BODY-Advantageous Exercise of the.

The admirable harmony established by the Creator between the various constituent parts of the animal frame, renders it impossible to pay regard to, or infringe the conditions required for the health of any one, without all the rest participating in the benefit or injury. Thus, while cheerful exercise in the open air, and in the society of equals, is directly and eminently conducive to the well-being of the muscular system, the advantage does not stop there; the beneficent Creator having kindly so ordered it, that the same exercise shall be scarcely less advantageous to the proper performance of the important function of respiration. Active exercise calls the lungs into play, favours their expansion, promotes the circulation of the blood through their substance, and leads to their complete and healthy development. The same end is greatly facilitated by that free and vigorous exercise of the voice, which so uniformly accompanies and enlivens the sports of the young, and which doubles the benefits derived from them considered as exercise. The excitement of the social and moral feelings among children engaged in play is another powerful tonic, the influence of which on the general health ought not to be overlooked; for the nervous influence is as indispensable to the right performance of respiration, as it is to the action of the muscles or to the digestion of food. Combe.

BODY-Wonderful Mechanism of the. I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid, from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. David.

BODY-Origin of the.

These limbs,—whence had we them; this stormy force; this life-blood, with its burning passion? They are dust and shadow-a shadow-system gathered round our me; wherein, through some moments or years, the divine essence is to be revealed in the flesh. Carlyle. BODY-a Spiritual Temple.

What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God: and ye are not your

BOND-and Bondage.

St. Paul.

BOOKS-Advantages of.

The writers who despise books may be original perhaps, but they may pass their lives without being original to any purpose of interest or utility. Whereas, true talent will become original in the very act of engaging itself with the ideas of others; nay, will often convert the dross of previous authors into the golden ore that shines forth to the world as its own peculiar creation. From a series of extravagant and weak Italian romances, Shakspeare took the plots, the characters, and the major part of the incidents of those dramatic works which have exalted his name, as an original writer, above that of every other in the annals of literature.

Dr. Cromwell.

Of all the amusements which can possibly be imagined for a hard-working man, after his daily toil, or in its intervals, there is nothing like reading an entertaining book, supposing him to have a taste for it, and supposing

him to have the book to read. It calls for no bodily exertion, of which he has had enough or too much.

It relieves his home of its dulness and sameness, which, in nine cases out of ten, is what drives him out to the alehouse, to his own ruin and his family's. It transports him into a livelier, and gayer, and more diversified and interesting scene, and while he enjoys himself there, he may forget the evils of the present moment, fully as much as if he were ever so drunk, with the great advantage of finding himself the next day with his money in his pocket, or at least laid out in real necessaries and comforts for himself and his family,— and without a headache. Nay, it accompanies him to his next day's work, and if the book he has been reading be anything above the very idlest and lightest, gives him something

to think of besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation,-something he can enjoy while absent, and look forward with pleasure to return to.

in the choice of his book, and to have alighted But supposing him to have been fortunate upon one really good and of a good class. What a source of domestic enjoyment is laid open! What a bond of family union! He may read it aloud, or make his wife read it, or his eldest boy or girl, or pass it round from hand to hand. All have the benefit of it-all contribute to the gratification of the rest, and a feeling of common interest and pleasure is excited. Nothing unites people like companionship in intellectual enjoyment. It does more, it gives them mutual respect, and to each among them self-respect-that corner-stone of all virtue. It furnishes to each the master-key by which he may avail himself of his privilege as an intellectual being, to

Enter the sacred temple of his breast,
And gaze and wander there a ravished guest,
Wander through all the glories of his mind,
Gaze upon all the treasures he shall find.
And while thus leading him to look within his

own bosom for the ultimate sources of his

happiness, warns him at the same time to be

cautious how he defiles and desecrates that inward and most glorious of temples.

BOOKS.

BOOKS-Advantages of.

Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness. Bartholin.

BOOKS-Badly Composed.

