Perhaps thy sterner mind condemns,
Some brother mind, that, reasoning less,
The tide of error slowly stems,

In pain, in love, in weariness:

Thou callest him weak, he may be so-
What made him weak, thou canst not know.

Perhaps thy spirit's calm repose,

No evil dream hath come to spoil:
A firm resistless front it shows,
Amid the battle's fiercest broil :
'Tis well-enjoy and bless thy lot;
Still pitying him who shares it not!

The pure, the holy, they perchance,
Around thy path have still been seen;
Nor could thy foot a step advance,

But there their pious aid hath been:
Ah! happy in that better state,
Yet pray for those more desolate !

E. TAYLOR.

It is good to seal the infant forehead with the mark of hope. It is good to form the infant mind: to take the infant reason patiently and gently by the hand, and guide it in its little excursions. Oh! it is good, beyond all names of goodness, to spread out the wings of sheltering love over an infant soul, and put it on that path which leads to its eternal home. This is that ladder which the Patriarch saw in vision. To mount at first is but a single step: for it is planted in the nursery-at the cradle-side-and thence leads upward, and upward, and onward, and onward; with holy angels ascending and descending -high over time and sense and earth, through the clouds of distance and the shades of death, to the highest heaven and the throne of God! EVERET.

Mantell's Museum.

COLUMBUS of the subterranean mine!

Star of Geology! whose rays enlighten
What nature in her darkest depths had hurled-
Mantell! we gladly welcome thee to Brighton.

No more shall we confine our thoughts and hopes,
To rounds of dull unintellectual pleasure,
For thy unparagoned Museum, opes

Exhaustless stores of scientific treasure.

Primeval nature here uplifts her veil

Here spreads her mystic volume, in whose pages

Her votaries read, and reverently hail

The wondrous records of uncounted ages.

Wrecks of an olden time are here combined-
With forms more strange than fabulous chimeras:
Medals that nature to her caves consigned,

As stamped memorials of her changful eras.

Oh how bewildering is the thought, that erst,
Hundreds of centuries ere man's formation,
Through Sussex weald some Mississippi burst,
In all the pomp of tropical creation.

Ferns arborescent on its flowery shore,

With giant palms and Southern fruits were blended, While birds uncouth, whose races are no more,

Poised on the torrid air with wings extended.

172

MANTELL'S MUSEUM.

Unto these sunny banks-this thermal tide,
Strange and stupendous animals resorted:
And here a monster monarch, undefied,
The marvellous Iguanodon disported:

In length a whale-but of the lizard race—
This horned leviathian with teeth tremendous,
Found 'mong the prostrate Palms a resting-place:
For trees were rushes to his bulk stupendous.

Doubt ye these startling facts? look round-a proof
Some fossil will afford of each averment:
From cliff or weald exhumed-and 'neath this roof,
Our Mantell lives, who caused their dis-interment.

Yes, where the huntsman winds his matin horn,
And the couched hare amid the covert trembles,
Where shepherds tend their flocks, or grows the corn,
Where fashion on our gay Parade assembles;

Wild horses, deer, and elephants, have strayed,
Trampling on early ocean's buried races;
Beneath us their successive bones are laid,
A chronologic scale of burial places.

The heaven-exploring Newton brought to light,
New spheres, new laws, new wonders of creation :
Mantell hath rivalled him in realms of night,
New worlds discovering by excavation.

Both have confirmed the Psalmist " If I fly
Beyond the seas, upon the wings of morning,

Dive into earth, Oh Lord, or seek the sky,

Still of thine omnipresence have I warning."

MANTELL'S MUSEUM.

'Tis not this rare Museum's highest praise, To charm the learned and the scientific: But that in all approaches it must raise,

Feelings and thoughts of holiness prolific:

For he who once within its verge hath trod,
And of its prodigies been made spectator,
Will look through Nature up to Nature's God,"
And in his creatures, own the great Creator!
HORACE SMITH.

If thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure,

Stranger! henceforth be warned, and know that pride,
How e'er disguised in its own majesty,

Is littleness that he who feels contempt

For any living thing, hath faculties

Which he has never used: that thought with him

Is in its infancy.-The man whose eye

Is ever on himself, doth look on one,

The least of Nature's works: one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds

Unlawful, ever-Oh, be wiser, thou!

Instructed that true knowledge leads to love:
True dignity abides with him alone,

Who in the silent hour of inward thought:

Can still suspect and still revere himself,

In lowliness of heart.

WORDSWORTH.

173

Bymn before Sunrise,

IN THE VALLEY OF CHAMOUNY.

HAST thou a charm to stay the Morning Star
In his steep course? so long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, Oh Sovereign Blanc ?
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black;
An ebon mass methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from Eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my Life, and Life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing,-there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret extacy! Awake,