nerve is the cord through which the brain communicates with the eye; and when, by disease or other means, that nerve, or its expansion, the retina, on which the images of external objects are painted, loses its function, or if, as has been often proved by experiment, the optic nerves be cut across, then the animal sees no longer, though the eyes themselves remain as perfect as before.

THE summer sun was in the west,
Yet far above his evening rest;
A thousand clouds in air displayed
Their floating isles of light and shade,-
The sky, like ocean's channels, seen
In long meandering streaks between.

Cultured and waste the landscape lay;
Woods, mountains, valleys stretched away,
And thronged the immense horizon round,
With heaven's eternal girdle bound:
From inland towns, eclipsed with smoke,
Steeples in lonely grandeur broke;
Hamlets, and cottages, and streams
By glimpses caught the casual gleams,
Or blazed in lustre broad and strong,
Beyond the picturing powers of song:
O'er all the eye enchanted ranged,
While colours, forms, proportions changed,
Or sank in distance undefined,

Still as our devious course inclined;

And oft we paused, and looked behind.
One little cloud, and only one,
Seemed the pure offspring of the sun,
Flung from his orb to show us here
What clouds adorn his hemisphere;
Unmoved, unchanging, in the gale
That bore the rest o'er hill and dale,
Whose shadowy shapes, with lights around,
Like living motions, swept the ground.

This little cloud, and this alone,
Long in the highest ether shone;
Gay as a warrior's banner, spread
Its sunward margin, ruby-red,
Green, purple, gold, and every hue
That glitters in the morning dew,
Or glows along the rainbow's form,
The apparition of the storm.
Deep in its bosom, diamond-bright,
Behind a fleece of pearly white,
It seemed a secret glory dwelt,
Whose presence, while unseen, was felt:
Like Beauty's eye, in slumber hid
Beneath a half-transparent lid,

From whence a sound, a touch, a breath,
Might startle it, as life from death.

Looks, words, emotions of surprise
Welcomed the stranger to our eyes:
Was it the phoenix, that from earth
In flames of incense sprang to birth?
Had Ocean from his lap let fly
His loveliest halcyon through the sky?
No: -- - while we gazed, the pageant grew
A nobler object to our view;

We deemed, if heaven with earth would hold
Communion, as in days of old,

Such, on his journey down the sphere,
Benignant Raphael might appear,
In splendid mystery concealed,
Yet by his rich disguise revealed:

That buoyant vapour, in mid-air,
An angel in its folds might bear,
Who, through the curtain of his shrine,
Betrayed his lineaments divine.
The wild, the warm illusion stole,
Like inspiration, o'er the soul,

Till thought was rapture; language hung
Silent but trembling on the tongue;

And fancy almost hoped to hail
The seraph rushing through his veil,
Or hear an awful voice proclaim
The embassy on which he came.
But ah! no minister of grace
Showed from the firmament his face,

"Five years older at the very least!" cried the other. "Five!" retorted the sexton. "Ten! Good eighty-nine. I call to mind the time her daughter died. She was eightynine if she was a day, and tries to pass upon us now, for ten years younger. Oh! human vanity!"

The other old man was not behindhand with some moral reflections on this fruitful theme; and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such weight as to render it doubtful, — not whether the deceased was of the age suggested, but whether she had not almost reached the patriarchal term of a hundred. When they had settled this question to their mutual satisfaction, the sexton, with his friend's assistance, rose to go.

"It's chilly, sitting here, and I must be careful,- till the summer," he said, as he prepared to limp away.

"What?" asked old David.

"He's very deaf, poor fellow!" cried the sexton. by!"

"Good

"Ah!" said old David, looking after him. "He's failing very fast. He ages every day!"

And so they parted: each persuaded that the other had less life in him than himself; and both greatly consoled and comforted by the little fiction they had agreed upon, respecting Becky Morgan; whose decease was no longer a precedent of uncomfortable application, and would be no business of theirs for half-a-score of years to come.

EXERCISE CLXXXI.

A LESSON TO REFORMERS.

Mrs. Child.

