who doubts that we should have done infinitely more towards covering our planet with all the dignities and decencies of civilized life than by centuries of endeavor to humanize barbarism without molesting superstition? We are clear as upon a point which needs no argument, because ascertained by experience, and which, if not proved by experience, might be established by irresistible argument, that, in teaching a nation the religion of Christ, we teach it the principles of government, which will give it fixedness as an empire, the sciences which will multiply the comforts, and the truths which will elevate the character, of its population. Thoroughly to christianize would be thoroughly to regenerate a land. And the poor missionary, who, in the simplicity of his faith, and the fervor of his zeal, throws himself into the waste of paganism, and there, with no apparent mechanism at his disposal for altering the condition of a savage community, labors at making Christ known to idolaters-why, we say of this intrepid wrestler with ignorance, that, in toiling to save the souls, he is toiling to develope the intellectual powers, reform the policy, and elevate in every respect the rank of the beings who engage his solicitudes. The day on which a province of Africa hearkened to his summons, started, from its moral debasement, and acknowledged Jesus as its Saviour, would be also the day on which that province overstepped one half the interval by which it had been separated from civilized Europe, and went on, as with a giant's stride, towards its due place amongst nations.

So that however true it be, that, in sending christianity, you send a sword into a land, we will not for a moment harbor the opinion, that christianity is no temporal blessing, if received by the inhabitants as their guide to immortality. It is a sword; and divided families, and clashing parties, will attest the keenness and strength of the weapon. But then it is also a sword,

:

whose bright flash scatters the darkness of ages, and from whose point shrink away the corruption, the cruelty, and the fraud, which flourished in that darkness as their element. It is a sword and it must pierce to the sundering many__close ties, dissect many interests, and lacerate many hearts. But to wave this sword over a land is to break the spell fastened on it by centuries of ignorance; and to disperse, or, at least, to disturb, those brooding spirits which have oppressed its population, and kept down the energies which ennoble our race.

And,

250

THE RUINED COTTAGE.

therefore, are we nothing moved by the accusation, that christianity has caused some portion of misery. We deny not the truth of the charge: to disprove that truth would be to disprove christianity itself. The Founder prophesied that his religion would be a sword, and the accomplishment of the prophecy is one of our evidences that he came forth from God. But when men would go farther, when they would arraign christianity as having increased, on the whole, the sum of human misery, oh, then we have our appeal to the splendid institutions of civilized states, to the bulwarks of liberty which they have bravely thrown up, to the structures which they have reared for the shelter of the suffering, and to their mighty advancings in equity, and science, and good order, and greatness. We show you the desert blossoming as the rose, and all because ploughed by the sword christianity. We show you every chain of oppression flying into shivers, and all because struck by the sword christianity. We show you the coffers of the wealthy bursting open for the succor of the destitute, and all because touched by the sword christianity. We show you the human intellect springing into manhood, reason starting from dwarfishness, and assuming magnificence of stature, and all because roused by the glare of the sword christianity. Ay, if you can show us feuds, and jealousies, and wars, and massacres, and charge them home on christianity as a cause, we can show you whatsoever is confessed to minister most to the welfare, and glory, and strength, and happiness of society, stamped with one broad impress, and that impress the sword christianity and, therefore, are we bold to declare that the amount of temporal misery has been immeasurably diminished by the propagation of the religion of Jesus; and that this sword, in spite of produced slaughter and divisions, has been, and still is, as a golden sceptre, beneath which the tribes of our race have found a rest which heathenism knew only in its poetry; a freedom, and a security, and a greatness, which philosophy reached only in its dreams. —MELVILLE.

THE RUINED COTTAGE

NONE will dwell in that cottage, for they say
Oppression reft it from an honest man,

And that a curse clings to it: hence the vine
Trails its green weight of leaves upon the ground;

Hence weeds are in that garden; hence the hedge
Once sweet with honeysuckle, is half dead;
And hence the grey moss on the apple tree.

