"I have never met with this remark in any other book: it is most beautiful, and of the deepest and dearest moral interest. The father recognizes in his daughters the representatives, and, as it were, renewed types of their mother, and repeats towards them, delicately modified by the difference of the relation, the tender reverence, the inward gentle awe, inseparable from all true love, that is at once pure and deep, and which, even in the stirring, gay summer tide, the blossoming May, and sapful leafy June, of our natural life, can and will preserve the purer, more permanent and spiritual element undebased by the earthly accessaries, which it elevates, refines, clothes and fills with its own light, and finally almost transubstantiates into its own essence. From the father, the same tone and feeling, again modified by the different relation, will pass to the brothers, and thus the parental home be a rehearsal of the finest duties, of the continuous affections, of the conjugal state. For the reverence of womanhood is the ground of all manly virtues, and a main condition of all female excellence."*

S. T. COLEridge.

Bishop Sandford lived to behold sorrow visiting the households of his children, and it is in such seasons, when called on to act as the consoler of his daughters' grief, that there is the deepest expression of that affection which has been described as so admirable at all times. We shall close our notice of these volumes by selecting two of his letters to his daughters, written on an occasion of domestic affliction:

"Your most deeply affecting letter is this moment put out of my hands. I have wiped away a 'natural tear' for the sufferings of my dearest son and daughter, and have most humbly and earnestly implored the blessing and support of the Almighty to his servants under this visitation. But gently indeed, my dearest has the chastening hand been laid upon you. The departure of a regenerated spirit, before it hath known the contamination of actual sin, is no subject of lamentation; and we must, in this world of vicissitudes, of 'chances and changes,' set the one against the other; the removal of your infant to a state of irreversible and eternal happiness, against the pain which your own deprivation cannot but occasion. Your letter, full of all the sentiments which become a Christian under such a trial, convinces me that you have

This Sybilline leaf is not contained in any of the volumes of Coleridge's writings: it may be found in an article in the Quarterly Review, No. 117, to which it appears to have been transcribed from the volume in which it had been written as a note.

done this, and that the assurance of your beloved infant's bliss hath tempered, if not removed, the sense of your own suffering. You are then in the very state of mind in which my prayers, had they such power, would place you-and I do not know that I can write any thing worth your reading on such a topic. But I do indeed, from the very bottom of my heart, bless and praise God for his goodness to you in your sorrow, and for the preponderating considerations which through his blessing and the instructions of his holy word, turn the balance, even in the hour of mourning, so much in your favor.

"The history of your beloved infant is very interesting to the Christian observer. His physical sufferings and early death are proofs of the doctrine, from which the natural man is so anxious to turn himself aside. The greater portion of his earthly life has been a state of disease and pain-sent by Him who 'doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.' So much for that original evil which comes into the world with every child of Adam. He became regenerated. I cannot forbear attributing much of the gentleness and patience with which he bore his disorder, to an influence higher and holier than mere natural temperament and disposition and now he is with the 'spirits of just men made perfect'-safe from the sin and sorrow of this world, and already wiser and more illuminated in the only knowledge that shall not ' vanish away,' than the wisest of men in this state-and happier than the most ardent and excursive conceptions of the brightest imagination can reach in thought. You have seen death my beloved you have seen it in your own sweet infant-God hath clothed the great Teacher' in the form the most amiable in your eye, the least repellant, and marshalling the way to everlasting peace. We cannot, indeed, escape the humbling sense of the corruption that brought death into the world; but we are lifted from it to contemplate the blessings of our redemption. While we are instructed, in the gentlest manner, not to set our affections on any earthly treasure, we are raised beyond this world to dwell on the assurance of eternal happiness in the Saviour, who washed us from our sins in his own blood.' You have, ere this time, committed the earthly remains of your dear child to the ground, earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.' Your dearest C—, the partner of all your feelings, hath heard that sound which no description can convey, that tells us that we have now seen the last of the coffin that encloses those dear remains. will never forget that sound—but blessed be the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, the recollection of it will bid him 'not sorrow as they who have no hope,' but be satisfied that God has chastened and corrected him for his good-and that the child whom the Lord hath taken away,' is added to the numbers without number who surround the throne of God with praise forever.

He

"I am but too sensible that I can say nothing which your own pious hearts and good understandings have not said to you much more efficiently than in my best days and powers I ever could have done. That I do sympathize with your feelings under this visitation, you will not need this paper to tell you; that I pray, earnestly pray, for the blessing and support to you of the God of all consolation, you will believe; and having thus endeavored to satisfy my own heart and sentiments towards you, I will bid adieu to the subject, with my earnest and solemn supplication to the 'Father of Spirits,' that in all the trials of life, it may please him to grant you the same support, and inspire you with the same filial submission to His holy will, that have been vouchsafed you in this your first experience of parental sorrow. Believe me, with regard more than I can express, your affectionate Father,

"MY MUCH BELOVED DAUGHter,

DANIEL SANDFORD."

