pleasure. All that it forbids you is sin. And do you wish for a licence to sin comfortably? God forbid! Every Christian will tell you that the law of God, which it is his delight to obey, leaves open to him the enjoyments of all those innocent comforts connected with our situation in this world as men, which his own mercy has so amply provided for us, and provided that they may be used. Does religion deprive me of any pleasures? Does it diminish my enjoyment? No, my dear child. To the honour and glory of my blessed Lord, let me tell you, it was this that held up my soul when passing through the deep waters, when I lost your dear father, which enabled me to rejoice in God, and to feel, that, although my earthly prospects were shrouded in darkness, all was safe-all was well; which has enabled me sometimes to feel, that, though the whole creation were shivered to atoms and mingled together in one universal wreck, I should still find all to be safe and well. I have given you to God, and I do so every day. You must, my dear boy, be his servant, and you shall find his service to be perfect freedom. SIR WALTER RALEIGH TO HIS SON. Know that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors, for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint thy follies and vices, as thou shalt never, by their will, discover good from evil, or vice from virtue. And because all men are apt to flatter themselves, and entertain the addition of other men's praises is most perilous. If thy friends be of better quality than thyself, thou mayest be sure of two things: first, they will be more careful to keep thy counsel, because they have more to lose than thou hast; the second, they will esteem thee for thyself, and not for that which thou dost not possess. JUDGE HALE TO HIS SON. You are like a small vessel beginning to put out to sea, wherein are many rocks and quicksands, which, beside accidental storms and tempests, may endanger you in your voyage. And many times youths do contract those ill customs about your age, that either ruin them betimes, or, like an evil genius, follow them to their graves; or, at best, are not without difficulty and loss of time broken. My business at this time is to give you some counsels in writing that may abide with you, and may be frequently considered by you, for the avoiding those rocks and dangers that are incident to your age, complexion, and future condition. And it will be your wisdom, reputation, and advantage, often to consider them, constantly to observe them, and in them to look upon me as present, advising you, observing you, and reprehending your neglect, or commending your observance. And, indeed, you have a stricter eye upon you than mine can be, which is upon your ways, though mine always cannot be. The advice that is given you comes from a father, and, therefore, carries in it love and authority; and it comes from one that hath, by God's assistance, passed through your age and the dangers incident to it, and hath had a strict observation and long experience, and, therefore, carries in it more weight and safety. REV. RICHARD CECIL TO HIS SON. There is one point you should never lose sight of that when a youth takes ill courses he begins to be shy of his parents, that is, of his only true and fast friends. He secretly forms connections with broken, if not dangerous reeds; and often plunges thereby into difficulties and disappointments that his real friends cannot help him out of. I am rejoiced to see you take the contrary course. I marked that wise and dutiful confidence with which you trusted me, and that jealousy as to how you stood in my mind. Watch against anything which may damp and impede this early friendship with your truest friend, and you will PROSPER. DANCING. Forbes, in his celebrated "Oriental Memoirs," gives the following information :"It is well known that the Asiatics of either sex, of any respectability, never dance themselves. Throughout Hindos tan, the master of a feast sends for the public dancing-girls and musicians to entertain his guests. An Indian of respectability could never consent to his wife or daughter dancing in public; nor can they reconcile the English dances to their ideas of female delicacy. I remember an amiable Hindoo at Bombay being taken to a veranda overlooking the assembly-room where a number of ladies and gentlemen were dancing. On his conductor asking him how he liked the amusement, he replied, 'I not quite understand this business; but in our caste we say, If we place butter too near the fire, butter will melt."" THE PASSIONS. I not only consider pride as the origin of hatred, in its various branches, as malice, envy, jealousy, revenge, &c., but consider all these passions to be nothing else than modifications of pride. That ambition proceeds from the same source will be more readily apparent. Ambition is indeed. very evidently nothing else than pride directed to certain objects. The greatest difficulty that presents itself is in finding terms to express my definition of pride; the best I can at present think of, is that of a resistless propensity to extend the idea of self. This propensity leads every man to create around himself a sort of circle, which, in imagination, he completely fills, and which he perpetually endeavours to enlarge, by carefully stuffing