unallowable use of language to style them beautiful; and pretty is a word that cannot be used in the walls of Florence. You find yourself walled in as your carriage proceeds and penetrates to the more important parts of the city, between rows of buildings which, from their great height, and the darkness of the stone of which all is built, and the massy iron gratings which guard all the windows of the lower storeys, make one think he must be plunging into the recesses of some boundless prison. All wears a dark, funereal look. The palaces you would take to be inquisitions-the convents and monasteries to be prisons of state. You feel that you have travelled back to a city of the middle ages, the greater part of which retains all the marks of those ages. The age of centuries is inscribed all over the city as legibly as the wrinkles of eighty or a hundred years upon the countenance of a human being.

Art almost constitutes Florence. There are three grand depositaries of it. The principal is that of the Imperial Gallery-rightly styled imperial. It is contained in a very extensive building, worthy of its builder, Vasari, the artist and the author. It may be said that there is no end to the works of value and interest which crowd the rooms of this noble establishment. In sculpture there is scarce a Roman emperor, philosopher, poet, whose bust or statue is not there, raked from the ruins of ancient Rome, or other overturned city of Italy. And besides these, statues of imaginary beings, god or goddess, dryad or hamadryad, satyr or faun, with which the imagination of antiquity teemed, and which genius expressed in such perfection in marble or bronze. Such objects adora the sides of these extensive galleries. Opening out of the galleries, in their own length, are halls and saloons, larger and smaller, where are deposited the masterpieces of sculpture and painting from the first appearance of art in the thirteenth century to the close of the sixteenth, with specimens of all the principal schools.

THE VOICE OF MY WATCH.

Ir is not at all unusual for us to ascribe to inanimate things the works and ways of living beings. Everybody knows that mountains and hills have not a tongue, and trees have not hands, yet Isaiah speaks of them as if they had; for, says he, "The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." We, also, say that the lightning flies, yet we never saw and do not believe that it has wings; and that the

thunder roars, though we never suppose it has a mouth or a throat. It is well known why we thus speak. There is a likeness between the things we describe and the figures we employ. The lightning has not wings, but it travels over space like those birds which have, only faster. In like manner my watch has no tongue, but it has a voice. The other Sabbath I had to give a monthly address to a Sabbath-school. It sometimes happens that when you have to speak you have nothing to say. It so happened with me that day. I therefore pulled out my watch, and began to count from it the minutes I had to spare ere the time to lecture arrived. While I looked and counted I fancied the watch spoke; yes, my tongueless, mouthless watch did speak. I wrote down on the blank pages of my memory all that it said, and then I went and told or repeated all in a lecture to the Sunday scholars. And, pray, what did that tongueless-talking, speechlessspeaking watch of yours say? I have not a good or great memory for details, and cannot, therefore, exactly repeat or record all that was said, but I shall do my best.

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1st. My watch very distinctly said, “I did not make myself." Now, although one is not always prepared to hear a watch speak, yet when mine did speak I was quite prepared to hear it utter this sentiment. If it had said "I was never made, nobody's head ever constructed and nobody's hand ever finished me," I should have felt very curious; indeed, I should almost have broken through the decencies of life, and the graces of good manners, and called my watch to its very face a story-teller. Nobody made you! Why, you could not make yourself, and you could not grow like an apple or pear on a tree. No, no, I should have said to my watch; the wheels, and chains, and springs, and pointers, about you, were not so skilfully arranged, so nicely prepared and put together, so tastefully finished and ornamented, without a skilful, tasteful, practical maker. My watch, however, knew the truth, and told the truth.

Turning from my watch to the big universe, I thought I saw a watch on a much larger scale. Here is the sun, a globe which is one million three hundred thousand times larger than the earth, the centre of a system. Around it several planets, with their moons, are constantly whirling with indescribable swiftness, and yet with greater exactness than the wheels of my watch. Besides our sun and system, there are several more, at vast distances from each other, working with like regularity. Did nobody make them?

is.

Then I thought what a wonderful watch the human frame
Look at the eye and the ear, the hands and the feet; see

its internal machinery-how well arranged, how nicely formed? Did nobody make it?

I do think that the same reasons which prove that a watch was made, and that it did not make itself, would as certainly prove that the world and the world's inhabitants were made, and were not made of themselves. It is a maxim old as the everlasting hills, and true as old, "out of nothing, nothing proceeds.' And while this is an argument in proof of something that always was, the arrangement and order, the mechanism we see, and the music we hear on all hands, are proof that these have proceeded from a wise, powerful, beneficent maker.