"September 28, 1822.

"Had you not sent me your last letter you would have deprived me of much. I have read your narrative with the deepest interest. I shall keep the letter for future and frequent perusal. Highly as I have always thought of you and your amiable husband, I esteem you both still more for the feeling and Christian conduct which God enabled you to pursue under your sore affliction. I have heard persons say, that the loss of a child is little; you know I never thought so. I remember my agony as I watched, what to all human judgment appeared the last moments of my beloved Wilhelmina, when a mere infant. Your trial has been much greater— but you turn your thoughts from the couch of an expiring mortal to the scene of blessedness to which your angel child is removed, and are comforted.

"I am anxious to hear how you have borne the return to Fulham. I have no doubt your removal was right; and by the blessings of God, I trust you have all of you gained health and strength by it; but I am likewise persuaded, that it is better, where it is fitting, to remain on the spot, where we have suffered, till we are familiarized with our loss, and can leave it without anticipating the pain of coming back. Now, my ever beloved child, will you permit me to solicit you to turn your mind and activity, with more concentrated exertion, to the blessings which remain to you. I know that the thoughts of your dear departed child will continually find their way to your heart and to your eyes. I will whisper to you, that I could, were I to give way, abandon myself to similar recollections. No day passes without many a remembrance of my departed Ellenand I could sit for hours thinking of her, but I am well convinced that this is an indulgence in which I should restrain myself; and I will ask of you, for your own sake, to follow my example. It was

(to write with all freedom to you) but a night ago that I woke myself from one of my poor slumbers, in a sort of self-expostulation, and repeating, 'I cannot but remember such things were, and were most dear to me.' I confess my weakness to you, and I confess it to be weakness. No one knows these things but yourself, and my dearest Willie—there is a name which I never pronounced but to yourselves. But as I thus show you how intensely I sympathize with you, and as I am far, far indeed from blaming you in this matter, I may, perhaps, claim the privilege to warn you against the encroachments of feelings, which, if unrestrained, would alike prevent you and me from doing our duty. I know you will forgive me, and the more surely, that I am well convinced we contemplate the same interesting subject in the same spirit, a spirit of more, thank God, than resignation,-of such complete acquiesence in the wisdom and mercy of our Heavenly Father, that could we recall the objects of our unutterable affection with a word, we would neither of us speak. But we are, my dearest daughter, such weak creatures, that in the very purity and blamelessness of the sentiment, there lurks the danger. Our recollections are tinged with no undutiful or ungrateful reluctance against the will of God, and therefore we do not fear to allow them to have their way—and yet, is there no fear lest the gratification of dwelling on them, should render us, at times at least, not so attentive as we ought to be, to the innumerable and unmerited blessings which surround us, and in the midst of which is our proper sphere of engagement? I am afraid I have not written very clearly; but no eye but your own or dearest Charles' must see this, and I do not stop to weigh expressions. But I will shut up all with assuring you of my confidence in your piety and zeal to do your duty-and of my deepest, heartiest prayers to the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, that he will so order your hearts and minds by His grace, that this dispensation may work for good unto you for Christ's sake."-Vol. II. pp. 12-18.

ART. V. The Steam Engine familiarly explained and illustrated. By the REV. DIONYSIUS LARDNER, L. L. D. Second American, from the Fifth London edition. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey, & A. Hart. 8vo. pp. 325.

THE application of the Steam Engine to navigation is among the proudest of the triumphs of human genius. Like many other of the most beautiful improvements in the mechanic arts, it is equally remarkable for the long and patient industry with which it was sought, and the simplicity of the means by which it was finally accomplished.

Although vague glimpses of the possibility of propelling vessels by steam are to be met with in the published histories of the earlier state of the engine, it was not until Watt had succeeded in rendering it double acting, and in effecting a saving of fivesixths of the fuel which had formerly been necessary, that any chance of success in the attempt could be calculated upon. In 1784, Watt completed his improvements, and gave the steam engine the form in which, with little variation, it is used up to the present day. It is from that date that we are to reckon the time which was occupied in bringing the engine, in a practical form, into use as a means of improving navigation. Had any immediate progress been made in the direction pointed out by our countryman Evans, we might have dated the beginning of well grounded investigations with his invention of the high pressure engine. It is to be recorded, to his high honor, that he not only saw the advantage to be derived, in certain cases, from the use of steam of high pressure, but ascertained the mode of rendering the engine of universal application, by impelling the piston in both directions, at a date as early as Watt did. Evans' form of engine, however, remained in model for more than twenty years, and the condensing engine had been applied successfully to navigation, before he had made more than a single experiment in reference to the same object. This experiment is too remarkable to be passed over, although it was not followed by any important consequences. Evans, who was by profession a mill-wright, and whose attention was almost exclusively directed to the improvement of the grist mills, which at