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closely allied to the departed, are soothed by the consciousness that his worth was known-that his absence is lamented; and this sympathy softens the harsh features of sorrow into melancholy and tenderness. When

crimes; and had not disease, the ness and happiness. Their name is effect of sin, introduced him into sounded abroad. They have left their another world, he had probably died characters as examples, and their by the hands of the executioner. | deeds as a monument. Their excelThus ended the earthly career of the lence is acknowledged. Those most once amiable, but self-confident, Wilson. In the darkness of a prison he yielded to despair; no pious friends knew his condition, or went to counsel him, or to pray for him; and he died without leaving one fact on which Christian charity may found a hope we behold, therefore, a great or an as to his acceptance with God in his aged man consigned to the tomb, last hour. although the scene is impressive, soHast thou, reader, believed the lemn, awful, it is yet neither unscriptural statement of the depravity natural nor terrific. It resembles of thy heart? Hast thou learnt thy the setting of the sun when the need of a Saviour to deliver thee from duties of the day are over, or the sin and its results, and the importance of the influences of the Holy Spirit to conduct thee into the paths of truth and of happiness? Yield thyself unto God; trust not in thine own heart; cherish a spirit of humility and prayer before the throne of the Most High, and safety and happiness are thine for

ever.

ON THE DEATH OF YOUTH.

passing away of autumn after the harvest has been gathered in. In these cases, we are hushed with awe, but not stricken with dismay, and death, though sublime, is not altogether horrible. The biographer, then, has the simple, but the proud and grateful task of enumerating the labours of genius and virtue, and of painting the fruits which they have brought forth. Over them is shed the warm colouring of fancy and love; the respect of mankind hallows and consecrates his grave-makes it a sweet retreat, and a holy resting-place for the imagination of the survivors; and, if it does not fill, at least illumines the dark void left in their hearts.

ALTHOUGH death, in all its forms, is appalling and terrific, there are circumstances which partly divest it of its horrors. The usual subjects of editorial notices are not always the most deeply mourned. They are, generally, individuals who have completed many of the promises of existence-who have not ended their pilgrimage without accomplishing the purposes of their youth, and the visions of their ambition. Their capacities have been filled-their energies awakened-their faculties developed the secret springs of their mind and character touched, and all their nature unfolded and displayed. ing away of age is only the fulfilment Affection, while it mourns over their of destiny; but youth was not made grave, is consoled and cheered by to die. Here is a calamity which memory, who paints their past great-was not expected, and therefore is not

With thoughts and feelings far different from these we follow youth to the tomb. Even when no rare promise has been given-when the bud was bursting with no more than the ordinary beauty of early life-when only innocence, and hope, and untried ambition, have been summoned, the mind recoils with horror.

The pass

easily borne. It is a double woe. It meditation, beneath the overshadow

ing branches of an oak. I approached
respectfully, and said, "My friend,
you seem solitary and sad."
"Not so," was his reply;
"I am
neither solitary nor sad."

is alike woe to the young eagle stricken down by the thunder, when first spreading its wings for its heavenward flight, and to the trembling, shuddering creatures left behind. Where shall they look for consolation? How I looked round with an air, doubtdifferent is their sorrow from that of less, of wonderment and unbelief, for the mourner over the grave of matured it attracted his notice, and led to furmanhood, ripened genius, and suc- ther discourse. I could see no living cessful ambition! They possess no thing, neither bird, nor beast, nor inproud recollections to lean on in the sect; the only sights that presented dark hour of weakness and affliction. themselves to the eye were an impene. Their loss is not only the bereavement trable forest skirting the narrow slip of love-it is the disappointment of of land between mountains, a narrow hope-of tenderness-of worldly in-streamlet gliding down the centre, and terest-of deep passion-of a thou-a hut without inhabitant, near which sand gay dreams, and fond aspiring the hoary-headed pilgrim had taken wishes. Every thing is crushed and his station; and the only sound I broken. The grave of youth is in- heard was the bubbling of the brook, deed a ruin. That of age resembles which seemed to create a deeper the remains of some ancient temple, silence. fallen, it is true, into decay, but "Not solitary?" I asked. mouldering in the lapse of ages, Stranger," continued he, "have the natural course of things. The you never heard or felt that one may broken arches and dilapidated co-be never less alone than when alone? lumns have served their purposes to These sylvan shades, and this conpast beings, and now, covered with verdant ivy, and associated with no violent and sudden convulsion, they spread a holy and not unpleasing charm over the scenes of their past grandeur. But the grave of youth shocks every heart like the fragments of some splendid palace, newly constructed for purposes of gaiety and pleasure-decorated with all the embellishments of taste and fancy, and furnished with every thing that can minister to joy and pride-but suddenly, in the midst of a festival, shaken down by an earthquake, and burying a crowd of young and happy hearts beneath the ruins.-New York Mirror.

