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THIS WORLD IS FULL OF BEAUTY.

Gerald Massey.

There lives a voice within me, a guest-angel of my heart,
And its sweet lispings win me, till the tears a-trembling start;
Up evermore it springeth, like some magic melody,
And evermore it singeth this sweet song of songs to me-

This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;

And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.

Night's starry tendernesses dower with glory evermore,

Morn's budding, bright, melodious hour comes sweetly as of yore;
But there be million hearts accurst, where no sweet sun-bursts shine,
And there be million hearts athirst for Love's immortal wine.
This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;

And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.

If faith, and hope, and kindness pass'd, as coin, 'twixt heart and heart,

How, thro' the eye's tear-blindness, should the sudden soul upstart!
The dreary, dim, and desolate, should wear a sunny bloom,
And Love should spring from buried Hate, like flowers o'er Winter's
tomb.

This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;

And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.

With truth our uttered language, Angels might talk with men,
And God-illumined earth should see the golden Age again:

The burthen'd heart should soar in mirth like Morn's young prophet

lark,

And Misery's last tear wept on earth, quench Hell's last cunning

spark.

For this world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;
And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.

Lo! plenty ripens round us, yet awakes the cry for bread,
The millions still are toiling, crusht, and clad in rags, unfed!
While sunny hills and valleys richly blush with fruit and grain,
But the paupers in the palace rob their toiling fellow-men.
This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;

And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.

Dear God! what hosts are trampled 'mid this killing crush for gold! What noble hearts are sapp'd of love! what spirits lose life's hold!

Yet a merry world it might be, opulent for all, and aye,

With its lands that ask for labour, and its wealth that wastes away. This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;

And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.

-

The leaf-tongues of the forest, and the flow'r-lips of the sod-
The happy Birds that hymn their raptures in the ear of God -
The summer wind that bringeth music over land and sea,
Have each a voice that singeth this sweet song of songs to me-
This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;
And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.

PROSE ILLUSTRATIONS OF EFFUSIVE OROTUND QUALITY.

ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG.

Abraham Lincoln.

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation—or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated. -can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who have given their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or to detract. The world will very little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated, here, to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

:

EXTRACT FROM THE SECOND INAUGURAL.

Ibid.

Both parties deprecated war: but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish: and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but located in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing his bread from the sweat of other men's faces.

The prayer of both

But let us judge not, that we be not judged. should not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences, which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in

the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wound, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans, to, do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

THE SHEPHERD OF THE PEOPLE.

From "The Life and Death of Abraham Lincoln." So let him lie here in our midst to-day, and let our people go and bend with solemn thoughtfulness and look upon his face and read the lessons of his burial. As he paused here on his journey from his Western home and told us what by the help of God he meant to do, so let him pause upon his way back to his Western grave and tell us, with a silence more eloquent than words, how bravely, how truly by the strength of God he did it. God brought him up as he brought David up from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. He came up in earnestness and faith, and he goes back in triumph. As he pauses here to-day, and from his cold lips bids us bear witness how he has met the duty that was laid on him, what can we say out of our full hearts but this-"He fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently with all his power." The Shepherd of the People! that old name that the best rulers ever craved. What ruler ever won it like this dead President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with counsel when we were in doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes faltered, with caution when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trustful cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts were dark. He fed hungry souls all over the country with sympathy and consolation. He spread before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion and patriotism on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, solid truths. He taught us the sacredness of government, the wickedness of treason. He made our souls glad and vigorous with the love of Liberty that was in his. He showed us how to love truth and yet be charitable - how to hate wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasure one personal injury or insult. He fed all his people from the highest to the lowest, from the most privileged down to the most enslaved. Best of all, he fed us with a reverent and genuine religion. He spread before us the love and fear of God just in that shape in which we need them most, and out of his faithful service of a higher Master who of us has not taken and eaten and grown strong. "He fed them with a faithful and true heart." Yes, till the last. For at the

last, behold him standing with hand reached out to feed the South with Mercy and the North with Charity, and the whole land with Peace, when the Lord who had sent him called him and his work was done.

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Mourn not the dead, but rejoice in his life and example. Rejoice as you point to this child of the people, who was lifted so high that republican institutions became manifest in him! Rejoice that through him Emancipation was proclaimed! Above all, see to it that his constant vows are fulfilled, and that the promises of the Fathers are maintained, so that no person in the upright form of man can be shut out from their protection. Then will the unity of the republic be fixed on a foundation that cannot fail, and other nations will enjoy its security. The corner-stone of National Independence is already in its place, and on it is inscribed the name of George Washington. There is another stone which must have its place at the corner also. This is the Declaration of Independence with all its promises fulfilled. On this stone we will gratefully

inscribe the name of ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

EXTRACT FROM "ALTON LOCKE." Charles Kingsley.

And he was gone at last! Kind women, whom his unknown charities had saved from shame, laid him out duly, and closed his eyes, and bound up that face that never would beam again with genial humor, those lips that would never again speak courage and counsel to the sinful, the oppressed, the forgotten. And there he lay, the old warrior dead upon his shield; worn out by long years of manful toil in The People's Cause; and, saddest thought of all, by disappointment in those for whom he spent his soul. True, he was aged; no one knew how old. He had said, more than eighty years; but we had shortened his life and we knew it. He would never see that deliverance for which he had been toiling ever since the days when as a boy he had listened to Tooke and Cartwright, and the patriarchs of the people's freedom. Bitter, bitter, were our thoughts, and bitter were our tears, as Crossthwaite and I stood watching that beloved face, now in death refined to a grandeur, to a youthful simplicity and delicacy, which we had never seen on it before—calm and strong—the square jaws set firm even in death — the lower lip still clenched above the upper, as if in a divine indignation and everlasting protest, even in the grave, against the devourers of the earth. Yes, he was gone-the old lion, worn out

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