THE TWO SPIRITS.

(Concluded from page 13.)

SHADES Crouch and fly before the orient sun;
The dreamy mists, in grim battalions glide
Back to the caves, where, robed in garments dun,
Silence and sadness ever more abide,

And rocky portals bar the beating tide

Of heaven-descended light. So flew the mien
Of Ernest's tranced soul, when to his side

A spirit bent, in lessening distance seen,
All radiant as the face of night's ethereal queen.

Gay roses twined around her snowy brow,

And blooming cheeks reflected back their hue.
Now played her parted lips with smiles, and now
The stamp of thought to deeper impress grew,
As all the scenes of earth broke on her view;

Scenes where glad joy shares throne with dismal pain
Then fell her song, as falls the crystal dew,

When evening comes with all her shadowy train, And winds and waters mingle in a murmuring strain.

SONG.

I've left my home in the far off sky,
Where the stars are shining bright,
And, on wings of air, I have sped my way
O'er a pathway paved with light.

For the smiling world, with its wooing voice,

Was calling me below,

While day went by, and night approached
With her footsteps calm and slow.

I saw thee lie 'neath the oaken tree,
Where flow the waters clear;

I heard the song which a spirit breathed
To your fixed and ravished ear.
I knew that voice with its cadence soft,
To your deepest heart would creep,
Like a vision blent, in the stilly night,
With the stealthy charm of sleep.

I know the place where the spirit dwells;
"Tis in a shady bower;

She dwells alone, and she has no one

Who may lighten a heavy hour.

Her cheek is pale, and her eye is wet

From the bitter fount of tears,

And sighs escape from her heaving breast,
For her heart is full of fears.

But often she flies to the earth alone;

She hushes the rising sigh,

She tries to change for a cheerful look
Her sad and tearful eye;

She tunes her voice to a pensive lay,

Which is wafted on the gale,

And the hearts of some are lured away
By the fair, deceitful tale.

Beware! beware how thou trust her word

And follow her commands.

She bids thee hie to some quiet place,
And there exhaust life's sands,
Far, far removed from the busy world,
With toil and turmoil rife.

But list to me, and I'll try to tell
Of a better, nobler life.

I flew this morn from the spirit world,
To a far-off heathen land;

I saw a child in its mother's arms,

On the white and wave-washed strand.

A monster huge, from the foaming deep
To the surface slowly rose,

When lo! the child, from her clasping arms,
The mother quickly throws.

One cry is all, and the harmless babe

Is a feast to the monster wild.

I stood by the mother and asked her why
She thus should slay her child.

She beat her breast with her trembling hand,

And the tears flowed down her cheek;

She said, 'twas not that she hated it,
But the smile of God to seek.

Away I flew, o'er the azure sea,

To the land where a tyrant reigns.
I saw the poor by his power crushed down,
And stript of their hard-earned gains.
I saw the slave, at his cruel task,
Beneath a driver's eye,

I saw the grief which oppressed his heart,
And heard his deep-drawn sigh.

I turned my steps to a city fair,
And mingled with its crowd.
I saw the sot, as he reeled along

By the side of rich and proud.
I saw that one whose league is made
With the fearful sovereign-Death;

And she stained the cheek of the modest girl,
With her sin-polluted breath.

I entered the door of a falling hut,
In a dark and lonely street,

And beheld the form of a dying man,
With a fair child at his feet.

The rest were gone to a land of peace,
Above the bright, blue sky,

And they were left in the gloorny hut,
Alone to starve and die.

I entered the mansion of wealth and pride,
And trode its spacious halls;

I saw a man, arrayed in gold,

Who heeded not mercy's calls.
He did not care for the dying poor,
Nor the prayer of sin and woe;
He forgot that all were his brethren here,
The high-born and the low.

I saw a youth 'neath an oaken tree,
His mind in fancy's bowers.

I heard him say that the noisy world
Should ne'er command his powers;

But, in loneliness and solitude,

He would pass a tranquil life,

For, far from the scenes of the busy world,

With toil and turmoil rife.

Oh! rouse thee! rouse from the dreamy sleep,

And hear the world's loud call!

It comes, it comes from the heathen land,

Fast bound in error's thrall.

It comes from the land of the tyrant's sway,

And from the weary slave;

From the guilty, who yield to their deadly lusts,
At the verge of the very grave.

Oh! listen not to the siren tongue,
Which bids thee linger here;
But haste to war, with thine armor on,

And thy heart fast closed to fear.

