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With a shrill fanatic voice,

And a bigot's fiery scorn:

"BACKWARD! ye presumptuous nations; Man to misery is born!

Born to drudge, and sweat, and suffer-
Born to labor and to pray;
BACKWARD! ye presumptuous nations,
Back!-be humble and obey!"

The second is a milder preacher;
Soft he talks, as if he sung;
Sleek and slothful is his look,
And his words, as from a book,
Issue glibly from his tongue.
With an air of self-content,

High he lifts his fair white hands:
"STAND YE STILL! ye restless nations;
And be happy, all ye lands!
Fate is law, and law is perfect;
If ye meddle, ye will mar;
Change is rash, and ever was so:
We are happy as we are."

Mightier is the younger preacher;
Genius flashes from his eyes:
And the crowds who hear his voice,
Give him, while their souls rejoice,
Throbbing bosoms for replies.
Awed they listen, yet elated,

While his stirring accents fall ;—
"FORWARD! ye deluded nations,
Progress is the rule of all:
Man was made for healthful effort;
Tyranny has crush'd him long;
He shall march from good to better,
And do battle with the wrong.

"Standing still is childish folly,

Going backward is a crime; None should patiently endure Any ill that he can cure:

ONWARD! keep the march of Time. Onward! while a wrong remains To be conquer'd by the right; While oppression lifts a finger To affront us by his might: While an error clouds the reason Of the universal heart, Or a slave awaits his freedom, Action is the wise man's part.

"Lo! the world is rich in blessingsEarth and Ocean, Flame and Wind

Have unnumber'd secrets still,

To be ransack'd when you will,

For the service of mankind;

Science is a child as yet,

And her power and scope shall grow,
And her triumphs in the future

Shall diminish toil and woe;
Shall extend the bounds of pleasure
With an ever-widening ken,
And of woods and wildernesses
Make the homes of happy men.

"ONWARD!-there are ills to conquer,
Daily wickedness is wrought,
Tyranny is swoll'n with Pride,
Bigotry is deified,

Error intertwined with Thought,
Vice and Misery ramp and crawl.
Root them out, their day has pass'd:
Goodness is alone immortal;

Evil was not made to last:-
ONWARD! and all Earth shall aid us
Ere our peaceful flag be furl'd."
And the preaching of this preacher
Stirs the pulses of the world.

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THE BROTHERS HARE.

FEW books contain more gems of instructive and suggestive thought, than the two volumes of "Guesses at Truth," first and second series, by the two brothers, Charles Julius and Augustus Hare, clergymen of the Church of England. The latter died a few years ago, and the duty of editing their joint productions devolved on the present archdeacon, Charles Julius Hare, whose contributions are marked by the letter U., while those with other marks are written either by his brother or by some congenial friends. In the original preface, the editor says,— "If I am addressing one of that numerous class who need to be told what to think, let me advise you to meddle with the book no further. You wish to buy a house ready furnisht: do not come to look for it in a stone-quarry. But, if you are building up your own opinions for yourself, and only want to be provided with materials, you may meet with many things in these pages to suit you.”

WHAT YOUTH SHOULD LEARN.

The teachers of youth, in a free country, should select those books for their chief study-so far, I mean, as this world is concerned which are best adapted to foster a spirit of manly freedom. The duty of preserving the liberty which our ancestors, through God's blessing, won, establisht, and handed down to us, is no less imperative than any commandment in the second table, if it be not the concentration of the whole. And is this duty to be learnt from the investigations of science? Is it to be pickt up in the crucible? or extracted from the properties of lines and numbers? I fear there is a moment of broken lights in the intellectual day of civilized countries, when, among the manifold refractions of Knowledge, Wisdom is almost lost sight of.

FREE TRADE.

A statesman may do much for commerce, most by leaving it alone. A river never flows so smoothly as when it follows its own course, without either aid or check. Let it make its own bed: it will do so better than you can.

MILTON.

Of Milton's mind, the leading characteristic is its unity. He has the thoughts of all ages at his command; but he has made them his own. He sits "high on a throne of royal state, adorned With all the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, And where the gorgeous East with richest hand Has showered barbaric pearl and gold." There are no false gems in him, no tinsel. It seems as if nothing could dwell in his mind but what was grand and sterling.

COLONIZATION.

