"Yes, sah, I ought to hab; but I's jis now learnt how to chew crusts."

"How is that, Uncle Payne; I do not quite understand what you mean ?"

"Well, sah, you see I came to Jesus an' gib my heart to Him, and for a long time I thought de Lord mus' be feedin' me wid pie an' cake, an' all good things. I was not pleased if He didn't, but now I's satisfied any way. I can take a crus' from His han' as well as anything. I's got de witness in me."

How many are there who follow the Master, not because of the miracles which He did, but because they eat of the loaves and fishes, and are filled. How many seek the "pie and the cake," but spurn the idea of crusts, though presented by the Father's hand. We must take the crust as well as the cake, if we would have the witness in us.

MESSINA.

MESSINA, the Messana of the Romans, capital of the province of the same name in the Island of Sicily, is among the oldest of Italian cities. It is said to have been founded about 1,000 years before Christ by a colony from Greece, who called their settlement Zancle ("Sickle"), from the shape of the harbor on which it stood. In 396 B. C. it was destroyed by the Carthaginians, but was immediately rebuilt by Dionysius of Syracuse, who drove out the Punic invaders. Carthage and Rome grew powerful, and

houses, rising in the form of an amphitheatre, contrasting vividly with the dark mountains beyond them. The better portion of the city, paved with blocks of lava, contains many wide streets, ornamented with statues and fountains. There are more than fifty churches, of which the Cathedral is the most ancient. It is especially notable for the magnificence of its High Altar, the architects of which seem to have laid themselves out to exhaust all the résources of their art to render it worthy of the grandeur of the worship due to the Most High.

THE FAST OF RAMADAN

RAMADAN, "the hot," is the ninth month of the Mohammedan year, which commences on the 16th of July, that

the narrow strait of Messina alone separated their respective possessions. Carthage was bent on the conquest of Sicily, and assailed Messina, the people of which invoked the assistance of the Romans, who gladly availed themselves of this pretext for a contest with their encroaching neighbors. Hence arose the first Punic War. The Carthaginians were repelled; but the Romans reduced their allies to the condition of subjects, and Messina became the first permanent dependency of Rome outside of the mainland of Italy. Cicero makes special mention of Messina as a very great and rich city, and it was so during the Middle Ages. In 1743 it suffered severely from the plague. It was almost entirely destroyed by the great earthquake of 1783, but was soon rebuilt upon a better plan. Its present population is about 120,000. The harbor of Messina, about four miles in circuit, is one of the finest in the world. The city, when approached from the

ing the month immediately following their recovery. The moment when the welcome stars appear, the people give themselves up to feasting, which lasts through the night. The day is passed in sleeping and religious exercises. The fast of Ramadan is succeeded by three days of feasting, called the "little Bairam," during which the mosques are illuminated, and everybody puts on his newest and gayest attire. Our illustration represents the interior of a Turkish konah, or hall of prayer, during the Ramadan, with the devout worshipers performing their evening devotions.

HE that is sincerely obedient will not pick and choose what commands to obey and what to reject. He will lay such a charge upon his whole man as the mother of Christ did on the servants at the feast: "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."

THE following verses offer a by no means unhappy example of that disposition to discern and separate the various parts, functions, or forces of nature, or of human nature, and to pit them argumentatively against each other, which in our own time has culminated in Tennyson's "Two ...Voices."

The work of conviction and of triumph on the part of the soul is not long in doubt; but of course the body is justly represented as impulsive rather than polemical. We are indebted for these lines to a work entitled, "Select Poetry, chiefly sacred, of the reign of King James I.," collected and edited in 1847, by Mr. Edward Farr, who thus speaks of the volume from which the piece called "The Convert Soul" is taken: "The pages derived from this author are from MSS. in the possession of the editor. The volume, which consists of about eighty pages, appears to have been written about 1620. It consists of songs and spiritual lays, the whole of which have poetical merit; but carnal thoughts and heavenly desires occasionally strangely agglomerate."

The "Stanzas" which succeed the dialogue are to be found amongst the "Excerpta Poetica" of the times of Elizabeth and James I. in the "Restituta" of Sir Egerton Brydges, who printed them from a manuscript placed at his disposal by the Rev. H. J. Todd, editor of the works of Milton.

PAPER.

Senses I have, but so refined,

As well become their mother soul, Which suit the pleasure of the mind, And scale the heavens without control.

I little care for such a feast,
Which beasts can taste as well as I;
Nor am content to set my rest

On goods in show, in deed a lie.

