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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

THE BABE OF THE BULRUSHES.

rs to the uncovenanted mercies of God. So whether it be the spitting to the left when a meets you, or the crossing of your threshold h the right foot foremost, or saying "God ss us" when a man sneezes, or the eating porige in Lent, and fish on Friday; whether it be ae exaltation of the altar, or the cross, or the church liturgy; whether it be the brazen serpent, or the blood of St. Januarius, or the water of baptism; whether you flagellate yourself according to St. Dominic, or fast and wear sackcloth with Dr. Pusey; whether you deify and adore the image of the Virgin, or the sign of Christ's passion, or any tradition of the ritual, the Pope, the Cathedral, or that tremendous talisman of Popery and Prelacy, THE Church; if this be your trust for salvation, it is all one; your God is an idol, your Saviour is a figment of your own depravity, your religion is form without faith, and in opposition to it.

This formalism without faith is the religion of nature; it is the creature instead of the Creator; the altar instead of the altar's God. It is Paganism, and Judaism, and Mohammedanism, and Buddhism, and Popery, and prelatical domination. It is the natural movement of the fallen soul in search of some religion, but an enmity against humility and faith. This formalism itself appears in various modes of enshrinement, according to its own taste. There is a material formalism and a spiritual formalism. The material formalism is for the grosser nature; the spiritual, for the higher and more refined. The spiritual formatism professes to adore its rites because of their spiritual beauty, and it sees a spiritual beauty only in connection with those rites. It professes to present the poetical side of religion to the soul, but it is merely the mint, anise, and cummin of poetry, as well as of the law; it cannot rise to the higher themes of inspiration. It is the poetry of that which is seen and temporal, not that which is unseen and eternal. It is fast-and-feast-day poetry; the poetry, not of devotion, nor of feeling, but of superstition and of sense. It is just as if Raphael, instead of employing his genius on the subject of the Transfiguration, had spent his life in illuminating missals, and painting the dresses of priests and friars,

FINE CLOTHES.-The person whose clothes are extremely fine, I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those Indians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose.—Goldsmith.

THE LILY OF THE VALE.

BY MISS HANNAH F. GOULD.

TENDER lily of the vale,

Lovely, modest, sweet, and pale;
While a tear the night hath shed,
Weeping o'er thy beauteous head,
Forms the trembling diadem
Weighing down thy slender stem;
How in meekness art thou seen,
Like the lowly Nazarene !

Stooping o'er the dust beneath,
From the leaf that rose to sheath
Thine unsullied snowy bells,
Art thou pouring from their cells,
As from pensive vials there,
Odors rising like the prayer,
When, in solemn midnight scene,
Kneeled the lonely Nazarene.

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THE tribes of Reuben, and Simeon, and Levi are in affliction; Judah, and Issachar, and Zabulun weep aloud; the families of Benjamin and Dan are sorrowing; Naphtali, and Gad, and Asher will not be comforted; lamentation is heard all along the river of Egypt.

Hast thou forgotten, O monarch of the Nile! the patriarch of the tribes, and Joseph the Deliverer, when desolation, and hunger, and famine were about to come upon the land? Will not thy treasure - cities, Pithom and Raamses, memorials of the labor and burdens of the children of Israel, under the task-masters whom thou didst place over them, suffice thee? Hast thou not made the sons of Jacob to serve thee with rigor, and hast thou not embittered their lives with hard bondage? And art thou not content

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JOHN WILLIAM LEWIS GLEIM.

to afflict them with burdens in mortar and brick, and all manner of service in the field! Canst thou not spare the goodly sons of the Hebrew mothers, and must they, at thy unmerciful behest, be cast into the turbid wave of thy inundating river?

Restrain thy waves, and haste not to mingle thy Ethiopian waters with the depths of the great sea, O river of seven mouths! and yet less voracious than the Pharaoh through whose realm thou art journeying. Innocently there slumbers among the flags of thy brink, in his bulrush bed, the first born of the daughter of Levi. Haste not on till thou say to the cruel crocodile that hides in thy pathway, Be more merciful than the ruler of Egypt. Bid thy waves to rock gently the babe committed to thy bosom. Let the breathing winds that are accustomed to fan thy face, and make music among the reeds of thy border, whisper lullabies to the hidden sleeper. Mark, the Levite mother has has stationed in the distance his sister as watcher of his couch. But her fears are not of thee, though thou art wont to toss thy billows, and dost fellowship with monsters of the deep; her fears are of man more monstrous.

Daughter of Pharaoh, charge thy maidens not to bring away from his ark of safety the babe of the Nile. The potentate of the pyramids will be its destroyer. See that thou wake not the infant son of the bondwoman; he sleeps, that beautiful boy of the bulrushes, how sweetly! Perchance he hath visions of his future great

ness.

Yes, princess, pride of thy father, thou art compassionate, and hast the heart of woman, tender and touched by others' woes; 'tis well that thine attendants bring to thee the bondbabe. Behold! he weeps, that child. And hath he fears of Pharaoh's daughter? Thanks to thine heart of kindness, maternal arms embrace the weeping foundling of the flage, and now a mother's bosom beats high with hope, and joy, and gladness. Go now, heir to the throne of Egypt, and lave thy fair form of beauty in the flowing fountain floods of Nile's far-reaching waters; baptism meet for one so kind and lovely! fit element and emblem of thy heart of purity!

But see! that babe of bondage-birth hath grown to manhood in the midst of Egypt's king and courtiers. Full forty years have fled since she who bore the babe first laid him on the bosom of the deep waters. He will not now be subject to the princely daughter. Profoundly versed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, in words and deeds he now is mighty. The magic

workers, without mask or mystery, now stand revealed before him-the man that shall become the prophet of the Lord. He spurns those gorgeous palaces. He will not worship now before the gods that dwell in those time-hallowed temples. He will not do his reverence to the mysterious priesthood of Isis and Osiris. The voluptuous court of Pharaoh hath now no charms for the deliverer of those that dwell in Goshen. Behold! he hath slain the Egyptian that smote his Hebrew bond-brother, and he fleeth from the face of Pharaoh into the land of Midian.