How came I thus? how here ?

Not of myself; by some great Maker, then,
In goodness and in power pre-eminent.
Tell me how may I know him, how adore,
From whom I have, that thus I move and live,
And feel that I am happier than I know?

2nd. My watch said, I cannot keep going of myself. If you, my owner, through carelessness or forgetfulness, were to neglect to wind me up, I could not help myself, I should cease to go. My maker gave me my mechanical life, and my owner must keep it in regular action."

True type again, thought I, of my own life. God not only made me and all men, but He preserves us. In Him we live and move every hour. My watch does not more depend upon me to wind it up than I depend upon God for life and all things; if I forget my watch it ceases to move; and if God forgot, or took his influence from me, I should die.

I fear we often forget our hourly dependence upon God. We think of Him as far away-as occupied with larger interests as having left this world to us and unseen good and bad angels. Yet when a terrible famine comes, and our bread is limited, or when a fatal accident occurs, and our friends are removed hence, in each case we say "It is the visitation of God." What, then, does God only visit to terrify and destroy us? This is all we have merited; but this is not all we receive from God. No; God cares for us and visits us every moment He gives us our homes, our friends, our fields, our flowers, our harvests, our all. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." Let us try to think of God as always seeing, guiding, protecting, blessing us. To see God in all, through all, above all, and better than all, is the privilege and portion of the “pure in heart."

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3rd. My watch read me quite a homily on the value and

velocity of time. Every moment-beat of this pocket companion of mine seemed to say, "Time moves, steals, flies onward and onward still, whether you think of it, appreciate it, or improve it, or whether you thoughtlessly or carelessly neglect it; even since you studiously sat down to look at me your life is shorter, and death, judgment, and eternity, are nearer by several minutes." Is it so? Does time thus fly, however I study or squander it? Yes, tis even so. Time i3 a capital ever growing less, a sand-glass ever running out. Soon, very soon, our capital of years will be reduced to months, and months to moments; soon, very soon, our sandglass of moments will have dropped its last. And can we be careless and unconcerned? If we lose our time we lose our sowing season, and how can we reap if we sow not?-our working-time, and how can we enter into rest if we work not? "Yes," but young people say, "we have time to spend and to spare; our life is just beginning, and we have the prospect of long long years to come.' Perhaps you have, perhaps you have not; but supposing you have, 1st, God requires all you have; 2nd, if you get into the habit of spending it now you will feel the force of that habit prompting you to spend it in after-life; and, 3rd, you will need in after-life all the wisdom you can by the most rigid economy of time acquire in early life.

Many people shorten life some years by negligent habits. Let me suppose you lose in sleep, in profitless company, or in useless visits, an hour a day. How much time will you have lost when you reach the age of seventy years? You can calculate it for yourself; but I make it nearly three years. What a deduction from life! And it is to be feared that not only an hour a day, but whole days are not unfrequently lost or lounged away; and so life, for pious and useful purposes already short, is greatly shortened. How melancholy is this! I have heard of a nobleman lighting a five-pound note to seek a sovereign that had just fallen on a carpeted floor. “A nobleman!" says a little boy. "You mean a madman: for none but a madman would perpetrate such folly." Doubtless this nobleman was ignoble; yet I would ask, Was his conduct nearly so bad or so mad as that of those who burn the fivepound notes of invaluable time to seek the paltry sovereigns of unsatisfying and unsanctified pleasure?

My watch taught me more lessons than I have room to record in this article; but I trust what is recorded will be well considered. Ponder," young friends, "the path of your feet." Set about the great work of life in a decided, bold, Godfearing spirit. Remember "the night cometh when no man

can work." Time, now measured by watches, will shortly be lost in eternity as drops are lost in the sea. What, then, I say unto one, I say unto all, Watch!

Bilston, January, 1853.

J. STOKOE.

[These lessons from a watch are so good, so pointed, so practical, and so calculated for usefulness, that we wish the author would tell us all the good things his watch said; and if any other things speak to him in the same style, we should be glad to waft his thoughts to our many thousand readers.ED.]

of

"And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward."-Matthew x. 41.

In this passage our Lord intends to urge and encourage the exercise of Christian kindness. The smallest gift offered in his name to one of his disciples is well pleasing in his sight,