aithful 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.

On it rushes--through the rapids, where the life receives an
impulse--driven forward--haply downward--among rocks and dangerous
channels, by the motives of ambition, by the fierce desire of wealth, or
by the goad of want! But soon the mad career abates, for the first
effect of haste is agitation, and the master-spell of power is calmness.
Happy are they,