after he has gone on for years, be converted, and changed, and made over again, and brought to God; but he would not advise you to do the same. "Heaven and earth would pass," before one tittle of the law should fail in him,-the law that sin shall be the seed of sorrow. Ah! that man, although he is pardoned and saved, feels this, in the difficulty of salvation, in the bitterness of repentance, in what follows now, in his recollections and thoughts, in all the feelings that are sometimes rising within him, and interfering with the blessedness of the internal life; and were you to ask him, he would tell you, Oh! never, never follow my example, or reckon upon being, as I was, "plucked as a brand from the burning;" oh! never, never trust to that chance, or desire to realize my experience. I would have given anything, if I had been called in early life, if I had feared God from my youth, and given my heart and affections to Him through Christ early, to have been saved from all the sin which I committed, and all the bitterness which I had to feel in my regeneration, which I feel now, and which I shall feel to my dying day! Such an one may be a happy man, having hope and faith in God, and looking towards Him; but he is the worse for having lived so long in sin, before he was converted. And you want to do that; you are content to be like him! Mind, you are forgetting another law of your nature. If in opposition to religious truth, and religious teaching, and an enlightened conscience, and a knowledge of the Gospel, and the calls of Providence, you go on putting off, procrastinating, and rejecting until a future day, there is a law in operation within you which is providing for the production of such a state of heart, that you shall be "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin," that you shall come to be "past feeling," that your conscience shall be as if it were seared with a red-hot iron," and that all the means of grace shall be to you as nothing. That is the general law which is operating within you: and the conversion of any man who has enjoyed a religious education, known the Gospel, attended the ministry, and been intellectually acquainted with the things of Christ, living in impenitence and unbelief till forty or fifty, is an exception, the one in a thousand, compared with the general operation of the law. Take an illustration here. I will suppose myself standing, where I was not long ago, in the town of Buffalo, in the State of New York, where there is an expansive lake. Suppose a young man in a boat, to start as if he were going up that lake; everything is favourable; he is young, strong, and vigorous; he has got

his boat in the right direction, and he knows how to go. He sets off, when he has got a little way from the town, his eye falls on an opening of the waters; there is something attractive about it; there is verdure upon the banks, and beauty in the scenery; and if he goes on and on over the lake, he will get out of sight of land, and there will be a dreary and solitary feeling about it. Thero will be the pleasure of getting to the end, it is true; but here are pleasant banks, covered with beauty and verdure. He thinks of going down a little way; but he will come back again! I am young and strong, and the day is before me; suppose I go down a little while, I can pull back again! And so he enters into the bursting out of the waters. It is very beautiful, and calm, and placid, and it winds, and the beauty nears upon him, and he thinks-I may just go on a little further; it is so sweet and delicious; but I will pull back again; and he goes on. Now mind, here is law. Had he gone over the lake at first, all his strength would have been expended in the right direction, and every stroke of the oar would have carried him towards the point, which he wanted to go to; but now he is going down and down, and has to pull back against tide. Well, the man goes on, over the smooth surface of the water; but by-and-bye he finds himself going rather faster, and he cannot stop: there is an impetus and power impelling him on. Presently he hears the roar of the cataracts; he is upon the rapids, and fast approaching the waterfall. Strength is in vain here; the law must take its course, and he is precipitated into the abyss.

Now that is just the way with many a young man. He starts; he has a knowledge of truth and right in God's Word; he enters upon the morning of life; he may seem to take the first steps in the right direction, but he turns aside to vanity and folly, and thinks he will go a little way, while he may enjoy these, but he will give them all up, and come back again at last. Ay, but he goes on and on, till another law, operating in his nature, gives him an impossibility to retrace his steps, and nothing but the cataract of destruction can be his doom. This is the judgment of one of the greatest preachers of the day.

THE LAST REQUEST.

A pious father had his dying moments embittered by the thought of leaving behind him a thoughtless, and even profligate son. While the prodigal stood by the deathbed, softened, into something like contrition by the prospect of losing a tenderhearted parent, the dying man asked his son whether he would grant him a last

request. The weeping youth promised that he would not refuse whatever a dying parent might ask. The father, summoning his remaining energies, said, "Will you promise to spend a quarter of an hour every day in solitary reflections?" His departing spirit waited to hear the ready answer, "I will," and then took its flight to a better world. For the first day or two after the decease of his father, the son occupied the quarter of an hour in wondering why his father should have made so strange a request, and why he should have laid so much stress on a thing so extremely simple. By-and-bye, however, he began to feel it was not so very easy as he had anticipated, to spend even a quarter of an hour every day in solitary meditation-away from the society both of men and books. He began to see himself as he had never before seen himself; he saw that he had been guilty of the vilest ingratitude towards a parent infinitely more kind than his deceased father: he wondered he had been so long in making

the discovery; and wondered, still more anxiously, whether he might not yet be reconciled to this, the best of fathers and of friends. These thoughts led him to peruse his long-neglected Bible with an intent which he had never before felt in reading it. The Bible directed him to the mercy-seat of God, there to implore and to expect, through Christ, pardon, and acceptance, and renovation; and only a few weeks had elapsed when this once dissolute youth became what his fond father wished him to be.