into it as many objects as he can possibly find means to appropriate. Pride having once adopted as its own all that it has thus identified with self, is bound to defend the possessions thus acquired from being intrided on by the pride of his neighbours. When the two circles come near each other, pride instantly assumes the form of jealousy; when they come in contact, pride sends anger to the post of danger; and, if the enemy is so strong as to occasion fear, malice mounts perpetual guard. As it is in the very nature of things that pride must have its own will uppermost, the least apprehension of its being otherwise brings him forth in the shape of envy; and in this shape he is most apt to exhibit himself when circumstances confine the bounds of his circle within narrow limits. In such circumstances, the confinary circle becomes quite invincible to others; so that it is often exposed to rude shocks, which never, however, fail to call up resentment, or malice, or revenge. I have known instances in which pride has not been con tented with extending itself in one direction; it appropriates, as its own, the future time, and travels by feeding on the posthumous honours that shall attend the mones of the great for ages yet to come. This, you will say, is rather vanity than pride; but, as far as my observations reach, the difference between the two passions is entirely occasioned by the strength or weakness of the mind on which they operate. Vanity does not, indeed, defend its pretensions by the same weapons, and, for this good reason, because it has the happy art of persuading itself that its pretensions are, on all hands, allowed; and that its rights are indefensible. When this persua sion is imperfect, vanity may be seen asserting its ideal rights by means of malice, envy, jealousy, and the more cowardly of the vindictive passions.-Elizabeth Hamil ton. FAULTS OF NURSES. 1. To lisp in a baby style, when the same words, in an endearing tone, would please as well; the reverse should be-the voice clear-toned, and each syllable distinctly articulated for imitation. 2. To tell of witches, ghosts, and goblins; such superstitions, impressed upon young minds, are rarely got rid of. 3. To direct a child to act like a man; whereas, it is not often becoming for a little boy to ape a man, but only to conform his demeanour to his age; every age has its own peculiar decorousness. Natural Bistory and Philosophy. PLANTS: THEIR PRESERVATION Lo! here thy wondrous skill arrays Annuals seem to grow for no other purpose than to produce seeds and present an endless variety. This being accomplished, they die, as if in leaving a posterity they Lad accomplished their chief destiny. For this the plant struggles against every difficulty, whatever check, accident, or mutilation it meets with. Cut off its flowers, cut itself down, still it resists, proceeding with unconquered obstinacy to effect its great object. Its life can sometimes be prolonged by this opposition for a second year, as if determined not to yield existence till it had accomplished its destiny. Perennials exhibit the great care of the Creator in his contrivances for protecting the future flower through the winter, when such protection is necessary. This appears in the exquisite packing of the buds, their investing scales, down or hair, with the coat of varnish that covers them, when the flower-bud is formed before the frosts are over. To a great extent the flower is a superfluity, an example of "gratuitous beauty," while it also contains provision for the feeding of insects. Protection is afforded by the calyx which envelopes every part of the bud, while in a tender condition, especially guarding, as is admirably seen in the rose, the unopened flower from the hurtful access of water. In the cistus, a flower of great delicacy, a varnish conjoins with the calyx in protecting the bud from the rains. The calyx of the poppy is lax, and not very firmly closed: but, as a set-off to this, the flower-bud bends by a curvature of the stem, and erects itself only when a more effectual protection is no longer necessary. Under all this care and concealment, the essential parts, destined to produce the perfect seed, are growing safely under cover until the flower is prepared to open to the light, necessary for the completion of the design. Some plants, by a vegetable instinct, as mysterious as animal instinct, turn their flowers to the sun, and others close their petals, when warned, as pimpernel, of the approach of rain, or as the cold of night advances and endangers their susceptible organisation. The protection bestowed on the formed but undispersed seeds is visible in the minutest fungi, where the capsule does not open till they are ready for the winds to bear them away. In the boleti, their roof forms a shelter from the rain, increased in their security by the beautiful tuber in which their almost invisible seeds are enclosed. Seeds make no effort to vegetate, as a general rule, till they are in circumstances to insure their great end. Dormant life exists in the dry seed. This, like the preservation of life in an egg, is a mystery. An atom can lie dormant for years, for centuries, and then start up a living being: and this with no extraordinary, much less miraculous, interposition of Providence, but simply by