With garlands grey and true love knots In the paper entitled the Wife, associations from the remembrance of Thomson; and Eastham draws its deepest interest from the writer of the Task, though Hayley, its owner, was thought a poet in his day. In Bracebridge Hall, its author has turned a mirror upon every part of the domain, in which we may see reflected, parks with their sauntering herds, glossy woodlands, orchards bending with fruitage, rivulets gliding through fluted marble, and Irving himself, with his sylvan Druidical hatchet, or his pruning hook, pulling the purple grape, watching the goldfinch in its flight, or clasping the lawn dove in his hand. It would not be right in this connexion, to withhold from Irving, due praise for the reverent use he has made of the scriptures. A perversion or two of scriptural passages may be found in his works, but we do not believe that he clearly saw them to be perversions. The habit of introducing the scriptures into ordinary writing, is becoming increasingly common, and custom, so far from reconciling us to it, only renders it the more obnoxious. When we meet with passages of the sacred word, violently rent from their original connexions and transplanted into tales and romances, or profane ballads, or accommodated to passing political events, or used to adorn some effusion of a thoughtless festivity, to say the least, it is a violation of good taste, and at the same time awfully irreverent. We are sustained in these remarks, by the judicious biographer of Dennie, in reference to the use he made of the scriptures in his Lay Preacher. Of the Lay Preacher we can never speak save with affection. Those papers are associated with the recollections of youth, when we reclined near the twisted roots of the oak and the elm tree. Irving has fallen into several common-place phrases, such as "the natural religion of the heart-and time alone being able to cure our sorrows." We regret too, that he should have soiled his Stratford on Avon, by copying the profane epitaph from Shakspeare's tomb. We lean to the belief, however, that this piece of awful levity has of late been dropped out of that otherwise interesting paper. Though not free from blemishes, we should still hope that the works of Irving place him at a vast remove from the deism of Walpole, the impurity of Montaigne, the levity of Voltaire, the incongruities of Rousseau, the bold profanity of the younger Lyttleton, and the atheism of Bolingbroke. Still, he belongs to a class of writers who seem afraid of deep and serious piety, lest it should spoil their minds or vitiate their taste. One knows not whether to weep or smile, at the apprehensions indulged by the friends of Mrs. Carter (some of them clerical friends too) lest she should become as religious as Mrs. Rowe. Mrs. Barbauld expresses her sage astonishment, that Dr. Price should ever look to the Divine mercy, seeing he had merit enough to look to the Divine justice. Southey tells us that Wesley's eloquence opened the living spring of piety, pent up in the hearts of thousands. It is rumoured, since the publication of the Epicurean, that Moore has become religious-that is, he has become an Arian and a Universalist. St. Pierre too, no doubt, thought himself abundantly stocked with his theistical religion. But how little do we hear of the holiness of the Creator, what feeble views of him as a Lawgiver, what distant hints of the mediatorial system, what a confused recognition of our accountability to the Judge of all. But we still live in hopes that the time will quickly pass away, when enlightened men will cease to display ignorance of the fundamental truths of the scriptures. When Collins was dying he had but one book, and that he pronounced to be the best of all books-it was the New Testament. It is indeed a sentiment too common, that errors, both in life and opinion, are sanctified by genius. Dr. Channing has lately forbidden us to speak lightly of papal errors, because the church of Rome has been upheld by men of great intellectual eminence. He gives us a proud array of men who figured in the revival of Italian literature. We are perfectly aware that men of talents have upheld the stately structure of papal delusion, but we never supposed that from this circumstance we were to look with less aversion on the use of holy water, or the smoking incense, the worship of the Virgin Mary, the rosary, and crucifix. Dr. Channing often smiles at the vast multiplication of Greek and Roman gods. But this system was supported by greater men than Boccacio and Petrarch, Ariosto and Dante; yet Dr. Channing will not in consequence become a worshipper in the Pantheon, or an inquirer at the oracle of Dodona. The system of infidelity has been countenanced by great men, but we never believed that high intellectual endowments rendered their possessors less culpable, or less responsible for depravity of heart. Many smile at the astronomy of Tycho Brahe, who still believe him to have been a man of genius. It would not be difficult to show that the prophets employ irony and satire against image worship, and we can see no good reason why the same weapons should not be employed at this day. The scriptures have foretold the rise of papal delusion, and have used awful comminations against its abettors. The Papists have employed satire against the Protestants; and perhaps Dr. Channing forgot that one of their genealogical church trees is fuller of saints considerably, than of birds; and that they have shown one Arius falling out of the tree, like a criminal from the Tarpeian rock. Some of Dr. Channing's own list of great men poured out on the papacy the vials of their indignation. He cannot deny that in some of the stories of the Decameron, Boccacio