Are all the wonders prophets told But wild delusive dreams? And can it be that human mould Is but the clay it seems? Shall love and virtue live on earth, And with the earth decay? Shall faith, and hope, and stainless worth, Pass like a dream away? Come forth, thou false and subtle sage! Creation read aright! Cast off the gathering mists of age, And clear thy clouded sight! Throw down, throw down the guilty pen-- Break off the stubborn mask: The creed thou dar'st assert to _men_, Its truth of _Nature_ ask! At morn, at noon, or sacred eve, On land or on the sea, The lightest sound thy step may leave Shall breathe "Eternity!" Come tread with me this dizzy height, And, through this waste of air, Gaze out upon the forms of night-- What is thine answer there? The moonlit fields of waving corn, That ripening harvests fill-- The bubbling springs where lakes are born, To man subservient still-- All speak of HIS unbounded love Who caused those streams to flow, Who fed those fields from founts above, And made the harvest grow. And wheresoe'er the broad moon's rays In matchless beauty fall, They mirror forth to thoughtful gaze The Hand that fashioned all. There's not a plant upon the earth, There's not a tree nor flower, But bears the stamp of heavenly birth, The proof of heavenly power. The very leaf on which you tread Was wrought with wondrous hand,-- A fragment of a volume dread That speaks to every land: A book unchanged from age to age-- The same since time began: For Nature is a living page That preaches God to man! CHARLES WILTON. BRITISH LABOUR AND FOREIGN RECIPROCITY.[29] We hear a great deal at the present day, not only from pretended philanthropists, but from well-meaning and conscientious people, about the "Rights of Labour." In fact, the term has become so hackneyed that very rarely is any popular speech delivered from a hustings, or elsewhere, without its occurrence as a marked and leading principle, which the speaker is determined to uphold.