There were two fathers in this ghastly crew,
And with them their two sons, of whom the one
Was more robust and hardy to the view,

But he died early; and when he was gone

His nearest messmate told his sire, who threw

One glance on him, and said, "Heaven's will be done!

I can do nothing!" and he saw him thrown

Into the deep, without a tear or groan.

The other father had a weaklier child,
Of a soft cheek, and aspect delicate;
But the boy bore up long, and with a mild
And patient spirit, held aloof his fate;
Little he said, and now and then he smiled,
As if to win a part from off the weight
He saw increasing on his father's heart,
With the deep deadly thought that they must part.
And o'er him bent his sire, and never raised

His eyes from off his face, but wiped the foam
From his pale lips, and ever on him gazed;

And when the wish'd-for shower at length was come,
And the boy's eyes, which the dull film half glazed,
Brighten'd, and for a moment seem'd to roam,
He squeezed from out a rag some drops of rain
Into his dying child's mouth-but in vain.

The boy expired-the father held the clay,
And look'd upon it long, and when at last
Death left no doubt, and the dead burden lay
Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were past,
He watch'd it wistfully, until away

'Twas borne by the rude wave wherein 'twas cast; Then he himself sunk down, all dumb and shivering, And gave no signs of life, save his limbs quivering.

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, so eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent.

MAN'S IMMORTALITY.

When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah, whither strays the immortal mind?
It cannot die,--it cannot stay,

But leaves its darken'd dust behind.
Then, unembodied, doth it trace

'By steps each planet's heavenly way?
Or fill at once the realms of space,
A thing of eyes, that all survey?

Eternal, boundless, undecay'd,

A thought unseen, but seeing all,—
All, all in earth or skies display'd,
Shall it survey, shall it recall:
Each fainter trace that memory holds
So darkly of departed years,

In one broad glance the soul beholds,
And all that was, at once appears.

Before Creation peopled earth,

Its eye shall roll through chaos back;
And where the furthest heaven had birth,
The spirit trace its rising track;
And where the future mars or makes,
Its glance dilate o'er all to be,

While sun is quench'd or system breaks,
Fix'd in its own eternity.

Above or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years as moments shall endure.

Away, away, without a wing,

O'er all, through all, its thoughts shall fly;
A nameless and eternal thing,

Forgetting what it was to die.

TO THE MEMORY OF HENRY KIRKE WHITE

Bright be the place of thy soul!
No lovelier spirit than thine
E'er burst from its mortal control,

In the orbs of the blessed to shine.
On earth thou wert all but divine,
As thy soul shall immortally be;
And our sorrow may cease to repine
When we know that thy God is with thee.

Light be the turf of thy tomb!

May its verdure like emeralds be!
There should not be the shadow of gloom
In aught that reminds us of thee.
Young flowers and an evergreen tree
May spring from the spot of thy rest,-
But nor cypress nor yew let us see;

For why should we mourn for the blest?

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD, 1743-1825.

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD, a name dear to the admirers of genius and the lovers of virtue, was the eldest child and only daughter of the Rev. John Aikin, master of a boys' school in the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire, and was born in that place, 1743. Her education was conducted by her father, and was of a very solid character; and though at that day there was a strong prejudice against imparting to females any tincture of classical learning, she devoted a portion of her time to the study of Latin, and before she was fifteen she had read many authors in that language with pleasure and advantage: nor did she rest satisfied without gaining some acquaintance with the Greek.

In 1758, when she was fifteen, her father removed from the somewhat obscure village of Kibworth, to take charge of the classical department in the "dissenting" academy at Warrington, in Lancashire, to which he had been invited; and where, in the cultivated society of this place, she found most congenial associates. In 1773 she collected the various poems she had from time to time written, and arranged them for publication. These were so well received that four editions were called for within that year.

In 1774, Miss Aikin was married to the Rev. Rochemond Barbauld, a descendant from a family of French Protestants. Soon after this, Mr. Barbauld opened a boarding-school for boys in the village of Palgrave, in Suffolk. The rapid and uninterrupted success which crowned this undertaking was doubtless owing, in a great measure, to the literary celebrity attached to the name of Mrs. Barbauld, who took part with her husband in the business of instruction. It was for the benefit of the younger class of scholars that she composed her Hymns in Prose for Children. "The business of tuition, however," says her biographer, Miss Aikin, "to those by whom it is faithfully and zealously exereised, must ever be fatiguing beyond almost any other occupation; and Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld found their health and spirits so much impaired by their exertions that, at the end of eleven years, they determined upon quitting Palgrave and allowing themselves an interval of complete relaxation before they should again embark in any scheme of active life." Accordingly, in the autumn of 1785 they embarked for the continent, and, after spending nearly a year in Switzerland and France, returned to England in June, 1786. In the spring of the next year, Mr. Barbauld was elected pastor of a “dissenting” congregation in Hampstead, where for several years he received a few lads as pupils, while Mrs. B. gave instruction to two or three girls. But her pen did not long remain idle. In 1790 and in the few subsequent years appeared

her Poetical Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce on the rejection of his bill for abolishing the slave-trade; her Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship; and her Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, &c.,

