close these already extended remarks without
recording my testimony, with that of others, of the positive pleasure
experienced both in the progress and completion of a work of this
character; and if I shall have been as fortunate in securing and
retaining an auditory, I shall be twice blessed; for our highest
ambition should ever be that of contributing to the happiness of others.

The reward of earnest labor, conscientiously performed, is the prize
only _once_ exceeded in the economy of things, and that _once_ beyond
the ken of our divulgence; yet, may we not hope that there is no actual
severance between the earthly type and the heavenly reality, that the
crown honestly won, and the prize worthily gained on earth, may both,
retaining their semblance, the more perfectly glow in the clearer
atmosphere of heaven.

H. H. R.

MONTEZUMA.

PART FIRST.

EGYPT.

THE DISPERSAL AT SHINAR.

As mariner upon the rocky sea,
Without a compass, helm, or heavenly hope,
A part of Earth's great ancestry to be
Upon the plains of Shinar; and they grope
In nature's darkness; they have lost the way
That leadeth to the Father, and can find
No clue of that great Presence, once their stay,
And still as near; but sin doth make us blind,
And when it fastens on the soul, the Father fades away.

How wholly lost, when man cannot descry
One token of his Maker in the soul--
One step remains, the animal must die;
But death has superseded its control,
Since the immortal "Ego" is no more,
The spirit gone from its companion, dust--
The ashes are but animate in vain
When love, and light, have given place to lust
And conscience gives no puncture for its pain.

Thus were they gathered, in this day far gone,
So near the causeway of the almighty past,
That retrospect brings close, the thought of God--
We wonder that a cloud could overcast,
So primitive a people, that the Shepherd's voice
Should leave no lingering echo, for the ear, so tokened and so
choice.

And they would build a city, and a tower
Whose top would reach the very verge of Heaven;--
The puniest arm, is puissent in power,
When to its grasp supernal aid is given;
But muscles may, like cordage, swell