HOME.

and

In traversing the vale of life, I saw an aged man sitting, as if in profound

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scious heart, touched by a renewing power, bespeak an ever-present Deity; and who can be alone when God is with him?"

"But may I be allowed, without offence or implied suspicion, to remark, that a romantic sentiment of this nature has been often uttered by those who have evinced no real knowledge of the infinite Being, no acquaintance with his moral character, and their relation to him, and none of the devout affection which breathes in the hallowed strains of Israel's pious monarch: As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.'"

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"I know," said he, "the sentiment is often romantic, but with me it is real. I hold converse with the Highest, not as the God of nature only, but as the God of Scripture; not as the Creator of heaven and earth only, but

as the Redeemer of lost man, through pect to pass over; nor is it a valuable property lying beyond them, in some fair enclosure which I seek to secure, or which I know to be mine."

the shedding of the blood of the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.'

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"Then you receive that doctrine which is often termed, in scorn, evangelical?"

66

He paused, and pointed upward once more; I saw it was to the everlasting hills," and to his anticipated "Assuredly; that great elementary possession in heaven. He added, with truth is all my salvation and joy,- inexpressible emotion, "My weary 'the blood of Jesus Christ his Son pilgrimage is ended, and I am just AT cleanseth from all sin.' Whoever HOME. From Ward's Miscellany. chooses to mock at, or neglect it, must take the fearful consequences of his derision and infidelity."

"Christian pilgrim, I hail your venerable age, but more venerable experience. You are not, then, solitary; and I perceive you cannot be sad."

"As to the latter, my worthy visitor, there is enough in my temporal lot to produce the wretchedness I nevertheless disclaimed. Ah, Sir! my life, like this wide-spreading tree in its wintry desolation, has no greenness; but unlike it, and more despoiled by time, I have no branches left."

66 Then you have lost a family?" "I have lost parents, kinsmen, wife, and children, the beloved companions of earlier days; and I have lost property bequeathed, and property acquired, all but my last shelter, that wind-shaken hut; and yet I have an inheritance, too, and am going to take possession."

He lifted up bis eyes, and pointed his finger: both appeared in the direction of the lofty mountains.

"You have an estate, then, beyond those hills, and your personal presence is necessary? But can you hope, under the pressure of so much age and infirmity, to surmount those barriers of nature; and will you spend your last strength in so vain a toil, and to acquire so transient a possession?"

"It is not those mountains," he exclaimed with energy, "which I ex

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ANECDOTES OF AVARICE.

(From Dr. King's Anecdotes of his Own Times.)

AVARICE, says the author of Religio Medici, seems to me not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; and if he had added incurable, his definition would have been perfect; for an avaricious man is never to be cured unless by the same medicine which perchance may cure a mad dog. The arguments of reason, philosophy, or religion, will little affect him; he is born and framed to a sordid love of money, which first appears when he is very young, grows up with him, and increases in middle age, and when he is old, and all the rest of his passions have subsided, wholly engrosses him. The greatest endowments of the mind, the greatest abilities in a profession, and even the quiet possession of an immense treasure, will never prevail against avarice. My Lord Hardwick, the late Lord Chancellor, who is said to be worth £800,000, sets the same value on halfa crown now as he did when he was only worth one hundred. That great captain, the Duke of Marlborough, when he was in the last stage of life, and very infirm, would walk from the public rooms in Bath to his lodgings in a cold dark night to save sixpence in chair hire. If the duke, who left at his death more than a million and a half sterling, could have foreseen that all his wealth and honours were to be inherited by a grand

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son of my Lord Trevor's, who had it, instead of being overjoyed, as any been one of his enemies, would he have been so careful to save sixpence for the sake of his heir? Not for the sake of his heir; but he would always have saved a sixpence. Sir James Lowther, after changing a piece of silver in George's Coffee-house, and paying twopence for his dish of coffee, was helped into his chariot (for he was then very lame and infirm), and went home; some little time after he returned to the same coffee-house on purpose to acquaint the woman who kept it that she had given him a bad halfpenny, and demanded another in exchange for it. Sir James had about £40,000 per annum, and was at a loss whom to appoint his heir. I knew one Sir Thomas Colby, who lived at Kensington, and was, I think, a commissioner in the victuallingoffice; he killed himself by rising in the middle of the night when he was in a very profuse sweat, the effect of a medicine which he had taken for that purpose, and walking down stairs to look for the key of his cellar, which he had inadvertently left on a table in his parlour: he was apprehensive that his servants might seize the key, and rob him of a bottle of port wine. This man died intestate, and left more than £200,000 in the funds, which was shared among five or six day-labourers, who were his nearest relations. Sir William Smyth, of Bedfordshire, who was my kinsman, when he was near seventy, was wholly deprived of his sight; he was persuaded to be couched by Taylor, the oculist, who by agreement was to have sixty guineas if he restored his patient to any degree of sight; Taylor succeeded in his operation, and Sir William was able to read and write without the use of spectacles during the rest of his life; but as soon as the operation was performed, and Sir William perceived the good effects of

