But passing from the business to the young men employed in it, we would observe that on the improved plan of early closing, after the stated labours of the day, sufficient mental energy, as well as leisure, would remain for intellectual engagements and devotional exercises; and the corporeal powers would not be so far exhausted as to preclude a moderate degree of healthful relaxation in open-air sports and recreations. Such means of improvement, and such opportunities of pleasure, experience warrants us to say would not be generally neglected or misapplied.* Isolated cases would probably be found in which these privileges would be abused; but it would be marvellous indeed if all who had contracted vicious practices under the old system should immediately reform on the introduction of the new. This is not to be expected. When, however, it shall be shown us that any who had for a long time maintained a fair reputation and prosecuted habits of self-improvements under the late-hour system, had straightway became intellectually torpid and viciously inclined from early closing, we will give the objection further consideration. Till then, it were as unjust to withhold the benefits that would undeniably accrue to the well-disposed, because the evil-minded would pervert, as to deny the observance of a Sabbath to the good, lest the wicked should have the opportunity of desecration.†

But to estimate fairly and fully the "moral results of early closing," we should have to consider all that is involved in its adoption-all that would follow in its train-all the advantages to themselves and their connexions, their employers and the public, that we may presume to be implied in the enfranchisement of our trading population with the privileges we have named. We should have to bring under review the elevated tone of mind that the consciousness of being dealt with in a manner that was worthy of a man would naturally produce in the assistant-tradesman; the mutual respect and confidence that would spring up between employer and and employed, when the one saw himself looked up to as a friend and esteemed as a benefactor, while the other felt himself trusted as a man, and treated as a brother. We should have to compare the average amount of intelligence at present existing in the class of young men under consideration, with that which it would probably exhibit when increased facilities for the acquisition of knowledge were afforded. In so doing, we should, I think, find reason to assign to it then a much higher rank than it holds Hitherto every fresh opportunity for improvement has been hailed with acclamation and embraced with eagerness. And we doubt not but that, if assistant-tradesmen were more generally able to participate in their advantages, mechanics' institutes, and similar associations for the promotion of science and dissemination of truth, would speedily multiply in the land, and exhibit an appearance very different from their present neglected and languishing condition. Nor are we to suppose that the means possessed for private study would be without their fruits. At this hour there are scores of young men holding subordinate situations in trading establishments, who, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which they

now.

See the speeches of Mr. PEARCE and Mr. OWEN at the last annual meeting of the Association, Student for April. These gentlemen employ each a great number of young men, and speak in the most approving terms of the manner in which the latter have improved the extra time that early closing has placed at their disposal.

"If the objection that young men would misemploy the time proposed to be given them, and therefore ought not to have it, proved any thing, it proved that because the leisure afforded by the Sabbath was abused by some, it should be withheld from all."— DR. ALDER. Ibid.

labour, have contrived to cultivate various branches of literature and science with no mean success. Is it not fair to presume that, with extended opportunities, this class of students would rapidly increase in numbers, till what was long since said of the Germans should be applicable to the English-that every one was either a chemist, or a natural philosopher?

Thus improved in professional habits, in social position, in intellectual culture, is it to be supposed that the free scions of commerce would remain stationary, much less that they would retrograde in moral qualifications? The direct and obvious tendency of every alteration we have yet seen to accompany or flow from "early closing," would be to elevate the conception, and consequently the desire and pursuit of happiness. Hence the moral taste would be improved, and to it moral practice would naturally conform.

But further than this, "early closing" would at once bring the young man within the sphere of moralising influences, from which the long hours of labour now exclude him. Instead of being daily harassed with the cares of business till all access to virtuous society was denied, he would be constantly experiencing the beneficial effects of a friendly intercourse with his fellow-men. Instead of knowing the Sabbath only as a day to be spent in vapid idleness or reckless dissipation, he would find himself freed from one great source of temptation to abuse its sacred hours. Some will be perhaps inclined to think lightly of these advantages. Not so, however, those who have known the achings of a widowed heart-the joyless solitude of a companionless life. Not so those who have experienced how unprofitable is the state of mind induced by a long week of late-hour toil; and have felt in contrast the kindly emotions with which, under opposite circumstances, the soul has delighted to look abroad on the world around, and the pleasing awe with which it then aspired to mount upward from the observance of sublunary nature to the contemplation of the Supreme. These will be prepared to admit that the labourer is as well fitted as his lord to enjoy the sweets of society, and to breathe the air of heaven. What is more, they will give him credit for being as well disposed.