If any persons are to be selected by preference for the peopling of a new country, they ought rather to be the most temperate, the most prudent, the most energetic, the most virtuous in the whole nation. For their task is the most arduous, requiring Wisdom to put forth all her strength and all her craft for its worthy execution. Their responsibility is the most weighty, seeing that upon them the character of a whole people for ages will mainly depend. And they will find much to dishearten them, much to draw them astray, without being protected against their own hearts, and upheld and fortified in their better resolves, as in a regularly constituted state all men are in some measure, by the healthy and cordial influences of Law and Custom and Opinion. Oh that statesmen would consider what a glorious privilege they enjoy, when they are allowed to become the fathers of a new people! This, however, seems to be one of the things which God has reserved wholly to himself.

We have long been unmindful, as a nation, of that which in our colonial policy we ought to deem our highest duty-the duty of planting the colonies of Christ. We have thought only of planting the colonies of Mammon, not those of Christ, nor even those of Minerva and Apollo. Nay, till very lately, we sent out our colonists not so much to Christianize the heathen, as to be heathenized by them and when a Christian is heathenized, then does the saying come to pass in all its darkness and wo, that the last state of such a man is worse than the first.

PHYSICAL AND MORAL POWER CONTRASTED.

Let us cast our thoughts backward. Of all the works of all the men who were living eighteen hundred years ago, what is remaining now? One man was then lord of half the known earth. In power none could vie with him, in the wisdom of this world few. He had sagacious ministers and able generals. Of all his works, of all theirs, of all the works of the other princes and rulers in those ages, what is left now? Here and there a name, and here and there a ruin! Of the works of those who wielded a mightier weapon than the sword-a weapon that the rust cannot eat away so rapidly, a weapon drawn from the armory of thought-some still live and act, and are cherisht and revered by the learned. The range of their influence, however, is narrow: it is confined to few, and even in them mostly to a few of their meditative, not of their active hours. But at the same time there issued from a nation among the most despised of the earth, twelve poor men, with no sword in their hands, scantily supplied with the stores of human learning or thought. They went forth East, and West, and North,

and South, into all quarters of the world. They were reviled; they were spit upon; they were trampled under foot; every engine of torture, every mode of death was employed to crush them. And where is their work now? It is set as a diadem on the brows of the nations. Their voice sounds at this day in all parts of the earth. High and low hear it; kings on their thrones bow down to it; senates acknowledge it as their law; the poor and afflicted rejoice in it; and as it has triumpht over all those powers which destroy the works of man-as, instead of falling before them it has gone on, age after age, increasing in power and in glory-so is it the only voice which can triumph over Death, and turn the king of terrors into an angel of light.

Therefore, even if princes and statesmen had no higher motive than the desire of producing works which are to last and to bear their names over the waves of time, they should aim at becoming the fellow-laborers, not of Tiberius and Sejanus, nor even of Augustus and Agrippa, but of Peter and Paul. Their object should be, not to build monuments which crumble away and are forgotten, but to work among the builders of that which is truly the Eternal City. For so, too, will it be eighteen hundred years hence, if the world lasts so long. Of the works of our generals and statesmen, eminent as several of them have been, all traces will have vanisht. Indeed, of him who was the mightiest among them, all traces have well-nigh vanisht already. For they who deal in death are mostly given up soon to death-they and their works. Of our poets and philosophers, some may still survive; and many a thoughtful youth in distant regions may still repair for wisdom to the fountains of Burke and Wordsworth. But the works which assuredly will live, and be great and glorious, are the works of those poor unregarded men, who have gone forth in the spirit of the twelve from Judea, whether to India, to Africa, to Greenland, or to the isles in the Pacific. As their names are written in the Book of Life, so are their works and it may be that the noblest memorial of England, in those days, will be the Christian empire of New Zealand.

IN WHAT CONSISTS A NATION'S STRENGTH

The strength of a nation, humanly speaking, consists not in its population or wealth or knowledge, or in any other such heartless and merely scientific elements, but in the number of its proprietors. Such, too, according to the most learned and wisest of historians, was the opinion of antiquity. "All ancient legislators, (says Niebuhr, when speaking of Numa,) and above all Moses, rested the result of their ordinances for virtue, civil order, and good manners, on securing landed property, or at least the hereditary possession of land to the greatest possible number of citizens."

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