lived, but is an example of it. Yet, in contradiction to all this, the almost universal feeling appears to be, that industry can effect nothing, that eminence is the result of accident, and that every one must be content to remain just what he may happen to be. Thus multitudes, who come forward as teachers and guides, suffer themselves to be satisfied with the most indifferent attainments, and a miserable mediocrity, without so much as inquiring how they might rise higher, much less making any attempt to rise.

For any other art they would have served an apprenticeship, and would be ashamed to practise it in public before they had learned it. If any one would sing, he attends a master, and is drilled in the very elementary principles, and, only after the most laborious process, dares to exercise his voice in public. This he does, though he has scarce any thing to learn but the mechanical execution of what lies, in sensible forms, before his eye. But the extempore speaker, who is to invent as well as to utter, to carry on an operation of the mind as well as to produce sound, enters upon the work without preparatory discipline, and then wonders that he fails!

If he were learning to play on the flute for public exhibition, what hours and days would he spend in giving facility to his fingers, and attaining the power of the sweetest and most impressive execution. If he were devoting himself to the organ, what months and years would he labour, that he might know its compass and be master of its keys, and be able to draw out, at will, all its various combinations of harmonious sound, and its full richness and delicacy of expression. And yet he will fancy, that the grandest, the most various, the most expressive of all instruments, which the infinite Creator has fashioned, by the union of an intellectual soul with the powers of speech, may be played upon without study or practice; he comes to it, a mere uninstructed tyro, and thinks to manage all its stops, and command the whole compass of its varied and comprehensive power! He finds himself a bungler in the attempt, is mortified at his failure, and settles in his mind forever, that the attempt is vain.

Success in every art, whatever may be the natural talent, is always the reward of industry and pains. But the instances are many, of men of the finest natural genius, whose beginning has promised much, but who have degenerated wretchedly as they advanced, because they trusted to their gifts, and made no effort to improve. That there have never been other men of equal endowments with Cicero and De

mosthenes, none would venture to suppose; but who have so devoted themselves to their art, or become equal in excellence ? If those great men had been content, like others, to continue as they began, and had never made their persevering efforts for improvement, what would their countries have benefited from their genius, or the world have known of their fame? They would have been lost in the undistinguished crowd, that sunk to oblivion around them.

Of how many more will the same remark prove true! What encouragement is thus given to the industrious! With such encouragement, how inexcusable is the negligence, which suffers the most interesting and important truths to seem heavy and dull, and fall ineffectual to the ground, through mere sluggishness in the delivery! How unworthy of one, who performs the high function of a religious instructer, upon whom depend, in a great measure, the religious knowledge, and devotional sentiment, and final character of many fellow beings, to imagine that he can worthily discharge this great concern by occasionally talking for an hour, he knows not how, and in a manner he has taken no pains to render correct, impressive, or attractive; and which, simply through that want of command over himself, which study would give, is immethodical, verbose, inaccurate, feeble, trifling! It has been said of the good preacher,

That truths divine come mended from his tongue.

Alas! they come ruined and worthless from such a man as this. They lose that holy energy, by which they are to convert the soul, and purify man for heaven, and sink, in interest and efficacy, below the level of those principles, which govern the ordinary affairs of this lower world.

LESSON XCIV.

Extract from the Tragedy of Ethwald.-JOANNA BAILLIE. Scene. A vaulted Prison. HEREULF, SELRED, ETHELBERT, and THREE THANES* of their party are discovered walking up and down.

Her. We are prepared: what say ye, noble colleagues? First Th. If that I here a bloody death must meet, And in some nook unblessed, far from the tombs Of all mine honoured race, these bones be laid, I do submit me to the will of Heaven.

Third Th. E'en so do I in deep submission bow.

* Chieftains.

Sec. Th. If that no more within my op'ning gates
My children and my wife shall e'er again
Greet my return, or this chilled frame again

E'er feel the kindly warmth of home, so be it!

His blessed will be done who ruleth all!

Her. If these nerved arms, full in the strength of youth,

Must rot i' th' earth, and all my glorious hopes

To free this land, with which high beat this heart,

Must be cut off i' th' midst, I bow my spirit
To its Almighty Lord; I murmur not.
Yet, O that it had been permitted me
To have contended in that noble cause!
Low must I sleep in an unnoted grave,
Whilst the oppressor of my native country
Riots in brave men's blood!

Eth. Peace, noble boy! he will not riot long.
They shall arise, who, for that noble cause,
With better fortune, not with firmer hearts

Than we to th' work have yoked, will bravely strive.
To future heroes shall our names be known,
And in our graves of turf we shall be blessed.

Her. Well, then, I'm satisfied: I'll smile in death;
Yea, proudly will I smile! it wounds me not.

