at a
walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a
slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is
no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their
places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little,
if they have run as well as they knew how!

----Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an
ocean of similitudes and analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns,
or Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts were suggested to
them by the simplest natural objects, such as a flower or a leaf; but I
will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at
a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given the name
of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble ourselves about the distinction
between this and the Paper Nautilus, the _Argonauta_ of the ancients.
The name applied to both shows that each has long been compared to
a ship, as you may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the
"Encyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look into Roget's
Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells,
and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging
compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the
shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in
this?

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a