means of moisture, warmth, and light! Maize found in the tombs of Peru has germinated after a period of three centuries. Seeds found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, after a period of eighteen centuries, have sprung into life. Egyptian corn, that, three thousand years ago at least, was buried with the human mummy in the sarcophagus, has been sown in Britain, and multiplied its kind. The vitality of seeds is astonishing. A piece of ground cannot be turned up, buried soil cannot be brought nigh the surface, but plants, before unseen, spring up. The flowers of a long-forgotten parterre, the dormant records of the past, surprise the new cultivator of an ancient demesne; while the mountain-moor, producing for generations only heath and rushes, has been covered with clover in a single summer by the application of lime as a manure. The buried seed will neither die nor germinate. Beneath the needful depth, the germ is as torpid, yet immortal, as if laid in a dry rock. Had it been otherwise, the Creator's design would have been frustrated. Philosophy says that the seed must be within reach of light and air. Why should not the action of both penetrate a depth of twenty as well as of two inches? God has so commanded. Can science go further than this? Devout piety delights to be brought by science itself into the presence of the First Cause. Berries and other fruits have a material superfluous to the seed, but useful as the food of animals, but in these cases the seeds are wisely produced in numbers far exceeding the mere purpose of perpetuation. In some cases the seed is distasteful, or is protected from the digestive powers of animals, so that its own proper uses are still attained, after the fruit has been eaten; and when animals, like the squirrel, can conquer the best protected seeds, the profuse abundance of the kind shows that the Creator has provided a sufficient plenty. The cone of the fir presents a familiar example of the beauty and sufficiency of the mechanism which is employed in the preservation of seeds, while, at the same time, when their escape becomes necessary, it is easily effected, by the retroflexion of the scales on drying, which allows the winged seed, still protected within a hard shell, to take flight. In stone-fruit, as the peach and the cocoanut, the protection afforded by the shell is so effectual that it requires no little force to get at the kernel. Yet how easily does nature provide for the deliverance of the prisoner when it becomes safe to set the seed at liberty, the circumstances necessary for its germination being present ! Mere moisture suffices to overcome all resistance, penetrating the fissures which we cannot find, while the increasing expansion of the cotyledons irresistibly does the rest. Can philosophy explain what is the power of expansion, which, in a feeble seed, splits even the solid rock; which, in the tender root of a tree, lifts weights that only yield to our powerful wedges and screws; and which enables the radicle, small as a pin and soft as paste, to perforate the hard ground, excavating its way with as much precision and success as any railroad contractor. The germ forms but a very small portion of the seed, but the cotyledons not only protect the germ, but are a provision for its early nourishment and support, being the lungs and stomach of the infant plant, as the body of an egg performs similar offices for the included chick. Species of plants refuse to propagate ex cept by seeds; others multiply by slips forcibly separated, or by radical shoots, tubers, or bulbs; others by deflexed and rooting stems, by runners, by stem-borne bulbs, and even by rooting leaves. The oak sends up an almost immortal progeny from its roots, while the fallen fir is exterminated for ever. Grasses are ordained to grow most rapidly under the most continued injury that they receive from the feet of animals feeding on them, conferring thus on their roots a vitality which, in the arid plains of tropical climates, covers the ground in a few days with a green carpet, after having been baked for months in a heat in which it might be supposed no vegetable life could exist. From the seed of the potato we cannot have a useful plant in less than three years; from its tuber we possess it in a single season. The fallen oak gives us a dozen trees, while its seeds would have produced plants long struggling with difficulties around them. The dismembered branch of a willow laid down, and in a few years we have a tree which, by seed, would not have been produced in twenty. Like the bulbs of the tulip, the tubers of the potato, and the offsets of the strawberry, the read and the banyan produce forests where the more usual efforts of nature would long have been slow in advance. The process of grafting, though it does not multiply the number of plants, multiplies the number of any desired plant, and is a saving of time in the production of a tree, while it enables man to influence for his own uses the forms and qualities of plants, as, by other means, he does his animais. Though ignorant of the laws which obtain these results, we cannot resolve them into a natural necessity; but we must resolve these singular processes into the Divine beneficence which has made such ample provision, in the perfec tion of vegetable life, for the support of the animal creation, and which has, in such variety of ways, secured the perpetuation and multiplication of plants. June 2, 1852. SOLAR SYSTEM. According to the state of our knowledge at the close of this half of the nineteenth century, the Solar Region includes the following bodies, arranging the planets according to their respective distances from the central body : 22 Principal Planets: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Flora, Victoria, Vesta, iris, Metis, Hebe, Parthenope, Irene. Astroa, Egeria, Juno, Ceres, Pallas, Hygiea, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. 