If in a picture, Piso, you should see
A handsome woman with a fish's tail,
Or a man's head upon a horse's neck,

Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,
Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds:
Would you not laugh, and think the painter

mad?

Trust me, that book is as ridiculous,
Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
Roscommon.

BOOKS-Delight in Designing.

And now the most beautiful dawn that mortal can behold, arose upon his spirit-the dawn of a new composition. For the book that a person is beginning to create or design, contains within itself half a life, and God only knows what an expanse of futurity also. Hopes of improvement-ideas which are to ensure the development and enlightenment of the human race-swarm with a joyful vitality in his brain, as he softly paces up and down in the twilight, when it has become too dark to write. Richter.

BOOKS-God's.

The books of Nature and of Revelation equally elevate our conceptions and invite our piety they mutually illustrate each other: they have an equal claim on our regard, for they are both written by the finger of one, eternal, incomprehensible God. Watson.

BOOKS-Lending.

Charles Lamb, tired of lending his books, threatened to chain Wordsworth's poems to his shelves, adding, "For of those who borrow, some read slow; some mean to read, but don't read; and some neither read nor mean to read, but borrow, to leave you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say, that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow my money, they Talfourd.

never fail to make use of it." BOOKS-Mental Links.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books, They are the voices of the distant

BOOKS.

and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. W. Ellery Channing.

BOOKS-Need for.

There is no end of books, and yet we seem to need more every day: there was such a darkness brought in by the Fall, as will not thoroughly be dispelled till we come to Heaven, where the Sun shineth without either cloud or night; for the present all should contribute their help according to the rate and measure of their abilities: some can only hold up a candle, others a torch, but all are useful; The press is an excellent means to scatter knowledge, were it not so often abused: all complain there is enough written, and think that now there scribbling age there were some restraint: useshould be a stop indeed it were well if in this less pamphlets are grown almost as great a mischief as the erroneous and profane: Yet 'tis not good to shut the door upon industry and diligence: there is yet room left to discover more (above all that hath been said) of the wisdom of God, and the riches of His grace in the Gospel: yea, more of the stratagems of Satan, and the deceitfulness of man's heart means need to be increased every day to weaken sin, and strengthen trust, and quicken us to holiness: fundamentals are the same in all ages, but the constant necessities of the Church and private Christians will continually enforce a further explication: as the arts and sleights of besieging and battering increase, so doth skill in fortification: if we have no other benefit by the multitude of books that are written, we have this benefit, an opportunity to observe the various workings of the same Spirit about the same truths; and, indeed, the speculation is neither idle nor unfruitful. Manton.

BOOKS-Popular.

In former times a popular work meant one that adapted the results of studious medita

tion, or scientific research, to the capacity of the people: presenting in the concrete by instances and examples, what had been ascertained in the abstract and by the discovery of the law. Now, on the other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to the people their own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them, under the title of the public, into a supreme and unappealable tribunal of intellectual excellence. Coleridge.

BOOKS-Potency of.

It is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man, as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a good reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself,-kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

BOOKS-most Preferable.

Milton.

In literature I am fond of confining myself to the best company, which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance, with whom I am desirous of becoming more intimate; and I suspect that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over again, than to read a new one for the first time. If I hear of a new poem, for instance, I ask myself whether it is superior to Homer, or Shakspeare, or Virgil; and, in the next place, whether I have all these authors completely at my fingers' ends. And when both these questions have been answered in the negative, I infer that it is better (and to me it is certainly pleasanter) to give such time as I have to bestow on the reading of poetry to Homer, Shakspeare and Co.; and so of other things. Is it not better to try and adorn one's mind by the constant study and contemplation of the great models, than merely to know of one's own knowledge that such a book is not worth reading? Some new books it is necessary to read-part for the information they contain, and others in order to acquaint oneself with the state of literature in the age in which one lives; but I would rather read too few than too many. Lord Dudley.

