As savage tiger, from the deep dark wood
Seizes the aged pilgrim by the way—

Tears the flesh, piecemeal, quivering in his teeth,
And bears him to his lair-then stays to rest.
A sacred tablet told its wondrous age-

How solemn read that seventeen hundred twenty-three!
But all its work was done, and heaven now called
The city to its obsequies. O, why be burned
The consecrated house of God! Fly quick some angel,
Dip your wing in life's fair stream and quench the fire,
It should not, cannot burn, for God is there.
Most cruel storm, to swell thy blast, and rage,
And blow, at this sad hour so barb'rously!
Ah, must thy pipes all stay their melody,*

And not one gloomy dirge mourn out thy obsequies?
Prostrate in dust the pride of Charleston lies:
The glory of a century is gone, clean gone for ever;
The watchful clock knew well the wonted hour,
And gathered up its strength to strike once more—
As if impressed that it could never speak again,
It uttered one! two!! three!!! and all was still.t

A WONDROUS BEGGAR.

ALL hungry from the wilderness he came,
Barefoot, and covered with a camel's skin,

And girt his loins with thong, and bald.

Months had the ravens brought him meat and flesh,
And Cherith brought him water, kind Heaven's bounty;
Ah, but the brook had dried. The ravens kept
Their duty up, through many a moon unwearied,
And called him to his meal, each morn, each night,
And when the work was done, stayed by the task.
"Elijah, man of God, come to your bread!"

How strange the servant, and the server strange,

A bird that lives on prey, and loves most loathsome food!

• Referring to the organ.

The tower fell just as the clock struck three.

How came he by the clean and healthful meal?

Did it drop down from heaven? Or came it whence?
The prophet's Lord owns all the cattle on the hills.

But he had gone to prove a widow's faith,
And have her fit betimes for heaven. Famine raged-
The earth was iron and the sky was brass-

Nor rain nor dew had dropped for many a month-
Death stared her in the face. Her meal was low,

Her oil sunk in the cruise. What could she do
But die? But lo! the wondrous beggar came from far!
She knew her noble guest. 'Twas not a costly palace,
Nor she a queen in gay and rich attire ;

No badge could win him to her lonely hut.
He asked for water. Ahab's flocks had none;
'Twas famine in the courts of kings and princes.

What wondrous streamlet, think ye, fed her spring?

Did it rill down from heaven? Or came it up

From earth's deep fountains, where the famine reached not?
Deep from the nether springs some angel drew it up;

It came most plenteously-it came most timely—
The widow and her son were gathering up two sticks,
To bake a cake and die-'twas the last morsel.

Bake one for me, the wondrous beggar cried,
And then for thee and him-There'll be no want.

There'll be no want! the little urchin cried; what can it mean?
The oil and meal are almost gone;

He knows not, said the careful lad, our want;

He did not hear our cry for daily bread,
This morning, ere the dawn had broken forth;
He did not see my anxious mother's tears;

I wonder does he know she is a widow?

O mother, let me tell him he has missed the house

Where Heaven would have him fed. Hold now thy peace,

my son,

The stranger is from God.—I heard him pray—

His faith took hold of Heaven-'twas the strong grip of death-
God will yet make it plain, my son, "There'll be no want."
Ah! what can mother mean? The beggar's cake

Will drain the barrel dry, and spend the oil.
She baked the cake-the meal expended not-
The oil but multiplied. There seemed far more

Than when they supped last night-Heaven increased it;
Now she well knew her guest-God's holy prophet-
And many a month she fed him at her board;
Her meal still lasted, and her oil held out.

Their holy converse we may know in heaven,
When olden times shall pour their story on the ear
Of the redeemed. Reader, let you and I be there-
We'll have the story from their own sweet lips,
In high and holy songs.

He'll tell us of his raising up the lad,

While lodged 'neath the same roof, and fed by miracle; And the whole story of the prophets slain;

Of Jezebel, the impious wife of Ahab,

Whose heart was set on mischief and on blood,
Till the dogs licked her own, at Naboth's vineyard.
Perchance he'll glance at scenes of later date,
And tell the tale of the transfigured Lamb
On Tabor, ere he suffered on Moriah's mount;
And then he'll help us to admire His love,
Who washed us.

