72

that monitor of our childhood and youth, to whom we give the name above all others on earth to be breathed forth by a pure affection, with respect and honor? And then would we recall the patience that bore with us in our waywardness; that tasked its ingenuity for our comfort and gratification; that could even be pleased to devise, if not share our childish amusements; that greeted the ingenuity of our young fancies with a rewarding smile; the prayer that was taught us early on bended knee; the stories from the Bible that stored our young minds with holy memories; the kind and gentle counsels that distilled upon us like the dew, but whose sweet influence will go with us to our dying day—what do all these bring before us, what image do they revive but that which was present to Cowper's eye when he wrote his lines "To my Mother's Picture ?"

Every land may pay its tribute to this noblest and purest of human affections; but when all are paid, the heart will be still ready to welcome more. Such tribute makes us all richer in what constitutes the true wealth of our human lot. Yet few poems, even on this subject, can be found, that have a juster claim upon our hearty admiration than "The Angel of a Mother's Love," by Frederic Kind. It touches with a skilful hand the chords of feeling within our bosom, and fills our hearts with the echoes of a music that thrills us now by its whispered cadence, and now by its thunder-peal. The poet who possesses such power over us must have a heart of his own; and we may read this tribute to a mother's love, and seem as we read it to have an insight into the home of the German poet, where he drew in his earliest inspirations. Any lengthened dissertation on the poet's character or on his early training that we seem to want from our ignorance of the circumstances of his youth, is supplied from the productions of his own pen, in which the author's heart claims the sympathy of our own. But we are delaying our readers from the poem itself.

THE ANGEL OF A MOTHER'S LOVE.

His was the task the earth to make
Heaven's portals, nor his charge forsake,
His younger brother's weal;
His was the task in every zone,
Where dust-formed millions sigh and moan,
Their pains and griefs to feel;
He their kind angel when forlorn,
The hope of ages yet unborn.

He kindles in the eye its fire,
When gazes on his son the sire,

Anxious and proud, yet mild;
The glowing cheek at his touch warms,
When, smiling, in her gentle arms

The mother holds her child.
Unharmed, from perils round that creep,
He teaches trust's fond pledge to keep.

Thou holiest feeling-thou art he,
A mother's love, that still will be
In want, in death the same;
Upon whose face the gentle love
Of the All-merciful above

To earth's tear-valley came.
Blest Mary at her breast the child,
Pledge that our God is reconciled.
Who, who is she whose wringing hands
Cry "mercy" to the rocks and sands? +

Who lifts her voice on high?
"O God! death's night around me spread,
But spare my Ishmael !" Scarce she said,
A fountain murmured by ;
Hope beamed upon her anguish wild ;
She hasted to refresh her child.

Oh, horror frightful forms, I ween,
Unfolding from the gloom are seen,

Like ruins dark through flames;
Spirits of hell their chains have broke;
Dark masses spread abroad; their stroke

Unpitying vengeance aims.

Hark! swords are clashing-ramparts shake! Woe to thy mothers! Bethlehem, quake!

In unresisting masses driven,

The word that speaks their doom is given;
Glances like daggers steeled
Their fate declare-dragged by the hair,
Or bleeding out their life, their care
Makes their own breast the shield
With which each seeks her child to save,
On which in death it finds a grave.

From Herod's vengeful ire I see
Mary to Egypt haste and flee;

She seeks a transient rest:
Within the torch-lit rocky dell,
Wood-crowned, the infant sleepeth well,

Cradled upon her breast,

THE GERMAN POET.

The zephyrs' gentle breathings shook
The orange boughs; the babbling brook
Lured him too far away:

The boy, induced yet more to roam,
Forgets to seek his mother's home.
Suspense no longer can she bear;
She gazes forth with anxious care,
But stillness reigns around.
The human flood no longer pours
Along the streets; the closed doors
Emit no human sound.

She rushes forth, hastes on, while they
Who gaze upon her faint away.

An anxious cry breaks on her ear: "Woman, the raging lion fear,

That from his cage has broke ! His keeper died-none chains him more; He rages-hark! it is his roar !"

"O God! my child !" she spoke ; Then, hasting on, sees, far away Beneath the tree, her child at play.

