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Where limped streams with silvery song
Speed music as they trip along;
Where sparkling dews from dawn to dawn
Unwasting, pearl the jewelled lawn;
Where wet with mists they latest drank,
Gay-tinted flowers illume the bank,
And mosses throw their fettered links
O'er rocky juts and water-brinks !

Sure skill of elf or fay ne'er wrought
The dream-work of a lovelier spot!-

'Aye, gentle sir, 'twere sooth you say,
Did sunshine rule each changing day:
But winter clouds fill summer skies,
And fair winds fall when gales arise."
It was the Voyageur that spoke,

As, pausing mid the paddle-stroke

He leaned upon his oar.

Now, mark," quoth he, "while I would tell, Of what in yonder glade befell,

Hard by upon the shore."

Fairly within a sheltering bay

Our breasting bark had borne its way,
And then, the favoring harbor won,
The boatman thus his theme began.

RIME OF THE VOYAGEUR.

'Tis midnight over land and lake,
And by the tempest's cry,
There's tumult in the air awake,
And terror in the sky!

The clouds are drifting wild abreast,

And far, with swollen sail,

The dun clouds from the bleak nor'west,

Sped by the rushing gale.

'Tis morn: the blast maintains its wrath,
But frownless opes the day,

And mounting high on glittering path,
Ascends the dawning ray.

Throw wide the door! let in the sun!
There needs no thrift of light,

To bar the beams that waste and run,
And starve the famished sight!

"It is enough to bear the pang,
That wrings the frame so sore,
Of hunger's rankling venom-fang-
Too much to make it more.

"Let in the light! let in the light!
And go, ANGELICA,-

A sail can ride through storm and night,
Perchance-go look, I pray."

The hutman said, and feebly leant
Upon his wasted arm,

And watched the waves that sped and spent,

And heard their hoarse alarm.

The winter cold, unpityingly,
Had dealt with cruel hand;

Its icy armor girt the sea,
Its snows o'erlaid the land.

Alone upon that island rude,

Long months of weary tide,

Had dwelt and loved, through ill and good,
Carl and his Indian bride.

Ill fared they in the fruitless waste,
For as the dull time wore,
Perished the guarded crust at last,
That formed their final store.

Then famine came !-Stranger pray God,
So thou may'st never know

The pains that gnaw-consume-corrode-
That brought that strong man low.

Inured to want, her threatening lot
The forest-wife withstood,
While pithless fare in misery sought,
Supplied a scanty food.

And day by day the hours rolled on,
And shrivilled, shrunk and wan,

A gaunt and ghastly Skeleton

There lay the grieved hutman.

"Speak wife; what hope doth morning bring?Say'st thou a sail !—a sail!”

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"It must be so!-Cease. cease my heart,
Lie still within thy cell!
Now light, and love, and hope depart,
Now life, my life, farewell.

"Farewell!-it was their parting word,
And, oh, it grieved me sore,
That home-adieu, the last I heard
When parting from the door.

"My father! did thy soul fore-fear
Aught boding else than well,
As on my palm in thine, a tear,
What time thou blest me, fell?

"Sister! a dimness palls my brow,
My pulse runs strangely wild,-
Come, throw thine arms around me now;

God bless thee, gentle child.

"Say, hang the ripe fruits, Ellie, mine,

Upon the garden tree?

The purple clusters on the vine ?--

And are they not for me?

"But now my weary head needs rest:
Mother!-how fades the light!—
Here, let me dream upon thy breast,
And so good night-good night!"

"A sail! a sail! ho, Carl, awake!
Lo, 'tis no treacherous guile;
It glides swift bounding o'er the lake,
It steereth for our isle!

"Arouse! arouse !"-aye when the blast
Of judgment-time is sped!

Then shall the sleeper wake at last

Christ shield him-Carl is dead!

*

"How say'st thou, stranger ?"-urge thine oar,
Good Voyageur, and prate no more.

To-night my dreams shall thither roam

To-morrow guide our bark for home!

Pittsburg, February, 1850.

R. P. N.

THE REFORMED CHURCH.

[The following article forms the Introduction to an unpublished work, entitled "The History of the German Reformed Church in its origin and Progress," by the late Rev. Dr. LEWIS MAYER. It is generally known that this distinguished and excellent man had devoted himself, particularly after his retirement from the place so long honorably occcupied by him in the Theological Seminary of the G. R. Church, to the task of preparing such a work, with reference especially to the rise and progress and present state of the Reformed division of the German Church in America. The feeble character of his health, added to the difficulties of the undertaking itself, led to much interruption and delay in its execution; and we are sorry to find now, since his decease, that the work as a whole is too incomplete altogether to be given to the world in a printed form. A part of it however, it is believed may yet appear in this way; being of sufficient interest and importance to justify its publication in such separate form, as well as in a state of proper preparation for the press under the author's own hand.]

The title Reformed Church, in its most comprehensive sense, designates all those professing Christians, who, embracing the

general system of doctrine which was taught by the Reformers, have rejected Luther's theory of a corporeal presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord's supper, and hold, in this particular, the belief of Zwingli, or that of Calvin. These christians constitute several distinct communities, each of which has its particular bond of union and differs from every other in some peculiarities which are sometimes of no little importance. They agree in few things about which they differ from Luther and his followers, except in their view of the Lord's supper. These communities are therefore so many distinct churches, and instead of calling them the Reformed Church, we must call them the Reformed Churches.

The title Reformed, was first assumed, in France, by those who separated from the Romish communion, and was adopted from them by their brethren in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, &c. In England it is used to denote all the churches which have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and thus includes the Lutheran. On the continent it is the distinctive title of those Protestant communities which are not Lutheran, exclusive of Socinians and Anabaptists.

The French Protestants, were by their adversaries called Huguenots The derivation of this term is somewhat uncertain. It is, however, very probable that it originated in a corrupt French pronunciation of the German word Eidgenoss, softened into Eidgenott, and then corrupted into Huguenot. The word Eidgenoss, in its plural Eidgenossen signifying confederates, or rather partakers of the oath, was originally the designation of the thirty-three Swiss confederates, who, in the night of the seventh of November 1307, bound themselves by a solemn oath to defend the liberties of their country against the Emperor ALBERT I. It became subsequently the distinctive title of the confederated Cantons which were parties to a perpetual league for the common defence and safety, and, in common parlance, was used to denote the people of those Cantons individually.

In Germany the Reformed were denominated, by their opponents Zwinglians and Calvinists, and in derision Sacrementarians. English writers speak of the two principal Protestant denominations on the continent as the Lutheran church and the Calvinistic church. This, however, is an erroneous distinction. The Reformed churches on the continent are not all Calvinistic. In some parts of Germany they never received Calvin's doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation; and the writer is not aware that it is, at this time, made a term of communion any where in the Reformed church of that country. This doctrine,

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