GREAT is the strength of an individual soul, true to its high trust; mighty is it, even to the redemption of a world.

A German, whose sense of sound was exceedingly acute, was passing by a church, a day or two after he had landed in this country; and the sound of music attracted him to enter, though he had no knowledge of our language. The music proved to be a piece of nasal psalmody, sung in most discordant fashion; and the sensitive German would fain have covered his ears. As this was scarcely civil, and might appear like insanity, his next impulse was to rush into the open air, and leave the hated sounds behind him. "But this,

influences which spring from their own constitutional susceptibility to nature and to sentiment, as sources of refinement, than suffer the indescribable evils resulting from false or perverted taste.

But, after the best initiatory instruction, the benefits of practice in drawing and in music, depend entirely on judicious personal culture. It matters little that a young lady has studied the rudiments of drawing under a teacher of acknowledged taste and skill, if she allows her practice to run into the line of fancy scenes of delicately graceful Gothic castles, slender upright trees, and prettily draped knights and damsels, promenading in "trim gardens; or if she restricts herself to the painting of those birds and flowers which exist nowhere but on much-abused paper or canvass. The taste which is formed by such exercises, is irretrievably perverted: every new essay, in such style, only stereotypes a fault.

Let the young student, on the other hand, attempt to draw a tree, to paint a flower, or to sketch a group of objects, from nature; and how different the result! Let the attempt even prove a failure, there has been a flood of instruction poured over the mind, a whole world of impressions stamped on the imagination, and a fresh sensibility awakened to every beauty of form, and light, and colour. The student rises from her work to new perceptions of grace, and symmetry, and perfection, in nature and in art, and, not less, in soul and character.

Similar effects follow the cultivation of music. A girl at school may have enjoyed the best opportunities of faithful and able instruction. But it will all be unavailing, if she give up her subsequent hours of practice to the low strains of a popular ballad, or to rattling off some delicious little snuff-box waltz. Her instrument and her voice become thus the effectual means of degrading her taste to the low and the trivial; and every hour devoted to such practice, becomes an additional security that she shall never rise to the refinement and elevation of soul, which music is so beautifully adapted to confer.

Let a young lady, on the contrary, regard every hour which she devotes to music, as consecrated to higher attainments in the perception and enjoyment of beauty, and to the power of exalting her own sense of loveliness and perfection; and she will select the works of great composers only. She may not be able to perform any but their easiest and slightest productions. But to these she will adhere, as to the manna

of genius, and shrink from the other, as from the messes of Egypt. She will be content to wait patiently, and practise assiduously, for the skill which, in due time, will reward her resolution and her perseverance, and enable her to present more faithfully, and to enjoy more amply, the richer fruits of great minds.

ance.

"With his ice, and snow, and rime,
Let bleak Winter sternly come !

There is not a sunnier clime

Than the love-lit winter-home." A. A. Watts.

WE are now placed in the midst of wintry scenes. Nature is stripped of all her summer drapery. Her verdure, her foliage, her flowers, have all vanished. The sky is filled with clouds and gloom, or sparkles only with a frosty radiThe earth is spongy with wet, rigid with frost, or buried in snows. The winds that, in summer, breathe gently over nodding blooms, and undulating grass, swaying the leafy boughs with a pleasant murmur, and wafting perfumes all over the world, now hiss like serpents, or howl like wild beasts of the desert; cold, piercing, and cruel.

Every thing has drawn as near as possible to the centre of warmth and comfort. The farmer has driven his flocks and cattle into sheltered home enclosures, where they may receive from his provident care, that food which the earth now denies them; or into the farm-yard itself, where some honest Giles piles their cratches plentifully with fodder. The labourer has fled from the field to the barn; and the measured strokes of his flail are heard daily, from morn till eve.

It amazes us, as we walk abroad, to conceive where can have concealed themselves the infinite variety of creatures that sported through the air, earth, and waters, of summer. Birds, insects, reptiles, whither are they all gone? The birds that filled the air with their music, the rich blackbird, the loud and cheerful thrush, the linnet, lark, and goldfinch,

-

whither have they crept?-The squirrel that played his