and the various mansions of deities are acquired by devotion alone; their efficient cause is devotion."

"Whatever is hard to be traversed, whatever is hard to be acquired, whatever is hard to be visited, whatever is hard to be performed, all this may be accomplished by true devotion; for the difficulty of devotion is the greatest of all."

DEATH.

BENEATH the endless surges of the deep,
Whose green content o'erlaps them evermore,
A host of mariners perpetual sleep,

Too hushed to heed the wild commotion's roar;
The emerald weeds glide softly o'er their bones,
And wash them gently mid the rounded stones.
No epitaph have they to tell their tale,
Their birthplace, age, and story, all are lost,
Yet rest they deeply, as within the vale

Those sheltered bodies by the smooth slates crossed,
And countless tribes of men lie on the hills,
And human blood runs in the crystal rills.

The air is full of men, who once enjoyed
The healthy element, nor looked beyond, -
Many, who all their mortal strength employed
In human kindness, of their brothers fond,-
And many more, who counteracted fate,
And battled in the strife of common hate.
Profoundest sleep enwraps them all around,
Sages and sire, the child and manhood strong,
Shed not one tear, expend no sorrowing sound,
Tune thy clear voice to no funereal song,
For, oh! Death stands to welcome thee and me,
And life hath in its breath a steeper mystery.

I hear a bell, that tolls an empty note,

The mourning anthem, and the sobbing prayer;
A grave fresh-opened, where the friends devote
To mouldering darkness a still corse, once fair
And beautiful as morning's silver light,

And stars which throw their clear fire on the night.
She is not here, who smiled within these eyes,
Warmer than spring's first sunbeam through the pale
And tearful air, -resist these flatteries;

O, lay her silently alone, and in this vale
Shall the sweet winds sing better dirge for her,
And the fine, early flowers her death-clothes minister.

O, Death! thou art the palace of our hopes,
The storehouse of our joys, great labor's end;
Thou art the bronzéd key, which swiftly opes
The coffers of the past; and thou shalt send
Such trophies to our hearts, as sunny days,
When life upon its golden harp-string plays.
And when a nation mourns a silent voice,
That long entranced its ear with melody,
How thou must in thy inmost soul rejoice,
To
wrap such treasure in thy boundless sea!
And thou wert dignified, if but one soul
Had been enfolded in thy twilight stole.

Triumphal arches circle o'er thy deep,
Dazzling with jewels, radiant with content;
In thy vast arms the sons of genius sleep,
The carvings of thy spheral monument,
Bearing no recollection of dim time,

Within thy green and most perennial prime.
And might I sound a thought of thy decree,-
How lapsed the dreary earth in fragrant pleasure,
And hummed along o'er life's contracted sea,
Like the swift petrel, mimicking the waves' measure;
But though I long, the sounds will never come,
For, in thy majesty, my lesser voice is dumb.

Thou art not tender of thy precious fame,
But comest, like the clouds, soft-stealing on;
Thou soundest in a careless key the name
Of him, who to thy boundless treasury is won;
And yet he quickly cometh; for to die

Is ever gentlest, to both low and high.
Thou, therefore, hast humanity's respect;
They build thee tombs upon the green hill-side,
And will not suffer thee the least neglect,
And tend thee with a desolate, sad pride;
For thou art strong, O Death, though sweetly so,
And in thy lovely gentleness sleeps woe.

O, what are we, who swim upon this tide,
Which we call life, yet to thy kingdom come?
Look not upon us till we chasten pride,
And preparation make for thy high home;
And, might we ask, make measurely approach,
And not upon these few, smooth hours encroach.
I come - I come·
think not I turn away!

Fold round me thy gray robe! I stand to feel
The setting of my last, frail, earthly day;

I will not pluck it off, but calmly kneel,

For I am great as thou art, though not thou,
And thought, as with thee, dwells upon my brow.

Ah! might I ask thee, spirit, first to tend
Upon those dear ones whom my heart has found,
And supplicate thee, that I might them lend
A light in their last hours, and to the ground
Consign them still. Yet think me not too weak;
Come to me now, and thou shalt find me meek.

