would be the consolation for the inflictions of the heart-sickening falsehood of friends to whom too much was trusted? If there were not a higher sphere of existence, why is the soul thus disciplined and educated here? If there were nothing more substantial than the things that are present with us, why does the drooping soul turn from them in disgust, and continually mourn their nothingness? Why are there moments in which, when, to the visible eye, the cup of bliss seems full even to overflowing, there is nevertheless an aching void craving to be occupied by something not present by something not to be found but from above?

Grateful for Heaven's distinguishing

care

for the high privileges showered upon me far be from me the misanthropic madness of exiling myself from life's charities, because I find not celestial perfection there. Let it be sufficient for me to communicate happiness where

I can nurturing no visionary miseries, and thus wilfully incurring sufferings, of which the houseless, starving wretch who wanders homeless and friendless cannot imagine the existence, and the very record of which is as a mockery and a scorn of him.-Beneath my window stretches a long lawn- not a plane surface, but curving in that undulating gracefulness which is a characteristic feature of this county; its even monotony is broken by lofty trees whose umbrageous boughs cast a deep black shadow on the earth. Beyond this lies the grand sea, sublime in repose, and covered with the pałeness of the moon. Raphael might have selected it in its dove-like quietness, as an appropriate accompaniment to the divine figure of the Saviour of the World, in the moment when a perfect calm succeeded instantaneously to the storm that had threatened the trembling, doubting Apostles. To look on this scene and not to imbibe peace, can be practicable only

to a heart oppressed by crime; - the innocent agonized by the severest suffering, would inhale tranquillity with the breath of the sighing sea. I am at peace; this world so magnificent, is, indeed, peopled with guilty beings; - but they were created in purity, and they are unhappy. Shall I therefore hate mankind? Oh, no!-compassion is the sentiment they should inspire; -am not I also a man?

Such a scene as this, although calculated to elevate the spirit to higher thoughts, and to make it feel more intimately its union with the Omnipotent, impresses on the lonely heart a deeper sense of its solitude. There is one feeling to be enjoyed under its influence, which I speak from experience rarely to be felt, for the first time, in another hour. We are delighted to recal it, and therefore it recurs even beneath the garishness of a mid-day sun; but the dawning of the sentiment belongs to this holy moonlight. I mean the con

is

viction, how many true and gentle hearts are softening into tenderness, and feeling love and kindliness for ideal objects of which we are the prototypes who love us unknown, and yearn for the knowledge of us. And these spirits we shall meet, and we shall be loved by them in eternity! I recal all those authors who have conferred on the world an inestimable benefit, by describing the progress and the effects of the best affections

by opening to the view of man the history of his own soul, and analysing the operation of passions, under the influence of which he is continually acting. They appear to me friends and confidants, the benefit of whose experience I am continually enjoying, and with whom I live in constant intercourse and uninterrupted union.

17th. If, unblest by the light of revelation, I had been given up to the dark

ness of my own imaginations, and my heart had been permitted to sink into the idolatry to which corrupted human nature, when left to itself, is so prone, I should surely have been a disciple of the Persian sun-worship. In its rising, in its meridian, in its setting, that magnificent luminary has equally the power of calling up ten thousand images of grandeur, and beauty, and sublimity, which, but for its influence, had slept in my spirit for ever. It awakens the loftiest music of the soul; it is the grandest realization of the most gorgeous ideas of which the imagination of man is susceptible. Limited in his influence only by the boundaries of creation, the splendid potentate of the sky sends forth his beams from his unapproachable solitude, deriding the puny shine of stars and remoter suns -- the sole occupant of the blue concave that stretches itself abroad, as if regardless of space and of things finite. It is impossible to a religious or reflect