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LITERARY NOTICES.

KINDNESS TO ANIMALS; or Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked.

The unwearied and judicious efforts of the American Sunday School Union, to furnish interesting books, and of the most healthful moral tendency, for children, are deserving much praise. This is one of their publications. How suitable that children should be taught, not only to be kind and gentle to each other, but also to animals.

TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF PALESTINE. Published by J. H. Colton, of New York City.

We take great pleasure in introducing to our readers, all of whom we hope are Bible students, this new and elegant Map of ANCIENT PALESTINE. It has been drawn with great care and accuracy from the latest researches and observations of the most distinguished travellers. Dr. Robinson, whose familiarity with everything relating to that country is well known, states that this map is, without doubt, the best delineation of that interesting region, on a large scale, in the English language. The distinctness and boldness of the execution strike the eye with great force, and add much to its value.

Every Sabbath School, every Bible Class, and every Bible student should own this map. By studying it in connection with the Bible, a new interest would at once be created, and its beautiful and distinct delineations would soon be impressed upon the mind.

The map possesses additional value from the 'Plan of Jerusalem' in one corner, and the Environs of Jerusalem' in another, both of which are executed with great fidelity and beauty.

For sale by Charles Tappan, Boston.

THE MESSIAH. Boston: Published by Wilkins, Carter & Co., and Oscar C. B. Carter. 1846.

George Frederick Handel was born at Halle, a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, in 1684. He brought out this masterly and celebrated composition in 1741, at the age of 57. In this edition, the vocal parts are given complete, and the most important of the instrumental parts (including those added by Mozart,) contained in an accompaniment newly arranged for the piano forte, or organ, by John Bishop, of Cheltenham, England.

This volume is issued in the folio form, and contains 188 pages. There are three general divisions. The subject of the first is, the promise and birth of the Messiah; the second, his triumph and victory over his enemies; and third, the salvation and victory of the church.

In the construction of this splendid composition, fifty-four various passages from the Old and New Testament are used.

The execution of the work is typographical, and in a style of great beauty. The paper is substantial and will bear use.

The musical public is greatly indebted to Mr. Oscar C. B. Carter, the enterprising originator of this new and beautiful edition of The Messiah.

LETTERS TO A VERY YOUNG LADY. Published by the American Sunday School Union.

The book contains forty-two letters, written in a style of simplicity, yet purity, and embracing in their range almost every duty incumbent upon those to whom the letters are addressed. The religious instruction given, is sound, earnest, and practical. It will be found not only entertaining, but highly useful.

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INFLUENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER.

BY REV. WILLIAM BATES, OF NORTHBRIDGE, MASS.

IN looking abroad upon society, nothing appears more wonderful to the contemplative man, than the great variety and vast diversity in human character. He sees some men sunk in gross animalism, living as though they had no capacity for intellectual enjoyment, or moral culture. He notices others, with minds enriched with the stores of various knowledge, delighting to dwell in the high regions of thought, and to seek elevated enjoyment in communing with the poet and the scholar. He beholds others, tender in conscience and pure in outward life, whose every action says to the world about them, There is a God; there is a spiritual world; heaven is a reality.

The variety in the cast and complexion of men's countenances, is not more marked than their diversity in character. Of all the inhabitants of Boston, there is not one who could be taken by his acquaintance for another. So, too, with the characters of men,-the variety is endless. In one mind, avarice predominates; in another, pride; in a third, love of pleasure. One person is cheerful; another, melancholy; a third, passionate. So in one countenance, the eye is the most marked feature; in another, the nose; while in a

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third, the chief expression rests on the brow or lies in the lines of the mouth. In the shades and phases of individual character, there is a like variety, which passes all enumeration.

Yet, notwithstanding this wide diversity in character, men are all endowed with essentially the same susceptibilities and mental faculties; the same moral constitution and elementary characteristics. There may be a natural and original difference in the powers of different minds, and in the strength of the intellectual faculties in different individuals. But of themselves, the faculties and susceptibilities of every mind are the same in nature, one in kind.

