It was long before the forlorn orphans could comprehend their situation, but when the dreadful truth came across their minds, they clapped their little hands, and screamed in terror and dismay. There was no house beside them; the frightful churchyard stood between them and their nearest neighbour; yet they could not stay within, but rushed to the roadside, and wailed beneath the silent face of heaven. At that moment the hand of mercy was upon them, and their deliverance was wrought even from the depth of their desolation. A gentleman passing on horseback was attracted by their cries, and inquired into the cause. He proved to be one of the princely merchants of Glasgow, with a heart as liberal as his means were unbounded. The case was fitted to his generous spirit. He not only gave immediate help, and saw the grandmother decently interred, but took the little ones under his own roof, and reared them, without distinguishing them from his own family. Thus was good brought out of apparent evil, and when the hand of Providence seemed to fall heaviest on the orphans, it was but "tempering the wind to the shorn lamb," for had the grandmother been carried away under ordinary circumstances, the fate of the grandchildren might have been very different. The result of the matter is not the least pleasing point of the anecdote, for Catherine is at this hour the happy wife of her benefactor's eldest son, and her brother conducts an important branch of his business in a foreign land.

Where the branches interlace

In a flush of green,

Oh! to look upon her face!
Oh! to mark her Dryad grace,

And her gracious mien !

Brighter eyes or bluer ne'er
To the light awake;

And the glooms the glosses snare,
In the ripples of her hair,
And its glory make.

Fresher is she than the day,

When the leaves are new; Daintier than the buds of May, When the greening branches sway, And the buds are few.

Fall, then, blooms, in rosy rain;

Birds, your sweetest sing; Flowers, you blossom not in vain, For my darling comes againComes embodied Spring!

KNOWLEDGE.

[Rev. Robert Hall, born at Arnsby, Leicester, 2d May, 1764; died at Broadmead, Bristol, 21st February, 1831. Baptist minister; and author of Christianity Consistent with a Love of Freedom; An Apology for the Freedom of the Press: Modern Infidelity Considered; and other sermons. He attained remarkable influence and popularity as a preacher. His works are published by Bell & Son. The following extract is from his sermon on Proverbs xix. 2: "That the soul be without knowledge, it is not good."]

Let me request your attention to a few remarks on the utility of knowledge in general. It must strike us, in the first place, that the extent to which we have the faculty of acquiring it, forms the most obvious distinction of our species. In inferior animals it subsists in so small a degree, that we are wont to deny it to them altogether; the range of their knowledge, if it deserves the name, is so extremely limited, and their ideas so few and simple. Whatever is most exquisite in their operations is referred to an instinct, which, working within a narrow compass, though with undeviating uniformity, supplies the place, and supersedes the necessity, of reason. In inferior animals, the knowledge of the whole species is possessed by each individual of the species, while man is distinguished by numberless diversities in the scale of mental improvement. 141

victory.

tion.

As the power of acquiring knowledge is to be ascribed to reason, so the attainment of it mightily strengthens and improves it, and thereby enables it to enrich itself with further acquisitions. Knowledge, in general, expands the mind, exalts the faculties, refines the taste of pleasure, and opens numerous sources of intellectual enjoyment. By means of it we become less dependent for satisfaction upon the sensitive appetites, the gross pleasures of sense are more easily despised, and we are made to feel the superiority of the spiritual to the material part of our nature. Instead of being continually solicited by the influence and irritation of sensible objects, the mind can retire within herself, and expatiate in the cool and quiet walks of contemplation. The Author of nature has wisely annexed a pleasure to the exercise of our active powers, and particularly to the pursuit of truth, which, if it be in some instances less intense, is far more durable than the gratifications of sense, and is, on that account, incomparably more valuable. Its duration, to say nothing of its other properties, renders it more valuable. It may be repeated without satiety, and pleases afresh on every reflection upon it. These are self-created satisfactions, always within our reach, not dependent upon events, not requiring a peculiar combination of circumstances to produce or maintain them; they rise from the mind itself, and inhere, so to speak, in its very substance. Let the mind but retain its proper functions, and they spring up spontaneously, unsolicited, unborrowed, and unbought. Even the difficulties and impediments which obstruct the pursuit of truth, serve, according to the economy under which we are placed, to render it more interesting. The labour of intellectual search resembles and exceeds the tumultuous pleasures of the chase; and the consciousness of overcoming a formidable obstacle, or of lighting on some happy discovery, gives all the enjoy ment of a conquest, without those corroding reflections by which the latter must be impaired. Can we doubt that Archimedes, who was so absorbed in his contemplations as not to be diverted by the sacking of his native city, and was killed in the very act of meditating a mathematical problem, did not, when he exclaimed Euρnka! eupŋka! I have found it! I have found it! feel a transport as genuine as

