bow melts into the brighter, Yet even if a harsher line is to be drawn between the pain and pleasure of the most unselfish mind (and ill health, for instance, may draw it), we should not quarrel with it, if it contributed to the general mass of comfort, and were of a nature which general kindliness could not avoid. Made as we are, there are certain pains without which it would be difficult to conceive certain great and overbalancing pleasures. We may conceive it possible for beings to be made entirely happy; but in our composition, something of pain seems to be a necessary ingredient, in order that the materials may turn to as fine account as possible; though our clay, in the course of ages and experience, may be refined more and more. We may get rid of the worst earth, though not of earth itself.

Now the liability to the loss of children-or rather what renders us sensible of it, the occasional loss itself seems to be one of those necessary bitters thrown into the cup of humanity. We do not mean that every one must lose one of his children, in order to enjoy the rest; or that every individual loss afflicts us in the same proportion. I allude to the deaths of infants in general. These might be as few as I could render them. But if none at all ever took place, I should regard every little child as a man or woman secured; and it will easily be conceived what a world of endearing cares and hopes this security would endanger. The very idea of infancy would lose its continuity with us. Girls and boys would be future men and women, not present children. They would have attained their full growth in our imaginations, and might as well have been men and women at once. On the other hand, those who have lost an infant, are never, as it were, without an infant child. They are the only persons who, in one sense, retain it always; and they furnish their neighbours with the same idea. The other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality. This one alene is rendered an immortal child. Death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and inno

cence.

Of such as these are the pleasantest shapes that visit cur fancy and our hopes. They are the ever-smiling emblems of joy; the prettiest pages that wait upon imagination. Lastly, of these are the kingdom of heaven.' Wherever there is a province of that benevolent and all accessible empire, whether on earth or elsewhere, such are the gentle spirits that must inhabit it. To such simplicity, or the resemblance of it, must they come. Such must be the ready confidence of their hearts, and creativeness of their fancy. And so ignorant must they be of the 'knowledge of good and evil;' losing their discernment of that self-created trouble, by enjoying the garden before them, and not being ashamed of what is kindly and innocent.-Leigh Hunt.

A MELTING STORY.

No other class of men in any country possess that facetious aptness of inflicting a good-humoured revenge which seems to be innate with a Green Mountain Boy.

One winter evening, a country store- keeper in the Mountain State was about closing his doors for the night, and while standing in the snow outside putting up his window-shutters, he saw through the glass a lounging, worthless fellow within, grab a pound of fresh butter from the shelf, and hastily conceal it in his hat.

The act was no sooner detected than the revenge was hit upon, and a very few moments found the Green Mountain store-keeper at once indulging his appetite for fun to the fullest extent, and paying off the thief with a facetious sort of torture for which he might have gained a premium from the old inquisition.

'I say, Seth!' said the store-keeper, coming in and closing the door after him, slapping his hands over his shoulders, and stamping the snow off his shoes.

Seth had his hand upon the door, his hat upon his head,

and the roll of new butter in his hat, anxious to make his exit as soon as possible.

'I say, Seth, sit down; I reckon, now, on, such a night as this, a leetle something warm wouldn't hurt a fellow; come, sit down.'

Seth felt very uncertain: he had the butter, and was exceedingly anxious to be off, but the temptation of 'something warm' sadly interfered with his resolution to go. This hesitation, however, was soon settled by the right owner of the butter taking Seth by the shoulders and planting him upon a scat close to the stove, where he was in such a manner cornered in by barrels and boxes, that while the country grocer sat before him there was no possibility of his getting out, and right in this place sure enough the store-keeper sat down.

'Seth, we'll have a little warm Santa Cruz,' said the Green Mountain grocer, as he opened the stove-door, and stuffed in as many sticks as the space would admit. Without it you'd freeze going home such a night as this.'

Seth already felt the butter settling down closer to his hair, and jumped up, declaring he must go.

'Not till you have something warm, Seth; come, I've got a story to tell you, too; sit down, now;' and Seth was again pushed into his seat by his cunning tormentor. 'Oh! it's confounded hot here,' said the petty thief, again attempting to rise.

'Sit down-don't be in such a plaguy hurry,' retorted the grocer, pushing him back in his chair. 'But I've got the cows to fodder, and some wood to split, and I must be agoin',' continued the persecuted chap. 'But you mustn't tear yourself away, Seth, in this manner. Sit down; let the cows take care of themselves, and keep yourself cool; you appear to be fidgetty,' said the roguish grocer, with a wicked leer.

