merely expressing the piety, or the passion, the seriousness, or the levity of the moment, we shall have no difficulty in accounting for those discrepancies in their features, which have so much puzzled professional commentators. Their very contradictions prove their truth. Or could the face even of Ninon de l'Enclos at seventy be just what it was at seventeen? Nay, was Cleopatra before Augustus the same as Cleopatra with Antony? or Cleopatra with Antony the same as with the great Julius?

The teachers of youth in a free country should select those books for their chief study,-so far, I mean, as this world is concerned,—which are best adapted to foster a spirit of manly freedom. The duty of preserving the liberty, which our ancestors, through God's blessing, won, establisht, and handed down to us, is no less imperative than any commandment in the second table; if it be not the concentration of the whole. And is this duty to be learnt from the investigations of science? Is it to be pickt up in the crucible? or extracted from the properties of lines and numbers? I fear there is a moment of broken lights in the intellectual day of civilized countries, when, among the manifold refractions of Knowledge, Wisdom is almost lost sight of. Society in time breeds a number of mouths, which will not consent to be entertained without a corresponding variety of dishes, so that unity is left alone as an inhospitable singularity; and many things are got at any way, rather than a few in the right way. But "howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgements and affections," would we imbibe the feelings, the sentiments, and the principles, which become the inheritors of England's name and glory, we must abide by the springs of which our ancestors drank. Like them, we must nourish our minds by contemplating the unbending strength of purpose and uncalculating self-devotion, which nerved and animated the philosophic and heroic patriots of the Heathen world: and we shall then blush, should Christianity, with all her additional incentives, have shone

on our hearts without kindling a zeal as steady and as pure.

Is not our mistress, fair Religion,
As worthy of all our heart's devotion,
As Virtue was to that first blinded age?
As we do them in means, shall they surpass
Us in the end?

Donne, Satires, iií. 5.

The threatenings of Christianity are material and tangible. They speak of and to the senses; because they speak of and to the sensual and earthly, in character, intellect, and pursuits. The promises of Christianity on the other hand are addrest to a different class of persons,-to those who love, which comes after fear,-to those who have begun to advance in goodness,--to those who are already in some measure delivered from the thraldom of the body. But, being spoken of heaven to the heavenlyminded, how could they be other than heavenly?

The fact then, that there is nothing definite, and little inviting or attractive, except to the eye of Faith, in the Christian representation of future bliss, instead of being a reasonable objection to its truth, is rather a confirmation of it. And so perhaps thought Selden, who remarks in his Table-Talk: “The Turks tell their people of a heaven where there is a sensible pleasure, but of a hell where they shall suffer they don't know what. The Christians quite invert this order: they tell us of a hell where we shall feel sensible pain, but of a heaven where we shall enjoy we can't tell what."

Why should not distant parishes interchange their apprentices? so that the lads on their return home might bring back such improvements in agriculture and the mechanical arts, as they may have observed or been taught during their absence.

E.

A practice of the sort was usual two centuries ago, and still exists in Germany, and other parts of the Continent.

The first thing we learn is Meum, the last is Tuum. None can have lived among children without noticing the

former fact; few have associated with men and not remarkt the latter.

To address the prejudices of our hearers is to argue with them in short-hand. But it is also more: it is to invest our opinion with the probability of prescription, and by occupying the understanding to attack the heart.

The ancients dreaded death: the Christian can only fear dying.

A person should go out upon the water on a fine day to a short distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so joyous, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are rippling gently, and the scene receives life and animation here and there from the glancing transit of a row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the vastness and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill sort with the other parts of the gay and glittering prospect.

The second Punic war was a struggle between Hannibal and the Roman people. Its event proved that the good sense and spirit of a nation, when embodied in institutions, and exerted with perseverance, must ultimately exhaust and overpower the resources of a single mind, however excellent in genius and prowess.

The war of Sertorius, the Roman Hannibal, is of the same kind, and teaches the same lesson.

Nothing short of extreme necessity will induce a sensible man to change all his servants at once. A new set coming together fortuitously are sure to cross and jostle ... like the Epicurean atoms, I was going to say; but no, unlike the silent atoms, they have the faculty of claiming and complaining; and they exert it, until the family is

distracted with disputes about the limits of their several offices.

But after a household has been set in order, there is little or no evil to apprehend from minor changes. A new servant on arriving finds himself in the middle of a system: his place is markt out and assigned; the course of his business is set before him; and he falls into it as readily as a new wheel-horse to a mail, when his collar is to the pole, and the coach is starting.

It is the same with those great families, which we call nations. To remould a government and frame a constitution anew, are works of the greatest difficulty and hazard. The attempt is likely to fail altogether, and cannot succeed thoroughly under very many years. It is the last desperate resource of a ruined people, a staking double or quits with evil, and almost giving it the first game. But still it is a resource. We make use of cataplasms to restore suspended animation; and Burke himself might have tried Medea's kettle on a carcass.

Be that however as it may, from judicious subordinate reforms, good, and good only, is to be lookt for. Nor are their benefits limited to the removal of the abuse, which their author designed to correct. No perpetual motion, God be praised! has yet been discovered for free governments. For the impulse which keeps them going, they are indebted mainly to subordinate reforms; now, by the exposure of a particular delinquency, spreading salutary vigilance through a whole administration; now, by the origination of some popular improvement from without, leading, if there be any certainty in party motives, any such things in ambitious men as policy and emulation,—to the counter-adoption of numerous meliorations from within, which would else have been only dreamt of as impossible.

As a little girl was playing round me one day with her white frock over her head, I laughingly called her Pishashee, the name which the Indians give to their white devil. The child was delighted with so fine a name, and ran

about the house crying to every one she met, I am the Pishashee, I am the Pishashee. Would she have done so, had she been wrapt in black, and called witch or devil instead? No: for, as usual, the reality was nothing, the sound and colour everything.

But how many grown-up persons are running about the world, quite as anxious as the little girl was to get the name of Pishashees! Only she did not understand it.

True modesty does not consist in an ignorance of our merits, but in a due estimate of them. Modesty then is only another name for self-knowledge; that is, for the absence of ignorance on the one subject which we ought to understand the best, as well from its vast importance to us, as from our continual opportunities of studying it. And yet it is a virtue.

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But what, on second thoughts, are these merits? Jeremy Taylor tells us, in his Life of Christ : Nothing but the innumerable sins which we have added to what we have received. For we can call nothing ours, but such things as we are ashamed to own, and such things as are apt to ruin us. Everything besides is the gift of God; and for a man to exalt himself thereon is just as if a wall on which the sun reflects, should boast itself against another that stands in the shadow." Considerations upon Christ's Sermon on Humility.

After casting a glance at our own weaknesses, how eagerly does our vanity console itself with deploring the infirmities of our friends!

T.

It is as hard to know when one is in Paris, as when one is out of London.

R.

The first is the city of a great king; the latter, of a great people.

M.

When the moon, after covering herself with darkness as in sorrow, at last throws off the garments of her widow