But to return to the moral good which results from the acquisition of knowledge: it is chiefly this, that by multiplying the mental resources it has a tendency to exalt the character, and, in some measure, to correct and subdue the taste for gross sensuality. It enables the possessor to beguile his leisure moments (and every man has such) in an innocent, at least, if not in a useful, manner. The poor man who can read, and who possesses a taste for reading, can find entertainment at home, without being tempted to repair to the public-house for that purpose. His mind can find him employment when his body is at rest; he does not lie prostrate and float on the current of incidents, liable to be carried whithersoever the impulse of appetite may direct. There is in the mind of such a man an intellectual spring urging him to the pursuit of mental good; and if the minds of his family also are a little cultivated, conversation becomes the more interesting, and the sphere of domestic enjoyment enlarged. The calm satisfaction which books afford, puts him into a disposition to relish more exquisitely the tranquil delight inseparable from the indulgence of conjugal and parental affection; and as he will be more respectable in the eyes of his family than he who can teach them nothing, he will be naturally induced to culti vate whatever may preserve, and to shun whatever would impair, that respect. He who is inured to reflection will carry his views beyond the present hour; he will extend his prospect a little into futurity, and be disposed to make some provision for his approaching wants; whence will result an increased motive to industry, together with a care to husband his earnings, and to avoid unnecessary expense. The poor man who has gained a taste for good books will in all likelihood become thoughtful: and when you have given the poor a habit of thinking, you have conferred on them a much greater favour than by the gift of a large sum of money, since you have put them in possession of the principle of all legitimate prosperity.

I am persuaded that the extreme profligacy, improvidence, and misery, which are so prevalent among the labouring classes in many coun tries, are chiefly to be ascribed to the want of education. In proof of this we need only cast our eyes on the condition of the Irish, compared with that of the peasantry in Scotland. Among the former you behold nothing but beggary, wretchedness, and sloth: in Scotland, on the contrary, under the disadvantages of a worse

climate and more unproductive soil, a degree of decency and comfort, the fruit of sobriety and industry, are conspicuous among the lower classes. And to what is this disparity in their situation to be ascribed, except to the influence of education? In Ireland, the education of the poor is miserably neglected; very few of them can read, and they grow up in a total ignorance of what it most befits a rational creature to understand: while in Scotland the establishment of free schools in every parish, an essential branch of the ecclesiastical constitution of the country, brings the means of instruction within the reach of the poorest, who are there inured to decency, industry, and order.

Some have objected to the instruction of the lower classes, from an apprehension that it would lift them above their sphere, make them dissatisfied with their station in life, and, by impairing the habits of subordination, endanger the tranquillity of the state; an objection devoid surely of all force and validity. It is not easy to conceive in what manner instructing men in their duties can prompt them to neglect those duties, or how that enlargement of reason which enables them to comprehend the true grounds of authority and the obligation to obedience, should indispose them to obey. The admirable mechanism of society, together with that subordination of ranks which is essential to its subsistence, is surely not an elaborate imposture, which the exercise of reason will detect and expose. The objection we have stated, implies a reflection on the social order, equally impolitic, invidious, and unjust. Nothing in reality renders legitimate governments so insecure, as extreme ignorance in the people. It is this which yields them an easy prey to seduction, makes them the victims of prejudices and false alarms, and so ferocious withal, that their interference in a time of public commotion is more to be dreaded than the eruption of a volcano.

The true prop of good government is the opinion, the perception, on the part of the subject, of benefits resulting from it; a settled conviction, in other words, of its being a public good. Now, nothing can produce or maintain that opinion but knowledge, since opinion is a form of knowledge. Of tyrannical and unlawful governments, indeed, the support is fear, to which ignorance is as congenial as it is abhorrent from the genius of a free people. Look at the popular insurrections and massacres in France: of what description of persons were those ruffians composed, who, breaking forth like a torrent, overwhelmed the mounds of lawful authority? Who were the cannibals that sported

with the mangled carcasses and palpitating limbs of their murdered victims, and dragged them about with their teeth, in the gardens of the Tuileries? Were they refined and elaborated into these barbarities by the efforts of a too polished education? No; they were the very scum of the people, destitute of all moral culture, whose atrocity was only equalled by their ignorance, as might well be expected, when the one was the legitimate parent of the other. Who are the persons who, in every country, are most disposed to outrage and violence, but the most ignorant and uneducated of the poor? to which class also chiefly belong those unhappy beings who are doomed to expiate their crimes at the fatal tree; few of whom, it has recently been ascertained on accurate inquiry, are able to read, and the greater part utterly destitute of all moral or religious principle.

"A HUNTING WE WILL GO."

BY HENRY FIELDING.

The dusky night rides down the sky,
And ushers in the morn;
The bounds all join in glorious cry,
The huntsman winds his horn,
And a hunting we will go.

The wife around her husband throws
Her arms to make him stay;
"My dear, it rains, it hails, it blows,
You cannot hunt to-day."
Yet a hunting we will go.

Away they fly to 'scape the rout,

Their steeds they soundly switch;
Some are thrown in, some are thrown out,
And some are thrown in the ditch.
Yet a hunting we will go.

Sly Reynard now like lightning flies,
And sweeps across the vale;
And when the hounds too near he spies,
He drops his bushy tail.

Then a hunting we will go.
Fond Echo seems to like the sport,
And join the jovial cry;

The woods, the hills, the sound retort,
And music fills the sky,

When a hunting we do go.

At last his strength to faintness worn,
Poor Reynard ceases flight;
Then hungry, homewards we return,
To feast away the night.

And a drinking we do go.
Ye jovial hunters in the morn

Prepare then for the chase;
Rise at the sounding of the horn,
And health with sport embrace,
When a hunting we do go.