often to attend. As soon as we were dressed and had breakfasted, family prayer was attended to, and then our father would point out some hymn or passage of Scripture which he wished us to learn, when we would sally forth, book in hand, in different directions, one to stretch himself upon the soft grass in the field close by, another to pace backward and forward on the pleasure walk, or to find a seat in the bough of an old bushy tree; while another would seek a little summer-house our father had made of heather, and seated round with the twisted boughs of the glossy birch, each reading aloud till the allotted lesson was thoroughly fixed upon our minds. If the day was wet, or if it was the winter season, we would gather around the table by the window. During the afternoon, mother would read to us, or all of us, father and mother included, read by turns; questions were then asked, and conversation entered into, about what we had been reading. "It was upon one of these occasions, when some remarks made by one of my parents in endeavouring to call our attention to the truth that we must be changed, renewed in the image of God; or, to take up the simple figurative expression then made use of, that we must have new hearts, else we never could be happy with our Father in heaven, that an impression was made upon my mind, never to be effaced from that hour, through all my follies and all my waywardness, the thought of that new heart still haunted me, until I indeed found peace with God through Jesus Christ, and felt the renewing power of the truth of God."

The Sabbath having thus become the birth-day of her own soul, she had the witness in herself of its peculiar blessedness. Whatever others might say to its disparagement, she knew that God had then condescended to meet with her; and evidence of this kind it is not in the power of the world to gainsay or resist. We hope that through the medium of this little narrative, and the essay by which it is followed, many more may be brought to taste of the refined and satisfying pleasures flowing from a right observance of this day of days.

Many of our readers, perhaps, have heard of a project which has been started with reference to these Essays by Working Men on the Sabbath. As so many of the competitors were necessarily doomed to disappointment, it has been proposed to raise by subscriptions of £5., sufficient to give that sum each, to fifty of the essayists, in addition to the other premiums. The Religious Tract Society have given £25. for five; and the

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Committee of this Magazine have just awarded the further sum of £10. for two more. In such a cause, we know that our readers will, one and all, go with us, combining as it does, a literary, a benevolent, and a religious object.

THE REV. THOMAS BRADBURY.

EARLY on Lord's day morning, the Rev. Thomas Bradbury was walking along Smithfield in a pensive condition. Dr Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, happened to pass through in his carriage, and observing Mr. Bradbury, called out to him by name, and enquired the cause of his great thoughtfulness? "I am thinking," replied Bradbury, "whether I shall have the constancy and resolution of that noble company of martyrs who were burned to ashes in this place; for I most assuredly expect to see similar times of persecution, and that I shall be called to suffer in a like cause.' The Bishop (a zealous protestant) endeavoured to quiet his fears; told him the Queen was very ill, that she was given over by her physicians, and that he was then going to Court, to inform himself of the exact particulars. He assured Mr. Bradbury that he would dispatch a messenger to him with the earliest intelligence of the Queen's death; and that if he should happen to be in the pulpit at the time of the messenger's arrival, he should be instructed to drop a handkerchief from the gallery, as a token of the event.

While Mr. Bradbury was preaching, the intelligence was communicated to him by the signal agreed upon. He suppressed his feelings during the sermon; but in his last prayer, he returned thanks to God, for the deliverance of these kingdoms from the evil councils and designs of their enemies; and implored the divine blessing upon "His Majesty King GEORGE, and the house of Hanover.

Mr. Bradbury ever afterwards gloried in being the first man in the kingdom who "proclaimed King George the First."

The whole body of ministers of the three denominations of Protestant Dissenters in London, went up with an address to his Majesty King George, on his accession to the throne, on September 28, 1714. Mr. Bradbury was one of them. As they were dressed in cloaks (according to their fashion) a nobleman

accosted him with "Pray, sir, is this a funeral ?” "Yes, my lord," replied Mr. Bradbury, “it is a funeral of the Schism Bill, and the resurrection of Liberty !”—Jones's Bunhill Memorials.

A TRIP TO NAHANT.

LEAVING Boston, we glide along past island and fort, and at length, having steamed through a narrow channel, we emerge into a wide expanse of water, and Nahant stretches before us like a long arm thrown out into the Atlantic, the hotel being grasped like a toy-house in its fist.

A wild and singular-looking place it is at the first glance— there it stands, a huge rock, around which the Atlantic rolls and raves; and standing on the point just beyond the hotel, the vastness of old ocean is in a measure comprehended, whilst remembering that between the spot where your foot rests, and Cape Clear, more than three thousand miles off, there is not a spot on which the sea-bird may alight and rest his wearied wings. When one's home lies beyond the blue waters, I need scarcely say that one wishes for long sight, or the gift of clairvoyance. But I must not sentimentalize-let us look around on this beautiful scene, as the ocean breezes cool our brows.

