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within his reach. None pass the threshold of the outermost door but with regrets and tears. Some charge their past chagrins upon envious or malevolent opponents; others, upon false friends; others, upon their own misconduct. Few can fail to ac knowledge that the means of enjoyment which the asylum offers, were they but used aright, would be all-sufficient for all." The stranger ceased, and took his leave; and the traveller went forth among the guests.

9. Many years after this conversation, as the same traveller sat meditating on the past, and gloomily anticipating the future, the messenger whose duty it was to conduct guests from the palace beckoned to him to leave. It was with a thrill of pain that the traveller received the signal, notwithstanding he was at that moment arraigning in his mind the justice and wisdom of the unseen master. The disorders and inequalities, the crimes and discontents, prevalent among the guests, were a subject of sorrowful reflection. And yet the traveller shuddered at the thought of his departure.

10. "Why is it," he said to himself, "that the sovereign master of this palace, if there be a master, does not interfere to prevent those scandalous scenes of spoliation and violence among his guests, which the good behold with so much regret and dismay? It was only this morning that I saw a most worthy family shamefully plundered, while the villains who committed the robbery were left to enjoy their ill-got spoils, without molestation. Such abuses are as repugnant to every notion of justice as they are inconsistent with the strict management of a wellordered household."

11. While revolving these sad thoughts, the messenger who had beckoned him to depart drew nigh; but, ere he could take the hand of the traveller, Experience, his old friend, interposed, and said to the latter, "Dost thou suppose that thou hast witnessed the end of these things? The sovereign has seen all, heard all. The palace is so constructed that not a whisper which is uttered there fails to reach his ears. Not a deed is committed which he cannot see. Not a thought is conceived, the motion of which in the brain does not make undulations in the atmosphere that reach him and vibrate its meaning.

12. "Know that, by a power inconceivable to all save him by whom it is exerted, he obliges all travellers who cross this forest to sojourn for a period, longer or shorter, in this Palace of Probation, in order that their qualities of mind and heart may be developed and tested amid scenes the best fitted for their exercise and confirmation. Indulgent but just, he will await all who have soʻjourned here, in a more magnificent palace, the Palace of

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Compensation, contiguous to this you are about to quit, but compared with which the present is little better than a hovel.

13. "Thither, by an irresistible power, of which this messenger who awaits you is an agent, the steps of all will be directed. It is there that each guest will find his deserts according to his conduct and character. It is there that all will recognize the sacred requisitions of justice." Light seemed to pour upon the soul of the pilgrim, now that he was departing, even as it had upon his eyes at the moment of his entrance. All was explained, all was clear! He was no longer bewildered by afflicting doubts as to the character of the sovereign whose hospitality he had enjoyed. At once consoled for the past and reassured for the future, he said, with a joyful alacrity, to the messenger, “Lead on!"

14. Already through the opening portai, rising above the haze of the distance, the traveller sees the stupendous outlines of the second palace. The style of the architecture of that portion of the building presented to his view is somewhat austere, but, as he advances, it assumes a softer and sublimer grace. He is eager to enter its magnificent precincts. He has no fear for the future. He has been seen by the master, whose hospitality he has not abused. He carries with him a conscience void of offence. That is enough.

ORIGINAL TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH.

CIII. THE DISCONTENTED MILLER.

1. WHANG, the miller, was naturally avaricious; nobody loved money better than he, or more respected those who had it. When people would talk of a rich man in company, Whang would say, "I know him very well; he and I have been long acquainted; he and I are intimate." But, if ever a poor man was mentioned, he had not the least knowledge of the man; he might be very well, for aught he knew; but he was not fond of making many acquaintances, and loved to choose his company.

2. Whang, however, with all his eagerness for riches, was poor. He had nothing but the profits of his mill to support him; but, though these were small, they were certain; while it stood and went he was sure of eating; and his frugality was such that he every day laid some money by, which he would at intervals count and contemplate with much satisfaction. Yet still his acquisitions were not equal to his desires; he only found himself above want, whereas he desired to be possessed of affluence.

3. One day, as he was indulging these wishes, he was informed

that a neighbor of his had found a pan of money under ground, having dreamed of it three nights running before. These tidings were daggers to the heart of poor Whang. "Here am I," says he, "toiling and moiling from morning till night for a few paltry farthings, while neighbor Thanks only goes quietly to bed and dreams himself into thousands before morning. O, that I could dream like him! With what pleasure would I dig round the pan ! How slyly would I carry it home! not even my wife should see me and then, O, the pleasure of thrusting one's hand into a heap of gold up to the elbow !

4. Such reflections only served to make the miller unhappy; he discontinued his former assiduity; he was quite disgusted with small gains, and his customers began to forsake him. Every day he repeated the wish, and every night laid himself down in order to dream. Fortune, that was for a long time unkind, at last, however, seemed to smile on his distresses, and indulged him with the wished-for vision. He dreamed that under a certain part of the foundation of his mill there was concealed a monstrous pan of gold and diamonds, buried deep in the ground, and covered with a large flat stone.