Eth. How, Selred? thou alone art silent here:
To Heaven's high will what off'ring makest thou?
Sel. Nothing, good Ethelbert. What can a man,
Little enriched with the mind's rare treasure,
And of th' unrighteous turmoil of this world
Right weary grown, to his great Maker offer?
Yet I can die as meekly as ye will,

Albeit of his regard it is unworthy.

Eth. Give me thy hand, brave man! Well hast thou

said!

In truth thy off'ring far outprizes all;

thus

Rich in humility. Come, valiant friends;
It makes my breast beat high to see you
For fortune's worst prepared with quiet minds.
I'll sit me down awhile; come, gather round me,
And for a little space the time beguile

With the free use and interchange of thought;
Of that which no stern tyrant can control.

(They all sit down on the ground.) Her. (to Eth.) Nay, on my folded mantle do thou sit. Eth. I thank thee, but I feel no cold. My children!

We do but want, methinks, a blazing fire,

To make us thus a friendly, chosen circle

For converse met. Then we, belike, would talk
Of sprites, and magic power, and marv'llous things,
That shorten weary hours; now let us talk
Of things that do th' inquiring mind of man
With nobler wonder fill; that state unseen,
With all its varied mansions of delight,

To which the virtuous go, when, like a dream
Smote by the beams of op'ning day, this life,
With all its shadowy forms, fades into nothing.

First Th. Ay, Ethelbert, thou'rt full of sacred lore:
Talk thou of this, and we will gladly hear thee.
How think'st thou we shall feel, when, like a nestling
Burst from its shell, we wake to this new day?

up

Eth. Why, e'en, methinks, like to the very thing
To which, good thane, thou hast compared us:
For here we are but nestlings, and, I trow,
Pent i' the dark we are. When that shall open
Which human eye hath ne'er beheld, nor mind,
To human body linked, hath e'er conceived,
Then, like a guised band, that for a while
Has mimicked forth a sad and gloomy tale,
We shall these worthless weeds of flesh cast off,
And be the children of our father's house.

LESSON XCV.

Description of Sand-floods in Arabia.-BRUCE.

At one o'clock we alighted among some acacia trees at Waadi el Halboub, having gone twenty-one miles. We were here at once surprised and terrified by a sight, surely one of the most magnificent in the world. In that vast expanse of desert from west to north-west of us, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand at different distances, at times moving with great celerity, at others stalking on with a majestic slowness: at intervals we thought they were coming in a few minutes to overwhelm us; and small quantities of sand did actually more than once reach us. Again they would retreat so as to he almost out of sight, their tops reaching to the very clouds. There the tops often separated from the bodies; and these, once disjoined, dispersed in the air, and did not appear more. Sometimes they were broken near the middle, as if struck with a large cannon-shot.

About noon they began to advance with considerable swiftness upon us, the wind being very strong at north. Eleven of them ranged along-side of us, about the distance of three

miles. The greatest diameter of the largest appeared to me, at that distance, as if it would measure ten feet. They retired from us with a wind at south-east, leaving an impression upon my mind to which I can give no name, though surely one ingredient in it was fear, with a considerable deal of wonder and astonishment. It was in vain to think of flying; the swiftest horse or the fastest sailing ship could be of no use to carry us out of this danger; and the full persuasion of this rivetted me as if to the spot where I stood, and let the camels gain on me so much, in my state of lameness, that it was with some difficulty I could overtake them.

On another day the same appearance of moving pillars of sand presented themselves to us, in form and disposition like those we had seen at Waadi el Halboub, only they seemed to be more in number and less in size. They came several times in a direction upon us; that is, I believe, within less than two miles. They began immediately after sun-rise, like a thick wood, and almost darkened the sun his rays, shining through them for near an hour, gave them an appearance of pillars of fire. Our people now became desperate : the Greek shrieked out, and said it was the day of judgment. Ismael pronounced it to be hell, and the Tucorories, that the I world was on fire. I asked Idris if ever he had before seen such a sight. He said he had often seen them as terrible, though never worse; but what he feared most was that extreme redness in the air, which was a sure presage of the coming of the simoon.

LESSON XCVI.

Description of the Simoon or Hot Wind.-IBID.

WHILE We contemplated with great pleasure the rugged top of Chiggre, to which we were fast approaching, and where we were to solace ourselves with plenty of good water, Idris, our guide, cried out with a loud voice, "Fall upon your faces, for here is the simoon." I saw from the southeast a haze come, in colour like the purple part of the rainIt did not occupy bow, but not so compressed or thick. twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly, for I scarce could turn to fall upon ground with my face to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground as if dead, till Idris told us it was blown over. meteor or purple haze, which I saw, was indeed past, but

the

The