26

But the moral results of early closing" would not stop here. Such fountains of happiness and such sources of improvement could not be opened up to assistants and apprentices without the masters themselves receiving equal advantages. At present the latter are almost as great sufferers as the former from the evils of the "late-hour system;" but being more inured to it, are less sensible of their loss. From their more intimate connexion with their families, it is however questionable whether they would not be even greater gainers in the event of a change. Besides, every improvement that affected the younger members of their establishments would proportionately add to their own sense of security and peace of mind. They would be conscious of possessing more cheerful, diligent, and conscientious services, and at any exigency could depend upon them. The great objection of "late hours" being obviated, a higher class of young men would be induced to enter several trades, from which they now abstain on that account. Thus higher premiums would be obtained; and, what is more to our purpose, the character of the occupation itself would be likely to be advanced-its conventional, if not its real, respectability would be promoted. Nor would the friends and families both of employers and assistants be the last or least benefited by the early closing of shops. Those who know how much the pleasures of the domestic circle depend on the

presence of fathers and brothers-how much the well-being of a family on their superintendence and orderly behaviour, will hardly think it possible for the happiness that might be secured in this way to be too dearly bought. And when to all these advantages conferred upon particular classes, we add the general tendency these would have to aid and stimulate other ameliorating and moralising agencies at work upon society at large, which of us shall pretend to limit the catalogue of blessings, individual and social, of which "early closing" may be the happy prelude? Without professing to regard it, simply and alone, as equivalent to the regeneration of operative society, or indeed as necessarily implying anything more than relief from a certain amount of daily toil-it does appear to us that the moral and intellectual progress of mankind are so intimately associated with their physical condition, that we may fairly view any material improvement of the latter as a most efficient mean for the acceleration of the former. Need we then say more to enlist the reader's sympathies-his energies-his effort on behalf of the measures now in progress to effect this most desirable as well as practicable reform, than consider what will be THE MORAL RESULTS OF EARLY CLOSING?

I come in the might of a herald of light,
As the sun o'er creation is beaming;

I come to dispel the night shadows that dwell
In the soul, of deep wretchedness dreaming:
I come to awake to the joys that partake
Of the glories that Paradise knew,

Ere its charms were defac'd, and its bowers laid
waste,

And a shroud o'er its loveliness grew.

I come to declare the bright hopes ye may share,
Though your sins, oh ye mortals! have riven
Ev'ry bond of your peace-but let misery cease,
For ye still may be freely forgiven.

I come in calm rest to the spirit oppress'd
With a week's disappointment and care,
Hopes bidding it cherish, that never can perish,
Nor leave it a prey to despair.

I come to impart to the desolate heart
A solace for every woe;

For, in "joy shall they reap" who their purity
keep,

Though in "sorrow and tears they may sow." I come in the ray of the regent of day,

When all nature is mantled in gold; When with heaven-lit smiles the light heart she beguiles

Into raptures that may not be told.

I come in the swell of the languishing bell,
From forests of melody stealing,

As it breathes from the spire of each hamlet and
shire,

The "voice of the Sabbath" revealing.
I come in the lays of a firmament's praise,
Chanted forth by the bird and the breeze-
In the earth's choral strain from cathedral and
fane ;-

And in the dread music of seas.

Ormes Green.

SABBATH.

I come to proclaim the Omnipotent's name-
The Creator of all that delights

The perception or sense, or the throbbings

intense

Or the soul's adoration invites.

I come to disperse ev'ry track of the curse
That fiends have implanted on earth-

To bid war be no more-human peace to

restore

And to hasten Millennium's birth.

"Till sorrow and pain shall relinquish their reign-
"Till natures malignant and wild
Shall in harmony blend-'till destruction shall
end-

"Till the tiger shall sport with the child-
My voice shall resound to the uttermost bound
Where evil may revel in might;

And each anthem I wake shall his monarchy shake,

"Till he flee to the regions of night.