Very much, therefore, of the marked inequality in the intellectual attainments and moral culture among men is, unquestionably, to be attributed to the influences and circumstances by which they are surrounded during the whole progress of life. While the elementary faculties of the mind are in process of development, the character must inevitably be modified by the myriad external circumstances, which are constantly darting influences upon it. Whatever may be the native difference between different men, in those original principles which are unfolded into intellectual powers and moral dispositions; yet the immediate causes of the greater portion of the prominent actual character of men, are to be found in those moral elements and surrounding circumstances through which life is drawn. One great principle of our nature is, that the mind takes its cast from whatever it is most conversant with; from that with which it communes; from that upon which it dwells; from that which it loves. Men are ever surrounded by a crowd of external influences, which are seeking to fix their impress on the intellect or the heart. Susceptible as the mind is of receiving impressions through the senses, it is at the mercy of innumerable influences which may strike it from every point of the surrounding world. These influences may proceed from natural scenery; from the words and actions of men; from books; from the customs of society; from the atmosphere of home. To the child just entering upon life, there is not an object external to itself with which it is familiar, and not a person with whom it associates, who may not affect its whole future character, by giving a determinate bias to all its thoughts and purposes, to its disposition and moral feelings.

Were we to trace one of the majestic rivers of our country to its source, we should find, (if the report of travellers be true,) not far

from the spot where it issues from its parent spring, a rock lying across the path it would naturally pursue, and turning its stream in an entirely new direction; thus determining, ever after, the course in which that proud river is to roll its mighty flood to the ocean. So is it with character. Were it possible for the mind to return upon its own foot-steps to that point in its moral history, when it first began to receive impressions from external objects, every person would probably find that some one powerful influence, or some few circumstances, of little apparent moment, perhaps, to which he was subjected in early youth, gave a decisive turn to his character and superinduced a grand determination of mind, which has continued to grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength throughout his whole life. Early impressions are often deep and abiding. The biases and mental habits of youth are the germ, the foundation of all future character. The boy is father of the man.' The lineaments of his mind may be modified, as those of the face are by age. But like those also they will probably continue substantially the same, only becoming more prominent and more distinctly marked, as life advances. When a determining principle, or a leading and decided propensity has, by some means, been once established in the mind of a youth, it is surprising to see how it will, not only produce a partial insensibility to all impressions which would tend to counteract it, but also augment its own ascendency, by attracting to itself every influence, and coalescing with every impression which is adapted to confirm and strengthen it.

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This is the grand secret in the history of character. And often, a single incident in early life originates this capital determination of mind, which shapes a man's future course. Often, a trivial circumstance is the pivot upon which a person's whole character and destiny turns. It is stated in the biography of Michael Angelo, the great Italian sculptor, that when a child, his nurse, who was the wife of a stone-mason, was accustomed to give him a little chisel as a plaything. Had it not been for that chisel, the genius of Angelo might have taken an entirely different course, and we should have read of him in history as a poet, an orator, or a statesman. Had a little sword been given him as a toy, in place of the chisel, his name might have come down to us as a military chieftain, a renowned general, rather than he

'Who made the senseless stone to breathe and speak,

The dull rock reflect the perfect form of youth and age.'

The simple fact that Hannibal, the renowned Carthagenian general, at nine years of age, was led by his father to the sacred altar, to swear uncompromising and eternal hatred to Rome, was, perhaps, the circumstance which first planted in his breast that deadly animosity toward the Romans, which incited him to devote his life and the masterly powers of his mind to the overthrow of the imperial city.

It is not impossible that the ardent love of war, and the insatiable desire for military glory, which the Emperor Napoleon manifested, may have been first kindled in his breast by that little brass cannon with which, we are told, he was accustomed to amuse himself in his boyhood. At that early period, while engaged in his youthful sports, were perhaps implanted in his mind, the seminal principles of that guilty ambition which prompted him to sacrifice the happiness and lives of millions to his love of fame, and caused him

'To wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'

In a retired village in Vermont, two hundred miles from any seaport, a traveller, not many years ago, turned his horse up to the door of an humble cottage to ask for entertainment and shelter for the night. He was hospitably received. In the evening, in conversing with his host and hostess, he learned that their three sons, their only children, were absent from them upon the sea. He was told that each of them, from early boyhood, had manifested a desire to become a sailor, so strong and ardent that all the earnest entreaties of their parents could not quench it. To these parents it was a mystery how their sons, so far from the sea and surrounded by all the attractions of rural life, should each of them, in turn, exhibit such an unconquerable desire to be wanderers upon the ocean. The traveller thought he could solve the mystery. He had noticed in a recess in the wall, over the mantle-tree, a beautiful glass model of a ship completely rigged and in full sail. This, to him, was a solution of the mystery. He believed, (and who will say it was a groundless belief?) that that little glass ship, a bridal present to the mother, and constantly before the eyes of those boys from infancy, had inspired in their breasts that love for a sailor's life upon the

ocean-wave.

The life of man is conducted throughout its whole course in the

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