has evinced no great respect for the monks, and other appendages of this tremendous system of error. Religion cannot sanctify errors, because they happen to be the errors of genius. But though she cannot approve of error, there is nothing in religion that seeks to narrow the human mind, or so to fix it on the supreme pursuit, as to prevent just attention to inferior objects. He must have been at pains to acquire a taste fastidious indeed, who could turn away from such productions of the muse as the Palestine of Heber-Montgomery's World before the Flood -Hannah More's Sacred DramasDale's Widow of Nain, or his Outlaw of Taurus. In reading them, we feel that there is consistency between the sentiments and lives of the writers; and though these poems do not belong to the first class of compositions, yet all through, our hearts confess the influence of a deep moral enchantment. The piety of that man is fast becoming morbid, who repudiates all the embellishments of taste. It is a pleasing and instructive fact, in the biography of Dr. Thomas Scott, that though he had filled the church with the incense of his fragrant deeds, and stood quite on the verge of heaven, he spent some of his last days in the study of the Greek tragedians. 46 It appears to have formed one of the designs of Pollok, to trace, in a prose work, the connexions of Christianity with literature in all ages." This was not a design entirely novel, for Chateaubriand long since suggested it in his "Beauties of Christianity." But his mind is too erratick, and his false brilliancy is always overpowering his common sense. The sub ject, as stated by Pollok, is too There is something, however, better than fame and sweeter than praise. Though literature be a fountain, it may be a fountain rising only in the vernal months of life, and having its course among a few fleeting flowers. In other seasons it may show nothing but white sands, or useless pebbles, or a rock, that refuses to send out more sup plies. But if any man, said the blessed Saviour, drink of the water that I shall give him, that water shall be in him a well of water springing up into eternal life. Literary and Philosophical Intelligence, etc. Dr. Forster has conducted a variety of experiments to show that original and reflected light may be distinguished from each other by causing the object glass of a telescope to vibrate, so as rapidly to change the inclination of its plane to the object; in which case reflected light remains unchanged after its refraction; whereas original light becomes decomposed into its colours. The fixed stars gave coloured light; the planets white; though the latter might be decomposed like the former through a prism. The discovery will be applied to ascertain whether comets shine by native or borrowed light. Dr. Johnson's favourite willow tree, which he always went to see when he visited Litchfield, was lately blown down, It is stated to have measured no less than twenty-nine feet in circumference. Captain Ross has sailed on another voyage for the discovery of the north-west passage. Tobacco is extensively planted in Ireland; and the quantity grown last year, if foreign and imported, would have yield. ed $140,000 to the revenue. No duty is attached to Irish tobacco, but the growth is interdicted in England. Beet-root sugar can now be manufac. tured in France as low as three pence per lb. and is likely to be still cheaper. The process of boring for water is practised with great success in Paris. Two sheets of water flow beneath the Paris basin; one between the chalk and the green sand, the other at a greater depth. From the last of these the water is discharged at St. Ouen to the height of ten or twelve feet. M. Champollion writes from Monfal outh, "I went at sunrise to visit these hypogeums, and was agreeably surprised on finding a wonderful series of paintings, perfectly visible, even in the minutest details, on being damped with a sponge, and removing the fine dust which covered them. We set to work and gradually discovered the most ancient series of paintings in the world, relating to civil life, the arts and trades, and the military caste. The animals are painted with such elegance and truth, that we shall need the testimony of the fourteen wit ג nesses who have seen them, to induce people in Europe to believe in the fidelity of our drawings." This abode among the tombs has produced a portfolio of drawings, which already exceed 300 in number. The introduction of Christianity among the Hottentots has improved their character almost to a miracle. Habits of cleanliness and industry have grown up among them. They exercise useful trades: the best forge in the colony belongs to a Hottentot, who has nine apprentices and three English journeymen; and the only asylum in the colony for the sick, the aged, and the poor, was built by Hottentots, and at their expense. We bless God that these deserving men will no longer be the victims of colonial oppres sion; that the law at least protects them; and we doubt not there will be found just and benevolent persons to see that it is enforced for their benefit. Oyster Trees.-The Seville, or bitter orange tree, abounds on the margin of the island of Jakel, situated in the mouth of the Altamaha river, in Georgia; and the lower branches being submerged in the waters of the river at times when it is high, thousands of oysters attach themselves to them, and thus, when the tide falls, present the curious phenomenon of that tes taceous fish growing on them, as part of the fruit of the orange tree. What adds to the singularity of the appearance, says the Mississippi Statesman and Gazettefrom which we learn the above particu lars-is the fact, that the upright branches of the tree are frequently found abounding in their natural fruit, while the lower ones present strange looking clusters of their marine adoption. An account of a similar phenomenon is given in the subjoined passage from a work, entitled "A Voyage to South America in 1823." "On a branch of the river Tomboz, in Peru, a singular appearance is presented by the oysters which line its banks. The reader has heard of that extraordinary tree in Numington, so large that a coach and horses can be driven with ease through its hollow trunk!