Such cates and joys do I bequeath
To thee, fond body, which must die;
For I pretend unto a wreath

Wherein is writ eternity.

Thou to thy earth must straight return;
Whilst I, whose birth is from above,
Shall upward move, and ever burn
In gentle flames of heavenly love.

BODY.

But I one person am with thee,

And at the first was formed by God, That must I needs for ever be

Deap ashes, or a senseless clod?

SOUL.

Or that, or worse; but quit thy sense
To boast all body; learn to fly
Up with me, and for recompense
At length thou blest shall be as I.

THOMAS HEYWOOD was an actor; and of so great fecundity as a writer of plays that, for prolific production, his name must be placed soon after that of Lope de Vega on the roll of dramatic authors. He claims to have had "an entire hand, or at least a main finger," in no fewer than two hundred and twenty plays, of which only twenty-three have survived to our time. Of these perhaps the best known is "A Woman Killed with Kindness," which was produced in the year 1617. He had begun to write for the stage as early as 1596; and his last work, published in 1658, was an "Actor's Vindication." Little is known of the events of his life. The time of his birth is not ascertained; but it appears that he was a native of Lincolnshire, and a some-time fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. The approximate year of his death is given as above by inference from the date of his last work, coupled with a remark made by him in the preface to his "Hierarchie" (1635), that Time "will never suffer our brains to leave working till our pulses cease beating." It is with this work, from which the following powerful poem is taken, that we are concerned; and as it is little known a short description of it may not be out of place. It was written when the author was already in his old age; when time, to use his own words, had "cast snow upon his head." It is entitled "The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells: their Names, Orders, and Offices. The Fall of Lucifer, with his Angells." The dedication is melancholy for its unrealized expression of confidence in the good fortune of the King. "To the Most Excellent and Incomparable Lady, as famous for her illustrious vertues, as fortunat in her regall issue; Henretta Maria, Queene: The Royall Consort and Spouse of the puissant and invincible Monarch, our dread Soveraigne, King Charles." The nine books into which it is divided treat of (1) Seraphim, (2) Cherubim, (3) The Thrones, (4) The Dominations, (5) The Vertues, (6) The Powers, (7) The Principats, (8) The Arch-Angell, (9) The Angell; and the Orders of this hierarchy are represented severally by (1) Uriel, (2) Jophiel, (3) Zaphkiel, (4) Zadkiel, (5) Haniel, (6) Raphael, (7), Chamael, (8) Michael, (9) Gabriel. Each

"A Quære made the world throughout,

To find the GOD of whom some doubt."

The meditations generally are thoroughly religious, experimental, and often profound. Heywood's verse is deficient in harmony; but his directness, earnestness, and solemnity, frequently carry him far in the direction of the sublime.

SEARCH AFTER GOD.

I SOUGHT Thee round about, O Thou my God! To find Thy abode.

I said unto the Earth, "Speak, art thou He?" She answered me,

"I am not." I inquired of creatures all,

In general,

RCANTILES

Contained therein; they with one voice proclaim, That none amongst them challenged such a name.

I asked the seas, and all the deeps below,
My God to know.

I asked the reptiles, and whatever is
In the abyss;

Even from the shrimp to the Leviathan

Inquiry ran;

But in those deserts which no line can sound The God I sought for was not to be found.

I asked the air, if that were He? but know
It told me, No.

I, from the towering eagle to the wren,
Demanded then,

If any feathered fowl, 'mongst them were such;
But they all, much

LIERS Y

Offended with my question, in full quire
Answered, "To find my God I must look higher."

I asked the heavens, sun, moon and stars; but they Said, "We obey

The God thou seek'st." I asked what eye or ear
Could see or hear;

What in the world I might descry or know,
Above, below:

With an unanimous voice all these things said,
"We are not God, but we by Him were made."

I asked the world's great universal mass,
If that God was?

Which with a mighty and strong voice replied, (As stupefled),

"I am not He, O man! for know that I

By Him on high

Was fashioned first of nothing, thus instated And swayed by Him, by whom I was created."

I did inquire for Him in flourishing peace,
But soon 'gan cease:

For when I saw what vices, what impurity,
Bred by security

(As pride, self-love, lust, surfeit, and excess),
I could no less

Than stay my search; knowing where these abound, God may be sought, but is not to be found.

I thought then I might find Him out in war;
But was as far

As at the first; for in revenge and rage,
In spoil and strage,
Where unjust quarrels are commenced, and might
Takes place 'bove right;
Where zeal and conscience yield way to sedition,
There can be made of God no inquisition.