leigh. He prayed but for life for life he would give all he had in the world;-it was but life he asked-life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations; he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of the lowest caverns of their hills.

It is impossible to describe the scorn, the loathing, and contempt, with which the wife of Macgregor regarded this wretched petitioner for the poor boon of existence. "I could have bid you live," she said, "had life been to you the same weary and wasting burden that it is to me—that it is to every noble and generous mind. But you-wretch!—you could creep through the world, unaffected by its various disgraces, its ineffable miseries, its constantly accumulating masses of crime and sorrow; you could live and enjoy yourself, while the noble-minded are betrayed-while nameless and birthless villains tread on the neck of the brave and long-descended; you could enjoy yourself, like a butcher's dog in the shambles, battening on garbage, while the slaughter of the brave went on around you! This enjoyment you shall not live to partake of; you shall die, base dog! and that before yon cloud has passed over the sun."

She gave a brief command to her attendants, two of whom seized upon the prostrate suppliant, and hurried him to the brink of a cliff which overhung the flood. He set up the most piercing and dreadful cries that fear ever uttered;—I may well term them dreadful, for they haunted my sleep for years afterwards. As the murderers, or executioners,-call them as you will,-dragged him along, he recognised me even in that moment of horror, and exclaimed, in the last articulate words I ever heard him utter, "O, Mr. Osbaldiston, save me!-save me!"

I was so much moved by this horrid spectacle, that, although in momentary expectation of sharing his fate, I did attempt to speak in his behalf; but, as might have been expected, my interference was sternly disregarded. The victim was held fast by some; while others, binding a large heavy stone in a plaid, tied it round his neck; and others again eagerly stripped him of some part of his dress. Half naked, and thus manacled, they hurried him into the lake, there about twelve feet deep, drowning his last death-shriek with a loud halloo of vindictive triumph; over which, however, the yell of mortal agony was distinctly heard. The heavy burden splashed in the dark-blue waters of the lake; and the Highlanders, with their pole-axes and swords, watched an instant, to guard, lest, extri

cating himself from the load to which he was attached, he might have struggled to regain the shore. But the knot had been securely bound; the victim sunk without effort; the waters, which his fall had disturbed, settled calmly over him; and the unit of that life, for which he had pleaded so strongly, was for ever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.

XX. ON THE EFFECTS OF RELIGION.-Wilberforce.

WHEN the pulse beats high, and we are flushed with youth, and health, and vigour; when all goes on prosperously, and success seems almost to anticipate our wishes, then we feel not the want of the consolations of religion: but, when fortune frowns, or friends forsake us; when sorrow, or sickness, or old age, comes upon us; then it is that the superiority of the pleasures of religion is established over those of dissipation and vanity, which are ever apt to fly from us when we are most in want of their aid.

There is scarcely a more melancholy sight, to a considerate mind, than that of an old man who is a stranger to those only true sources of satisfaction. How affecting, and at the same time how disgusting is it, to see such a one awkwardly catching at the pleasures of his younger years, which are now beyond his reach; or feebly attempting to retain them, while they mock his endeavours, and elude his grasp! To such a one, gloomily, indeed, does the evening of life set in! All is sour and cheerless. He can neither look backward with complacency, nor forward with hope: while the aged Christian, relying on the assured mercy of his Redeemer, can calmly reflect that his dismission is at hand; "that his redemption draweth nigh." While his strength declines, and his faculties decay, he can quietly repose himself on the fidelity of God; and, at the very entrance of the valley of the shadow of death, he can lift up an eye, dim, perhaps, and feeble, yet occasionally sparkling with hope, and confidently looking forward to the near possession of his heavenly inheritance, "to those joys which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive."

What striking lessons have we had, of the precarious tenure of all sublunary possessions! Wealth, and power, and prosperity, how peculiarly transitory and uncertain! But religion dispenses her choicest cordials in the seasons of exigence, in poverty, in exile, in sickness, and in death. The essential superiority of that support which is derived from religion, is

less felt, at least it is less apparent, when the Christian is in full possession of riches, and splendour, and rank, and all the gifts of nature and fortune. But, when all these are swept away by the rude hand of time, or the rough blasts of adversity, the true Christian stands, like the glory of the forest, erect and vigorous; stripped, indeed, of his summer foliage, but more than ever discovering, to the observing eye, the solid strength of his substantial texture.

XXI.-THE UNCERTAINTIES OF FORTUNE.-Lord Bolingbroke. THE sudden invasion of an enemy overthrows such as are not on their guard; but they who foresee the war, and prepare themselves for it before it breaks out, stand, without difficulty, the first and the fiercest onset. I learned this important lesson long ago; and never trusted to Fortune, even while she seemed to be at peace with me. The riches, the honours, the reputation, and all the advantages, which her treacherous indulgence poured upon me, I placed so, that she might snatch them away without giving me any disturbance. I kept a great interval between me and them. She took them, but she could not tear them from me.