21 Satellites: 1 belonging to the Earth, 4 to Jupiter, 8 to Saturn, 6 to Uranus, 2 to Neptune. 197 Comets whose orbits have been caleulated. Of these 6 are interior; that is, such as have their aphelia within the outermost of the planetary orbits. To these we may probably addThe Ring of the Zodiacal Light, which probably lies within the orbits of Venus and Mars. The swarms of the Meteor-Asteroids which more especially intersect the earth's orbit at certain points.-Humboldt. 271 colour; and on the back of its head is a crest, or bunch of feathers. marshes, but builds its nest on lofty trees. It lives near It lives on frogs, eels, and other kinds of fish, and will devour an immense quantity. It is fond of its young. A gentleman took a young one from its nest at Walton-onThames, to his own walled garden some miles distance. The next morning one of the old birds had found out its place of confinement, and was busy in feeding it. This he continued very faithful to do, till one day the young heron managed to make its escape. BAT. This animal mentioned in Lev. xi. 19, is said to be too much of a bird, to be properly a mouse, and too much of a mouse to be properly a bird. Its name in Hebrew means "flying in the dark." consist of a thin skin, covering the whole Its wings body, and stretching over the fore and hind legs. They feed on insects, and sleep during the winter. Isaiah ii. 20, says men shall cast their idols to the bats; that is, shall carry them to dark caverns, old ruins, or desolate places, and regard them with contempt, as unholy things. This word occurs only Lev. xi. 29. The animal is about seven inches long, and two and a-half high, is of a reddish brown colour on the back, has large ears, whiskers like a cat, small round black eyes, and thirty-two sharp teeth. tive to eggs, poultry, rabbits, and also to It is very destrucrats and mice. It is remarkably active, but wild and untractable, though there have been instances in which it has been tamed. MOUSE. A well-known little troublesome animal, but unclean. Its increase is prodigious. A farmer in Norfolk lately informed the writer that he had taken two bushels of mice out of one stack of corn. Some of the species are of a white colour, with fine full red eyes. TORTOISE. Occurs in Lev. xi. 29 only; but Dr. Clarke thinks that the frog is intended. The tortoise is covered with a beautiful snaillike shell; is slow, quiet, inoffensive, and can endure long fasting. One in the Zoological Gardens in 1833 weighed 283 lbs. One at Peterborough was 210 years old. FERRET. This animal is known in England only in a kind of domestic state, but is a native of Africa. It is about fourteen inches in length, and the tail five; and is of a pale yellow. It breeds twice a-year, and is used in hunting rabbits and rats. CHAMELEON. A small animal of the lizard kind, with four feet, a long flat tail, no ears, but telescopic eyes, that move separately, and can be directed upwards or forwards. It feeds on flies, caught by the rapid protrusion of a long and viscous tongue. The faculty of changing the colour of its skin has no reference to the substance it may be placed but to its respiratory organs acting upon a transparent skin, and on the blood of the animal. It is slow, inoffensive, and capable of considerable abstinence from food. on, LIZARD. A cold-blooded animal, of the conformation of a serpent, but with four feet. There are various species; some living on land, and some in water. SNAIL. Having neither feet nor claws with which to creep or climb; it has a broad thin skin along each side of the belly, and an undulating motion there by which it creeps. Poetry. "WE OUGHT TO OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN.” KINGS and princes, here below, Reverence for the God above; Though he knew the king's command, Knelt before the God of Truth, Worshipped towards his native land; And that God whom Daniel served To his faith high honour gave, In the lions' den preserved Life which he had scorned to save. "T was a lesson Jesus taught, On the shores of Galilee, Champions for the living God! Throughout ages long since fled,— KATE PYER. ON HEARING THE REV. R. WATSON Kindling with seraph ardour that reveals Thy prophet accents strike with conscious dread, Unfolding depths of holy mystery, As Sinai's thunderings o'er the awe-struck head. Still, like the gifted seer of Chebar's stream, Rapt in high vision, may'st thou comprehend The sacred import of each hallowed dream, Where Heaven's mysterious inspirations blend, Till, where bright cherubim adoring glow, Thine is each truth which Plato died to know. THE SACRAMENT. From the Italian of Ferretti. REJOICE, O brethren, in the Lord, |