It would be absurd in me to enter into any description of NAHANT. Everybody hereabouts knows everything about it, from the time when it was sold by Poguannum, the Sagamore, to Farmer Thomas Dexter, of Lynn, for a suit of clothes, until these present times, when the wolves which abounded here afford no sport, and when the Puritan spirit has passed away, which prosecuted in 1688 one Robert Page, of Boston, for settinge saille from Nahant, in his boate, being loaden with wood, thereby profaining the Lord's Daye "

Having secured comfortable quarters at the Nahant Hotel, I sauntered towards the rocks, and ere long found myself at the entrance of the Swallow's Cave. It is a romantic place, but the influx of visitors had scared away the birds which gave the place its name. Passing through it, PULPIT ROCK, a huge pile of stone, the upper part of which is something like a desk, on which great books of stone lie, came in view, and at the base of it I sat down to admire the wild scenery around.

The rocks about NAHANT are very picturesque, both as regards shape and color. They are white and green, blue and red, purple and grey, and in some places, as the guide book says, very black and shining, having the appearance of iron." Whilst I was occupied in picking my way amongst the deep fissures, caverns, and grottoes, formed by them, the sky became gradually darkened, and a thunder storm came on, to avoid which I retreated into the SWALLOW'S CAVE, where I enjoyed a magnificent view of a "white squall," as it swept along the waters like a sheeted ghost, and disappeared in the distance with the usual spectral accompaniments of thunder and lightning.

A fine place it is among these rocks to study the now fashionable science of Geology-fashionable even amongst ladies, whose little geological hammers we hear clinking wherever specimens are deemed procurable. Some people consider this same geology a dry topic, but looking at it merely with the eye of an amateur, I cannot agree with them. It is the grandest species of antiquarianism—but there are two kinds of antiquaries in the world, fools and wise men, one class valuing the relic for its own sake, the other for its associations with periods he can never know but by the dim reflex of history, and into which such relic, horn, bone, statue, or whatever it may be, more strongly transports men of vivid imaginations.

Whilst the thunder storm is passing over us, let us stay in the Swallow's Cave, and seated on one of these eternal rocks, try to conjure up the pre-adamite landscape, which existed hundreds of years before the Indian hunted on these shores, with its flying monsters, real dragons, with all its gigantesque features, animate and inanimate.

A little distrust, I confess, I feel of those learned resurrection men, Buckland, Silliman, and company, who compose a terrific animal so easily out of scattered relics, but the enormous bulk of the disjecta membra proves itself, and wonder has food enough in contemplating them, per se, without pinning our faith on the sleeve of an enthusiast, who may force into conjunction members which a few hundreds of thousands of years divided in reality— but let that pass.

A strange flight, the reader will say, from this little Swallow Cave, of Nahant, to the planet "Earth Universe." Seriously,

however, one sometimes finds a strange comfort in sending the soul back into antiquity—that of Rome or Greece for example— then back still into the twilight time of Hercules and Orpheus, till outstripped in this backward flight, Romulus and Alexander become moderns. At last we reach an antiquity that modernises even those half-human, half-fabulous, elder brothers of ours. I mean the antiquity of this planet, of which we get awful glimpses by that wonderful dissection of our mother earth, yclept Geology. What are ivied ruins, Norman, or even British wrecks of castles, cromlechs, and all we have been fancying ancient before, while we look at the skeleton of a mammoth? The battle of Hastings has just been fought, the newsboys have hardly ceased crying it in the street. As to Caractacus, he was our elder brother certainly, but we recollect him very well. Hercules and Theseus we have but faint recollections of; they were before our time of memory; but as belonging to this very identical stratum of this many stratified globe's crust, we smile at all of them as pretenders to venerability. And without vagaries like these, let me ask, does not a mind, rapt as it were, into a distance of time so vast, that it seems to penetrate far into eternity, lose all remembrances of itself, and ranging through the ruins of generations, of species, and even of the surfaces they inhabited, regard even the fall of empires as trivial accidents; a falling dynasty, as one dropping leaf in a forest, and learning to contemplate this planet in its elements only, as part of the solar system, return to its single petty hope, blasted or crowned, with wonder at its former importance prior to this excursion ?

But lo! "the storm is over and gone,” and a “rainbow based on ocean, spans the sky." Let us visit IRENE'S GROTTO. It is a singular and rude archway of rock, forming an entrance to a cave, half demolished by those who have stolen the stone-work of the roof for utilitarian purposes. There is nothing here which calls for particular attention, so we will just go and listen to the roaring of the waters in the "CAULDRON," as they boil and foam below. This is a place which the spirit of the storm visits, when "flying winds are all abroad." It is too calm now for me to hear much, but it must be a fine place for spirits to revel in when the Storm-King's legions dash in their fury over this ironbound shore.