Then let us live in fellowship with thee,

And turn our red cheeks to thy kisses pale,

And listen to thy song as minstrelsy,

And still revere thee, till our heart's throbs fail,

Sinking within thy arms, as sinks the sun

Beyond the farthest hills, when his day's work is done.

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF DR. FOLLEN.*

THERE are two classes of men that have a wide and reformatory influence on the world; who write out their thoughts and sentiments, not in words only, but in things. The one consists of men of great intellectual power, but no special goodness of heart. They see, in the "dry light" of the understanding, what is false, what wrong, what ludicrous in man's affairs, and expose it to be rejected, to be abhorred, or to be laughed at. Their eye is keen and farreaching in the actual; but their insight is not the deepest, nor does the sphere of their reason include all things of human concern. Of these men, you do not ask, What was their character? how did they live in their day and their place? but only, What did they think of this thing and of that? Their lives may have been bad, their motives, both for silence and for speech, may have been ignoble and selfish, and their whole life, but a long attempt to build up for themselves a fortune and a name, - but that does not mar their influence, except in the narrow sphere of their personal life. The good they do lives after them; the evil sleeps with their buried bones. The world looks on them as half-men; expects from them no wholeness of action, but takes their good gift, and first forgives and then forgets their moral obliquity, or defects. It is often painful to contemplate such men. The brightness of their intellect leads us to wish for a corresponding beauty on their moral side. If a man's wisdom does not show itself in his works; if his Light does not become his Life, making his pathway radiant why our moral anticipation is disappointed, and we turn away in sadness. Men of a giant's mind and a pigmy's heart; men capable of spanning the Heavens, of fathoming the depths of all human science, of mounting with vigorous and untiring pinions above the roar of the crowd and the prejudice of the schools, and continuing their flight before the admiring eyes of lesser men, till distance and loftiness swallows them up; men, who bring back from their adventurous voyagings new discoveries for

* The Works of Charles Follen, with a Memoir of his Life, in five volumes. Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co. 1841.

human wonder, new truths for daily use men too, that with all this wondrous endowment of intellect are yet capable of vanity, selfish ambition, and the thousand little arts which make up the accomplished worldling, such men are a sore puzzle to the young and enthusiastic moralist. "What," he says, "is God unjust? Shall the man, whose eye is ever on himself, keen as the Eagle's, to look for his own profit, yet dull as the Blindworm's or the Beetle's to the shadows of wrong in his own bosom, - shall he be gifted with this faculty to pierce the mystic curtains of nature, and see clearly in his ignoble life, where the saint groped for the wall, and fell, not seeing?" Such is the fact, often as he may attempt to disguise it. The world, past and present, furnishes us with proofs that cannot be winked out of sight. Men capable of noble and reformatory thought, who lack the accomplishment of goodness and a moral life- we need not pause to point out men of this character, both present and departed; that would be an ungrateful work; one not needed to be done.

The other class is made up of men of moral powers. Their mental ability may be small or great, but their goodness is the most striking, and the fundamental thing. They may not look over a large field, nor be conversant with all the nooks and crevices of this wondrous world, where science each day brings some new miracle to light, but in the sphere of morals they see as no others. Fast as Thought comes to them it turns into action; what was at first but Light, elementary and cold, is soon transformed into life, which multiplies itself and its blessings. These men look with a single eye to the everlasting Right. To them God's Law is a Law to be kept, come present weal, or present woe. They ask not, What shall accrue to me - or praise or blame? But contentedly they do the work of Righteousness their hands find to do, and this with all their might. They live faster than they see for with a true moral man, the Spontaneous runs before the Reflective, as John outran Peter in seeking the risen Son of Man. When these men have but humble minds, they are worthy of deep homage from all mankind. In solitude and in silence, seen by no eye but the All-seeing, they plant with many and hopeful prayers the seed that is one day to spread wide its branches, laden with all manner of fruit, its

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