BOOKS-Repositories.

Books are faithful repositories, which may

Books are loved by some merely as elegant combinations of thought; by others as a means of exercising the intellect. By some they are considered as the engines by which to propagate opinions; and by others they are only deemed worthy of serious regard when they constitute repositories of matters of fact. But perhaps the most important use of literature has been pointed out by those who consider it as a record of the respective modes of moral and intellectual existence that have prevailed in successive ages, and who value literary performances in proportion as they preserve a memorial of the spirit which was at work in real life during the times when they were written. Considered in this point of view, books can no longer be slighted as fanciful tissues of thought, proceeding from the solitary brains of insulated poets or metaphysicians. They are the shadows of what has formerly occupied the minds of mankind, and of what once determined the tenour of existence. The narrator who details political events, does no more than indicate a few of the external effects, or casual concomitants, of what was stirring during the times of which he professes to be the historian. As the generations change on the face of the globe, different energies are evolved with new strength, or sink into torpor; faculties are brightened into perfection, or lose themselves in gradual blindness and oblivion. No age concentrates within itself all advantages. The knowledge of what has been is necessary, in addition to the knowledge of the present, to enable us to conceive the full extent of human powers and capacities; or, to speak more correctly, this knowledge is necessary to enable us to become acquainted with the varieties of talent and energy with which beings of the same general nature with ourselves have, in past times, been endowed. Lord Dudley.

us

Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book -a message to from the dead-from human souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. say we ought to reverence books, to look at them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion or politics, farming, trade, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things, the Kingsley.

teacher of all truth.

Worthy books

Are not companions-they are solitudes;
We lose ourselves in them, and all our cares.
Bailey.

The book of Life is the tabernacle wherein

the treasure of wisdom is to be found. The truth of voice perishes with the sound. Truth latent in the mind is hidden wisdom and in

visible treasure, but the truth which illuminates books desires to manifest itself to every disciplinable sense. Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books-how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters that instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating, you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them,

they never grumble; if you are ignorant they

cannot laugh at you.

Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, 1344.

BOTANY-Advantage of.

Botany has one advantage over many other useful and necessary studies, that even its first beginnings are pleasing and profitable, though pursued to ever so small extent; the objects with which it is conversant are in themselves charming, and they become doubly so to those

BOUNTIES.

who contemplate them with the additional sense, as it were, which science gives: the pursuit of these objects is an exercise no less healthful to the body, than the observations of

their laws and characters is to the mind. Sir J. E. Smith.

BOTANY-Objection to.

The standing objection to botany, has always been, that it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory without improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge; and, where the science is carried no further than a mere systematic classification, the charge is but too true. But the botanist who is desirous of wiping off this aspersion, should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study plants philosophically, -should investigate the laws of vegetation,should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs,-should promote their cultivation, and graft the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phytologist: not that system is by any means to be thrown aside; without system the field of nature would be a pathless wilderness; but system should be subservient to, not the main object of our pursuit. White of Selborne.

BOTANY-Pleasures of.

Among the manifold creatures of God, that have all, in all ages, diversely entertained many excellent wits, and drawn them to the contemplation of the Divine wisdome, none have provoked men's studies more, or satisfied their desires so much, as plants have done, and that upon just and worthy causes; for what greater delight is there than to behold the earth appareled with plants as with a robe of embroidered worke, set with orient pearles, and garnished with great diversity of rare and costly jewels. But the principal delight is in the minde, singularly enriched with the knowledge of these visible things, setting forth to us the invisible wisdome and admirable workmanship of Almighty God! Gerard, 1597.

BOUNDS-set by the Deity.

bounds until the day and night come to an He that hath compassed the waters with end.

Job.

There's nothing situate under Heaven's eye, But hath its bound, in earth, in sea, in sky. Shakspeare.

BOUNTIES-Royal.

Royal bounties Are great and gracious, while they are dispensed

With moderation; but when their excess,