f Bethlehem!

It was my guide, my light, my all,
It bade my dark foreboding cease;
And through the storm and danger's thrall
It led me to the port in peace.

Now safely moored, my perils o'er,
I'll sing first in night's diadem,
For ever and for evermore
The Star, the Star of Bethlehem!"

_John Brown._

ON LIFE

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is
an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the
wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its
transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are
changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which
supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and
of political systems to life? What are the revolutions of the globe
which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is
composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns,
of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their
destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not,
because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by
the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable,
from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the
functions of that which is its object.

If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in
his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not
existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the
spectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated
it by the wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had
he imagined the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas, and
the rivers; the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of the forms
and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colours which attend
the setting and the rising sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, turbid
or serene, these things not before existing, truly we should have been
astonished, and it would not have been a vain boast to have said of
such a man, "Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta."
But now these things are looked on with little wonder, and to be
conscious of them with intense delight is esteemed to be the
distinguishing mark of a refined and extraordinary person. The
multitude of men care not for them. It is thus with Life--that which
includes