“How hard it is to climb The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar!” and therefore it is, that the whole country is groaning under their oppression—over-burthened with law—and taxed, and trapped, and crushed, and trampled on by lawyers. But, if instead of this unhealthy ambition—this boyish uneasiness and appetite for notoriety, which three times out of four will be satisfied with the title of esquire, there should arise the unconquerable spirit of one created for dominion, with the holy instincts of a reformer, and anxious from the first hour of his revealed strength, to be the friend of the Fatherless and the Widow, of the Wronged and the Suffering—the champion of the poor and the helpless—the refuge of the hunted and betrayed upon earth—let him devote himself to the study and practice of the law, and of nothing but the law, in its vast and magnificent comprehensiveness; let him consecrate himself with prayer, and praise, and thanksgiving and sacrifice—let him go up to the temple with humility and reverence, and godly fear; and let him take possession “of the purple robe and diadem of gold,” as of right, and though his life may be a continual warfare, and he may die in the harness at last, and upon the battle-field, as Pinkney and Emmett, and others have died before him—for “He, who ascends to mountain-tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow, Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow Contending tempests on his naked head.” Yet will he die the death of the righteous, and never be forgotten: and whole communities will pass by his grave, generation after generation, saying to one another as if speaking of a personal friend, “that although he was a great man, and a great lawyer, and perhaps a statesman, he was a good neighbor, and a good citizen, a good husband and a good father; and _therefore_ a good Christian, doing justly, walking humbly, and loving mercy to the last.” And would not such a death, my dear G——, be worth living for? And such a reputation worth dying for? * * * * * ELPHOLEN. A FRAGMENT. BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR. Where many cedars shade Igondo’s shelf, Like towering Dukes of Edom crowned with plumes; Where seven rivers to an awful gulf Fall, with much foam, from Himalaya’s flooms; And where, from Baal-Phaxi’s caverned rooms, Through ice-arched galleries pours tumultuous Ulf, Are built across a swarthy savage glen, The gates which bar the land of Elpholen.