DIRGE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1834.

In a mouldering cave, where her woe sought retreat,
Columbia sat wasted with care,

For a Washington wept, and lamented her loss,
And gave herself up to despair.

The sides of her cell she had sculptured around

With th' exploits of her favorite son,

And every pathway and every rock,

Seemed inscribed with some deed he had done.

The star of her glory rose high in the west,
Her Eagle no prowess could daunt;

The cleft of the rock was the place of her rest—
The heavens invited her haunt.

But the tears ceased at length to moisten her face,
Her commerce filled every sea;

Her glory was sung by the nations afar,

'Twas the song of the brave and the free.

But a sigh from her cave broke her joy in the midst,
Like the slow dirge of one she begat;

We listened to know who the stranger could be
'Twas the loved and the brave LAFAYETTE.

Hail, heroes! you're gone from the seat of the brave,

O! to know that your sins were forgiven,

That your spirits may rise, when you're waked from the grave,
To fill some high mansion in heaven;

And the land that you loved, may it smile in the west,
Till moon, and till sun shine no more;

Be the theme of the brave, and the place of their rest,
For ever and for ever more.

THE INFLUENCE OF A GOOD TASTE UPON THE MORAL AFFECTIONS.

THE question has been often asked, whether this is a deformed or a beautiful world; whether it came from the hand of its Maker in its present aspect, or has been marred and defaced by some mighty disaster. Men have had on this subject widely different opinions. One has seen nothing in which this world is defective; no mountain he would have levelled, no valley he would raise, no rock he would bury, no marsh he would drain, no heath he would fertilize, no morass he would redeem. Another has seen, or thought he saw, deformity every where, and has in many a gloomy hour responded to that moan of the poet, uttered in view of the first transgression:

"Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her seat

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of wo,
That all was lost."

• Delivered before the Alexandrian Society of Amherst College, August 21, 1827.

To him it has seemed, that in every hill and vale and ocean and lake and heath and river there is some curse to be deplored. Others again have discovered on the face of this world many beauties, which must have been designed as such by its Creator; while yet they see deformities, which indicate, that when Jehovah rested from his work he left this world not as it now is, and which bespeak some convulsion, by which its distortions have been generated, and much of its original beauty lost. Some of its most elevated ridges wear the marks of having risen from the ocean, while the presumption is, that what were once its mountains are now buried in the depths of the sea.

That the earth has been swept over by some deluge passing from north to south, is too obvious to admit of a doubt. But whether the event, happen when or how it might, finally left the surface of the world deformed or beautiful, may still be a question to be decided, very differently perhaps, by our different tastes. One man will see deformity in some cases where another sees only beauty. It may even be questioned, whether men of equally improved tastes will invariably agree in what is beautiful, and what deformed, in the sceneries of nature. One may have taste only for what is plain, and another for what is splendid. One may be most gratified when in his landscape there are seen the barren rock, and the broken cliff; while another, who can be pleased only with what is useful, must see every spot fertile, have every rock concealed, and every eminence accessible. Which of these have the best taste, is a question on which ingenuity might employ itself most elegantly, and not without profit.

Whether taste should be denominated an internal sense, or judgment operating without any perceptible process of reasoning, is of small moment; for whatever difficulties there may be in defining, there is none in understanding it. "Taste," says an elegant writer, "is of all nature's gifts the most easily felt, and the most difficult to explain; it would not be what it is, if it could be defined; for it judges of objects beyond the reach of judgment, and serves in a manner as a magnifying glass to reason." I have supposed it not wide from the truth to say, that taste is a sense of the understanding, holding much the same relation to objects of nature and art, that conscience, another sense, holds to moral objects: As one has been defined, "The power of receiving pleasure or pain from the beauties or deformities of nature and of art;" so the other may be termed, the power of receiving pleasure or pain from moral beauty or deformity. Hence, to trace the resemblance