr Channing, by W. C. Bryant.

Ye friends of Freedom! bless his sacred name!
To learn of him be now your constant aim.
Bless him, ye 'mancipated slaves! for he

Wept o'er your bonds-rejoiced when ye were free!
And ye, poor scarred and mutilated band-

The wretched bondsmen in fair Freedom's land—
Bless ye his name, who strove your chains to break,
And braved the worldling's scorning for your sake.
And Oh ye friends of Truth! your homage bring,
And o'er his sacred urn your garlands fling.
Bless him, ye friends of Peace, for his pure soul
Would spread her sacred flame from pole to pole;
Of war's fell power leave not a single trace,
And bind in cords of Love the human race;
Bid strife and hatred flee from earth away,
And smiling Peace exert her gentle sway.
Ye whose pure spirits ever yearn to save
The wronged and wretched from the untimely grave,
Of dark despair; who fain would free each soul,
From error, sin, and slavery's base control-
Ye true Philanthropists, of every clime-
Bless ye his memory throughout all time.
Bless him, whose ceaseless energies combined
Texalt, to purify, to save mankind!

Oh let your kindred souls record with pride,
How Truth and Freedom wept when Channing died.
W. EARL.

BIRMINGHAM, Jan. 2. 1843.

MORAL BEAUTY-LOVE.

A FORMER article we devoted to the consideration of moral beauty in the abstract, and its general distinguishing characteristics: we now purpose to enter more into detail, and examine the general features of which it is composed, and contemplate each of these in the more prominent phases it assumes.

When we survey one of the many fair scenes, which nature spreads around us with a lavish hand, not only are we impressed with the beauty of its entirety, but, from the mass of objects that compose the landscape,

and on which the eye rests delighted, it singles out some on which it feasts with a pleasure still more intense, and is only satisfied when all the points of view in which these may be contemplated have been exhausted. As with the outward material forms, so it is with the inward immaterial ideas, the vast, and glorious, and varied scenery of the mind. Moral beauty is a compound idea, formed of others more simple, each of which, while preserving its identity, presents us with diversified aspects. And even here, where all is goodly and attractive, we yet delight to dwell on some ideas, and some aspects, more than on others. That idea which takes the first rank in the elements of moral beauty we conceive to be Love-love, in the highest and most expanded sense of the term, and to it we design at present to limit our remarks.

To

Love or benevolence, for we shall use them as synonymes, may be recognized by two general features, which are, indeed, its essential qualities—a desire for, and attention to, the welfare, happiness of others, and an antagonism to the supremacy of the principle of selfishness, either in the individual, or in society. cause the sunshine of enjoyment to play upon the countenance, and light the eye with a sweet lustre-to attune the voice of humanity to the tones of gladness-to kindle on the altar of the inward fane the flame of serene happiness, and to fan its glow-to surround the objects of its regard with those circumstances that may minister to the comfort and enjoyment of the physical and mental being-to endeavour strenuously, unceasingly, to disentangle man from those meshes (alas! how numerous and how difficult to escape!) that beset the paths of our earthly pilgrimage, and ensnare our happiness, cloud the face, and weigh heavy on the soul-to suppress all those promptings of the grosser appetites, that would refuse, for the enjoyment of others, to sacrifice aught pertaining to self-to arouse the spirit from its sleep of indifference to the duties of life, and necessities of humanity-to proclaim no hollow truce with injustice and error, ignorance and vice, because from these arise the ills of existence, but with them to wage perpetual war -and, finally, where individual exertion is too weak