5. He concealed his good luck from every person, as is usual in money dreams, in order to have the vision repeated the two succeeding nights, by which he should be certain of its truth. His wishes in this, also, were answered; he still dreamed of the same pan of money in the very same place. Now, therefore, it was past a doubt; so, getting up early the third morning, he repaired alone, with a mattock in his hand, to the mill, and began to undermine that part of the wall to which the vision directed him.

6. The first omen of success that he met was a broken ring; digging still deeper, he turned up a house-tile, quite new and entire. At last, after much digging, he came to a broad flat stone, but then so large that it was beyond man's strength to remove it. Here!" cried he, in raptures, to himself; "here it is; under this stone there is room for a very large pan of diamonds indeed. I must e'en go home to my wife, and tell her the whole affair, and get her to assist me in turning it up."

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7. Away, therefore, he goes, and acquaints his wife with every circumstance of their good fortune. Her raptures on this occa sion may easily be imagined. She flew round his neck and em braced him in an ecstasy of joy; but these transports, however did not allay their eagerness to know the exact sum; returning therefore, together to the same place where Whang had beer digging, there they found not, indeed, the expected treasurebut the mill, their only support, undermined and fallen.

GOLDSMITH.

CIV.

THE PLANETS AND HEAVENLY BODIES.

1. Ir is not for us to say whether inspiration revealed to the Psalmist the wonders of modern astronomy. But even though the mind be a perfect stranger to the science of these enlightened times, the heavens present a great and an elevating spectacle,an immense con' cave reposing upon the circular boundary of the world, and the innumerable lights which are suspended from on high, moving with solemn regularity along its surface. It seems to have been at night that the piety of the Psalmist was awakened by this contemplation, when the moon and the stars were visible, and not when the sun had risen in his strength, and thrown a splendor around him, which bore down and eclipsed ali the lesser glories of the firmament.

2. And there is much in the scenery of a nocturnal sky to lift the soul to pious contemplation. The moon and these stars, what are they? They are detached from the world, and they lift us above it. We feel withdrawn from the earth, and rise in lofty abstraction from this little theatre of human passions and human anxieties. The mind abandons itself to revëry, and is transferred in the ecstasy of its thoughts to distant and unexplored regions. It sees nature in the simplicity of her great elements, and it sees the God of nature invested with the high attributes of wisdom and majesty.

3. But what can these lights be? The curiosity of the human mind is insatiable; and the mechanism of these wonderful heavens has, in all ages, been its subject and its employment. It has been reserved for these latter times to resolve this great and interesting question. The sublimest powers of philosophy have been called to the exercise, and astronomy may now be tooked upon as the most certain and best-established of the sciences.

4. We all know that every visible object appears less in mag nitude as it recedes from the eye. The lofty vessel, as it retires from the coast, shrinks into littleness, and at last appears in the form of a small speck on the verge of the horizon.EI The eagle with its expanded wings is a noble object; but when it takes its flight into the upper regions of the air, it becomes less to the eye, and is seen like a dark spot upon the vault of heaven. The same is true of all magnitude. The heavenly bodies appear small to the eye of an inhabitant of this earth only from the immensity of their distance. When we talk of hundreds of millions of miles it is not to be listened to as incredible. For remember that we are talking of those bodies which are scattered over the immens

ity of space, and that space knows no termination. The concep tion is great and difficult, but the truth is unquestionable.

5 By a process of measurement which it is unnecessary at present to explain, we have ascertained first the distance and then the magnitude of some of those bodies which roll in the firmament; that the sun, which presents itself to the eye under so diminutive a form, is really a globe, exceeding, by many thousands of times, the dimensions of the earth which we inhabit; that the moon itself has the magnitude of a world; and that even a few of those stars, which appear like so many lucid points to the unassisted eye of the observer, expand into large circles upon the application of the telescope, and are some of them much larger than the ball which we tread upon, and to which we proudly apply the denomination of the universe.

EI

6. Now, why should we think that the great Architect of nature, supreme in wisdom as he is in power, would call these stately mansions into existence, and leave them unoccupied ? When we cast our eye over the broad sea, and look at the country on the other side, we see nothing but the blue land stretching obscurely over the distant horizon. We are too far away to perceive the richness of its scenery, or to hear the sound of its population. Why not extend this principle to the still more distant parts of the universe? What though, from this remote point of observation, we can see nothing but the naked roundness of yon planetary orbs? Are we, therefore, to say that they are so many vast and unpeopled solitudes; that desolation reigns in every part of the universe but ours; that the whole energy of the divine attributes is expended on one insignificant corner of these mighty works, and that to this earth alone belongs the bloom of vegetation, or the blessedness of life, or the dignity of rational and immortal existence?

CHALMERS.

CV.

THOUGHTS ON EARLY RISING.

1. HABITS OF GREAT MEN.- Anonymous.EI

EI

WHATEVER may be the quantity of sleep required, early rising is essential to health, and promotes longevity. Almost all mer who have distinguished themselves in science, literature, and the arts, have been early risers. The industrious, the activeminded, the enthusiasts in pursuit of knowledge or gain, are up betimes at their respective occupations, while the sluggard wastes the most beautiful period of his life in pernicious slumber

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