The next thing was the production of two smoking glasses of hot rum toddy, the very sight of which, in Seth's present situation, would have made the hair stand erect upon his head, had it not been well oiled and kept down by the butter.

'Seth, I'll give you a toast now, and you can butter it yourself,' said the grocer, yet with an air of such consummate simplicity, that poor Seth still believed himself unsuspected. Seth, here's a Christmas goose-(it was about Christmas time)-here's a Christmas goose well roasted and basted, eh? I tell you, Seth, it's the greatest eating in creation. And, Seth, don't you never use hog's fat or common cooking butter to baste with; fresh pound butter, just the same as you see on that shelf yonder, is the only proper thing in nature to baste a goose with; come, take your butter-I mean, Seth, take your toddy.'

Poor Seth now began to smoke, as well as to melt, and his mouth was as hermetically sealed up as though he had been born dumb. Streak after streak of the butter came pouring from under his hat, and his handkerchief was already soaked with the greasy overflow. Talking away as if nothing was the matter, the grocer kept stuffing the wood into the stove, while poor Seth sat bolt upright, with his back against the counter, and his knees almost touching the red-hot furnace before

him.

Dreadful cold night this,' said the grocer. Why, Seth, you seem to perspire as if you was warm! Why don't you take your hat off? Here, let me put your hat away!

No exclaimed poor Seth at last, with a spasmodic effort to get his tongue loose, and clapping both hands upon his hat; No! I must go; let me out; I ain't well; let me go!' A greasy cataract was now pouring down the poor fellow's face and neck, and soaking into his clothes, and trickling down his body into his very boots, so that he was literally in a perfect bath of oil.

'Well, good night, Seth, if you will go;' said the humorous Vermonter; adding, as Seth got out into the road, Neighbour, I reckon the fun I've had out of you is worth a ninepence, so I shan't charge you for that pound of butter !'-New Orleans Picayune.

THE SONG OF THE PASSIONS. A FRAGMENT OF AN ODE.

I.

'Twas now the hour when gentle Sleep
Doth loose of waking life the chain,
And Fancy starts the soul to steep
In dreams, in which she loves to keep
Her strange fantastic reign.

Of airy forms a motley throng

Before my startled vision grew:
I heard them as they swept along
Achanting each the changeful song,
And straight the PASSIONS knew.

II.

First, Jor: I dance in the glance of youth,

When the loved maid is woo'd and won;

And I flit o'er his face when the sick men looks
Once more on the ruddy sun.

On the cliff I sit which beacons home

To the wave-cradled mariner;

And his wife, when she clings by his neck and weeps, I smile in her first big tear.

When summer sheds her flowers I sport

With the children young on the lea;

And the scholar's lamp, through the long winter night, Is fed and is trimm'd by me.

I dimple the peasant's swarthy cheek,

Whom twilight calls homeward away;

I watch by his pillow, and wake him afresh,

When blusheth the orient day.

When the mother looks with new delight

On her rosy-lipp'd laughing boy,

And straineth the babe to her bosom so white,
On it, too, is nestling Joy.

When the sinner turns from ways of guilt,
I whisper his first-born praver;

And the while it ascends to the throne of Love,
I'm flying to meet it there.

I speed o'er the earth with gladsome step,
And fresh flowers in my path are strewn :
I rest for an hour, and they woo my delay,
But on must I pilgrim-on.

And I hollow a way for the fiend Decay,
Who hastes to make that fond heart his prey.
And when the boy is led to look

On her from him that soon must sever,
And draws the kiss, long, long, and deep,
As if she'd have it last for ever-
And drinketh in the trickling tear,

The last from these soft blue eyes given-
And hears the last fond blessing ere
The parent spirit rise to Heaven-
And thinks, when the pure soul is fled,
And when the soft blue eyes are dim,
Those eyes on him have look'd their last,
That soul breathed out in love to him-
And feels that o'er the wide world he
Must pilgrim it all lonelily-

A world, though wide, that holdeth none
To be to him as she that's gone:

A mother's eye must ne'er behold him,
A mother's love must ne'er enfold him--
That never more must he be prest
In soft embrace to mother's breast-
I'm there:

And who shall paint the Passion wild
That swells and sways in that young child!

IGNORANCE BLISS.

