active, ingenious, and enterprising. Among the first effects, which history describes as produced by this difference in character and circumstances, are the warlike irruptions of the hardy tribes of the north on the luxurious inhabitants of the south, accompanied by extensive conquests, and ending in the permanent settlement of these nations in the fertile regions, of which they have taken forcible possession. The stimulus, which was thus given to the human faculties, has frequently been permanent, and has produced extensive, and eventually important, consequences on the improvement of the species.

This, however, is mentioned only incidentally, my object at present being merely to show the salutary effect of a limited and comparatively scanty supply of the necessaries of life, arising from what may, as regards production, be considered an unfavourable climate. But this remark has its limitations; and I must not neglect to state, that cold and consequent privation, when carried to an extreme, have a depressing effect of a different kind. The natives of Greenland, and the other countries bordering on the Arctic Circle, are not less degraded in the scale of intellect than the Negro race in the teeming wilds of Africa. It is in the regions within the Temperate Zone that the mind of man, along with his bodily powers, seems most freely and vigorously to expand. He is here situated in regions not only peculiarly suited to his bodily constitution, but to the development of his moral and intellectual faculties. The variety of climate, alternating between moderate heat and mitigated cold, while it requires attention to the comforts of clothing and habitation in their adaptation to the changes of the seasons, and thus exercises his ingenuity, presses still more powerfully on the resources of his mind, by the cessation, during a considerable part of the year, of that supply of the necessaries of existence, which, at another season, is afforded in comparative abundance. Under the influence of these circumstances, man becomes, by a kind of moral and physical necessity, a storing animal, and

habits of forethought, thus engendered, are strengthened and increased by exercise, till the mercantile spirit is produced.

The same tendency is encouraged by the diversified productions of the different soils, of the changing seasons, of various elevations from the towering mountain to the sheltered valley, of adjoining islands and continents, and even of more distant regions. Placed in the middle, between the two extremes of climate, the productions of the north and of the south are equally within his reach, and experience soon teaches him the enjoyment and comfort of accumulating from both quarters. The neighbourhood of seas, lakes, and rivers, contributes much to the fostering of this spirit, by affording facilities of intercourse which could not otherwise be obtained; and, accordingly, we find that the early efforts of commercial enterprise have been chiefly confined to such localities, or at least have derived their origin or their stimulus from them. It is true that the first traders of whom we read, were among the descendants of Ishmael, a wandering and active inland tribe; but it was to the maritime land of Egypt that they were directing their course for conducting their petty traffic. The rise of the mercantile spirit in that country is easily accounted for, on the principles to which we have adverted. Situated on the banks of the Nile, a navigable river, with the Red Sea toward the south, and the broad Mediterranean toward the north, there is no wonder that the Egyptians should have been among the most early and most successful merchants of ancient times. A similar remark may apply to Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage, the other cities of antiquity, where the mercantile spirit prevailed. And, indeed, it is impossible not to regard the subsequent civilization of European nations, surrounded as they are by facilities for navigation, and situated in a climate possessing all the properties we have described, as the natural, or rather providential result of the same principles.

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SECOND WEEK-SUNDAY.

GENERAL ASPECT OF WINTER.

THE general aspect of winter is forbidding. It is the night of the year: the period when, under a mitigated light, nature reposes, after the active exertions of spring and summer have been crowned with the rich stores of autumn. We now no longer survey with admiration and awe those wonders of creative power which arrested our attention in that youthful season when herbs, plants, and trees awoke from their long sleep, and started into new life, under the kindly influences of warmer suns and gentler breezes; and when the feathered tribes made the fresh-clothed woods and lawns, and the blue sky itself, vocal with the music of love and joy. Nor do we now expatiate in the maturer beauties of summer, when light and heat flushed the glowing heavens and smiling earth, and when the fleecy clouds distilled their grateful showers, or tempered the intense radiance by their flitting shade: And mellow autumn too has passed away, along with the merry song of the reapers, and the hum of busy men, gathering their stores from the teeming fields, and the sweet notes of the redbreast, the latest songster of our groves.

Instead of these genial influences of a propitious heaven, our lengthening nights, and our days becoming perpetually darker and shorter, shed their gloom over the face of nature; the earth grows niggardly of her supplies of nourishment and shelter, and no longer spreads beneath the tenants of the field the soft green carpet on which they were accustomed to repose; man seeks his artificial comforts and his hoarded food; the wind whistles ominously through the naked trees; the dark clouds lower; the chilling rain descends in torrents; and, as the

season advances, the prostrate earth becomes rigid, as if struck by the wand of an enchanter; the flowing waters, spell-bound, lie motionless in crystal chains; the north pours forth its blast, and nature is entombed in a vast cemetery, whiter and colder than Parian marble.

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Yet, even in this apparently frightful and inhospitable season, there are means of pleasure and improvement, which render it scarcely inferior to any other period of the revolving year, while proofs of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the great Creator are not less abundantly displayed to the mind of the pious inquirer. With reference to the angry passions of the human race, it is said that God " causes the wrath of man to praise him, and restrains the remainder of wrath ;" and a similar remark applies with a truth equally striking to the troubled elements. The Almighty sets bounds to the raging ocean, saying, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." He regulates by his wisdom the intensity of the tempest, "staying his rough wind in the day of the east wind." All the active powers of nature are his messengers : "Fire and hail, snow and vapour," as well as stormy winds, fulfil his word." Nothing, indeed, can be more worthy of admiration and gratitude than the manner in which the rigours of winter are tempered and modified, so as to contribute to the subsistence and comfort of living beings. It is true that, even in the ordinary occurrences of life, there are, in winter, probably more distressing and fatal incidents than during the other quarters of the year. A snow-storm may sometimes overwhelm a shepherd and his flock; a tempest may cause a gallant vessel and its crew to perish; a fire may lay a village in ashes; disease, attendant on exposure to a rigorous climate, may invade the unwholesome and comfortless huts of the poor; or, in a season when the wages of agricultural labour cease along with the power of working in the open air, famine may emaciate and destroy whole families; but such events as these, melancholy as they are, must be ranked among

the common evils of life, and belong to a class, marking a peculiar feature in the government of this fallen world, to which I have previously adverted, and which can never be far from the mind of the accurate observer of nature. At present let us take a rapid glance at the other side of the picture, and we shall see enough to prove that, even in these gloomy months, the paternal care of an all-wise and beneficent Governor is not less conspicuous than in other periods of the changing year.

If we look at the lower animals, how wonderful are the kind provisions of Providence. Among the numerous tribes of insects, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, there appears to be a general presentiment of the coming desolation. Some, impelled by a wonderful instinct, provide for themselves comfortable retreats, each tribe adapting its accommodation to its peculiar circumstances, burrowing in the earth, or boring beneath the bark of trees and shrubs, or penetrating into their natural hollows, or lodging in crevices of walls and rocks, or diving beneath the surface of the water, and lying immoveable at the bottom of pools, lakes, or marshy streams. Here they are preserved during this barren period, either by feeding on the stores which, with a foresight not their own, they had collected in the bountiful weeks of harvest, or by falling into a deep sleep, during which they become unassailable either by the attacks of cold or of hunger, or by issuing daily or nightly from their resting places, and gathering the food which a providential care has reserved for them, and taught them how to seek. Others, chiefly belonging to the winged tribes, are taught to migrate, as the rigours of winter approach, to more genial climates, where abundant food and enjoyment are provided for them, and where they are thus permitted to expatiate in all the advantages of a perpetual yet varied summer; while these, again, have their places supplied by hardier species of the feathered family, which the gathering storms of more northern regions had warned to leave their summer haunts.