—of that wide spreading oak at Nismes, said to cover an acre of ground!-as also of the far-famed Indian Ūpas, so baneful in its effects that instant death would attend the temerity of that traveller who should approach within five miles of it, and whose vicinage is covered with the dead bodies of the animals, reptiles, birds, and insects, which have ventured within the sphere of its contagious influence! But has he ever heard of the oyster tree?-a tree on which oysters were the fruit. Nay, start not, gentle reader. This branch of the main river that I have been speaking of is so lined with trees and underwood as almost to exclude the rays of the sun. The branches of these trees, like the weeping willow, grow downward: at high water, the tide rising and falling six or seven feet every twelve hours, and overwhelming the low lands, these branches become partly immersed in the water. Thou sands of oysters attach themselves to them, and at low tide they are seen suspended several feet above water, and present a curious spectacle. We plucked two boat loads of this species of marine fruit, which, though small, nearly equalled those of the Chesapeake." In Harte's Essays the following passage occurs. It is an extract from one of Bishop Latimer's discourses, preached before Edward the Sixth, and as it relates to the Bishop's own personal history, and is also a just picture of the ancient yeomanry, and moreover shows the familiarity with which a king might be addressed in those days, it is curious. "My father was a yeoman, and had londes of his own, onlye he had a farme of three or four pound by yere, at the uttermost; and hereupon he tilled so much as kepte halfe a dozen men. He had walke for a hundred sheps, and my mother mylked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the kynge a harnesse, with himselfe and hys horse, whyle he came to the place that he should recyve the kynge's wages. I remembre that I buckled hys harnes, when he went into Blackheath felde. He kepte me to schole, or elles, I had not been able to have preached before the kynge's majestie now. He marryed my sisters with five pounde, or twenty nobles a pece; so that he brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kepte hospitalitie for his poore neighbours, and sum almess he gave to the poore, and all thys did he off the sayd farme." This sermon was preached about the year 1550. Rumford Premium.—The following article, from a Baltimore paper, relative to the Rumford Premium, should be widely circulated, for the information of our men of science. The reward proposed, is, both in a pecuniary and honorary view, one of the most brilliant ever offered for the competition of scientific effort. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in conformity to their vote accepting the donation of Count Rumford, will at their statute meeting in May next, take into consideration the discoveries and useful improvements which may come to their knowledge, which shall have been "made and published by printing, or in any way made known to the public in any part of the continent of America, or in any of the American Islands, during the preceding two years, on heat or on light;" and will award to the author of the most important discovery or improvement the Rumford premium, of a gold and a silver medal of the value of three hundred dollars, and the farther sum of about fifteen hundred dollars in money, it being the interest of the said donation for the two years. Application for this premium, founded on any discovery or improvement, coming within the conditions prescribed by Count Rumford, addressed to the officers of the society, will of course be duly attended to. Dry Atmosphere.-All over the southeast part of Persia, to within a few miles of the Persian Gulf, the air is so dry, that the brightest steel may be laid bare to the atmosphere, at all hours, without the slightest shade in its brilliancy. To find a rose with a sparkle of dew upon it, from March to September, would be regarded almost equal to a miracle. Modern Authors.-It has been calculated, that at present, exclusive of occasional writers, there are upwards of 5000 authors in Great Britain, who rely solely on the productions of their brains for subsistence. Of these, a considerable number are connected with the periodical presses, in its various gradations, from the dignified quarterly and monthly publications, to the ephemeral of four pages, which lives its little hour and perishes forever. Of the aggregate number of authors, it is presumed that not more than 500 enjoy the comfort and respectability to which, they are entitled by their ta lents, and the industry with which these are exercised. It is also found that, as in most other occupations, those who labour hardest obtain the most scanty remuneration. Connexion of the Atlantic with the Pacifick.-Says a Bogota paper, "The Topographical Commission appointed to examine the obstacles which oppose the opening of a communication between the Atlantick and Pacifick, through the Isthmus of Panama, have informed the government that in their opinion one considerable difficulty has vanished, in the discovery that the two seas have the same level; but, notwithstanding this, they consider the |