Were the time of our death foreseen, what a melancholy character would it impart to the pursuits and occupations of the human race! If every man saw the moment of his death continually before him, how would his thoughts be fixed to the fatal spot; and, upon its near approach, the consideration of it would probably absorb every other. With respect to our fellow-creatures, how would it poison the springs of enjoyment were parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, able to calculate with certainty the period of each other's lives! We should seem to be walking among the victims of death-the scenes of human existence would lose all cheerfulness, animation, and beauty. The interests of society would also sustain most serious injury. Many great and noble enterprises would never have been begun, could the persons who, in the hope of life, engaged in them, have foreseen that, before they could be concluded, they themselves would be snatched away by the hand of death. Many discoveries, by which great benefit has been conferred on the world, would not have been elicited. Few efforts probably would be made to attain any object, the consequences of which terminate with the life of the party, if he foresaw that they would be intercepted by || death. Who would venture to engage in any lucrative employment, if he certainly knew that the benefit would not be even partially realized during the term of his mortal existence? But happily for mankind events are concealed-duties only are made known.-R. Hall.

A UNIVERSAL EXAMPLE.

Christ was an example to men of all classes, and under every variety of circumstances. To the great? A greater than Solomon is here.' To the mean? Is not this the carpenter' To the rich? He is heir of all things." To the poor? Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. To the famous? Behold the world is gone after him! To the obscure? Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?' To the sorrowing? Jesus wept.' To the joyous? He 'rejoiced in spirit.' To the tempted? 'All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down" and worship me.' To the injured? His visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.' To the powerful? Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels ? To the loved? Lord I am ready to go with thee to prison and to death. To the slighted? I know not the man.' To the insulted? Be ye come out as against a thief with swords and with staves ?' To the betrayed? Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away safely. To the idol of the crowd? Hosanna to the Son of David!' To the butt of their scorn? Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas !'-Rev. G. O. Campbell.

ROMANCE READING.

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Many works of fiction may be read with safety, some even with profit; but the constant familiarity even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind that needs hardening, dissolves the heart which wants fortifying, stirs the imagination which wants quieting, irritates the passions which want calming, and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues and for spiritual exercises. Though all these books may not be wicked, yet the habitual indulgence in such reading is a silent, mining mischief. Though there is no act and no moment in which any open assault on the mind is made, yet the constant habit performs the work of a mental atrophy-it produces all the symptoms of decay, and the danger is not less for being more gradual, and therefore less suspected.-Hannah More.

Printed and published by JAMES HOGG, 122 Nicolson Street. Edinburgh; to whom all communications are to be addressed. Sold also by J. JOHNSTONE, Edinburgh; J. M'LEOD, Glasgow; W. M'COMB, Belfast; G. & R. KING, Aberdeen; R. WALKER, Dundee; R. GROOMBRIDGE & SONS, London; and all Booksellers.

No. 13.

ETCHINGS FROM LIFE.

STEPHEN WOODFORD.

STEPHEN WOODFORD was the most prosperous merchant in the thriving town of B. For a quarter of a century he had carried on an extensive and gradually increasing trade; and now scarcely a vessel entered or left the port which was not, in some way, connected with his mercantile concerns. Fortune had smiled pleasantly on all his undertakings; nor was there one in the town who envied his prosperity, for Stephen was liberal, and his character princely. The poor loved him as a man who never sent the suppliant empty away; those with whom he transacted business admired him as a man above niggardly bargaining and petty advantage-withal, his moral character was fair, and in most points irreproachable. Yet there was one feature in his conduct distorted and out of keeping; he never attended divine worship, and often on the Sabbath he might have been seen entering his office and remaining there for hours, apparently immersed in business. Of religion he never spoke slightingly, but always avoided the subject, in a manner plainly signifying his wish that it should not be handled in his presence; and Stephen Woodford was by far too influential a man to have home-truths thrust upon him. His personal appearance was very prepossessing. Above the middle height, and stout without being corpulent; scrupulously neat in his dress, without any approach to foppery; with a dignity of carriage, yet a suavity of expression and manner-he was marked out as a man of whom you would have said'There is one who holds in his hand the cup of prosperity, yet carries it steadily.'

In the little world of his own domestic circle, Stephen Woodford seemed as favoured as in the great world without; for he was blessed with a partner possessed of all that is excellent in woman, and with two noble enterprising sons. There was a waywardness and impatience of control in the dispositions of the youths; bat their hearts were manly and generous, and their intellectual powers energetic, and people set down their occasional deviations from the path of strict decorum to the very luxuriance of their spring-time. The merchant was proud of his sons, and, when they arrived at a proper age, he associated them with him in business; nor was there any transaction so important that he would not confide it to their judgment.

