“But all this was no more than hopes.  I set a greater value upon his admirable virtues, his equality of temper, his resolution, the courage with which he bore up against fear and pain; for, how were his physicians astonished at his patience under a distemper of eight months continuance, when at the point of death he comforted me himself, and bade me not to weep for him! and delirious as he sometimes was at his last moments, his tongue ran on nothing else but learning and the sciences:  O vain and deceitful hopes!” &c.

Are there many boys amongst us, of whom we can truly say so much to their advantage, as Quintillian says here of his son?  What a shame would it be for them, if born and brought up in a Christian country, they had not even the virtues of Pagan children!  I make no scruple to repeat them here again—­docility, obedience, respect for their masters, or rather a degree of affection, and the source of an eternal gratitude; zeal for study, and a wonderful thirst after the sciences, joined to an abhorrence of vice and irregularity; an admirable fund of probity, goodness, gentleness, civility, and liberality; as also patience, courage, and greatness of soul in the course of a long sickness.—­What then was wanting to all these virtues?—­That which alone could render them truly worthy the name, and must be in a manner the soul of them, and constitute their whole value, the precious gift of faith and piety; the saving knowledge of a Mediator; a sincere desire of pleasing God, and referring all our actions to him.

COLUMBIA.

BY THE REVEREND DR. DWIGHT.

    Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
    The queen of the world, and child of the skies! 
    Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold,
    While ages on ages thy splendors unfold. 
    Thy reign is the last, and the noblest of time,
    Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime;
    Let the crimes of the east ne’er encrimson thy name,
    Be Freedom, and Science, and Virtue, thy fame.

    To conquest, and slaughter, let Europe aspire;
    Whelm nations in blood, and wrap cities in fire;
    Thy heroes the rights of mankind shall defend,
    And triumph pursue them, and glory attend. 
    A world is thy realm:  for a world be thy laws,
    Enlarg’d as thine empire, and just as thy cause;
    On Freedom’s broad basis, that empire shall rise;
    Extend with the main and dissolve with the skies.

    Fair Science her gates to thy sons shall unbar,
    And the east see thy morn hide the beams of her star,
    New bards, and new sages, unrival’d shall soar
    To fame, unextinguish’d, when time is no more;
    To thee, the last refuge of virtue design’d,
    Shall fly from all nations, the best of mankind;
    Here, grateful to Heaven, with transports shall bring
    Their incense, more fragrant than odours of spring.