One once dwelt there, who had been in his youth
A soldier; and when many years had pass'd
He sought his native village, and sat down
To end his days in peace. He had one child-
A little laughing thing, whose large dark eyes,
He said, were like the mother's he had left
Buried in stranger lands; and time went on
In comfort and content-and that fair girl
Had grown far taller than the red rose tree
Her father planted her first English birth-day;
And he had train'd it up against an ash
Till it became his pride;-it was so rich
In blossom and in beauty, it was call'd
The tree of Isabel. 'Twas an appeal
To all the better feelings of the heart
To mark their quiet happiness; their home,
In truth, a home of love and more than all,
To see them on the Sabbath, when they came
Among the first to church; and Isabel,
With her bright color and her clear glad eyes,
Bowed down so meekly in the house of prayer ;
And in the hymn her sweet voice audible :-
Her father look'd so fond of her, and then
From her look'd up so thankfully to Heaven!
And their small cottage was so very neat;

:

Their garden filled with fruits, and herbs, and flow
And in the winter there was no fireside
So cheerful as their own. But other days
And other fortunes came-an evil power!
They bore against it cheerfully, and hoped
For better times, but ruin came at last;
And the old soldier left his own dear home,
And left it for a prison. 'Twas in June,
One of June's brightest days-the bee, the bird,
The butterfly, were on their brightest wings
The fruits had their first tinge of summer light;
The sunny sky, the very leaves seemed glad,
And the old man look'd back upon his cottage
And wept aloud :—they hurried him away,
And the dear child that would not leave his side.
They led him from the sight of the blue heaven
And the green trees, into a low, dark cell,
The windows shutting out the blessed sun
With iron grating; and for the first time
He threw him on his bed, and could not hear
His Isabel's "good night!" But the next morn
She was the earliest at the prison gate,

But every morning could he see her cheek
Grow paler and more pale, and her low tones
Get fainter and more faint, and a cold dew
Was on the hand he held. One day he saw
The sun shine through the grating of his cell,
Yet Isabel came not: at every sound

His heart-beat took away his breath, yet still
She came not near him. But one sad day
He mark'd the dull street through the iron bars
That shut him from the world ;-at length he saw
A coffin carried carelessly along,

And he grew desperate-he forced the bars;
And he stood on the street, free and alone!
He had no aim, no wish for liberty-

He only felt one want, to see the corpse
That had no mourners. When they set it down,
Or e'er 'twas lower'd into the new dug grave,
A rush of passion came upon his soul,
And he tore off the lid, and saw the face
Of Isabel, and knew he had no child
He lay down by the coffin quietly—
His heart was broken!

-L. E. L. (MRS. MAC

THE STUDY OF THE NATURAL SCIENCE BUT it is not through the allurements of ambition, that noble kind which aims at enlarging the bounda knowledge, that the cultivators of natural science are the purest enjoyment and the truest success in their p A higher, more spiritual sensibility must nourish their siasm. The love of truth for its own sake; the po deriving exquisite satisfaction not only from the disco new relations among objects, but from contemplating t the light of known facts as subordinated to harmoni laws; a loving appreciation of beauty in external cha and of that subtler beauty of structure and affinities, a the most delicate perceptions of the artist and poet, but discloses itself only to the penetrating eye of the natura such are some of the impulses and tastes that qualify enjoying the pursuits of natural history, and for giving their highest usefulness.

In speaking of the delights of knowledge as compare other pleasures, Lord Bacon has eloquently said, "In al

pleasures there is satiety; but of knowledge th re is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable." Surely of no kind of knowledge can this be more truly said than of that which unfolds to us the characters, structure and mutual dependences of the endless variety of organic and inorganic objects with which natural science has to deal.

It was once the fashion with poets to decry the growth of positive science, as unfriendly to poetical and spiritual conceptions of the material world, and to lament, although we may trust only for the sake of the verse, "the lovely views" which have been forced to "yield their place to" what they please to call "cold, material laws. But, thanks to a juster knowledge of the spir, objects, and results of physical inquiries, now generally used among scholars, such complaints are no longer likely to find sympathy with them. From the known laws of the intellect, what more certain conclusion can be drawn, than that thought becomes exalted and suggestion quickened in proportion as they embrace a wider and more varied field of objects and relations? Who that, gazing on the vault of the sky, thinks of the innumerable multitude of worlds which the sure demonstrations of astronomy there point out to him,-measures in imagination their dimensions, and the vast distances which separate them,-follows the planets in their stately march, and watches the whole solar system, as, like a majestic fleet of argosies, it moves sublimely on its voyage of circumnavigation among the stars,—and, while witnessing in thought this grandest of Nature's spectacles, reflects on the profound adjustment of forces and motions by which these results are secured,-who, thus looking and reflecting, can see, in the material laws which control and harmonize this universe, aught lower or less spiritual than the thought of infinite wisdom and the handiwork of infinite power? Surely such a meditative gazer on the skies must feel in his soul the inspiration of a far nobler poetry than ever charmed the reveries of him

"To whose passive ken

Those mighty spheres that gem infinity
Are only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven

To light the midnights of his native town."

And what is true of astronomy is not less true of even the obscurest walks of natural history. For it is less in the mag