as when we first read of his desolation of heart, we know not how many years ago. There is a melting tenderness in his musings, amid the sights and sounds now strange to his eye and ear, and among the graves of the friends of his youth, who have long since been 'followed to the house of mourning, and forgotten in the dust,' which is to us irresistibly touching. We feel the holy sadness of his blighted affection, when he wakes from dreams of departed years, and the loved ones who blessed his childhood—dreams which come to him in a sleep finally won to his bed in the late and troubled night-watches—and in alternate joy and bitterness of soul, exclaims:
'I see each shade all silvery white,
I hear each spirit's melting sigh;
I turn to clasp those forms of light,
And the pale morning chills mine eye!'
We shall never forget a scene in which deep pathos was a principal characteristic, which we once beheld, at a country church, in one of the thinly-populated, humble towns of western New-York. A pious clergyman, of the Baptist denomination, whose 'three-score years and ten' had turned his hair to snow, and given to his limbs the tremulousness of age, was to preach his farewell discourse to his little congregation, over whom he had presided for nearly half a century. The place itself, and the time, were accessaries to the 'abiding effect' which was left upon the minds of all who were present. It was the afternoon of a mild October day, and the sere leaves of the trees which shaded the church were falling in slow eddies by the open windows. After recapitulating his long labors among them—his teachings 'publicly, and from house to house'—his attendance upon the marriage festivals of those whom he had afterward consigned to the grave with bitter tears—the christenings and funerals he had celebrated—after these affectionate reminiscences, which touched an answering chord in the bosom of every hearer—he adverted to that day wherein all the actors in the drama of life must enter at the last scene, to complete and make up the sublime catastrophe, and warned them to prepare for its momentous solemnities. 'For myself,' said he, 'I can say—standing upon a narrow point between two eternities, and looking back upon a world imperfect and fading, and upon friends dear indeed, but more fleeting still—that I account myself as nothing, until I was my Saviour's, and enrolled in the register of Christ.' And raising his trembling, attenuated hands to heaven, his dim eyes streaming with tears—for, though he had struggled against emotion, his feelings now overcame him—he repeated these lines, in the most melting cadence:
'Ere since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming Love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die:
Then, in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, faltering tongue
Lies silent in the grave!
The look which followed these touching stanzas—the subdued emotion, the pious hope, which beamed in the countenance of the venerable father—will never fade from the memory of those who heard him. The heart of the speaker was poured forth; he was embodied Pathos.
New-York Mercantile Library Association.—We hear, with sincere pleasure, of the continued success and improvement of this widely-useful institution. A large increase of its already extended list of members; additions of new and valuable books; accessions of magazines, and the higher order of periodicals; and ample preparations for a series of lectures from some of the best minds of the country, are some of the more prominent indications of the 'high and palmy state' to which we have alluded. Let but party disaffections be religiously avoided—let the members but strengthen each other's hands in the advancement of the great interests of the association—and the institution, for whose original foundation we are mainly indebted to the benevolent efforts of William Wood, Esq., of Canandaigua, will become one of which both our city and state may be justly proud.
Laplace.—We have received a small and handsomely-printed pamphlet, containing 'An Historical Eulogy of M. Le Marquis De Laplace, pronounced in the Public Session of the Royal Academy of Sciences, at Paris, June 15, 1829. By M. Le Baron Fourier, Perpetual Secretary.' Translated from the French, by R. W. Haskins, Esq., of Buffalo. We regard this as an excellent and compendious history of one of the most eminent scientific men France has ever produced. It is the tribute of a mind capable of appreciating the labors of one 'who enlarged the domain of thought, and taught man the dignity of his being, by unveiling to his view all the majesty of the heavens,' and whose name the world will not 'willingly let die.' A clear and forcible style assures us that the original has lost little in the hands of the translator.