The fair and gentle hand of nature has spread her beauties and her wealth around our pathway, wherewith to make us rich and blest; and if we welcome not her lavish kindness and constant care, some sordid sentiment must blind our minds, or guilty stain defile our hearts. In the dim, hushed hour of twilight, I have sat by my window, and looked, in quiet thought, at the pensile boughs of the willow tree, waving gently their leaves of sadness, and found more of rapture, undimmed by earth, than earth’s brightest honors could bestow. I have wandered over the silent graves of changed humanity, and, wrapped in lonely musings on the sleeping dust of the departed, and on the distant home of immortal being, I have felt more true and tranquil joy than the gathered wealth of the world could ever afford. To the eye of reason, raised and enlightened by truth, how little, comparatively, is there of what is great and good in the restless pursuit of unenjoyed opulence and honor, or in the transient distinctions of rank and power. Is not the mind, with its electric thought, and the heart, with its sublime emotions--the one darting through the elevated regions of philosophy, the other meandering through the beauteous paradise of poesy--the lasting and essential worth of man--the lofty majesty of merit--the eternal divinity within him? Is not his free and deathless spirit--from heaven descended--over earth outspreading--extending through all time--collecting the treasures of all realms--and, like a vestal fire that struggles to go up to its smiling source, aspiring ever to ascend to that blest home of truth and goodness, “the bosom of its Father and its God”--the pride of his distinction--the grandeur of his glory?