No man suffers by bad fortune, but he who has been deceived by good. If we grow fond of her gifts; if we fancy that they belong to us, and are perpetually to remain with us; if we lean upon them, and expect to be considered for them; we shall sink into all the bitterness of grief, as soon as these false and transitory benefits pass away, as soon as our vain and childish minds, unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute even of those which are imaginary. But, if we do not suffer ourselves to be transported with prosperity, neither shall we be reduced by adversity. Our souls will be proof against the dangers of both these states: and, having explored our strength, we shall be sure of it; for, in the midst of felicity, we shall have tried how we can bear misfortune.

Ignominy can take no hold on virtue; for virtue is in every condition the same, and challenges the same respect. We applaud the world when she prospers; and when she falls into adversity we applaud her. Like the temples of the gods, she is venerable even in her ruins. After this, must it not appear a degree of madness to defer one moment acquiring the only arms capable of defending us against attacks, to which at every moment we are exposed? Our being miserable or not miserable, when we fall into misfortunes, depends on the manner in which we have enjoyed prosperity.

XXII.-SALATHIEL'S ACCOUNT OF THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.-Croly THE fall of our illustrious and happy city was supernatural The destruction of the conquered was against the first princi ples of the Roman policy; and, to the last hour of our nationa existence, Rome held out offers of peace, and lamented our frantic disposition to be undone. But the decree was gone forth from a mightier throne. During the latter days of the siege, a hostility, to which that of man was as a grain of sand to the tempest that drives it on, overpowered our strength and senses; fearful shapes and voices in the airvisions starting us from our short and troublesome sleeplunacy in its hideous forms-sudden death in the midst of vigour the fury of the elements let loose upon our heads. We had every terror and evil that could beset human nature, but pestilence; the most probable of all, in a city crowded with the famishing, the diseased, the wounded, and the dead. Yet, though the streets were covered with unburied, though every well and trench was teeming, though six hundred thousand corpses were flung over the ramparts, and lay naked to the sun, pestilence came not;—for if it had come, the enemy would have been scared away. But "the abomination of desolation," the Pagan standard, was fixed where it was to remain until the plough had passed over the ruins of Jerusalem.

On this fatal night no man laid his head upon the pillow. Heaven and earth were in conflict. Meteors burned over us— the ground shook under our feet-the volcanoes blazed-the wind burst forth in irresistible blasts, and swept the living and the dead in whirlwinds far into the desert. We heard the bellowing of the distant Mediterranean, as if its waters were at our sides, swelled by the deluge. The lakes and rivers roared and inundated the land. The fiery sword shot out tenfold fire-showers of blood fell-thunder pealed from every quarter of the heavens-lightning, in immense sheets, of an intensity and duration that turned the darkness into more than day, withering eye and soul, burned from the zenith to the ground, and marked its track by forests of flame, and shattered the summits of the hills. Defence was unthought of, for the mortal enemy had passed from the mind. Our hearts quaked for fear; but it was to see the powers of heaven shaken. All cast away the shield and spear, and crouched before the descending judgment.

We were conscience-smitten. Our cries of remorse, anguish, and horror, were heard through the uproar of the storm. We

howled to caverns to hide us. We plunged into the sepulchres, to escape the wrath that consumed the living. We would have buried ourselves under the mountains. I knew the cause the unspeakable cause, and knew that the last hour of crime was at hand. A few fugitives, astonished to see one man amongst them not sunk into the lowest feebleness of fear, came around me, and besought me to lead them to some place of safety, if such were now to be found on earth. I told them openly that they were to die, and counselled them to die in the hallowed ground of the Temple. They followed; and I led through streets encumbered with every shape of human sufferings, to the foot of Mount Moriah; but beyond that, we found advance impossible. Piles of clouds, whose darkness was palpable even in the midnight in which we stood, covered the holy hill. Impatient, and not to be daunted by any thing that man could overcome, I cheered my disheartened band, and attempted to lead the way up the ascents; but I had scarcely entered the cloud, when I was swept down by a gust that tore the rocks in a flinty shower around me.

Now came the last and most wonderful sign that marked the fate of rejected Israel. While I lay helpless, I heard the whirlwind roar through the cloudy hill, and vapours began to revolve. A pale light, like that of the rising moon, quivered on the edges of the horizon; and the clouds rose rapidly, shaping themselves into the forms of battlements and towers. The sound of voices was heard within, low and distinct, yet strangely sweet. Still the lustre brightened; and the airy building rose, tower on tower, and battlement on battlement, in awe that held us mute. We knelt and gazed on this more than mortal architecture, that continued rising and spreading, and glowing with a serener light, still soft and silvery, yet to which the broadest moonlight was dim. At last, it stood forth to earth and heaven, the colossal image of the first Temple of the building raised by the wisest of men, and consecrated by the Visible Glory.

All Jerusalem saw the image; and the shout that, in the midst of their despair, ascended from the thousands and tens of thousands, told that proud remembrances were there. But a hymn was heard, that might have hushed the world beside. Never fell on my ears, never on the human sense, a sound so majestic, yet so subduing-so full of melancholy, yet of grandeur and command. The vast portal opened, and from it marched a host, such as man had never seen before, such as man shall never see but once again-the guardian angels of