The Boarding School; Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils / Consisting of Information, Instruction and Advice, Calculated to Improve the Manners and Form the Character of Young Ladies. To Which Is Added, a Collection of Letters, Written by the Pupils to Their Instructress, Their Friends, and Each Other.

by Hannah Webster Foster

Around the cold aerial mountain’s brow,

And by conflicting winds together dash’d,

The thunder holds his black tremendous throne,

From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage;

Till in the furious elemental war

Dissolve the whole precipitated mass,

Unbroken floods and torrents pours.”

Conscious of our own weakness and dependence, we can hardly fail to adore and to fear that Divine Power, whose agency this imagery exhibits to our minds. Nor are the devout affections of our hearts less excited, when we behold the same glorious Being arrayed in love, and accommodating the regular succession of summer and winter, seed time and harvest to our convenience and comfort. When nature, obedient to his command, revives the vegetable world, and diffuses alacrity and joy throughout the animal, and even rational creation, we involuntarily exclaim with the

“Hail, source of being! Universal soul

Of heaven and earth! Essential Presence, hail!