Then I'll come in the dawn of Eden's new morn,
And all shall be rapture and rest;

And the pure and the bright shall in triumph
unite,

And man be abundantly blest.
And when I've fulfill'd all the Deity will'd

In my mission to mortals, of love,
Back to Heaven I'll fly-to my own native sky--
And prepare them a Sabbath above.

But oh! as I speed, favour'd creatures! take heed
How my visits ye treat with neglect;
If ye let me depart without gaining your heart,
All your hopes are eternally wreck'd:-
If the pleasures or strife of a grovelling life
Will not leave you e'en one day in seven,
A temple to raise to your Maker's due praise,
They will leave you "no Temple in Heaven."

ADOLESCENS.

LINES,

Suggested by the efforts now making in behalf of the ASSISTANT DRAPERS of the Metropolis.

"Yes, my friend, the Rhine is a noble river-feudal, republican, imperial-worthy, at the same time, of France and of Germany. The whole history of Europe is combined within its two great aspects-in this flood of the warrior and of the thinker-in this proud stream, which causes France to bound, and by whose profound murmurings Germany is bewildered in dreams. The Rhine is unique; it combines the qualities of every river. Like the Rhone, it is rapid; broad, like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse; serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme; historical, like the Tiber; royal, like the Danube; mysterious, like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and, like a river of Asia, abounding with phantoms and fables."— Victor Hugo.

NATURAL MAGIC.

"THE Science of Acoustics furnished the ancient sorcerers with some of their best deceptions. The imitation of thunder, in their subterranean temples, could not fail to indicate the presence of a supernatural agent. The golden virgins, whose ravishing voices resounded through the temple of Delphos; the stone from the river Pactolus, whose trumpet notes scared the robber from the treasure which it guarded; the speaking head, which uttered its oracular responses at Lesbos; and the vocal statue of Memnon, which began at the break of day to accost the rising sun, were all deceptions derived from science, and from a diligent observation of the phenomena of nature.

"The principles of Hydrostatics were equally available in the work of deception. The marvellous fountain which Pliny describes in the Island of Andros as discharging wine for seven days, and water during the rest of the year; the spring of oil which broke out in Rome to welcome the return of Augustus from the Sicilian war; the three empty urns which filled themselves with wine at the annual feast of Bacchus in the city of Elis; the glass tomb of Belus which was full of oil, and which, when once emptied by Xerxes, could not again be filled; the weeping statues, and the perpetual lamps of the ancients, were all the obvious effects of the equilibrium and pressure of fluids.

"Although we have no direct evidence that the philosophers of antiquity were skilled in Mechanics, yet there are indications of their knowledge, by no means equivocal, in the erection of the Egyptian obelisks, and in the transportation of huge masses of stone, and their subsequent elevation to great heights in their temples. The powers which they employed, and the mechanism by which they operated, have been studiously concealed, but their existence may be inferred from results otherwise inexplicable, and the inference derives additional confirmation from the mechanical arrangements which seem to have formed a part of their religious impostures. When in some of the infamous mysteries of ancient Rome the unfortunate victims were carried off by the gods, there is reason to believe that they were hurried away by the power of machinery; and when Apollonius, conducted by the Indian sages to the temple of their god, felt the earth rising and falling beneath his feet, like the agitated sea, he was no doubt placed upon a moving floor capable of imitating the heavings of the waves. The rapid descent of those who consulted the oracle in the cave of Trophonius, the moving tripods which Apollonius saw in the Indian temples, the walking statues at Antium, and in the temple of Hierapolis, and the wooden pigeon of Archytas, are specimens of the mechanical resources of the ancient magic.

"But of all the sciences, Optics is the most fertile in marvellous expedients. The power of bringing the remotest objects within the very grasp of the observer, and of swelling into gigantic magnitude the almost invisible bodies of the material world, never fails to inspire with astonishment even those who understand the means by which these prodigies are accomplished. The ancients, indeed, were not acquainted with those combinations of lenses and mirrors which constitute the telescope and the microscope, but they must have been familiar with the property of lenses and mirrors to form erect and inverted images of objects. There is reason to think that they employed them to effect the apparition of their gods; and in some of the descriptions of the optical displays which hallowed their ancient temples, we recognize all the transformations of the modern phantasmagoria.”—Sir D. Brewster.

T