other person would have been, he began to lament the loss (as he called it) of his sixty guineas. His contrivance, therefore, now was how to cheat the oculist: he pretended that he had only a glimmering, and could see nothing perfectly for that reason the bandage on his eye was continued a month longer than the usual time; by this means he obliged Taylor to compound the bargain, and accept of twenty guineas; for a covetous man thinks no method dishonest which he may legally practise to save his money. Sir William was an old bachelor, and at the time Taylor couched him, had a fair estate in land, a large sum of money in the stocks, and not less than £5000 or £6000 in his house. But to conclude this article: all the dramatic writers, both ancient and modern, as well as the keenest and most elegant satirists, have exhausted their whole stock of wit to expose avarice this is the chief subject of Horace's satires and epistles; and yet the character of a covetous man hath never yet been fully drawn or sufficiently explained. The Euclio of Plautus, the L'Avare of Moliere, and the Miser of Shadwell, have been all exceeded by some persons who have existed within my own knowledge. If you could bestow on a man of this disposition, the wealth of both the Indies, he would not have enough; because by enough (if such a word is to be found in the vocabulary of avarice) he always means something more than he is possessed of. Crassus, who had a yearly revenue sufficient to maintain a great army, perished together with his son, in endeavouring to add to his store. In the fable of Midas, the poet had exhibited a complete character, if Midas, instead of renouncing the gift which the god had bestowed on him, had chosen to die in the act of creating gold.

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SMOKING.

"WHAT can be more deleterious than tobacco? Many an honest Deutcher have I seen smoking himself into the grave!

Rauch-Rauch-immer Rauch!

The countenance pale and haggard; the frame emaciated; the propensity

to smoke irresistible!

Even snuff, my old friend Abernethy used to say, fuddles the nose; but the fumes of tobacco possess a power of stupifying all the senses and all the faculties, by slow but enduring intoxication, in dull obliviousness. I redical and Chirurgical Review, so long collect reading, I believe in the Meand so creditably conducted by Dr. Clutterbuck, the address of a proA pipe! a pipe! my heart's blood for a pipe?' fessor in some American University to Neither is there need of much physio- his pupils, on the bad effects of tobacco. logical acuteness, to account for the This address, sensible and spirited, bad effects of this pernicious habit on seemed to come from the professor's the health. Tobacco is a very pow- very heart. He deprecated, in the erful narcotic poison. If the saliva, most forcible manner, the practice of the secretion of which it provokes, be smoking which had been recently impregnated with its essential oil and taken up; and said, 'That prior to so swallowed, the deleterious influ- the period when pipes were to be ence is communicated directly to the seen in the mouth of every student, stomach; or if, as more frequently the youths of the university were as happens, it is ejected, then the bland- different in their looks from the indiest fluid of the human frame, that viduals with whom he was then surwhich, as a solvent and diluent, per-rounded, as health from disease.' forms an office in digestion secondary From Early Years and Late Refleconly to the gastric juice itself, is lost. tions. London, 1836.

A VOICE FROM THE FACTORIES. 1836.

"THERE the pale orphan, whose unequal strength
Loathes the incessant toil it must pursue,
Pines for the cool sweet evening's twilight length,
The sunny play-hour, and the morning's dew:
Worn with its cheerless life's monotonous hue.
Bowed down, and faint, and stupified it stands ;
Each half-seen object reeling to its view-
While its hot, trembling, languid little hands
Mechanically heed the task-master's commands.

There, sounds of wailing grief and painful blows
Offend the ear, and startle it from rest
(While the lungs gasp what air the place bestows);
Or misery's joyless vice, the ribald jest,

Breaks the sick silence: staring at the guest

Who comes to view their labour, they beguile

The unwatched moment; whispers half supprest

And mutterings low, their faded lips defile,

While gleams from face to face a strange and sullen smile.

These, then, are his companions: he, too young
To share their base and saddening merriment,
Sits by his little head in silence hung;

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His limbs cramped up; his body weakly bent;

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