of America:" and would to Heaven the case could suit no other people and country!-Sylva, or the Wood.

CXCIX.

Effect of Methodism.-These preachers, I will admit, do some good, but they do, at the same time, a great deal of harm. There would have been little religion, I believe, in the purlieus of St. Giles's, London, but for the preaching of Whitfield and Wesley. It so happened, however, that their proselytes and followers were among the lowest and least intelligent classes of men, and finding it neces sary to hold out to them the terrors of the Lord, in alarming the hardened, it terrified the weak, and put them, as it were, beside themselves. Not experiencing that new birth, or feeling that regeneration within themselves, which they are taught to believe necessary to salvation, they, with the best of principles, are wretched and unhappy for the remainder of their lives, and are continually in search of comfort and cannot find it. One of these unhappy men assured me, that though in the early part of his life he was thoughtless, dissipated, and wicked, yet, by attending the chapels of Calvinistical preachers, he had seen his error, and had reformed; and that he was not conscious, for the last ten years of his life, of having been guilty of any one sin; and that, in his humble situation, it was his study to do all the good it was in his power to do; yet, with tears, he feared that, after all, his soul was in a state of damnation, and he a lost creature; for he had never, at any one time, felt within him that spirit-working principle of regeneration, which Mr. Whitfield says is the mark of the elect, and without which all the good works we do are an abomination.-Trusler's Memoirs.

CC.

Various Views of Life.-It fares with us in human life, as in a routed army; one stumbles first, and then another falls upon him, and so they follow, one upon another, till the whole field comes to be one heap of miscarriages.— Seneca.

It is in human life, as in a game ať tables, where a man wishes for the highest cast; but if his chance be otherwise, he is e'en to play it as well as he can, and to make the best of it.-Plutarch.

Life is like a game at cards; we know the cards will beat any one, but he who plays them carefully will do more with the same cards, than he who throws them out at random. The gifts of nature, education, and fortune, are the cards put into our hands; all we have to do is to manage them well by a steady adherence to the dictates of sound reason.- -Tucker's Light of Nature.

CCI.

Self-Knowledge-Who seeth not how great is the advantage arising from this knowledge, and what misery must attend our mistakes concerning it. For he who is possessed of it not only knoweth himself, but knoweth what is best for him. He perceiveth what he can and what he cannot do; he applieth himself to the one, he gaineth what is necessary, and is happy; he attempts not the other, and therefore incurs neither distress nor disap. pointment. From knowing himself, he is able to form a right judgment of others, and turn them to his advantage, either for the procuring some good or preventing some evil. On the contrary, he who is ignorant of himself, and maketh a wrong estimate of his own powers, will also mistake those of other men: he knows neither what he VOL. I.-10

wants or undertakes, nor yet the means he maketh use of; so that he not only fails of success, but oftentimes falls into many misfortunes; while the man who sees his way before him, most commonly obtains the end he aims at, and not only so, but secures to himself renown and honour. -Socrates in Xenophon.

CCII.

Moral Evil Man's own Creation.-Man brings upon himself a thousand calamities, as consequences of his artifices and pride, and then overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls evil :-he compromises every natural pleasure to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death; and seeks to render his name celebrated among posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though posterity and himself can have no contemporaneous feeling. He deprives himself and all around him, of every passing enjoyment, to accumulate wealth, that he may purchase other men's labour, in the vain hope of adding happiness to his own. He omits to make effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming poor, and being the victim of his own neglect and injustice. He arms himself with murderous weapons; and on the slightest instigation practises murder as a scifollows this science as a regular profession, and ho. nours its chiefs above benefactors and philosophers, in proportion to the quantity of blood they have shed, or the mischiefs they have perpetrated. He disguises the most worthless of the people in showy liveries, and then excites them to murder men whom they never saw, by the fear of being killed if they do not kill. He revels in luxury and

ence,

gluttony, and then complains of the diseases which result from repletion. He tries in all things to counteract or improve the provisions of nature, and then afflicts himself at his disappointments. He multiplies the chances against his own life and health by his numerous artifices, and then wonders at their fatal results. He shuts his eyes against the volume of truth as presented by Nature, and, vainly considering that all was made for him, founds on this false assumption, various doubts in regard to the justice of eternal causation. He interdicts the enjoyment of all other creatures, and, regarding the world as his property, in mere wantonness destroys myriads on whom have been bestowed beauties and perfections. He forgets that to live and let live, is a maxim of universal justice, extending not only to his fellow creatures, but to inferior ones, to whom his moral obligations are greater, because they are more in his power. He afflicts himself that he cannot live for ever, though his forefathers have successively died to make room for him. He repines at the thought of losing that life, the use of which he so often perverts: and, though he began to exist but yesterday, thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to enjoy it for ever. He desires to govern others, but, regardless of their dependence on his benevolence, is commonly gratified in displaying the power intrusted to him by a tyrannical abuse of it. He makes laws, which, in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty, but as shields to crafty wealth. He acknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet teaches them any thing but their social duties in the political state in which they live. He passes his days in questioning the providence of Nature, in ascribing evil to supernatural causes, and in feverish expectations of results contrary to the necessary harmony of the world.-Sir R. Philips's Walk from London to Kew.

CCIII.

A Geological Fact. The following geological fact has been lately given, as translated from Count Bournon's Mineralogy. During the years 1786-7, and 8, they were occupied near Aix, in Provence, in France, in quarrying stone for the rebuilding, upon a vast scale, of the Palace of Justice. The stone was a deep-gray limestone, and of that kind which are tender when they come out of the quarry, but harden by exposure to the air. The strata were separated from one another by a bed of sand, mixed with clay more or less calcareous. The first which were wrought presented no appearance of any foreign bodies; but, after the workmen had removed the first ten beds, they were astonished, when taking away the eleventh, to find its inferior surface, at the depth of forty or fifty feet, covered with shells. The stone of this bed having been removed, as they were taking away the sand which separated the eleventh bed from the twelfth, they found stumps of columns and fragments of stones half-wrought, and the stone was exactly similar to that of the quarry. They found, moreover, coins, handles of hammers, and other tools, or fragments of tools, of wood. But that which principally commanded their attention was a board, about an inch thick, and seven or eight feet long; it was broken into many pieces, of which none were missing; it was possible to join them again one to another and to restore its original form, which was that of the boards of the same kind used by the masons and quarrymen; it was worn in the same manner, rounded and waving on the edges. The stones, which were partly wrought, had not changed in their nature, but the fragments of the board, and the instruments, and the pieces of instruments of wood, had been changed into agates, which were very fine, and agree