Go forth, as an angel of light from heaven,
Who dost love thy fallen race;

And thy name shall then have right to claim
With noble names a place.

The fires which glowed upon the far-off West
Had flickered and gone out, save one bright spark,
Which shone like jewel on a virgin breast.

Hovered the shades like sprites all grim and stark
Round forests whispering through their mazes dark.
Ernest awoke from out his happy trance,

Wet with the tear-like dews of heaven. And hark!

O'er slumbering lake, and mead, and grove, there dance
The tones which tell how fast the hours of night advance.

E.

ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE.

IT is an original principle of our nature, which leads us to consecrate shrines and temples to the Deities whom we worship, and to lavish upon them all the beauty which our skill can command. In the most savage state of society, we behold men throwing together rude heaps of stone upon which to offer sacrifice to their uncouth idols; and passing on among civilized nations, we see hill and valley crowned for the same object, with stately structures, rich in dome, and portico, and colonnade, and adorned with the most beautiful conceptions of the painter and the sculptor.

As this spirit was implanted within us at our very creation, so it is among the most pure and lofty feelings of which we are conscious. What object more noble, more appropriate to man as an immortal being, can be imagined, than the rearing of temples which shall be fit habitations for the GoD of the Universe; in massive solidity typical of His unending life; in solemn grandeur of His ineffable majesty? When we look upon it in this light, sacred Architecture rises to an eminence and a dignity far above that to which any other art has attained. It fills us with the most exalted ideas of the nature of worship, withdraws our imagination from low and polluting objects, and carries it upward and onward to the great DIVINITY. Let us endeavor, therefore, to catch a few occasional glimpses of its progress during the various periods of its history.

If we look first at that primæval nation, the Hebrews, we shall find that the temple of religion among them far surpassed in magnificence the most celebrated structures of ancient or modern times. As we read the description of it in Holy Writ, we can almost see it rise up before us in its pristine grandeur, flashing in the sunbeams with gold, and marble, and jewels innumerable, and dazzling the eye of the beholder with an almost etherial beauty. To the Jew it was something more

than a mere house of worship, or an architectural ornament. It was the monument of his national pride keeping fresh in his memory the ancient glories of his people; in prosperity and adversity reminding him of the great Being who had conducted his fathers upon their weary pilgrimage in the cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. In war, a glance at its fair proportions aroused him to new courage against the invaders of his country, even when overwhelmed in battle and surrounded by heaps of the dying.

Passing on among the nations of antiquity, we behold in like manner the most splendid productions of Grecian art everywhere consecrated to the popular deities. As we wander among the ruins of these lordly piles, we are carried back in imagination into far distant times, and placed in the midst of States which have long since crumbled away, and over which Time has thrown, so to speak, a mantle of ivy, rendering them doubly sacred and interesting. We are transported to a country beautiful in landscape, and grove, and placid river, under a sky of the deepest hue, and in a most genial and sunny climate. Around us rise up the thousand divinities who peopled this favored region,

"The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen,

Satyrs and silvan boys are seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green.”.

Faun and dryad, god and goddess, nymph and siren, the Eternal Thunderer, and Phoebus of the silver bow, pass like some bright vision before our delightful fancy. The nation who originated this mythology are recalled to our minds; that elegant people, the prevailing trait in whose character was a love of the beautiful, and all whose conceptions were breathed upon by the life-giving spirit of poetry. Their sages, their poets, their orators, sit at our side, and utter in our ears those burning words, which were divinely spoken in far antiquity. We love, in imagination, to clear away the rubbish which ages have thrown around their stately temples, their fountains and statues, their courts of law, their magnificent public and private edifices, and to picture them to our minds in all the freshness and beauty of youth. We are filled with a pleasing wonder at the busy crowd which wanders through the long porticoes and colonnades, now listening intently to the teacher of some new philosophy, and now drinking in the words of wisdom which fall more sweetly than honey from the lips of some hoaryheaded sage. We are impressed with the deepest awe and solemnity as we stand by the Bema or pulpit of the orator, for we remember that there Demosthenes fired the hearts of his countrymen with lofty patriotism; and St. Paul spoke to the Athenians concerning the unknown GOD whom they ignorantly worshiped.

It is a fact worthy of notice, that every work of Architecture is in some measure an index of the character of the people who built it. Thus the temples of which I have been speaking, light, graceful, highly ornamented, are the conceptions of an elegant and refined nation, whose mythology was the most beautiful of all forms of paganism. On