which troubles and deforms it. One should have liked to see a mind powerful as his led to that secret of this world's depravity which is only revealed unto babes, while hid in a veil of apparent mysticism from the wise and the prudent. And yet even as it is, does he-in the wild and frenzied career of his imagination-catch a passing glimpse of the truth that he had not yet apprehended.

"Our life is a false nature. "Tis not in

The harmony of things, this hard decree, This ineradicable taint of sin,

This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be

WILLIAM CAREY, THE MISSIONARY.

SEVENTY years ago a young cobbler might be seen wearily treading the crosscountry roads near Northampton. Newly risen from a sick-bed, he was trying to earn bread for himself and his wife by vending his hob-nailed wares to the ploughmen and shepherds. But there glowed in his bosom a fire which ague and poverty were not able to quenchan immortal spark of Heaven's own kindling the love of knowledge and a longing to do good. In yonder lane he has set down his sackful of shoes, whilst with glistening eye he examines some wonderful weed, or conveys into the crown of his hat some great flapping moth whose slumbers he has surprised in the hedge-row. And now that it is evening he turns aside into some friendly cottage, and with a brother Calvinst discusses some deep question in divinity, or propounds to him his visionary scheme of going to preach the gospel to the Hindoos, till the household goes to bed; and then, over his Latin rudiments, or a grammar of geography, the studious pedlar burns out his hoarded candle-end. But time passed on, and the inquisitive lad, who used to gather flowers and insects along the Nen, was the fellow of learned societies, and a high name among Eastern naturalists. Time passed on, and the starving artizan, who learned his Latin from a borrowed grammar, was the chief of Oriental linguists, and enjoyed the rare renown of a Sanscrit professor. Time passed on, and the obscure Baptist teacher, who smuggled a clandestine entrance to Bengal, and was driven forth like an outlaw, had be come the guest of governors-general, and one of the most influential residents in India. Time passed on, and the Utopian evangelist, who set out amidst the jeers of the worldly and the silence of the churches, saw the great peninsula studded with mission stations, whilst with paternal pleasure his eye surveyed the Bible in thirty Eastern versions-all of them, less industry. more or less, the memorial of his matchAnd to what did he owe it all? What was his peculiar

genius? Which was his lucky star! We accept his own explanation, and we offer it to all who are pursuing knowledge under difficulties:-"Whoever gives me credit for being a plodder will describe me justly. Anything beyond that will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. And to this I owe everything." In the same community William Carey had a hundred coevals much more brilliant than himself, and some of them quite as clever; and amidst fluent speakers and fast workers, it was mortifying to the poor shoemaker to feel his own contrasted slowness. But whilst a desultory acquaintance would dip into Hebrew, and then make a dash at Italian; whilst one would devote this summer to bettles, and the next to the Neptunian theory; and whilst many would take a little interest in India, and a little interest in missions, it was reserved for the steady zeal and continuous application of a supreme absorbing purpose to do a service to Christianity which has seldom been equalled, and to confer a benefit on India which has never been surpassed.

ANTIQUITY OF SHORT-HAND WRITING.

Ir would be a great historical error to suppose that short-hand reporting was unknown to the ancients. There were many causes which served to bring it into general use. The enthusiastic admiration of eloquence which prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, furnished a motive for seeking to preserve what had electrified the populace. The extra ordinary amount of manuscript, in ages before the invention of printing, led to a facility in the penman's art, which we probably undervalue. The use of uncial or separate characters, in place of a cursive or running hand, in rapid writing, would naturally prompt to such ligatures and contractions as we observe in many manuscripts, and then to still greater abridgments, condensations, and symbols, by means of which a whole word, or even a whole sentence, was denoted by a single mark. Specimens of these, from ancient remains, may be seen appended to some editions of Cicero.

But as to the details of the method, we are altogether uninformed. The results show that full reporting was as much relied on by them as by us. Those orations of Greek and Roman orators, which were produced on the spot, were thus taken down; and as soon as Christian eloquence began to be regarded from its worldly and literary side, the same mode was applied. Eusebius assures us that the discourses of Origen were thus written by stenographers. Almost all the sermons of Augustine which remain to us, are due to this method. The expositions of Calvin on the Old Testament, are from reports of this sort, which contain the very prayers which he offered. The commentary on the Ephesians, by Magee, one of the most admirable evangelical works of the age, was delivered by the author at a little weekly lecture in Ireland, and reported in stenography. Some of the greatest sermons of Robert Hall were never written till after the delivery; and some of them "extended" from the notes of Wilson, Grinfield, and Green.

were

A LESSON FROM THE DEW. As the tender dew that falls in the silent night, makes the herbs and flowers to flourish and grow more abundanty than great showers of rain that fall in the day, so secret prayer will more abundantly cause the secret herbs of grace and holiness to flourish in the soul, than all these more open, public, and visible duties of religion, which too often are mixed with the sun and wind of pride and hypocrisy.