However urbane the general manners of Stephen Woodford, and however decorous his habits, the placidity of his countenance was not always undisturbed, nor his walk and conversation so uniform as to deprive the good citizens

PRICE 1 d.

of all ground of comment. Now and then a ruffled asperity would show itself, puzzling, because apparently causeless-a hurried gait, an indefinite reply, as from a mind busied about other concerns-and occasionally he would take a strange fancy for strolling in the dark to the pier, and scanning the ocean through a night-glass.

Time were on, and with the natural changes which his fingers wrought on the material man, came into light features of character moulded by the silent but sure agency of moral causes, the operation of which was unseen then, but clearly indicated by the aspect of subsequent events. The courtesy of his deportment became more frequently interrupted-the frank English bearing almost merged into the sinister-the expression of the eye savoured of anxiety and suspicion-the scrupulous neatness of attire had given place to negligence, and so marked, though gradual, was the alteration, that men asked each other the question, 'What can have happened to Mr Woodford ?' His demeanour betokened a man sustaining severe losses, and bending beneath an accumulating load of disaster: yet at that period he was actually realizing profit far greater than in the days of his portly carriage and his prosperous smile. The whole mystery lay in the nature of the trafic. He had become a wholesale smuggler, and for years freight after freight of articles of contraband had floated on his capital, and now, when the incident occurred which closed his career in B, the bulk of his wealth was embarked in the demoralizing trade. This circumstance was, of course, from his high character for probity, totally unsuspected by his neighbours; but upon its discovery it afforded a ready solution of the mystery which had long hung over many of his actions. Such a trade he could not have carried on single-handed; agents, subordinate tools, were requisite, and these were only to be obtained among the dregs of mankind. Poverty makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows;' so does crime. The merchant, whose integrity was unsullied in the eyes of the world, whose company was courted by the proud, was the hidden associate of abandoned desperadoes, comrelied at least to a unity of interest if not to a community of feeling. And for what? Was it that a passion, blinding, absorbing, contented to sacrifice the bright jewel of a pure conscience for the love of getting, had settled upon his soul? Yet his was no sordid mind, incapable of aught save a concern for self; on the contrary, his education had been that of a gentleman, his sensibilities were refined and cultivated, and his perceptions of right and wrong acute. What the verdict of his own conscience had been upon him his aspect told too legibly. He was a striking illustration of the fallacy of that philosophy which seeks for the causes of what are called the coldblooded vices of mankind only in an error of calculation,

PORTRAIT GALLERY.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. Tus progress of the new spirit which heralded the French Revolution was not less marked in the changes which it wrought in the character of men of letters than in the political aspect of Europe. The rules of the schools tottered-doubt was boldly enunciated where, a few years before, the expression of such doubt would have been considered rank blasphemy—and the travail of great minds, unsettled upon topics of momentous interest, showed itself in their passion-breathing productions, and in the incongruous features of their private history. For more than a century previous to the rise of that galaxy of writers who graced the few last years of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, our literature, and our poetry in particular, had become polished enough; but cold, timid, and superficial-possessing few faults but fewer beauties-very orthodox morality was conveyed in very orthodox hexameters, and the men of taste were content with a round of stale truths decked in musical cadence and verbal elegance. Poetry, in short, had degenerated into mere versification, and the inhabiting spirit having fled, the priests of the temple strove, by adorning the motionless statue, to win back to its abode the departed guest. But the change came, and mind after mind of gigantic calibre appeared, at whose power the world has not yet ceased to wonder. Rich-unspeakably rich-though the period to which we refer was, and abounding in literary character of the highest order, we think that few will be inclined to deny the subject of this sketch a prominent place in the ranks of his brilliant compeers.

In the portraiture of individual human mind, as in the delineation of the features of the countenance, the more marked and irregular the outlines the more easy the limner's task. Possessing few bold or strongly developed peculiarities, patent to the eyes of the world, and seemingly rather a man of metaphysical dreams, the intellectual and moral constitution of Coleridge presents a subject of study deeply interesting and instructive. In the still and unpretending history of the philosophical poet, truths are to be found, and lessons learned, more valuable to the world by far than are to be obtained from the noisy march and pompous progress of many a man who has drawn all eyes upon his career.

