to the service of the souls and the understandings of mankind, both masters and servants, as to supersede the necessity of a particular day. At present our Sunday may be considered as so much Holy Land, rescued from the sea of oppression and vain luxury, and embanked against the fury of their billows.

RIDE AND TIE.

"ON a scheme of perfect retribution in the moral world"--observed Empeiristes, and paused to look at, and wipe his spectacles.

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Frogs," interposed Musaello, "must have been experimental philosophers, and experimental philosophers must all transmigrate into frogs."

"The scheme will not be yet perfect," added Gelon, "unless our friend Empeiristes, is specially privileged to become an elect frog twenty times successively, before he reascends into a galvanic philosopher."

"Well, well,” replied Empeiristes, with a benignant smile, " I give my consent, if only our little Mary's fits do not recur."

Little Mary was Gelon's only child, and the darling and god-daughter of Empeiristes. By the application of galvanic influence Empeiristes had removed a nervous affection of her right leg, accompanied with symptomatic epilepsy. The tear started in Gelon's eye, and

he pressed the hand of his friend, while Musaello, half suppressing, half indulging, a similar sense of shame, sportively exclaimed, " Hang it, Gelon! somehow or other these philosopher fellows always have the better of us wits, in the long run!"

JEREMY TAYLOR.

THE writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor are a perpetual feast to me. His hospitable board groans under the weight and multitude of viands. Yet I seldom rise from the perusal of his works without repeating or recollecting the excellent observation of Minucius Felix. Fabulas et errores ab imperitis parentibus discimus; et quod est gravius, ipsis studiis et disciplinis elaboramus.

CRITICISM.

MANY of our modern criticisms on the works of our elder writers remind me of the connoisseur, who, taking up a small cabinet picture, railed most eloquently at the absurd caprice of the artist in painting a horse sprawling. "Excuse me, Sir," replied the owner of the piece, " you hold it the wrong way: it is a horse galloping."

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

OUR statesmen, who survey with jealous dread all plans for the education of the lower orders, may be thought to proceed on the system of antagonist muscles; and in the belief, that the closer a nation shuts its eyes, the wider it will open its hands. Or do they act on the principle, that the status belli is the natural relation between the people and the government, and that it is prudent to secure the result of the contest by gouging the adversary in the first instance? Alas! the policy of the maxim is on a level with its honesty. The Philistines had put out the eyes of Samson, and thus, as they thought, fitted him to drudge and grind

Among the slaves and asses, his comrades,

As good for nothing else, no better service:

But his darkness added to his fury without diminishing his strength, and the very pillars of the temple of oppression—

With horrible convulsion, to and fro,

He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them with burst of thunder,

Upon the heads of all who sat beneath;

Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests,
Their choice nobility.

The error might be less unpardonable with a statesman of the continent;-but with En

glishmen, who have Ireland in one direction, and Scotland in another; the one in ignorance, sloth, and rebellion,-in the other general information, industry, and loyalty, verily it is not error merely, but infatuation.

PICTURESQUE WORDS.

Who is ignorant of Homer's Πήλιον εινοσίφυλλον? Yet in some Greek manuscript hexameters I have met with a compound epithet, which may compare with it for the prize of excellence in flashing on the mental eye a complete image. It is an epithet of the brutified archangel, and forms the latter half of the verse,

Κερκοκερώνυχα Σατάν.

Ye youthful bards! compare this word with its literal translation, "tail-horn-hoofed Satan," and be shy of compound epithets, the components of which are indebted for their union exclusively to the printer's hyphen. Henry More, indeed, would have naturalized the word without hesitation, and cercoceronychous would have shared the astonishment of the English reader in the glossary to his Song of the Soul with Achronycul, Anaisthæsie, &c. &c.

TOLERATION.

THE state, with respect to the different sects of religion under its protection, should resemble a well drawn portrait. Let there be half a score individuals looking at it, every one sees its eyes and its benignant smile directed towards himself.

The framer of preventive laws, no less than private tutors and school-masters, should remember, that the readiest way to make either mind or body grow awry, is by lacing it too tight.

WAR.

It would have proved a striking part of a vision presented to Adam the day after the death of Abel, to have brought before his eyes half a million of men crowded together in the space of a square mile. When the first father had exhausted his wonder on the multitude of his offspring, he would then naturally inquire of his angelic instructor, for what purposes so vast a multitude had assembled? what is the common end? Alas! to murder each other,all Cains, and yet no Abels!