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meager souls, in feeling that they shall never know them again, are capable of deep regret. They are as a melody when the lute is broken'; they are as a tale which the minstrel tells', and dies. The inanimate universe itself seems to undergo the changes of our own spirits, and to sympathize with the transitions of our experience. The stars', it is true, rise as brightly in the heavens, the flowers spring as lovely from the earth, the woodlands bloom as freshly, as before; but, oh! the glory and the joy within, the fancy, and the hope, which made the stars more beautiful, and the flowers more graceful, and the woods more elysian, and the birds more musical, will not last with passing suns, nor come back again with returning reasons.

5. I do not decry this characteristic of our nature. I do not decry the genius which has affinity with it and appeals to it. A high and solemn melancholy is the sighing of our immortality; it is the struggle of a divine aspiration with our earthly imperfections. The capacity of sorrow belongs to our grandeur; and the loftiest of our race are those who have had the profoundest grief, because they have had the profoundest sympathies.

6. There is a sadness which is an attribute of our spiritual humanity; and it is only when this spiritual humanity is dormant that misery approaches the limitation of simple physical suffering or physical want. To be happy as moral and intellectual beings, we must feel the joy which has its center in the soul: from that center springs also the anguish which testifies our exaltation. This very sorrow of ours is one of the strongest reasons why nothing should dissociate the soul from principles which are not dependent on externals, but which, when suns grow dim, will come out into brighter revelation.

LESSON LVIII.

BINGEN ON THE RHINE.

BY MRS. NORTON

1. A SOLDIER of the Legion lay dying in Algiers :

There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;

But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebb'd away, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say.

The dying soldier falter'd as he took that comrade's hand,

And he said, "I never more shall see my own, my native land:

Take a message, and a token, to some distant friends of mine;
For I was born at Bingen,-at Bingen on the Rhine.

2. "Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around,

To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard-ground, That we fought the battle bravely, and, when the day was done,

Full many a corse lay ghastly pale beneath the setting sun.
And midst the dead and dying were some grown old in

wars',

The death-wound on their gallant breasts', the last of many scars';

But some were young', and suddenly beheld life's morn decline;

And one had come from Bingen',-fair Bingen on the Rhine!

3. "Tell my mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age',

And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage':
For my father was a soldier, and, even as a child',

My heart leap'd forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild';

And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard,

I let them take whate'er they would', but kept my father's sword';

And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine,

On the cottage-wall at Bingen,—calm Bingen on the Rhine!

4. "Tell my sister not to weep for me, and sob with drooping head',

When the troops are marching home again, with glad and gallant tread';

But to look upon them proudly', with a calm and steadfast eye',

For her brother was a soldier too, and not afraid to die.

And, if a comrade seek her love, I ask her in my name
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame;

And to hang the old sword in its place, (my father's sword and mine,)

For the honor of old Bingen,-dear Bingen on the Rhine!

5. "There's another, not a sister: in the happy days gone by You'd have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her

eye;

Too innocent for coquetry', too fond for idle scorning';

Oh, friend', I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning!

Tell her the last night of my life (for e'er this moon be risen
My body will be out of pain, my soul be out of prison)

I dream'd I stood with her and saw the yellow sunlight shine
On the vine-clad hills of Bingen,-fair Bingen on the Rhine!

6. "I saw the blue Rhine sweep along'; I heard', or seem'd to hear,

The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear';

And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,

The echoing chorus sounded through the evening calm and still; And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we pass'd, with friendly talk,

Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-remember'd walk; And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly, in mine:

But we'll meet no more at Bingen,-loved Bingen on the Rhine!"

7. His voice grew faint and hoarser'; his grasp was childish weak',

His eyes put on a dying look'; he sighed', and ceased to speak': His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled: The soldier of the Legion in a foreign land was dead!

And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she look'd down On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strown; Yea, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seem'd to shine,

As it shone on distant Bingen,—fair Bingen on the Rhine!

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LESSON LIX.

IRELAND.