She quakes, she cries, she wavers now! The lion, rage upon his brow,

Advances to the shade;

He shakes his mane, his parched tongue And long lank jaws to madness stungHis spring will soon be made. Crushed by her torturing, anxious care, The mother sinks in deep despair.

Fixed is her eye: tears will not flow: She seems, a Niobe of woe,

Her lifted arm to stay. The lion stands, her anguish knows ; His rage is quelled to calm repose,

He quickly slinks away. The mother flies with trembling joy, Clasped in her arms her darling boy.

Shall I forget thee, noble dame,*
Pride of thy country, who in flame
Love's martyr-death hast found?
The raving spirits of the fire,
Obedient to their master's ire,

Make havoc all around.

"He," howls the Fire King, with fierce boast, "Who dares to brave me now, is lost."

The flames blaze on; they glow, they burn;
The skill of man their course to turn

Is vainly, vainly spent ;
While, blind with an embittered rage,
In their hot arms they seize as gage
A helpless innocent.

"Where is my child?" The anxious cry,
A mother's voice, found no reply.

Though all are silent-trembling all-
A daughter's rescue loud doth call,
Her life for its to sell.

She braves the flame: her jewelled stone
Tells what is told by no charred bone-
Where her last tear-drop fell.

78

* Princess Schwartzenberg, who perished in the fire at Paris, July 1st, 1810.

74

She perished--in her parting breath
A mother's love defying death.

Be quenched, then, all ye other fires!
Behold mother-heart's desires,

Whose holy flame dies not:

E'en in its agony, a crown

By faith and hope is nobly won,

Whose splendor knows no blot.

Forth from earth's mother-arms doth rise
This angel to its native skies.

There are other poems of Kind that we should be glad to present to our readers, but space forbids.

THE STRANDED SHIP.

BY J. E. R.

I HAVE often recalled the painful emotions with which I first saw a wreck. It was a large and noble vessel, which the storm had driven upon the shore; and there it had lain for many months fast bedded in the sand. The waves played amid its huge and broken timbers, and the sea had hung upon them its green mantle of weeds and slime. What a story could that desolate ruin tell, had it but a tongue! How often had its broad wings been outstretched to the gale as it sped along its trackless path! How many an eye, wet with the parting tear, had watched that receding vessel, until the last sail had sunk beneath the horizon! And then came day and night, sunshine and clouds, and dreams of home, until the storm awoke the ocean from its slumbers, and the ship, like a frightened bird, fled before its wrath. Then followed the long struggle with the elements; the night of fear, and watching, and despair; the convulsive motions of the staggering vessel, as the waves broke over it; the strange and unearthly moaning of its huge timbers, as they yielded to the power of the tempest, and the closing scene, when a ragged and shapeless wreck is thrown upon the beach, to tell in voiceless eloquence its sad story. And there it lies amid its solitude and desolation, with the ceaseless roar of the surf and the sighing of the wind for its solemn requiem.

Other ships go and return; but this broken and stranded wreck remains. Never more shall it rock upon the swelling waves, and walk the water as if instinct with life. Once the voice of joy, the tread of busy feet, and the hum of active life were heard there; but now all is lonely and desolate. Day and night alternate. The moon waxes and wanes, the wind whistles, and the

tempest's breath spreads ruin in its path, but never more shall the sails of that once proud vessel be outspread; its strength and glory are gone for ever.

Thus have I sometimes thought it is with the soul that is lost. There was a time when it was in a world of hope and probation, and when, under the sacred instructions of the Gospel, it might have been saved. But amid the storms of temptation and passion, it has gone down to death. The offers of pardon, the truths of God's Word, the convictions of conscience, the warnings of Christian friends, the influences of the Holy Spirit have been neglected, and all is lost. The sinner has entered eternity, with no love to God, and with no sympathy for His service and worship. And there he must remain for ever, his character unchanged, except in the degree of its development. The soul will retain all its faculties entire. There will be conscience and reason, and memory and thought, through its unmeasured ages of sorrow and despair.

