Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He, who bore in Heaven the second name, Had not on earth whereon to lay His head: How His first followers and servants sped: The precepts sage they wrote to many a land; How he, who lone in Patmos banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand;

And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounc'd by Heaven's command.

Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,

That thus they all shall meet in future days:
There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,

Together hymning their Creator's praise,

In such society, yet still more dear;

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.

Compar'd with this, how poor Religion's pride,
In all the pomp of method, and of art,
When men display to congregations wide,
Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart!
The Pow'r, incens'd, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ;
But haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleas'd, the language of the soul; And in His book of life the inmates poor enroll.

Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way;
The youngling cottagers retire to rest:
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest, And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride,

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, For them and for their little ones provide;

But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad; Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, "An honest man's the noblest work of God;' And certes, in fair virtue's heav'nly road, The cottage leaves the palace far behind;

What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd!

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent! Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content! And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov'd Isle.

O Thou! who pour'd the patriotic tide

That stream'd through Wallace's undaunted heart; Who dar'd to nobly stem tyrannic pride, Or nobly die, the second glorious part, (The patriot's God, peculiarly Thou art, His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!) O never, never, Scotia's realm desert; But still the patriot, and the patriot bard, In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard.

AN OLD-TIME DISTRICT SCHOOL.

JAMES PARTON.

(From "The Life of Horace Greeley.")

A district school-and what was a district school forty years ago? It concerns us to know what manner of place it was, and what was its routine of exercises.

The school-house stood in an open place, formed by the crossing of roads. It was very small, and of one story; contained one apartment, had two windows on each side, a small door in the gable end that faced the road, and a low door-step before it. It was the thing called house, in its simplest form. But for its roof, windows, and door, it had been a box, large, rough, and unpainted. Within and without, it was destitute of anything ornamental. It was not enclosed by a fence; it was not shaded by a tree.

The sun in summer, the winds in winter, had their will of it: there was nothing to avert the fury

of either. The school-houses of the previous generation were picturesque and comfortable; those of the present time are as prim, neat, and orderly as the cottage of an old maid who enjoys an annuity; but the school-house of forty years ago had an aspect singularly forlorn and uninviting. It was built for an average of thirty pupils, but it frequently contained fifty; and then the little school-room was a compact mass of young humanity: the teacher had to dispense with his table, and was lucky if he could find room for his chair.

The side of the apartment opposite the door was occupied, chiefly, by a vast fireplace, four or five feet wide, where a carman's load of wood could burn in one prodigious fire. Along the sides of the room was a low, slanting shelf, which served for a desk to those who wrote, and against the sharp edge of which the elder pupils leaned when they were not writing.

The seats were made of "slabs," inverted, supported on sticks, and without backs. The elder pupils sat along the sides of the room,-the girls on one side, the boys on the other; the youngest sat nearest the fire, where they were as much too warm as those who sat near the door were too cold. In a school of forty pupils, there would be a dozen who were grown up, marriageable young men and women. Not infrequently married men, and occasionally married women, attended school in the winter.

Among the younger pupils, there were usually a dozen who could not read, and half as many who did not know the alphabet. The teacher was,

perhaps, one of the farmer's sons of the district, who knew a little more than his elder pupils, and only a little; or he was a student who was working his way through college. His wages were those of a farm-laborer, ten or twelve dollars a month and his board. He boarded "round," i. e., he lived a few days at each of the houses of the district, stopping longest at the most agreeable place.

The grand qualification of a teacher was the ability "to do" any sum in the arithmetic. To know arithmetic was to be a learned man. Generally, the teacher was very young, sometimes not more than sixteen years old.

I've stood beside the cottage-bed

Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath;
A straw-thatched roof above his head,
A straw-wrought couch beneath.

And I have stood beside the pile,

His monument-that tells to Heaven
The homage of earth's proudest isle
To that Bard-peasant given!