Our age is not peculiarly ecclesiastical, yet we have not done with the church and its teachers. Many a time of late we have had cause to think with regret of the persuasive eloquence of the Archbishop of Cambray, of the sacred Art that could make truth lovely to wayward youth, and religion beautiful to hard and skeptical manhood. Has it not sometimes seemed as if ambitious prelacy had forgotten the purer example for the baser, and copied Bossuet's pride instead of Fenelon's charity? Nay, has not priestly assumption coveted the talons and forgotten the wings of the Eagle of Meaux and lost sight wholly of the Dove of Cambray? What government or ruler in Christendom would not be the better for a counsellor as eloquent and fearless as he who dared rebuke without reserve the great Louis of France in words like these: "You do not love God; you do not even fear him but with a slave's fear; it is hell and not God whom you fear. Your religion consists but in superstitions, in petty superficialities. You are like the Jews, of whom God said: _'Whilst they honor me with their lips, their hearts are far from me.'_ You are scrupulous upon trifles and hardened upon terrible evils. You love only your own glory and comfort. You refer everything to yourself as if you were the God of the earth, and everything else here created only to be sacrificed to you. It is you, on the contrary, whom God has put into the world only for your people." POEMS. BY MRS. GEORGE P. MARSH. I. EXCELSIOR. The earnest traveller, who would feed his eye To fullness of content on Nature's charms, Must not forever pace the easy plain. No! he must climb the rugged mountain's side, Scale its steep rocks, cling to its crumbling crags, Nor fear to plunge in it's eternal snows. And yet, if he be wise, he will not choose To find the doubtful way alone, lest night O'ertake him wandering, and her icy breath Chill him to marble; not alone will risk His foot unwonted on the glassy bed Of rifted glacier, lest a step amiss Should hurl him headlong down some fissure dark, That yawns unseen--thence to arise no more. But, furnished with a trusty guide, he mounts From peak to peak in safety, though with toil. Once on the lofty summit, he beholds A glory in earth's kingdom all undreamed Till now. The heavy curtains are withdrawn, That shut the old horizon down so close; And, lo! a world is lying at his feet! A world without a flaw! What late he held But as discordant fragments, now show forth, From this high vantage ground, the perfect parts Of a harmonious whole! He would not dare To change one line in all that picture marvellous Of hill and vale, bright stream and rolling sea, O'erhung by the great sun that gildeth all.