Like yonder stranded vessel, enough is left of it to tell what it once was; but its glory is gone for ever. A lost soul! every feature unaltered; every power in full exercise, every impulse and passion awakened to their utmost intensity; but all in ruins; every trace of God's image effaced, and ein and despair where there might have been holiness and joy. Eternity will roll on its endless cycles, but the soul, though ever dying, will still live. The worm will gnaw, the fire burn, the conscience mutter its unceasing accusation, "Thou hast destroyed thyself.” And all this will be an appalling contrast to what is passing in other regions of holiness and peace. Happy spirits will be winging their flight over the universe, in blest obedience to God's commands; but the lost sinner is shut up to darkness and despair. Joyous souls, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, are singing the praises and joining in the mighty choruses of heaven, but he is in the midst of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Just men made perfect are ravished with the vision of Christ, but he can recall him only as his slighted Saviour and his inexorable Judge, and hear from his prison walls the eternal echo of the sentence, "Depart from me into everlasting burnings!" And all this is the terrible reverse of what was once his condition, and of what, but for his own sin, it might now have been. He looks back on wasted Sabbaths; on truths, and warnings, and invitations which he has slighted; on providences misimproved; on a seared conscience, a quenched Spirit, a neg

lected Saviour. One dreadful scene in his probation for ever fixes his eye, and adds intensity to his sorrows. It is the time when, under clear convictions of duty, he passed the limits of divine forbearance, and in his love of the world, or his hope of a more convenient season, put away the great salvation, and was left evermore of the Spirit and of hope.

A lost soul! cast like a wreck upon the shore, the monument of God's justice, the object of his wrath, "for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever!"

A lost soul! without hope, or joy, or light, or happiness! Who that reads these lines, in his neglect of Christ, in his love of sin, in the obduracy and pride of heart with which he resists the Spirit, is preparing for himself the elements of sorrow and remorse, the agony and despair of the second death?

THE ROD OF MOSES-A SERPENT.

BY REV. GEORGE RICHARDS.

A Sacred Tableau.

THE event which the artist has here depicted, eminently striking and impressive in itself, derives, perhaps, its highest interest from the scene of its occurrence, the individual who was its solitary witness, and the career to which it formed the appropriate prelude. We are introduced, at once, to the classic ground of miracle and divine manifestation-"Horeb, the mount of God." The name in this connection denotes, probably, the whole cluster of mountains occupying the central and southern portions of that part of Arabia Petra inserted between the arms of the Red Sea. As seen from one of its highest peaks, it appears "a sea of mountains, black, abrupt, naked, weather-worn peaks, a fitting spot where the very genius of desolation might rear his throne." The central range, running northwest and south-east, is terminated at its northern extremity by the majestic front of SINAI, rising perpendicularly above the plain to an altitude of from twelve to fifteen hundred feet. From its base, that may be "approached and touched,” stretches backward, for more than a mile, a grassy slope, enclosed on every side by “rugged and venerable mountains of dark granite; stern, naked, splintered peaks and ridges of indescribable grandeur."

This quiet and secluded retreat, the only spot

75

amid these bold and precipitous ranges which at all meets the conditions of the narrative--being a place suitable for grazing, on the "back," namely, west of the desert, and adjacent to Horeb-was, in all probability, the scene of the event we are to notice.

Environed by this dark and colossal amphitheatre of hills and precipices, soon to blaze with incessant lightnings, and resound with thunders and the trump of God; on this green oasis, yet to bend beneath the tramp of more than two millions of people, the multitudinous hum of human voices, mingling with the bleating of sheep and goats, sits, at the period we are describing, in quiet and solitude, a shepherd, tending his flocks. Not the least remarkable among the objects here presented to us is this solitary

man.

