Cradled in its downy bed, beneath a window closely curtained, to obstruct the light, lay a sleeping infant, whose dawn of life had just begun.  Its very helplessness demanded our love and pity.  It smiled and wept, but knew not why; but succeeding days added strength and vigor to his frame, and he came forth in all the sportiveness and beauty of infant loveliness.

It was noon; the sun had gained his zenith in the heavens, and shed down his scorching rays upon the parched earth, that lay drooping beneath his noon-day beams.  Scarce a leaf was seen to move, the birds sat silent with folded wing, in the leafy branches, the flowers hung fainting upon their stems, and nature shrank from the oppressive heat.

The cradled infant had passed from infancy to childhood, from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, through the various changes that mark each successive period, and he now stood in the meridian of life,

  “With all his blushing honors thick upon him.”

His brow was marked by care and anxiety, and he seemed ambitious to win a name.  “Fear first assailed the child, and he trembled and screamed; but at a frown, with youth came love, torturing the hapless bosom, where fierce flames of rage, resentment, jealousy contend.  Disturbed ambition presented next, to bid him grasp the moon and waste his days in angry sighs, add deep rivalry for shadows, till to conclude the wretched catalogue, appears pale avarice, straining delusive counters to his breast, e’en in the hour of death.”  Such are human passions.

It was evening; the curtains of the west were tinged with the varied dyes of sunset, and nature seemed revived by the cool, fresh evening breeze, and smiled complacently beneath the sun’s last ray.  The full orbed moon arose in the east, and the crystal streams reflected myriads of diamonds beneath her silver beams, and the stars, those golden lamps of night, shone bright in the blue chambers of the sky.  An aged man was leaning on his staff, the vigor of life had departed, his locks were thin and scattered, his palsied limbs would scarce perform their office.  His eye was dim—­no longer beaming with intelligence, and he muttered to himself, as he groped his way along, worn out with the cares, sorrows and perplexities of a busy life, deep furrows were upon his cheeks, and his whole appearance bespoke a weary, way-worn child of earth.  He took his solitary way, down a retired path, thickly shaded with fir, holly and yew, through whose thick foliage the struggling moonbeam scarce could penetrate, and the air was filled with humid vapors, gloomy silence as of the tomb reigned around, but exhausted nature sank, and the aged man pillowed his head upon the bosom of earth, and closed his weary eyes to rest, for he was a homeless wanderer.

It was deep, solemn midnight; a dense cloud had obscured the sky, and hid the refulgent light of the moon; the wind howled in fitful murmurs, the thunder rolled in the distance, lightnings glared, and nature wrapped herself in the sable shroud of midnight, and seemed shrieking a death-wail in her many voices.