BY HENRY GILES.

that all classes and all creeds would unite in a broad and generous sentiment of nationality, not a nationality of vanity and prejudice', but a nationality of brotherhood and peace'! This would be for Ireland the day of her regeneration. To the eye she is fair, indeed, among the nations; but to the heart her beauty has been covered with sadness. Her fields are luxuriant', and her hills are green'; yet the lot of her children has been in tears and blood. History, whose work at best is but melancholy, has written her story in despair.

2. Hunger has lingered in her valleys'; sickness in her dwellings'; sin and madness in her secret places. Nature has given her a great largeness of bounty. Cattle cover her plains; the horn of plenty has been emptied on her vales; but sorrow and a curse have rained a blight on all. The airs of heaven blow upon her freshly'; but they swell no sails', except those which are to bear her children into exile. The glorious sea girds her about; but it washes the shores of solitary harbors, and dashes an unloaded wave upon a virgin sand. A race of no mean capacities have lived in huts unworthy of the savage, and upon food almost too wretched for the brutes.

3. Ought it to be thus? Is this the design of nature? Is this the order of Providence? Is this a fatal and perpetual necessity? No, no! it is against the design of nature'; it reverses the order of Providence'; and the only necessity that belongs to it is that which springs from misrule', mismanagement', and disunion'.

4. Let there be but a united people', and it cannot be longer thus'; let divisions be abolished by a holy love of country, combined interests and combined activity will issue in general prosperity'; let party names be lost in Irishman, and Irishman be a word for patriot; then the sun of a new era will bathe with glory "the emerald set in the midst of the sea;" then will the land of a common birth be the land of a common heart; and then,

"Howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace will rise the while,

And stand, a wall of fire, around their much-loved isle."

5. If days which are gone have left but painful memories, days that are to come may cheer us with bright and gracious hopes. If a soil the most fertile has borne but a starving peasantry'; if noble rivers have flowed unburdened to the sea'; if capacious harbors have been ruffled by no freighted keels'; if mines of wealth have slumbered untouched in the sleeping earth'; still, I do not despair for my country. The soil is there yet in its beauty', and its children may yet live upon its fullness'; the rivers are yet majestic', and will not always be a solitude'; the broad and sheltered bay, that now mirrors but the mountains and the heavens', may yet reflect the snowy drapery of many a gallant ship'; and the hills on which now the ragged and dejected shepherd wanders', may yet yield up their treasure to the light'.

6. Nature is not dead; nature is not dead in the works of creation or in the soul of man; nature is not dead, but ever in its generous beauty covers and supports us. No foolish passions can dry up the kindly heart of earth, or consume the fatness of the clouds, or shut out the glory of the skies. Nature yet survives,survives in her limitless bounty, survives in her eternal youth; and the people, though impoverished, are not destroyed. No wrongs have been able to crush them; no wars to render them inhuman. From every savage influence they have come forth, not indeed uninjured, but yet not deeply degraded nor ruthlessly depraved. From the worst experience in the history of nations, they have saved elements of excellence that may be shaped into the noblest civilization.

7. From a long and dreary night of bondage, they have escaped with the vivid intellect, the cheerful temper, the affectionate spirit, the earnest, the hopeful enthusiasm, that springs elastic from every sorrow. The hour now seems dark in Ireland, but the light is not quenched'; it is only for a season obscured'. The cloud is thick and broad; it rests heavily over the shivering millions; it is most dreary, and it seems filled with threatenings. But the moveless sun is shining tranquilly above it in the benignant and the everlasting heavens. The cloud may break in tempest'; but stillness and beauty will come when the hurricane has spent its strength', and the storm has passed away'.

8. But no tempest will, possibly, come at all. The cloud may dissolve in rain; it may give freshness where it has only given gloom, and cool the ardor of the beams which it had excluded. Dark skies bring lightning; lightning brings the shower; then comes the sunshine on the grass, and all the fields are sparkling with glory and with gems. Let me so think of the moral atmosphere that now hangs around and over Ireland. It is not

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