Thus, an emblem of the stream of history, it is still more like a march along the highway of a single human life. As the sinless thoughts of smiling childhood are the little rivulets, which afterward become the mighty river; like the infant, airy, volatile, and beautiful--sparkling as the dimpled face of innocence--a faithful reflex of the lights and shadows of existence; and revealing, through the limpid wave, the golden sands which lie beneath. Anon, the errant channels are united in one current--life assumes a purpose, a direction--but the waters are yet pure, and mirror on their face the thousand forms and flashing colors of Creation's beauty--as happy boyhood, rapidly perceptive of all loveliness, gives forth, in radiant smiles, the glad impressions of unfaded youth. Yet sorrow cometh even to the happiest. Misfortune is as stern a leveller as Death; and early youth, with all its noble aspirations, gorgeous visions, never to be realized, must often plunge, like the placid river over a foaming cataract, down the precipice of affliction--even while its current, though nearing the abyss, flow softly as "the waters of Shiloah." It may be the death of a mother, whom the bereaved half deemed immortal--some disappointment, like the falsehood of one dearly loved--some rude shock, as the discovery of a day-dream's hollowness; happy, thrice happy! if it be but one of these, and not the descent from innocence to sin! But life rolls on, as does the river, though its wave no longer flows in placid beauty, nor reveals the hidden things beneath. The ripples are now whirling eddies, and a hundred angry currents chafe along the rocks, as thought and feeling fret against the world, and waste their strength in vain repining or impatient irritation. Tranquillity returns no more; and though the waters seem not turbid, there is a shadow in their depths--their transparency is lost. Tributaries, great and small, flow in--accessions of experience to the man, of weight and volume to the river; and, with force augmented, each rolls on its current toward the ocean. A character, a purpose, is imparted to the life, as to the stream, and usefulness becomes an element of being. The river is a chain which links remotest latitudes, as through the social man relations are established, binding alien hearts: the spark of thought and feeling, like the fluid of the magnet, brings together distant moral zones.