* "Rises a nobler hope—a loftier fear."—Human perfection is still a beautiful and unrealized dream; it has its encouragement in human progress. A higher and more generous purpose is now the stimulus to all efforts of improvement: our views are more enlightened, because more general; the many have taken the place of the few. In the earlier ages, science kept as secrets those discoveries, which now its chief object is to promulgate. Trade was fettered by monopolies, which it is the first step of commerce to shake off. Laws were rather privilege than protection, not what to-day admits them to be, the sacred barriers of universal right. Knowledge was solitary distinction, or secluded enjoyment; not, as now, to be gained by all, and to be used for all. It is to intellectual intercourse that we owe our advancement; intellect is the pioneer to improvement. We have still to hope, and to aspire. It is only by looking onwards that we can perceive the goal; It is only by looking upwards that we can see heaven.
† "Mark those pale children."—If there be one condition in our land that demands assistance and sympathy, it is that of children of the poor.—
It is for childhood's hour to be
Life's fairy well, and bring
To life's worn, weary memory
The freshness of its spring.
But here the order is reversed,
And infancy, like age,
Knows of existence but its worst,
One dull and darken'd page.
Written with tears, and stamp'd with toil,
Crush'd from the earliest hour,
Weeds darkening on the bitter soil,
That never knew a flower.
Alas! to think upon a child
That has no childish days,
No careless play, no frolics wild,
No words of prayer and praise.
Man from the cradle, 'tis too soon
To earn their daily bread,
And heap the heat and toil of noon
Upon an infant's head.
