THE DROP OF WATER.

AN EASTERN APOLOGUE.

"How mean 'mid all this glorious space, how valueless am I!"

A little drop of water said, as, trembling in the sky, It downward fell, in haste to meet the interminable

sea,

As if the watery mass its goal and sepulchre should

be.

But ere of no account within the watery mass it fell, It found a shelter and a home, the oyster's concave shell;

And there that little drop became a hard and pre

cious gem,

Meet ornament for royal wreath, for Persia's diadem.

Cheer up, faint heart, that hear'st the tale, and though thy lot may seem

Contemptible, yet not of it as nothing-worth esteem;

Nor fear that thou exempt from care of Providence

shalt be,

An undistinguishable drop in nature's boundless sea.

The Power that called thee into life has skill to make

thee live,

A place of refuge can provide, another being give; Can clothe the perishable form with beauty rich and

rare,

And "when He makes His jewels up," grant thee a

station there.

Anonymous.

IT happens to men of learning, as to ears of corn: they shoot up and raise their heads high, when they are empty; but when full, and swelled with grain, they begin to flag and droop.

PROOF OF DESIGN.

HAD man been a mere animal machine, destitute of reason, he would have been the most defenceless creature on earth The elephant possesses an instrument by which he can grasp his enemy, and an enormous weight by which he can trample him to death. The bear is endowed with a degree of muscular strength, by which he can compress the human figure with as much facility as we break a nutshell. The lion and the tiger can spring upon their prey, and fix it by their claws to the earth until they satiate their hunger. But the infant, what a helpless being it is, and remains, long after it first sees the light! The idiot who never enjoyed reason; the melancholy maniac who has been deprived of it; how pitiably weak and dependent are they, compared with the rhinoceros or the eagle ! Nevertheless, it has been given to man to subdue all the tribes of animated nature to his use, and he has

fulfilled his destiny in that respect by means of his hand, the most perfect physical instrument with which we are acquainted. Not all the skill of man has yet been able to imitate the hand in its formation and functions, or to suggest an improvement in one of its joints or muscles. Galen's enthusiastic and eloquent description of it, which the reader will find translated in Dr. Kidd's volume (Bridgewater treatise), though unrivalled in ancient or modern literature, scarcely does justice to the flexibility, delicacy, and strength of this admirable instrument. But it is, after all, nothing more than an instrument; it would have been, comparatively, powerless, had it not been moved to action by the rational faculty of which it is the immediate servant.

Yet, although it is by means of the hand that we operate upon external matter, we cannot perceive, as Sir Charles Bell justly remarks, any relation between that instrument and the mind. The hand is not more distinct from the rose which it is about to pluck, than the mind is from this organ of its volition. Indeed, we must all feel that this pulse which beats at the wrist, has nothing whatever to do with our will. We e may use the hand for our purposes, but its machinery, its vitality, do not in any way depend

upon our dictates.

The action of the heart, the circulation of the blood, are carried on by laws to which the mind is no party. Had it been otherwise, a single act of omission in ordering the requisite functions on our part, might bring life to a premature termination. The fracture of a small filament in the admirable tracery of nervous cords which unites many organs in sympathy, would produce spasm, suffocation, and death. Thus, then, we have two principles of vitality in us,-one, that of the mind; the other, that of the frame in which it is enveloped; each perfectly distinct, and manifestly the work of a Superior Intelligence, who has given us a control over the operations of both, but has taught us the secret of immortality, in the laws which disclose their separate existence. The planets move round the sun by His attraction; the blood circulates through our frame by no relation to the mind. The planets and the sun itself shall perish; the blood shall cease to circulate, and the fairest fabric of mortality shall moulder in the dust; but the mind lives independently of matter, as matter does of mind, and can no more be affected, as to its vital essence, by the destruction of the body, than Sirius would be by the extinction of our entire solar system.