Among the Hebrews, the descendants of those who, in the days of Jacob and Joseph, emigrated into Egypt, were two of the tribe of Levi, who, amid their captivity and its multiplied hardships, were solaced with a child of uncommon beauty and attractiveness. Afraid of that tyranny which, not content with embittering their own hard lot, had ordered the extermination of their male offspring, these parents retained their infant for three months in concealment, till, fearful of detection, the mother deposited it in a skiff of papyrus, made impervious to water; and, leaving it among the rushes of the Nile, awaited the result. It happened that the king's daughter, going with her attendants to bathe, discovered it. A nurse was sought for, and the mother of the child presented herself. Intrusted for a time to her care, the boy was at length restored to the princess, adopted into the royal family, and educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians-the nation then in the forefront of civilization, and whose palaces, temples, porticoes, obelisks, statues, and canals, after the waste of thirty centuries, are still the wonder of the world. The honors and privileges thus showered on the young Levite did not alienate his affections from his people, nor steel his heart to their misfortunes. When about forty years of age, visiting them one day at their toil, he saw a Hebrew beaten by his task-master. Exasperated at the outrage, seeing himself its only witness, he killed the Egyptian, and hid his body in the sand. The affair reached the ears of the king. A warrant was issued against its perpetrator. He fled; and we next hear of him by a well-side, in the land of Midian, the territory adjoining the Gulf of 'Akabah. The daughters of the priest, driving

76

thither their flocks to water, were rudely repulsed by shepherds. The resolute stranger, again the vindicator of the right, interfered, and successfully, in their behalf.

As might be expected, his manly gallantry was duly reported at home, where he was welcomed with Oriental hospitality, and made, ultimately, a member of the household. For forty years the courtly and accomplished exile, apparently forgetful of the regal honors he had deserted, pursued the peaceful occupation of a shepherd, tending his flock on the green sward thus embosomed amid the stupendous crags and splintered peaks of Horeb, the mount of God.

It is he, then, who is before us-MOSES, the son of Amram and Jochebed, of the tribe of Levi; the adopted son of the daughter of Pharaoh; the son-in-law and herdsman of Jethro, the priest of Midian.

The period being reached in that economy of which all history is the development, when the nation destined from eternity to be the repository of the true religion was to be led out of the house of bondage into the promised land; an individual was to be chosen as its deliverer, guide, legislator, and instructor, who would command the confidence and respect of the Hebrews; whose talents, accomplishments, and personal bearing would secure him influence at court; who had been trained to endure weariness, privations, and opposition, with meekness and resignation; and whose religious character and deportment rendered him a suitable medium of communication between God and man. The same providence that created the exigency had raised up and qualified the man to meet it. have seen him a shepherd in Midian.

We

come to break the pride of the oppressor, and emancipate its victims; and of both, Moses was selected to be the instrument. With a modesty and self-distrust, the ordinary attendant on the highest merit, the awe-struck shepherd hesitates. Who shall he say sent him? "The great I AM, the Self-Existent, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob."

But what credentials can he plead? “What is that in thine hand?" It was his walking-staff, to whose use he must have been habituated in Egypt. "Cast it on the ground." It became a serpent! and Moses fled before it. "Now put forth thine hand and take it by the tail!" It was a staff again.

Such the scene, the individual, the event, which the artist has portrayed.

In the background, Sinai, the neglected flock clambering along its sides; nearer, the bush in flames; in the fore-ground, Moses, gazing with awe and terror on the miraculous transformation.

The miracle was twofold. A simple rod, rigid, inanimate, transformed into a living, moving reptile; the reptile retransformed into a rod. But was this really a miracle? Yes; if the narrative may be trusted. Language could not be more explicit. "It-the rod-became a serpent; it-the serpent-became a rod."

Are not such changes contrary to all experience? Contrary to all ordinary experience they doubtless are; to say contrary to all experience were to beg the question; to presuppose that even this instance is no exception, which is the point in dispute. Are not such occurrences unnatural? Yes; they are contrary to the laws of nature. The laws of nature are the ordinary modes in which the God of nature acts. No one can prove that they are the only modes, or, in every possible instance, the best modes; but only the ordinary modes. The same general good which requires that, in all ordinary cases, the divine activity should manifest itself in accordance with fixed laws-the like causes, under the like circumstances, producing the like effectsmay require, in some extraordinary cases, a departure from the rule. Thus, these very variations may themselves be the development of a

JEHOVAH proceeded to disclose his design in this interview. The covenant Friend and Protector of the Hebrews, as of their fathers, long the witness of their degradation, and of the arrogant injustice of their masters, he had now

case before us. The great end to which earth and time, with all their productions, events, and laws, are subordinate, is the display of the divine perfections in the moral renovation of our race. The power alone adequate to this reformation is Christianity. This Christianity is to be heralded