Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain torch.
A fearful hope was all the world contained:
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest

Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food:
And war, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails-men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured.
Even dogs assailed their masters-all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead

Lured their lank jaws! himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage; they raked up,

And shivering scraped, with their cold skeleton hands,
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects-saw, and shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped,

They slept on the abyss without a surge

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the universe.

LESSON CX.

The Philosopher's Scales.-JANE Taylor.

WHAT were they?-you ask: you shall presently see;
These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea;
O no;-for such properties wondrous had they,
That qualities, feelings, and thoughts they could weigh,

Together with articles, small or immense,
From mountains or planets to atoms of sense;
Nought was there so bulky but there it could lay,
And nought so ethereal but there it would stay;
And nought so reluctant but in it must go:-
All which some examples more clearly will show.

The first thing he tried was the head of Voltaire,
Which retained all the wit that had ever been there;
As a weight he threw in a torn scrap of a leaf,
Containing the prayer of the penitent thief;
When the skull rose aloft with so sudden a spell,
As to bound like a ball on the roof of his cell.

Next time he put in Alexander the Great,

With a garment that Dorcas had made-for a weight;
And though clad in armor from sandals to crown,
The hero rose up, and the garment went down.

A long row of alms-houses, amply endowed
By a well-esteemed Pharisee, busy and proud,
Now loaded one scale, while the other was prest
By those mites the poor widow dropped into the chest;
Up flew the endowment, not weighing an ounce,
And down, down, the farthing's worth came with a bounce.

By further experiments (no matter how)

He found that ten chariots weighed less than one plough. A sword, with gilt trappings, rose up in the scale, Though balanced by only a tenpenny nail

A lord and a lady went up at full sail,

When a bee chanced to light on the opposite scale.
Ten doctors, ten lawyers, two courtiers, one earl,-
Ten counsellors' wigs full of powder and curl,—
All heaped in one balance, and swinging from thence,
Weighed less than some atoms of candor and sense ;-
A first-water diamond, with brilliants begirt,
Than one good potato just washed from the dirt;-
Yet not mountains of silver and gold would suffice,
One pearl to outweigh-'t was 'the pearl of great price!'

At last the whole world was bowled in at the grate,
With the soul of a beggar to serve. for a weight;-
When the former sprung up with so strong a rebuff,
That it made a vast rent, and escaped at the roof—

While the scale with the soul in 't so mightily fell,
That it jerked the philosopher out of his cell.

LESSON CXI.

Character of Martin Luther.-ROBERTSON.

In his

As Luther was raised up by Providence to be the author of one of the greatest and most interesting revolutions recorded in history, there is not any person perhaps whose character has been drawn with such opposite colors. own age, one party, struck with horror and inflamed with rage, when they saw with what a daring hand he overturned every thing which they held to be sacred, or valued as beneficial, imputed to him not only all the defects and vices of a man, but the qualities of a demon.

The other, warmed with the admiration and gratitude which they thought he merited as the restorer of light and liberty to the Christian church, ascribed to him perfections above the condition of humanity, and viewed all his actions with a veneration bordering on that which should be paid only to those, who are guided by the immediate inspiration of Heaven. It is his own conduct, not the undistinguishing censure or the exaggerated praise of his contemporaries, that ought to regulate the opinions of the present age concerning him.

Zeal for what he regarded as truth, undaunted intrepidity to maintain his own system, abilities, both natural and acquired, to defend his principles, and unwearied industry in propagating them, are virtues which shine so conspicuously in every part of his behavior, that even his enemies must allow him to have possessed them in an eminent degree. To these may be added, with equal justice, such purity of manners, as became one who assumed the character of a reformer; such sanctity of life as suited the doctrine which he delivered, and such perfect disinterestedness as affords no slight presumption of his sincerity.

His extraordinary qualities were alloyed with no inconsiderable mixture of human frailty and human passions. These however were of such a nature, that they cannot be imputed to malevolence or corruption of heart, but seem to

have taken their rise from the same source with many of his virtues. His mind, forcible and vehement in all its operations, roused by great objects, or agitated by violent passions, broke out, on many occasions, with an impetuosity which astonishes men of feebler spirits, or such as are placed in a more tranquil situation.

By carrying some praiseworthy dispositions to excess, he bordered sometimes on what was culpable, and was often betrayed into actions which exposed him to censure. His confidence that his own opinions were well founded, approached to arrogance; his courage in asserting them, to rashness; his firmness in adhering to them, to obstinacy; and his zeal in confuting his adversaries, to rage and scurrility.

Accustomed himself to consider every thing as subordinate to truth, he expected the same deference for it from other men; and without making any allowances for their timidity or prejudices, he poured forth against such as disappointed him in this particular, a torrent of invective mingled with contempt.

But these indecencies of which Luther was guilty, must not be imputed wholly to the violence of his temper. In passing judgment upon the characters of men, we ought to try them by the principles and maxims of their own age, not by those of another, for, although virtue and vice are at all times the same, manners and customs continually vary.

Some parts of Luther's behavior, which to us appears most culpable, gave no disgust to his contemporaries. It was even by some of those qualities, which we are now apt to blame, that he was fitted for accomplishing the great work which he undertook. To rouse mankind, when sunk in ignorance and superstition, and to encounter the rage of bigotry armed with power, required the utmost vehemence of zeal, as well as a temper daring to excess.

A gentle call would neither have reached, nor have excited those to whom it must have been addressed. A spirit more amiable, but less vigorous than Luther's would have shrunk back from the dangers which he braved and surmounted. Towards the close of Luther's life, though without any perceptible diminution of his zeal or abilities, the infirmities of his temper increased upon him, so that he grew daily more peevish, more irascible, and more impatient of contradiction.

Having lived to be a witness of his own amazing success;