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All these thro' life's long path thy steps shall tend,
With converse high shall form thy growing mind;
Shall daily pleasure with instruction blend,

And yield thee counsel with example join'd.

Is this enough? or, shall my wand again
Strike the firm earth? Again I strike it here;
Harken, ye sacred graves! ground part in twain;
Ye mightier, wiser, holier, dead appear.
Ye Christian sages (o'er whom frantic zeal,
Nor superstition e'er could tyrannize),
Ye raptur'd Prophets, heard on Zion's hill;
Ye faithful meek Evangelists arise!

But ah! what thunder roars! what earthquake rocks!
What glory, and what darkness all around!

What heav'nly strains! lo! 'midst the dreadful shocks,
The bloody cross, slow rising, parts the ground.
Heart-piercing sight! the Saviour! yes, 'tis he!
With thorns and glory crown'd; amazing grace!
His aspect ever mild and meek, I see,

Breathing immortal love to human race.

THE EFFECTS OF RELIGION. WHEN the pulse beats high, and we are flushed with youth, and health, and vigour; when all goes on prosperously, and success seems almost to anticipate our wishes, then we feel not the want of the consolations of religion; but when fortune frowns, or friends forsake us; when sorrow, sickness, or old age comes upon us, then it is that the superiority of the pleasures of religion is established over those of dissipation and vanity, which are ever apt to fly from us when we are most in want of their aid. There is scarcely a more melancholy sight to a considerate mind than that of an old man who is a stranger to those only true sources of satisfaction. How affecting, and at the same time how disgusting, it is to see such a one awkwardly catching at the pleasures of his younger years, which are now beyond his reach; or feebly attempting to retain them, while they mock his endeavours, and elude his grasp ! To such a one, gloomily indeed does the evening of life set in. All is sour and cheerless.

He can neither

look backward with complacency, nor forward with hope; while the aged Christian, relying on the assured mercy of the Redeemer, can calmly reflect that his dismission is at hand, that his redemption draweth nigh. While his strength declines, and his faculties decay, he can quietly repose himself on the fidelity of God; and at the very entrance of the valley of the shadow of death, he can lift up an eye, dim, perhaps, and feeble, yet occasionally sparkling with hope, and confidently looking forward to the near possession of his heavenly inheritance, " to those joys which eye have not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." What striking lessons have we had of the precarious

tenure of all sublunary possessions! Wealth, and power, and prosperity, how peculiarly transitory and uncertain! But religion dispenses her choicest cordials in the seasons of exigence, in poverty, in exile, in sickness, and in death. The essential superiority of that support which is derived from religion is less felt, at least it is less apparent, when the Christian is in full possession of riches, and splendour, and rank, and all the gifts of nature and fortune. But when all these are swept away by the rude hand of time, or the rough hand of adversity, the true Christian stands, like the glory of the forest, erect and vigorous; stripped, indeed, of his summer foliage, but more than ever discovering to the observing eye the solid strength of his substantial texture.— Wilberforce.

A MAN OF THE TIME.

THE editor of the Hannibal (Missouri) Journal says he keeps a standing head, as follows:-"Terrible Accident! Five Hundred Men Killed and Missing!" He knows he is likely, any day, to have to use it, and he keeps it ready, so as to be out early with the news when the accident comes.

HOW TO COIN A JOKE.

It is singular that so much astonishment has been created by a man walking with his feet on the ceiling, when no less a person than her Majesty may be seen with her head on the florin'.

HEIGHT OF GALLANTRY.

AT the late "fair for the blind," in Boston, a sailor was strolling
past a table kept by a most lovely woman. Jack stopped, looked
for a moment in breathless admiration, then took a ten-dollar note
from his pocket, laid it on the table, and was passing on. "My
good friend," said the lady, "won't you take something for your
money ?"
"I thank you, madam," replied the tar, with another
sly look, "I've had more than my money's worth already."

THE ASPIRATED "H"

MRS. CRAWFORD said she wrote one line in her Kathleen Mavourneen, for the express purpose of confounding the cockney warblers, who sang it thus:-"The 'orn of the 'unter is 'eard on the 'ill." But Moore had laid the same trap in the Woodpecker:"A 'eart that is humble might 'ope for it 'ere."

"MA, has your tongue got legs ?" "Got what, child ?" "Got legs, ma ?" "Certainly not; but why do you ask that silly question ?" "Oh, nothing; only I heard pa say your tongue was running from morning till night."

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OF VOLUPTUARIUS AND EUBULLUS.
"Shan't, I pursue," Voluptuarius cries,
"Whate'er is bright and pleasing to my eyes?
Must I in awe of mean advisers stand?
Or be a slave when prating guides command?
Suppose they finely preach in poetry;

What is their witty cant to me?

Such grovelling stuff suits not my lofty mind;
I give their rhyme and reason to the wind.
Sooner shall strict Mohometans bow down
To Jewish laws or serve the triple crown;
Or furious bigots keep the Church's peace,
Than I'll resign my liberties to these.
Where'er the world's alluring pleasures call,
I'll go and unstrain'd will taste of all."
Eubullus answers, 66 none though great in name,
Can claim a right to be exempt from blame :
No wealth and pomp, and seats in places high,
A vain licentious life can justify.

