THE MORAL CHANGE ANTICIPATED BY HOPE. 109

VIII. THE MORAL CHANGE ANTICIPATED BY HOPE. "THERE is no happiness which hope cannot promise, no difficulty which it cannot surmount, no grief which it cannot mitigate. It is the wealth of the indigent, the health of the sick, the freedom of the captive."-Brown's Lectures.

"One thing is certain, that the greatest of all obstacles to the improvement of the world, is that prevailing belief of its improbability, which damps the exertions of so many individuals; and that in proportion as the contrary opinion becomes general, it realizes the event which it leads us to anticipate."-Stewart's Elements, vol. i.

HOPE, when I mourn with sympathising' mind,
The wrongs of fate, the woes of human kind,
Thy blissful omens bid my spirit see

The boundless fields of rapture yet to be;
I watch the wheels of Nature's mazy plan,3
And learn the future by the past of man.
Come bright improvement! on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime.
Thy handmaid arts shall every wild explore,
Trace every wave, and culture every shore.
On Erie's banks where tigers steal along,
And the dread Indian chants a dismal song,
Where human fiends on midnight errands walk,
And bathe in brains the murderous tomahawk.
There shall the flocks on thymy pastures stray,
And shepherds dance at summer's opening day;
Each wandering genius of the lonely glen,*
Shall start to view the glittering haunts of men,
And silent watch, on woodland heights around,
The village curfew as it tolls profound.

Where barbarous hordes on Scythian mountains roam
Truth, Mercy, Freedom, yet shall find a home;
Where'er degraded nature bleeds and pines,

From Guinea's coast to Sabir's dreary mines,

Truth shall pervade the unfathomed darkness there,
And light the dreadful features of despair-
Hark! the stern captive spurns his heavy load,
And asks the image back that heaven bestowed;"
Fierce in his eye, the fire of valour burns,
And as the slave departs, the man returns."

1. Why sympathizing mind?

2. Meaning of rapture?

3. Why mazy plan?

4. Put this and the three following

CAMPBELL.

lines into the natural order, filling up ellipses, &c.

5. What is alluded to here?

6. State fully the meaning of the last line.

IX. DAILY WORK.

"THERE is no earthly thing more mean and despicable in my mind, than an English gentleman destitute of all sense of his responsibilities and opportunities, and only revelling in the luxuries of our high civilization, and thinking himself a great person."-Arnold.

EXCELSIOR.

No dread of toil have we or ours;

We know our worth, and weigh our powers;
The more we work, the more we win :

Success to Trade!

Success to Spade!

And to the Corn that's coming in!
And joy to him, who o'er his task
Remembers toil is Nature's plan ;
Who, working, thinks-
And never sinks

His independence as a man.

Who only asks for humblest wealth,
Enough for competence and health;
And leisure, when his work is done,
To read his book,

By chimney nook,

Or stroll at setting of the sun.
Who toils as every man should toil
For fair reward, erect and free:
These are the men-

The best of men

These are the men we mean to be!

111

CHARLES MACKAY.

1. In what sense is dread of daily work 2. The object of the verb give? used here?

X. EXCELSIOR.1

"BUT it boots not to look backwards. Forwards! forwards! forwards! should be one's motto."-Arnold.

THE shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a faulchion from its sheath,

And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,

Excelsior!

Try not the Pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied
Excelsior!

"O stay," the maiden said, " and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche !"

This was the peasant's last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard3
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping, in his hand of ice,
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!

LONGFELLOW.

1. Excelsior is a Latin word, meaning | brandy fastened round the neck, and "higher," and the moral of this poem is the same as Montgomery's " Aspirations of youth," p. 121.

2. What is the nominative to low

ers?

3. "It is among the Alps that the monks of St. Bernard send out their noble dogs, with a small vessel of

a cloak fastened round the body. These dogs find out the poor frozen traveller, perishing in the snow; the brandy is meant to give fresh life to him that drinks it; and the cloak to protect him from the cold. God bless the kind monks of St. Bernard !"-Peter Parley's Geography.

KNOWLEDGE PROGRESSIVE.

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XI. KNOWLEDGE PROGRESSIVE.

"THE love of man to woman is less irresistible than the love that binds intellect to knowledge."--Bulwer.

FIRED at first sight, with what the muse imparts,
In fearless youth, we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind ;
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
The eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But, those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

POPE.

XII. AMELIORATION AND THE FUTURE, MAN'S NOBLE TASKS.

"As in ancient Rome, it was regarded as the mark of a good citizen, never to despair of the fortunes of the Republic, so the good citizen of the world, whatever may be the political aspect of his own times, will never despair of the fortunes of the human race, but will act upon the conviction that prejudice, slavery, and corruption must gradually give way to truth, liberty, and virtue; and that, in the moral world, as well as in the material, the farther our observations extend, and the longer they are continued, the more we shall perceive of order and of benevolent design in the universe."-Dugald Stewart.

FALL, fall, ye mighty temples to the ground;
Not in your sculptur'd rise

Is the real exercise

Of human nature's brightest power found.

I