Yes; go, thou man of might and deeds of daring, and explore a pathway for the escape of Israel's children from the land of bondage. Tarry abroad till the death of him who ruleth over Egypt. The lovely daughter of the priest of Midian meantime shall bless thee-a stranger in a land of strangers. In coming years the angel of the burning bush shall call and bid thee go on thy mission to the house of bondage.

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A LITTLE more than half a century ago, the traveller might have seen, not far from Halberstadt, a plain cottage, whose lack of all outward pretension to any thing more than neatness and simplicity would scarcely have arrested his eye for a passing moment. But if he should have stepped to the door to ask for a glass of water, or to make some inquiry in regard to books or the men of the day, he would have been met at the threshold by a man whose venerable yet gentle aspect would at once have secured his respect and love. In all probability he would have been invited within, and the tone and manner of the invitation would have acted like a charm. The features of his host-a face full of genial yet thoughtful expression-eyes gleaming with soul from beneath large, heavy eyebrows a mouth that seemed made to utter words of kindness-a voice clear and distinct as it was gentle-a manner full of courteous kindness, these would have put the stranger at once at ease, and he would feel impelled to fol

JOHN WILLIAM LEWIS GLEIM.

low his guide as he led the way to his own room-an intellectual workshop, a chamber whose peculiar furniture and ornaments would have excited his curiosity anew. He would see no show of splendor; but tables covered with books and simple ornaments, niches occupied by busts and plaster-casts, the walls covered with copper-prints and paintings; while on the other side of the room would be observed a small library of choice volumes, among which the most noticeable so the old man tells the strangerare, an Elzevir Horace, (every mistake corrected,) Wolf's Homer, Heine's Virgil, and Hans Luft's Bible. Yonder, by the bedside, is a stand with a night-lamp on it, of very original and primitive construction, by which, the old man would tell you, he had made many of the sleepless hours of night very agreeable in reading and composing; for his very look would have already betrayed the fact that he was a poet. As you listen to the charm of the old man's voice, you find that it is wise as well as gentle. In that very chair you occupy, Klopstock, and Jacobi, and Lessing-in fact, nearly all the noblest spirits of the day-have in turn sat and enjoyed the same charm which throws its spell around you. And Richter, too, has been here. Yonder lies his last work open on the table, and the old man grows enthusiastic and eloquent as he tells you how much he has enjoyed this book of "that divine genius our Frederic Richter;" and perhaps he takes down one of his letters from that young genius and hands it to you, and you read: "I am happy, indeed, good Gleim-- my dear, honored Father Gleim-in your warm, full, faithful heart... To my last breath, and through every change, I will say, proudly, 'My friend Gleim had my most hearty love and respect.' No heart ever forgets him." And if you could peruse some of those letters that lie there on his table, they would all show you the kind and liberal spirit of the old man, and the life-long gratitude with which his benefactions are cherished by the multitudes whom, in their want or suffering, he bas befriended like a brother.

Yes, well might Richter call him "good Father Gleim." Everybody loved him. Fourscore years had rested but lightly on that aged form, still unbent; and see how his eye kindles, and every feature is lighted up with a kindly smile, as the little children whom he meets in his daily walks come to bid him Good-morning, and ask the old man's blessing. There― precious relics!— are the hat and scarf of the Great Frederic; to none more properly intrusted than to the "Prussian

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Grenadier" whose war-songs stirred anew the nation's life; and he lets the little children gaze upon them while he endeavors to kindle in their young hearts the patriotism that glows in his own. Many a scholar or poet of whom Germany is proud could tell you how much he owed to the counsels and the open charity of "good Father Gleim." When years have passed away, they will tell their children how the old man took them by the hand and helped and cheered them on, and how the desert of the world seemed at once changed to an Eden.

The story of Gleim's life is soon told. His lot was cast, for the most part, amid scenes of peace and of cheerful content that afford little of unusual or extraordinary incident. He was born in April, 1719, at Ermesleben, on the banks of the Selkabach, not far from Halberstadt. His education was carefully conducted under his father's supervision, until he was seventeen years of age. At this time his father died, but the evidence he had already given of his genius secured him friends. An extract from a poem written by him at this time may show that the confidence felt by others in the promise of the youth was not misplaced:

"Then, O thou Highest, while thy help imploring, May we receive the comforts of thy grace, And let me evermore, thy truth adoring, Trust in it while I fill my destined place! Strengthen our mother; let her taste how precious That trust in thee which chases griefs and fears. Thy sheltering arm shall hold, thy grace refresh us, Thy Father-hand shall wipe our orphan tears." The mother soon followed the father, and Gleim was left an orphan. But kind friends cherished him and opened to him the doors of their dwellings, and met him with the sympathy of their hearts. He was not suffered to want whatever was necessary to the prosecution of his studies.

At the age of nineteen, Gleim went to Halle. Here, at the university, he drew around him a circle of kindred spirits. Uz, Ruderik, Götz, and others here formed with Gleim a life long attachment.

Gleim left the university to become a private tutor at Potsdam. Here he met Kleist, the hero and the poet, whose death on the battle-field he bitterly bemoaned; Ramler, the German Horace; Spalding, Lamprocht, and others whom he cherished as friends. In 1744, Gleim accompanied Prince William in his campaign, as Private Secretary. The death of the prince, and the harsh character of his successor, soon drove Gleim back to more quiet scenes. In 1747, through the influence of his friends, he was ap

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