Of his early history, prior to his appearance upon the stage of life as an author, little is known, and that little is tinted with the sombre hues which enshrouded the period of his pilgrimage here. Cast an orphan on the world, and educated at a public charity-prolific though Christ's Church Hospital has been in gifted alumni-he was left to a blighting neglect, damping enough to ordinary mortals, how much more so, then, to a being of his delicate organization! Even when his literary celebrity had brought peers from their palaces to hear the great man, like a second Johnson, eloquently and profoundly discourse, this inexplicable absence of natural feeling on the part of his near relatives continued, and was bitterly felt by the mortified poet. How far this untoward influence, acting as a mildew on his very spring, affected his subsequent history, we pretend not to determine. But one common result of such circumstances could never take place in him; his heart was too vitalized to be seared, and the current of his sympathies too powerful to be frozen into callous indifference or misanthropy. It is from the date of his connexion with the Bristol savans that the full stature of his mind and character is to be measured; and then we find him displaying a combination of qualities so captivating, as to lead, in admiring submission, the affections of all with whom he came in contact. Yet few of these brilliant endowments were not chequered by some flaw, which piteously baulked their operation for good.

At this time that enthusiasm, which, however modi

fied by longer contact with the stern reality of life, never entirely forsook him, displayed itself in its strongest colours. It was part of the man, and whatever of beautiful or great Coleridge has given to the world, owes, if not its production, at least its birth and public existence, to this feeling. To have deprived him of enthusiasm would, from his constitution, have been to convert him into a dumb day-dreamer-the architect of magnificent castles invisible to every eye save his own. True, it may be objected, that this enthusiasm was softened down in the progress of his life, and that Cole. ridge still was great; but we would answer, perchance not very logically, yet somewhat to the point, that the decline of this feeling may be observed cotemporary with the ascendancy of that substituted excitement which wrought his ruin. What a contrast between the doubting, irresolute, almost imbecile, man of years, and the enthusiastic young advocate of the Paxtisocracy. By the way, it was in Bristol that the wild scheme of forming a colony on the banks of the Susquehanna, was entered into by Coleridge, Southey, and some other literary gentlemen, in which expedition they were to be accompanied by certain equally ardent young ladies, two of whoin, however, subsequently became the wives of the poets in their native land. In this project, notwithstanding its almost absurd nature, Coleridge was perfectly sincere, and he afterwards censured in strong terms the delinquency of Southey and others, whose shrewder sense had speedily conquered their inferior enthusiasm, and who had abandoned the enterprise. His mental life was a changing tissue of gorgeous dreams, the intangibility of one of which no sooner became apparent, than another shadowy creation sprang up, and was welcomed to the vacant place. And in these dreams, in the very sifting of their evanescent constitution, a mass of intellectual energy was expended, sufficient, had it been accompanied by a powerful will, to have evolved problems of great import to mankind, or generated productions excelling all that ever flowed from his pen. In knowledge of the world-that prime requisite for success in life, and that rare accompaniment of poetic genius-he was deficient, which, coupled with a natural imprudence, tended to precipitate him into situations of embarrassment and annoyance. Indeed, so utterly devoid of the bustle and business-like habits of ordinary mortals did he appear, that his unfitness for the struggle, to which his want of fortune called him, was too painfully evident. In October, 1795, he married Miss Fricker-the Sara of his pieces-when destitute of any fixed means of income, and trusting for his support to providence, and a promise from his publisher of a guinea and a half for every hundred lines of poetry he should produce. The want to which he was reduced, and the depiction of its influence upon him in his letters, form a melancholy chapter in the history of authors. Could volumes tell more powerfully the misery of a refined mind suffering under pecuniary distress, than the following extract from a letter of his to his publisher: 'It is my duty and business to thank God for all his dispensations, and to believe them the best possible, but indeed I think I should have been more thankful had he made me a journeyman shoemaker, instead of an author by trade.' So I am forced to write for bread! write the flights of poetic inspiration, when every moment I am hearing a groan from my wife; groans, and complaints, and sickness. The present hour I am in a quickset hedge of embarrassment, and whichever way I turn a thorn runs into me. The future is cloud and thick darkness! Poverty, perhaps, and the thin faces of them that want bread looking up to me. Nor is this all. My happiest moments for composition are broken in upon by the reflection that I must make haste.'

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Such, however, was by no means the uniform aspect of Coleridge's career; he had his sunshine as well as his cloud, and his bright hours were as gay as if a shadow were never again to fall upon him. To follow him through the incidents, or even to notice the leading events of his career, is foreign to our purpose. But one circumstance in his conduct, continuing its influence for a long period,