By love enkindled;—­Thou hast lived and breathed;
  Our wants and woes partaken—­all that charms
  Or sanctifies, to Thine unspotted truth
  May plead for sanction—­virtue but reflects
  Thine image! wisdom is a voice attuned
  To consonance with Thine—­and all that yields
  To thought a pureness, or to life a peace,
  From Thee descends—­whose spirit-ruling sway,
  Invisible as thought, around us brings
  A balm almighty for affliction’s hour—­
  Once felt, in all the fullness of Thy grace
  The living essence of the living soul,—­
  And there is faith—­a firm-set, glorious faith,
  Eternity cannot uproot, or change—­
  Oh, then the second birth of soul begins,
  That purifies the base, the dark illumes,
  And binds our being with a holy spell,
  Whereby each function, faculty, and thought
  Surrenders meekly to the central guide
  Of hope and action, by a God empower’d.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

  A God with all his glory laid aside,
  Behold Him bleeding,—­on his awful brow
  The mingled sorrows of a world repose—­
  “’Tis FINISH’D,”—­at those words creation throbs,
  Round Hell’s dark universe the echo rolls—­
  All Nature is unthroned—­and mountains quake
  Like human being when the death-pang comes—­
  The sun has wither’d from the frighted air,
  And with a tomb-burst, hark, the dead arise
  And gaze upon the living, as they glide
  With soundless motion through the city’s gloom,
  Most awfully,—­the world’s Redeemer dies.

* * * * *

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

We quote the following from the Cabinet Cyclopaedia history of these countries: 

The Penitential Habit.

“From the fifth century,” says Masden, “or from the beginning of the sixth, the custom prevailed in Spain of the infirm, when so heavily afflicted as to be in danger of death, piously assuming the tonsure and the penitential habit, and engaging to continue both through life, if God raised them up.  As the use of this penance became common enough to throw discredit on the piety of all who did not thus undertake it, if the sick or dying man was unable to demand the habit, his relations or friends could invest him with it, and his obligation to a penitential life thenceforward was as great as if that obligation had been imposed, not by others, but at his own request, since, as he was charitably supposed to be thus piously inclined, he must of necessity wish to become a penitent.  This continued in force until king Chindaswind, impressed with the abuses to which it had given rise, decreed that in such cases the obligation imposed by others should be void unless the patient should afterwards ratify it when in a sound state of mind.  Penitents of this class might remain in their own houses, without seclusion within the walls of a monastery; but they were for ever compelled to wear the habit and shaven crown, to shun business and diversions, to lead exemplary and chaste lives:  if single, they could not marry; if married, they could not enjoy the privileges of the state:  hence, though they inhabited not the cloister, they were of the religious order, and consecrated to God.”