As laws divine prohibit what is ill,

All men deserve rebuke who live at will.
Tho' good advice be turn'd to ridicule,
And one who gives it is proclaim'd a fool;
The giver's meanness lessens not its force;
For still 'tis strong against a lawless force;
If some offend by pen, or with the tongue,
Are little men to blame, who say 'tis wrong?
Or why in verse may they not vice expose,
When from the pulpit, 'tis condemn'd in prose?
Respect we own to quality is due;
But who to vanity respect will shew?
Whate'er is vain appears the same in all;
It is contemptible in great and small.
If some the love and fear of God neglect,
Can such with any reason claim respect?
Or if such men are pleased to go astray,
Must others wander too as well as they?
Who live by custom or by modish rules,
Are not themselves but everybody's fools.
All swerve from right who wilfully offend;
'Tis wrong, 'tis wicked when they learn to mend.
No sinners then good counsel ought to blame;
Not to accept it shews a want of shame.

INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY ON SOCIETY. THE era of democracy has begun. The struggles of hereditary aristocrats to maintain exclusive privileges; the menial vanity of nonveaux riches seeking for adoption into the family of the newlyborn; the stupid endurance of the many, may indefinitely defer the period when society shall be everywhere avowedly organized upon democratical principles: but the fact that we are democratising must be evident to every man who can look truth in the face. One of the many forms under which this fact everywhere incessantly solicits our attention, has been pointed out. I believe that in democratic as well as in aristocratic countries there will be

landowners and tenants: but the connection existing between them will be of a different kind. In aristocracies, the hire of a farm is paid to the landlord, not only in rent, but in respect, regard, and duty in democracies, the whole is paid in cash. When estates are divided and passed from hand to hand, and the permanent connection which existed between families and the soil is dissolved, and the landowner and the tenant are only casually brought into contact, they meet for a moment to settle the conditions of the agreement, and then lose sight of each other; they are two strangers brought together by a common interest, and who keenly talk over a matter of business, the sole object of which is to make money. An aristocracy does not expire like a man in a single day; the aristocratic principle is slowly undermined in men's opinions before it is attacked in their laws. Long before open war is declared against it, the tie which had hitherto united the higher classes to the lower, may be seen to be relaxed. Indifference and contempt are betrayed by one class, jealousy and hatred by the others the intercourse between rich and poor becomes less frequent and less kind, and rents are raised. This is not the consequence of a democratic revolution, but its certain harbinger; for an aristocracy which has lost the affections of the people, once and for ever, is like a tree dead at the root, which is more easily torn up by the winds the higher its branches have spread.

In the course of the last fifty years, the rents of farms have amazingly increased, not only in France, but throughout the greater part of Europe. The remarkable improvements which have taken place within the same period do not suffice in my opinion to explain this fact: recourse must be had to another cause more powerful and more concealed. I believe that cause is to be found in the democratic institutions which several European nations have adopted, and in the democratic passions which more or less agitate all the rest.

I have frequently heard great English landowners congratulate themselves that, at the present day, they derive a much larger income from their estates than their fathers did. They have, perhaps, good reason to be glad; but most assuredly they know not what they are glad of. They think they are making a clear gain, when, in reality, it is only an exchange; their influence is what they are parting with for cash, and what they gain in money will ere long be lost in power.

THE LAST.

FELIX M'C CARTHY of the Kerry militia, was generally late to parade. "Felix," said the serjeant, "you are always last." "Be 'asy, Serjeant Sullivan," he replied, sure some one must be last."

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"I THINK Our Church will last a great many years yet," said a waggish deacon to his minister, "I see the sleepers are very sound.

!

OF CLOUDS.

THEY are formed when vapours being drawn up into the air from all parts, their motion is lessened and their parts come nearer together, and reaching the middle region of the air, they become more united and form those clouds which we see move in the air when driven by winds.

OF HAIL.

HAIL is formed under the clouds, thus, the air of the middle region is very cold in summer, and in the temperate seasons; and when that air is under a great and thick cloud, which deprives it of the rays of the sun, by this means it grows cold to a certain degree. Hence it is, that if that cloud fall down in rain, it necessarily happens, that the drops of water, as they pass through the cold air, under that cloud inust freeze, and fall down in little particles of ice much of the figure and greatness with the drops of rain.

OF MILDEW.

THIS is a kind of fog that happens in the middle of summer, when by the heat of the season, many corrosive exhalations are raised with the vapours; which falling upon the growing corn, blasts and scorches it, especially if heated by the sun, which makes them still more corroding. Therefore skilful countrymen kindle great fires of straw on that side of their corn from whence the winds blow, to protect it from the mildew.

OF FROST AND ICE.

FROST comes from a violent north wind, that brings a colder air with it than what we had, which by the violence of that wind, only glances upon the surface of the earth. It stops the motion of the small particles of the earth and water, and by this means hardens and condenses them. Ice comes from the same cause, but with this difference, that the air which the wind brings from the north is very cold; and it being the same in the place where it comes, those two concurring winds freeze the water.

OF MISTS OR FOGS.

THE mists in winter are formed of vapours raised in that season, and condensed by the cold in the lower region of the air. Whence it comes, that though fewer vapours are then raised than in other seasons, we have yet more frequent mists. Mists in summer are partly formed of vapours, and partly of exhalations raised in the daytime by the heat of the season; and because the mist, by reason of the grossness and weight of the exhalations, cannot easily mount to the higher region, where the air is more subtile, and so

VOL. II.

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