is not only not to be forbidden but is profitable, whilst their attention indeed to the more mysterious and difficult portions may be withheld. The Holy Scriptures are adapted not only for instructing one particular condition in life, but for instructing every man in his own condition, and are applicable as well to beginners as to the more advanced. All should come through them to a knowledge of their sins, and those, who cannot do this from within outwards, because they are strangers to themselves and their own hearts, should at least be led to it from without through the mirror which the Holy Scriptures present to them. And in this way no one need be shut out from that divine consolation through which the Holy Scriptures assure life and nourishment to souls. There are the universal blessings of God, and it is particularly necessary to the laity that the natural law in them should be seconded by the revealed, that the inner eye should be purified and made more keen, so that in the business of life, it may acquire that introspection which is always best obtained through a contemplation of the divine Word. The laity are allowed to hear the preaching of the Word of God; why should they not be allowed to read it? The laity are not prohibited from reading secular books, even those of a seductive and obscene character; why should the reading of the Holy Scriptures be prohibited? Indeed the greatest Doctors of the Church-Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Chrysostom-have a!ways admonished the most zealous attention to this.

But if the laity should be allowed to read the Holy Scriptures, they should naturally be allowed to read them also in the vernacular. The whole Bible was indeed originally written in those languages which were intelligible to its nearest readers in Hebrew to the Jews; Greek to the Greeks, and, from the earliest times, translations of the Bible were prepared in the languages of different countries, partly by the most distinguished Doctors of the Church, and partly by others with their approbation. If the Jews were allowed to have their Bible in Hebrew, the Chaldeans in Chaldee, the Greeks in Greek, the Arabians in Arabic, the Syrians in Syriac, the Goths in Gothic, the Sclavonians in Selavonic, why should the Germans not have theirs in German? The laity, also, instead of being deprived of good German books and especially the Bible, should rather be encouraged to it; for it would be much more profitable if they spent their time in this way than with useless stories or with drinking in pot-houses.

Precisely in the same strain Zerbolt recommends, in another treatise, the use of the vernacular in prayer. He does not indeed entirely reject Latin prayers for the laity, but prayer in the vernacular seems to him, according to 1 Cor. xiv, to have by far the preference, because it is more intelligible, and at the same time also more edifying and fruitful.

It is evident, what seeds of the Reformation are concealed in these thoughts! The translation of the Holy Scriptures in the language of every country, free access of the laity to the same, dissemination of edifying writings (especially the Bible) among all people,

Let the love of Christ within me
Burn and flame, until it win me,
Answering love from him again!

Holy mother, by thy favor,

Let the nails which pierced my Saviour,
Pierce and fix my wandering heart!
In his sorrows, which abounded,
In his woundings, who was wounded,
All for me, oh give me part!

Be it mine through life, sincerely
Aye to weep with Thee! and nearly
Follow still my Lord divine!
Near the cross be still my station,
By thy side! each lamentation

Of thy lips be swelled with mine!

Virgin queen of heavenly splendor,
Let me share, oh bosom tender!
E'en thy sorrows' secrecies!
Let me hear my Jesus dying
In my flesh! and to him flying,
Cherish every wound of his!

With his love, oh recreate me!
With his cross inebriate me!

Wound me with love's wounds, I pray!

That secure in thy protection,
Bound to him with strong affection,
I may meet the judgment day!

Be his cross my tower abiding.
And his death my place of hiding!
Feed me with his grace and love!
That, when worms my flesh inherit,
I may rise a ransomed spirit,
To the Paradise above!

MEMORY. It is said of Cardinal Richellieu, that when he built his magnificent palace on the site of the old family chateau at Richellieu, he sacrificed its symmetry to preserve the room where he was born. An attachment of this nature is generally characteristic of a benevolent mind; and a long acquaintance with the world cannot always extinguish it. "To a friend," says John, Duke of Buckingham, "I will expose my weakness. I am often missing a pretty gallery in the old house I built in its stead, though a thousand times better in all respects." This is the language of the heart, and will remind the reader of the good-humored remark in one of Pope's letters: "I should hardly care to have an old post pulled up, that I had remembered ever since I was a child."

element which pervades and controls it. It is indeed refreshing and wholesome to the soul, after reading the irreverent writings of men who now stand high in the literary world, as Mr. Holmes, and the poet Mr. Mason, who attempts witticisms upon Scripture in public; it is refreshing and wholesome to the soul, we repeat, after sorrowing over such trifling boldness, to come to the gentle, pious thoughtfulness and beauty of this pastoral we are examining, where the sweet scenes of nature arc ever directing us to the scenes of heaven, and where the mysteries of Divine revelation are ever approached, as was the burning bush, with unsandled feet. How happily, in the contrast just suggested, does the childlike faith of our honest fisherman show itself, when citing for Venator the example of "Doctor Nowel, sometimes Dean of the Cathedral Church of St Paul in London, where his monument stands yet undefaced:" who, being so noted for meekness, learning, and piety, was chosen by Parliament and Convocation to make a Catechism for public "The good old man," he continues, "though he was very learned, yet knowing that God leads us not to heaven by many nor by hard questions, like an honest Angler, made that good, plain, unperplexed Catechism, which is printed with our good old service book." There is a reverent simplicity in such language as this, plainly assuring us that he who used it has often knelt at the altar, and felt the wondrous exaltation there is in adoring service. That most appreciating critic, Charles Lamb, recognized the truth of this, as is evident, when, in his Rosamund Gray, he put into Margaret's library, with the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress and Wither's Emblems, the Compleat Angler also.

use.

Everywhere, indeed, does a childlike, Christian faith show itself; and no doubt but in the light thereof nature did look fairer to him. That he had a poet's ken too, noting each thing of beauty above him and around him, this morning walk which we have been writing of must convince any one. With what consummate grace does he introduce to Venator's attention his friend and co-fisher "Sir Henry Wotton, that undervaluer of money, the late Provost of Eton College ;" and how poetically too, does he thus preface the quotation of his poem-"Sir, this was the saying of that learned mau, and I do easily believe that peace, and patience and a calm content, did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton, because I know that when he was beyond seventy years of age, he made this description of the present pleasure that possessed him, as he set quietly in a Summer's evening on a bank a fishing. It is a description of the Spring, which, because it glided as soft and sweetly from his pen, as that river does at this time, by which it was then made. I shall repeat it unto you." One hardly knows which to admire the more, the preface or the poem. Though the former be not in verse, it is nevertheless poetry. There is an impassioned imagination, "an uneasy sense of delight" in that gliding soft and sweetly from his pen, which none but a poet could feel. Time does not allow us to quote but a stanza or two from that "description of Spring," which is prefaced as above.