Page 226 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

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RE,\DING LESSONS. 225
memory, to lose those friends that have been snatched away om us by death or distance; that the still re­ proaches of that mysterious principle in our nature, which points to the eternal object of our existence, steal upward through the tumult of our passions and our interests, and speak to our hearts like the voice of a long- rgotten iend. The rocks and woods, the lakes and water lls, the ruins and the sober day­ light, and the whisper of the persuasive wind, in scenes like this, convince fe heart more readily than volumes of ingenious controversy, read over with aching head and weary eyes in the midnight chamber.
3. Here we el the truth that is too bright even r the eagle-eye of reason to contemplate. Ambi­ tion seems a dream, philosophy a guess ; our spirit seems to mount above its tenement, and to behold the passions, the culties, the sciences, and the oc­ cupations of man, at that leisurely elevation, where alone it can become acquainted with their relative value. Here we discover all the superiority of virtue over knowledge, and remember, with all that zest which feeling gives, even to the oldest truths, those ndamental principles of virtue, which, in our days of feverish inquiry, we were accustomed to despise r their want of novelty.
4. As the thrilling music of the Christian churches rst drew those tears om the yes of St. Augustin, which he afterwards shed om a purer and lo ier impulse ; so here we are won back to the love of in­ nocence by the poetry of nature. She reproaches us with having so long preferred, to her in nite varie- ties of rm and colour, of sound and agrane, the oarseness of scenic imitations, and al] the low arti-