JEALOUSY.

Jealousy violates contracts; dissolves society; breaks wedlock; betrays friends and neighbours; nobody is good; and every one is either doing or designing a mischief. Its rise is guilt or ill-nature, and by reflection it thinks its own fault to be other men's; as he that is overrun with the jaundice takes others to be yellow.

IF there be force in the saying of Young, that an "undevout astronomer is mad," we feel assured that he who cultivates the study of Natural History, and who does not, from its startling and impressive facts, find his faith in God confirmed at every stage of his progressive knowledge, is much like an idol that hath eyes, but seeth not, and ears, but heareth not. Our object in writing these papers will have failed, if our readers cannot sympathize with the sentiment of another of our poets.

"Blessed is he, in every hour,

If spring-time smile, or winter lour,
Who round him scattered hears or sees,
What still the attractive sense may please;
Who round him finds, perchance, unsought,
Fresh matter for improving thought;
And more, the more he looks abroad,
Marks, owns, and loves the present God."

Animal motion in insect life furnishes its quota of praise to "Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being," though we do not find the striking anatomical differences between the walking and the flying insect tribes, as we find them existing between quadrupeds and birds. Indeed, there are some insects, the ant and the aphis, for instance, which walk and fly at different periods of their lives; in fact, at one time, gaining wings, and, at another, losing them. Every one knows that the number and

size of wings varies much in the insect tribes; but it does not appear that the animal gains in powers of flight by the multiplication or large extent of its wings. The bee, for instance, is much more rapid in its motions than the butterfly. We must not overlook the rapidity of muscular action, and of alternating motion, in these minuter forms of God's glorious works. These will appear very extraordinary, if it be recollected, that on each vibration two muscles must be alternately put into action, and relaxed. Wherever the motion of the wings is audible, the rapidity of the motion can be measured by the law of musical vibrations; while, as the note appears very constant in each insect, it follows that there must be great precision in these motions. If the gnat hums louder in the ear as it approaches an individual, it is but the upper octave becoming audible by approximation, as is the case when a singing-master uses his tuning-fork.

The strength and endurance of insect motion is, if possible, more extraordinary than in the case of birds. Many insects seem to pass their whole life on the wing. Multiply the time that they are on the wing into the velocity with which they move, and the space traversed by animals so small and apparently feeble, will be astounding. Some insects, as the locust,

migrate to a great distance, and are, therefore, long on the wing. Rapid as are the motions of the swallow, they are far outstripped by the dragon-fly, to whose quick angularity of motion is to be added its power of flying backwards or forwards with equal ease, and of changing these directions instantaneously. Can the driver of a locomotive achieve this with his steam-engine, and when driving an express train at the height of his speed? Let him, who would admire the muscular power and rapid motion of insect life, watch one of them, while hovering with rapid wing over some flower, containing the nectar sweetness on which this little creature feeds.

Swimming, as a mode of animal motion, will furnish the student of natural history with much interesting matter of observation. Quadrupeds, in general, can adopt it as a security against accidents, though few will attempt it, unless hunger urge or danger compel. In their case, the motion differs little from walking, the buoyancy of the body accomplishing the rest. Where this buoyancy is great, as in the deer and the ox, the facility of swimming is in the same proportion increased. The great weight of the elephant, though sinking his body deeply in the water, does not prevent him from taking to a river, because his trunk enables him to breathe when his body is wholly immersed. In the amphibious mammalia, which are not always quadrupeds, there are sometimes peculiar constructions to enable the animal to swim. All marine divers have fins to replace the hinder legs, these animals, in their mode of life, approximating most nearly to the fish. The swimming birds display a graduated series of powers, not very different from those between which the otter and the seal range. No terrestrial bird takes to the water from choice, though easily floating upon it, as every one must have observed who has seen a young brood of ducks that have been hatched under a hen, when the ducklings, to the alarm of their fostermother, have hurried off to the neighbouring pond or brook. Some birds, that depend upon the sea for their food, as the terns, never touch the water, except with their bills. Gannets plunge into the sea like stones, without swimming or diving. Gulls, provided with paddles, swim, but do not dive. The stormy petrels, or Mother Cary's chickens, as the sailors call them, superstitiously considering them birds of ill-omen, as if associated with storms and tempests, live always on the waves. Their wings literally seem untiring:

"Up and down, up and down,

From the base of the wave to the billow's crown,
Amidst the flashing and feathery foam,
The stormy petrel finds a home;

A home, if such a place can be,
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,
On the craggy ice, in the frozen air;
And only seeketh her rocky lair

To warn her young, and teach them to spring,
At once o'er the waves on her stormy wing.'

In the long-winged divers, the swimming is effected chiefly by means of their paddled feet; in the short-winged divers, the action is compound, their web feet acting as oars and their short wings as paddles.

Every schoolboy is familiar with the action in water of the frog, and the lizard; and he may be informed, that that of the tortoise resembles the other two. It is the same principle of progression that appears in the seals.

