EAUTY is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in the numberless flowers of the spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and sea and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple, and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side.

Now, this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial with our tenderest and noblest feelings and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it as if, instead of this fair earth and glorious sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of this spiritual endow

ment.

Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest pictures of Raphael and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn that neither man, woman nor child ever cast an eye at these

miracles of art, how should I feel their privation! how should I want to open their eyes and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice!

But every husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner Artist, and how much would his existence be elevated could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions and moral expression! I have spoken only of the beauty of nature, but how much of this mysterious charm is found in the elegant arts, and especially in literature! The best books have most beauty.

The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire. Now, no man receives the true culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished, and I know of no condition in life from which it should be excluded.

Of all luxuries this is the cheapest and most at hand, and it seems to me to be most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give a grossness to the mind. From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may partake of refined gratifications which have hitherto been thought to be necessarily restricted to a few.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

pure

WAS noon.

lay;

wall,

On temple, portico and hall, The summer sunbeams gayly fall,

Bathing as in a flood of light
Each sculptured frieze and
column bright.

Dirce's stream meanders there,.
A silver mirror clear and fair,
Now giving back the deep-blue sky,
And now the city proud and high,

And now the sacred grove;
And sometimes on its wave a shade,
Making the light more lovely, played,
When some close-brooding dove
Flew from her nest on rapid wing
For needful food across the spring
Or sought her home of love.
The very air in that calm hour

Seemed trembling with the conscious power
Of its own balminess;

The herbage, if by light foot pressed,
Sent up sweet odors from its breast.

Sure, if coy Happiness

E'er dwelt on earth, 'twas in that clime
Of beauty, in that noonday prime
Of thrilling pleasantness.

But who are they before the gate
Of Thebes convened in silent state?

Passing to death. A while she laid
Her clasped hands on her heart, and stayed
Her firmer step, as if to look

On the fair world which she forsook:
And then the sunbeams on her face
Fell, as on sculptured nymph or Grace,
Lighting her features with a glow
That seemed to mock their patient woe.

She stayed her onward step, and stood
A moment's space; oh what a flood
Of recollected anguish stole
In that brief moment o'er her soul!
The concentrated grief of years,
The mystery, horror, guilt and tears,
The story of her life passed by
E'en in the heaving of a sigh.

She thought upon the blissful hour
Of infancy, when as a flower

Set in the sun she grew,
Without a fear, without a care,
Enjoying, innocent and fair,
As buoyant as the mountain-air,
As pure as morning dew;
Till burst at once like lightning's flame
The tale we tremble but to name,

Of them from whom her being came. Poor Edipus, and one,

The wretched yet unconscious dame
Who wedded with her son.
Then horror fast on horror rose;

She, maddening, died beneath her woes,
Whilst, crownless, sightless, hopeless, he
Dared to outlive that agony.

Through many a trackless path and wild
The blind man and his duteous child
Wandered, till pitying Theseus gave
The shelter brief, the mystic grave:
One weary heart finds rest at last.
But when to Thebes the maiden passed,
The god's stern wrath was there:
Her brothers each by other slain,
And one upon the bloody plain.
Left festering in the sun and rain,
Tainting the very air.

For none, the haughty Creon said,
On pain of death should yield the dead
Burial or tear or sigh,

And for alone she feebly strove

She paused, and in that moment rose
As in a mirror all her woes.

She spake; the flush across her cheek
Told of the woe she would not speak
As a brief thought of Hæmon stole
With bitter love across her soul:
"I die; and what is death to me
But freedom from long misery?
Joyful to fall before my time,

I die; and, tyrant, hear my crime :
I did but strive his limbs to shield
From the gaunt prowlers of the field;
I did but weave as Nature weaves,
A shroud of grass and moss and leaves;
I did but scatter dust to dust,
As desert wind on marble bust;