Through night's still shade dread thunders roll
Prophetic o'er my conscious soul;

And spectres shriek my future doom,
And dark fiends beckon to the tomb.
Oh! how I wake, and watch for day,
To drive those dreary dreams away!
And what is fame so dearly won,
Whose early rays so brightly shone?
"Tis faithless as the clear blue stream
Which veils the deep abyss below;
'Tis fleeting as a lovely dream,

From which the dreamer wakes to woe.'

DALE'S OUTLAW.

A persuasion of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Divine Being, is the best preservative from suicide. 'The Adventurer' tells a beautiful tale of a Caliph of Egypt, who gave himself up to despair for the sudden death of his only son, by an arrow from an unknown hand, and retired to the gloomiest grotto in the neighbouring mountains:

"Can that God be benevolent," he cried, "who thus wounds the soul, as from an ambush, with unexpected sorrows, and crushes his creatures in a moment with irremediable calamity? Yelying Imans, prate to us no more of the justice and the kindness of an all-directing and all-loving Providence! He, whom ye pretend reigns in Heaven, is so far from protecting the miserable sons of men, that he perpetually delights to blast the sweetest flowerets

in the garden of Hope; and, like a malignant giant, to beat down the strongest towers of Happiness with the iron mace of his anger. If this Being possessed the goodness and the power with which flattering priests have invested him, he would, doubtless, be inclined and enabled to banish those evils which render the world a dungeon of distress, a vale of vanity and woe. I will continue in it no longer!"

At that moment he furiously raised his hand, which Despair had armed with a dagger, to strike deep into his bosom; when suddenly thick flashes of lightning shot through the cavern, and a being of more than human beauty and magnitude, arrayed in azure robes, crowned with amaranth, and waving a branch of palm in his right hand, arrested the arm of the trembling and astonished caliph, and said, with a majestic smile, "Follow me to the top of this mountain. Look from hence," said the awful conductor; "I am Caloc, the angel of peace; look from hence into the valley."

'The caliph instantly beheld a magnificent palace, adorned with the statues of his ancestors wrought in jasper; the ivory doors of which, turning on hinges of the gold of Golconda, discovered a throne of diamonds, surrounded with the rajas of fifty nations, and with ambassadors of various habits and

different complexions; on which sat Aboram, the much-lamented son of Bozaldab, and by his side a princess fairer than a houri.

"Gracious Alla! it is my son," cried the caliph; "Oh, let me hold him to my heart!" "Thou canst not grasp an unsubstantial vision," replied the angel: "I am now showing thee what would have been the destiny of thy son, had he continued longer on the earth.” "And why," returned Bozaldab,

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was he not permitted to continue? Why was not I suffered to be a witness of so much felicity and power?" "Consider the sequel," replied he that dwells in the fifth heaven. Bozaldab looked earnestly, and saw the countenance of his son, on which he had been used to behold the placid smile of simplicity and the vivid blushes of health, now distorted with rage, and now fixed in the insensibility of drunkenness: it was again animated with disdain, it became pale with apprehension, and appeared to be withered by intemperance; his hands were stained with blood, and he trembled by turns with fury and terror; the palace, so lately shining with oriental pomp, changed suddenly into the cell of a dungeon, where his son lay stretched out on the cold pavement, gagged and bound, with his eyes put out. Soon after he perceived the favorite sultana, who before was seated by his side, enter with a bowl of poison, which she compelled Aboram to

drink, and afterwards married his successor to the throne.

"Happy," said Caloc, "is he whom Providence has, by the angel of death, snatched from guilt! from whom that power is withheld, which, if he had possessed, would have accumulated upon himself yet greater misery than it could bring upon others."

"It is enough," cried Bozaldab; "I adore the inscrutable schemes of Omniscience! From what dreadful evil has my son been rescued by a death which I rashly bewailed as unfortunate and premature; a death of innocence and peace, which has blessed his memory upon earth, and transmitted his soul above the skies!"

"Cast away the dagger," replied the heavenly messenger, "which thou wast preparing to plunge into thine own heart. Exchange complaint for silence, and doubt for adoration. Can a mortal look down, without giddiness and stupefaction, into the vast abyss of Eternal Wisdom? Can a mind, that sees not infinitely, perfectly comprehend any thing among an infinity of objects mutually relative? Can the channels which thou hast cut to receive the annual inundations of the Nile contain the water of the ocean? Remember that perfect happiness cannot be conferred on a creature; for perfect happiness is an attribute as incommunicable as perfect power and eternity."

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CHAP. XI.

INFIDELITY THE CAUSE OF SUICIDE, AND RELIGION THE CURE.

'Quo moriturus ruis?'-VIRGIL.
Why wilt thou rush on death?

• Conduct me, Thou, of beings cause divine,
Where'er I'm destin'd in thy great design;
Active I follow on, for, should my will
Resist, I'm impious, but must follow still.'

The Mischief of Infidelity—Influence of Temptation, and Acquaintance with Infidelity, illustrated in Cowper's Attempts at Suicide, and his Abhorrence of it by Belief in ReligionConversion to God-True Religion the Cure of Melancholy -Case of the late Dr. Bristow, Vicar of St. Mary's, Nottingham-Religion not the Cause, but the Cure, of Cowper's Melancholy-The Christian Observer's Opinion.

INFIDELITY, I am persuaded, must take full possession of the mind of that man, who, if his senses are in exercise, commits the horrid crime of selfmurder.

Perhaps this was never more exemplified than in Cowper's case, which I shall here relate more at large, to show the weakness of man and the power