A few animals, belonging truly to the sea, can not only live on the land, but also, at times, seek it. Such is the chironectes of Australia, which voluntarily quits the sea, and, by means of its pectoral and ventral fins, walks on the land after the manner of small quadrupeds, its fins performing the office of legs. It can thus remain, though really a fish, on land for several days, while most fish with fins die almost as soon as they are removed from their native element. That beautiful fish, the anabas scandens, of tropical seas, can not only quit the sea for the dry land, but, though much resembling a perch, has the singular instinct which induces it to climb trees. This extraordinary action it performs by means of the spiny processes of its gillcovers, as stated by Lieutenant Doldorff, who saw it ascending by a fissure in the stem of a palm at Tranquebar, and found it so tenacious of life as to move about for hours on the dry sand after it was captured on the tree. The eel, as is well known, has a similar power of quitting the water for the land; while the sand-eel buries itself so rapidly in the sand, that he must be quick indeed with his spade who digs the active creature from its lair. Even shell fish are deeply interesting for the rapidity of their motions. The razor-fish, for instance, a bivalve mollusk, remarkable for its long, narrow shell, like the pod or seedvessel of a plant, on the least alarm buries itself with amazing rapidity in the sand. The donax trunculus, an oblong, wedgeshaped bivalve, very general on our own shores, has its shell admirably shaped to enable it to burrow easily in the sand. The common cockle-cardium edule-is well known on all our coast; but, perhaps, it is not so well known, that by means of its foot, as the fleshy protuberance of the mollusks is called, it can emerge from the sand, raise itself briskly, advance, or retreat; that if desirous of sinking in the mud or sand it can lengthen this foot, and hook itself to any object by its extremity,

and then shorten it, and by bringing the shell to its point cuts the sand with its edge; that it can curve its foot into an arch and make a spring, then quickly straighten itself again, thus moving its whole boy with great agility; that in this way it has even been observed to jump to a considerable height. The limpet, which every stroller on the sea-beach has observed, when the tide is out, clinging by tens of thousands to the rocks,

"As close as though the stone It rests upon, and it, were one,"

can, when it chooses, crawl over the rocks, and find a new and more promising settlement, as well as any emigrant to Canada or Australia. And even the oyster, common as is the proverb, "As dull as an oyster," dances merrily, when young, with greatest rapidity, and has admirable powers of locomotion in the water, though, as it advances in years, it with becoming propriety increases in sedateness and gravity. Crus tacean animals are worth noticing, because of their motions. Crabs, for instance, though their sideway movements may not appear to us graceful, yet how rapidly when alarmed will it hie away to the cleft of a rock, or beneath a bunch of sea-weeds, as its retreat. It has been said that a single flap of the tail of the lobster will carry it through a space of thirty feet, and with unerring precision also into the narrow orifice which it has selected for its shelter. The recoil of water is another mode of motion, as in the tribe of salpa. In these, a tube, containing the gills, passes through the whole length of the body, furnished with a valve at one extremity, so that the action of breathing is also the swimming power. And then the light and elegant nautilus! Who has not heard of it, careering on the waves, and spreading its living sail to the light breeze?

And is all this chance? accident? luck? fortune? Is this the lame conclusion to which we come, when we have walked through a dockyard? when we have watched the motions of a power-loom? when we have traversed a gallery of marble statues? or when, in some iron foundry, we have seen the unconscious machinery forming the screw, planing smooth the face of the metal, or cutting deep into it the impres sion of the die? It is our happiest result of these investigations of the world around us to trace the Creator in the creature, to make science the handmaid of piety, and thus to transform our earth and universe into a temple, not built with hands, and everywhere refulgent with the glory of God. From our hearts we devoutly say,

"Thrice blest is he

Whose understanding mind can see,

In all that through the waters move,
In earth beneath and heaven above,
The Sovereign Power who Nature made,
The author in His works displayed."

November 9, 1852.

A HAPPY WORLD AFTER ALL.

The air, the earth, the water, teem with delightful existence. In a spring noon or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. "The insect youth are on the wing." Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or pur pose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties. A bee among the flowers in spring is one of the most cheerful objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment; so busy and so pleased; yet it is only a specimen of insect life, with which, by reason of the animal being half domesticated, we happen to be better acquainted than we are with that of others. The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent on their proper employments, and, under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the offices which the Author of nature has assigned to them. But the atmosphere is not the only scene of enjoyment for the insect race. Plants are covered with insects, greedily sucking their juices, and constantly, as it should seem, in the act of sucking. It cannot be doubted but that this is a state of gratification: what else should fix them so close to the operations, and so long? Other species are running about with an alacrity in their motions which carries with it every mark of pleasure. Large patches of ground are sometimes half covered with these brisk and sprightly natures. If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves. Their attitudes, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it, (which I have noticed a thousand times with equal attention and amusement,) all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess. Walking by the sea-side in a calm evening, on a sandy shore, and with an ebbing tide, I have frequently remarked the appearance of a dark cloud, or rather very thick mist, hanging over the edge of the water, to the height, perhaps, of half a yard, and of the breadth of two or three yards, stretching along the coast as far as the eye could