of despotism, or sunk beneath the scale of human nature by the influence of priestcraft,a time, when the feelings of men were gallopped over, rough shod, and the dignity of the creation trampled under foot with impunity and exultation, by a state of the most passive and degenerate servility: how much must it now excite our wonder and admiration of that supreme Providence, who, in his merci ful consideration for the frailest of mortals, by a variety of ways and means best suited to his omnipotent ends, has dragged us gradually, and, as it were, reluctantly to ourselves, from darkness to day-light, by extinguishing the stench and vapour of the train oil of ignorance and superstition, lighting us up with the brilliant gas of reason and comparative understanding, while, under less despotic and more tolerant times, we are permitted the rational exercise of those faculties which formerly were rivetted to the floor of tyranny by the most humiliating oppression!

The pranks of popes and priests, conjurors and fire-eaters, have comparatively fled before the piercings of the intellectual Witches no longer untie the winds to

cay.

capsise church-steeples, and " topple" down castles, they no longer dance round the enchanted cauldron, invoking the "ould one" to propitiate their cantrip vows:-Beelzebub himself with his cloven foot is seldom if ever seen above the "bottom of the bottomless pit;" ghosts and apparitions are "jammed hard and fast" in the Red sea; demons of every cast and colour are eternally spellbound; legends are consigned to the chimney-corner of long winter-nights; miracles to the "presto,quick, change and begone!" of the nimble-fingered conjuror; and holy relics to the rosary of the bigot. Amulets and

charms have lost their influence; saints are uncanonized, and St. Patrick, St. Dennis, & Co. are flesh and blood like ourselves; monks and holy friars no longer revel in the debauches of the cloister; the hermit returns unsolicited from the solitude of the desert, to encounter with his fellow-men; the pilgrim lays by his staff, leaves the Holy Land to its legitimate possessors, and the tomb of St. Thomas-à-Becket, to enjoy, unmolested, the sombre tranquillity of the grave. Quacks and mountebanks begin also to caper within a narrower sphere; to be brief, the word of command, to use a nautical phrase,

has long been given, "every man to his station, and the cook to the fore-sheet,"-worldly occupations have superseded ultramundane speculations. Astrologers themselves, who once ruled the physical world, have long ago been virtually consigned to the grave of the Partridges; and floods and storms are found to be phenomena perfectly consistent with the natural world. We also know that the sun is stationary, that the moon is not made of green cheese, and that there are stars yet in the firmament which the centifold powers of the telescope of a Herschell will never be able to explore.

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The Reformation, which originated in the trammels of vice itself, gave the Devil in hell and his agents on earth, such a “bellygo-fister," that they have never since been able to come to the scratch, but in such a petty larceny-like manner, as to set all their demonological efforts at defiance. This is the first time" old Nick" was ever completely floored; though, it would appear, from the recent

10. 1973

number of new churches, built no doubt with the pious intention of keeping him in abeyance, that he has latterly been making a little head-way;—these, however, with the Holy alliance," like stern-chasers on a new modofw to egoieribdited) gold

construction, should the "ould one" attempt to board us again in the smoke of superstition, will, without much injury to the hull of the church, pitch him back to Pandemonium, there to exhaust his demonological rage in the sulphuretted hydrogen of his own hell; while the lights of revealed religion, emanating from these soul-saving foundations, like Sir Humphrey Davy's safety-lamp, will give us timely warning of the choke-damp of damnation be

fore it have time to explode about our ears. nevertheless, to pray t

of uses, nevertheless, It behoves pray that we may merit this protection, and to watch, for we know not at what hour the cracksman may pay us an unwelcome visit; for, whatever pampered hypocrites and mercenary prayer-mongers may pretend to the contrary, our worldly goods, although but of a temporary and perishable nature, are as essential to our existence and respectability here below, as our spiritual faith is necessary to our heavenly and eternal happiness above, ever unequal the comparison,

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90018 the creatures of the Devil, no on Among has a more decent claim to his clemency, than

the caterwauling canting hypocrite. The bypocrite is a to which a variety of species Les genus belong, the subdivisions of which are too nu

merous for our present purpose; we shall only therefore offer a few remarks on one kind of these vampyres, drawn from daily observation. If not absolutely gluttons, although many of them are gourmands in excess, hypocrites are invariably fond of their ungodly guts, for which they are at all times ready to sacrifice their God, their King, their country and their friends. They have a stomach like a horse, and a reservoir like a brewer's vat. The hypocrite of circumstances prays, or pretends to pray, in adversity, and swears in good earnest, like a trooper, in prosperity, he is either a roaring bedlamite or a whining calf, a peevish idiot,a buffoon, or a disgusting bacchanal ;—in short, he is capable of such derogatory pranks and extremes, that, as the occasion serves, he with equal facility rises from the bended knee of supplication to extend the hand of venality, aye, and of sensuality too, to the object of his latent and ungovernable concupiscence. His bloated chops, at one time, resemble a passive pair of bagpipes, while, at another, they are inflated with all the arrogance of beggarly pride and momentary superfluity. He is never ashamed to beg, and only afraid to steal--although equally adapted for the one as the other.