In 1802, Mr. Barbauld accepted an invitation to become pastor of the congregation at Newington Green; and, quitting Hampstead, they took up their abode in the village of Stoke Newington. In 1804 she offered to the public Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay. This essay has ever been considered a very fine piece of criticism, and the most successful of her efforts in that department of literature. Hitherto Mrs. Barbauld's life had been almost one uninterrupted course of happiness and prosperity. But she was soon to experience one of the severest of all trials, in the loss of her husband, who, after a lingering illness, expired on the 11th of November, 1808. A beautiful memoir of his character, doubtless from her pen, appeared shortly after in the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature; and in her poem of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven she touchingly alludes to

"That sad death whence most affection bleeds."

Mrs. Barbauld published but little after this: a gentle and scarcely perceptible decline was now sloping for herself the passage to the tomb; and on the morning of March 9, 1825, after a few days' illness, she expired without a struggle, in the eighty-second year of her age.

To claim for Mrs. Barbauld the praise of purity and elevation of mind, might well appear superfluous. She is decidedly one of the most eminent female writers that England has produced; and both in prose and poetry she takes a high rank. Her prose style is very easy and graceful, calculated to engage alike the most common and the most elevated understanding. Her poems are addressed more to the feelings than to the imagination; but their language never becomes prosaic, and has beauty and pathos, without bombast or affectation. Her hymns are among the best sacred lyrics in the language; and it has been justly said of her that "the spirit of piety and benevolence that breathes through her works pervaded her life.”

ON EDUCATION.

The first thing to be considered with respect to education is the object of it. This appears to me to have been generally misunderstood. Education, in its largest sense, is a thing of great scope and extent. It includes the whole process by which a human being is formed to be what he is, in habits, principles, and cultivation of every kind. But of this, a very small part is in the power even of the parent himself; a smaller still can be directed by purchased tuition of any kind. You engage for your child masters and tutors at large salaries; and you do well, for they are competent to instruct him: they will give him the means, at least, of acquiring science and accomplishments; but in the business of education, properly so called, they can do little for you. Do you ask, then, what will educate your son? Your example

1 Read a Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld by Miss Lucy Aikin.

will educate him: your conversation with your friends, the business he sees you transact, the likings and dislikings you express, -these will educate him: the society you live in will educate him; your domestics will educate him; above all, your rank and situation in life, your house, your table, will educate him. It is not in your power to withdraw him from the continual influence of these things, except you were to withdraw yourself from them also. You speak of beginning the education of your son. The moment he was able to form an idea, his education was already begun; the education of circumstances,-insensible education,which, like insensible perspiration, is of more constant and powerful effect, and of infinitely more consequence to the habit, than that which is direct and apparent. This education goes on at every instant of time; it goes on like time; you can neither stop it nor turn its course. What these have a tendency to make your child, that he will be. Maxims and documents are good precisely till they are tried, and no longer: they will teach him to talk, and nothing more. The circumstances in which your son is placed will be even more prevalent than your example; and you have no right to expect him to become what you yourself are, but by the same means. You that have toiled during youth to set your son upon higher ground and to enable him to begin where you left off, do not expect that son to be what you were,diligent, modest, active, simple in his tastes, fertile in resources. You have put him under quite a different master. Poverty educated you; wealth will educate him. You cannot suppose the result will be the same. You must not even expect that he will be what you now are; for, though relaxed, perhaps, from the severity of your frugal habits, you still derive advantage from having formed them; and, in your heart, you like plain dinners, and early hours, and old friends, whenever your fortune will permit you to enjoy them. But it will not be so with your son: his tastes will be formed by your present situation, and in no degree by your former one. You are sensible of the benefit of early rising; and you may, if you please, make it a point that your daughter and your son shall retire at the hour when you are preparing to see company. But their sleep, in the first place, will not be so sweet and undisturbed amid the rattle of carriages, and the glare of tapers glancing through the rooms, as that of the village child in his quiet cottage, protected by silence and darkness; and, moreover, you may depend upon it that, as the coercive power of education is laid aside, they will in a few months slide into the habitudes of the rest of the family, whose hours are determined by their company and situation in life. You have, however, done good, as far as it goes: it is something gained to defer pernicious habits, if we cannot prevent them.

There is nothing which has so little share in education as direct