WHEN IS THE WORLD TO HAVE PEACE? "I UTTERLY despair," said Chalmers in 1836, "of the universal prevalence of Christianity as the result of a pacific missionary process, under the guidance of human wisdom and principle. But without slackening in the least our obligation to help forward the great cause, I look for its conclusive establishment through a widening passage of desolating judgments, with the utter demolition of our present civil and ecclesiastical structures."

THE TELEGRAPH OF THE DESERT.

THE manner in which reports are spread and exaggerated in the East is frequently highly amusing. In all the encampments in the desert there are idle hangers-on, who live by carrying news from tribe to tribe, thereby earning a dinner and spending their leisure hours. As soon as a stranger arrives, and relates any thing of interest to the Arabs, some such fellows will mount his ready-saddled deloul, and make the best of his way to retail the news in a neighbouring tent, from whence it is carried in the same way to others. It is extraordinary how rapidly a report spreads in this manner over a great distance. Sofuk sent to inform the British resident at Bagdad of the siege and fall of Acre many days before the special messenger despatched to officially announce that event reached the city; and Mr. Layard informs us that he frequently rejected intelligence received from Bedouins, on account of the apparent impossibility of its coming through such a channel, but which he afterwards found to be true.

DR. CHALMERS' FIRST PRAYERS IN PUBLIC.

IN November 1795, Dr. Chalmers was enrolled a student of divinity. It was then the practice at St. Andrews that all the members of the university assembled daily in the public hall for morning and evening prayers, which were conducted by the theological students. The hall was open to the public, but in general the invitation was not largely accepted. In his first theological session it came, by rotation, to be Dr Chalmers' turn to pray. His prayer an amplification of the Lord's Prayer-clause by clause, consecutively, was so original, and yet so eloquently worded, that universal wonder and very geueral admiration were excited by it. "I remember still," says the Rev. Mr. Burns of Kilsyth, "the powerful impression made by his prayers in the Prayer Hall, to which the people of St. Andrews flocked when they knew that Chalmers was to pray. The wonderful

thing; because it is too true after all, that we cannot be staying in this world always, and when one gets out of it, why, there may be some hardish matters to settle in the other place. The prayer-book of a Sunday, is a good deal to be sure towards making all safe, but then it is really so tiresome; for penance, it is very well, but to say one likes it, one cannot for the life of one. If there were some tolerable religious things that one could read now and then without trouble, and think it half as pleasant as a game of cards, it would be very comfortable. Now, nothing could have been more to the purpose than these sermons; they were welcomed as the very thing. They were about religion, and grave enough in all conscience, yet they were elegant; they were so easy to comprehend throughout, that the mind was never detained a moment to think; they were undefiled by Methodism; they but little obtruded doctrinal notions; they applied very much to high life, and the author was evidently a gentleman; the book could be discussed as a matter of taste, and its being seen in the parlour excited no surmise that any one in the house had lately been converted. Above all, it was most perfectly free from that disagreable and mischievous property, attributed to the eloquence of Pericles, that "it left stings behind."

BORROWED NOTIONS.

"WHEN I entered into public disputations," says Richard Baxter, "my mird was so forestalled with borrowed notious, that I chiefly studied how to make good the opinions which I had received, and so ran farther from the truth. Yea, when I read the truth, I did not understand it, or read it in books of controversy, I discerned it least of all; till at last, being in my sickness cast far from home, where I had no book but my Bible, I set myself to study the truth from them; and so, by the blessing, discovered more in one

week than I had done before in seven

teen years' reading, hearing, and wrangling."

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THE BOWELS

OF ST. BONIFACE?

WERE you to visit Mentz, as did Karamsin, a Russian traveller, the lackey might ask you with the utmost gravity, "Would you like, sir, to see the bowels of St. Boniface, which are preserved in St. John's Church?" Your answer probably would be, "No, my friend; St. Boniface may have been a very good man, and a zealous converter of heathens, but his bowels have not the least charms for me."

THE REMEDY OF THE GOSPEL AND THE REMEDY OF LITERATURE.

THE moralists of our age, whether in lessons from the academic chair, or by the insinuating address of fiction and poetry while they try to mend and embellish human life, have never struck one effective blow at that ungodliness of the heart which is the germ of all the distempers in human society. The gospel combats the disease in its original elements; and instead of idly attempting to intercept or turn aside the stream of this sore corruption, it

Review and

THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE. No.
XII. London: Blackader and Co.
THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN EVANGELICAL RE-
VIEW. No. IX. Edinburgh: Johnstone
and Hunter.

THE Journal of Sacred Literature, under its new editor, pursues its course most promisingly. There is interesting variety in the articles discussed, some of them are elaborately written, and being purely Biblical, will be highly relished by ministers and students.

The present number of the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, is one of the best which has appeared, and honourably sustains the hopes which, at the outset, we entertained of this quarterly. The selections which appear in this work, are made with very considerable judiciousness. We have been