conduct is as judicious as if he were the dullest of human beings, and his imagination as brilliant as if he were irretrievably ruined. But when wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence, and restrained by strong principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty and something much better than witty, who loves honour, justice, decency, good nature, morality, and religion ten thousand times better than wit-wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different characters of men; than to observe its expanding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldnessteaching age, and care, and pain to smile-extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit, like this, is surely the flavour of the mind! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavour, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marle."-SYDNEY SMITH. THE SOLITARY REAPER. BEHOLD her, single in the field, No nightingale did ever chant Such thrilling voice was never heard Will no one tell me what she sings? Or is it some more humble lay, Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang WORDSWORTH. Explained. ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. Defend. Convincing. Succeeded. No boy is the happier for bad qualities, though they are so common among young people; many children find delight in tormenting defenceless creatures, and in unnecessarily destroying insects, forgetting the old saying 66 Destroy them not, for all things ought to live: A father once rebuked his cruel children in the following manner: he told them that he had some very heavy charges to bring against them, and that the complainants whom they had injured were all in the next room, and would appear against them. The children were much frightened at this, and begged hard to know what it was they were charged with. Their father told them that one complainant had been pushed by them into a puddle up to his knees; another wounded by a sharp pike; a third knocked down; a fourth stoned; a fifth robbed of all that his house contained; and a sixth frightened almost out of his senses. All the children denied the truth of these accusations, and declared that they had never been guilty of such cruelty in their lives; but the father told them, he could not believe them, for that children who were cruel would not scruple to tell falsehoods. He then fetched a basket from the next room, and placed it on the table. Uncovering the basket, he took out a poor fly, which one of them had wantonly pushed into a cup of treacle; a cock-chafer, which they had been spinning; a butterfly, which they had knocked down as he was flying over the garden; a frog, whose leg they had broken with a stone, as he hopped about by the side of a pond; and a bird's nest, with the eggs they had taken from it. He then went out, and returned with a dog, to whose tail they had cruelly tied an old tin kettle, which rattled against the ground as he ran, and drove him almost mad. The children were all confounded. Their father explained to them, that if they had committed those acts of cruelty towards their fellow-creatures they would have been severely punished; but that their wickedness was not less clearly shown by being committed against feeble and helpless creatures, which had power neither to defend themselves, nor to punish their tormentors. They cried while their father spoke of the bird's nest, and he succeeded in convincing them of the sin which they had committed; and though the punishment he inflicted was light compared with their cruelty, it impressed on their youthful minds the remembrance of their transgression, and they did not again practise cruelty. The child who is cruel to insects, or animals, is a tormentor of God's creatures, and may well fear His judgments whose tender mercies are over all his works, and without whose permission not a sparrow falleth to the ground. It is better to overcome evil in our youth, than to let it overcome us in our manhood.-' Boy's Week-day Book.' THE SELFISH MAN. WHO should lament for him within whose heart Was the sole science he was ever taught; The multiplication-table was his creed, His paternoster, and his decalogue. When yet he was a boy, and should have breathed To give his blood its natural spring and play, He in a close and dusky counting-house, Smoke-dried and seared, and shrivelled up his heart. So, from the way in which he was trained up, Poor muck-worm! through his threescore years and ten; LET the young go out, under the descending sun of autumn, into the fields of nature. Their hearts are now ardent with hope, with the hope of fame, of honour, of happiness; and in the long perspective which is before them, their imagination creates a world where all things give enjoyment. Let the scenes which they now witness, moderate but not extinguish their ambition; while they see the yearly desolation of nature, let them see it as the emblem of hope; while they feel the disproportion between the power they possess, and the time allotted for their employment, let them carry their ambitious eye beyond the world; and while, in these sacred solitudes, a voice in their own bosom corresponds to the voice of decaying nature, let them take that high decision which becomes those who feel themselves the inhabitants of a greater world, and who look to a being incapable of decay. Let the busy and the active pause for a time amid the scenes which surround them, and learn the high lesson which nature teaches in the hours of its fall. They are now ardent with all the desires of mortality; fame and interest and pleasure are displaying to them their shadowy promises; and, in the vulgar race of life, many weak and many worthless passions are too easily engendered. Let them withdraw themselves for a time from the agitation of the world; let them mark the desolation of summer, and listen to the winds of winter, that begin to murmur above their heads. It is a scene which, with all its power, has yet no reproach; it tells them that such is also the fate to which they must come; that the pulse of passion must one day beat low that the illusions of time must pass; and "that the spirit must return to Him who gave it." It reminds them, with gentle voice, of that innocence in which life began, and for which no prosperity of vice can make any compensation; that the angel who is one day to stand upon the earth, and to "swear that time shall be no more," seems now to whisper to them, amid the hollow winds of the year, what manner of men they ought to be who must meet that decisive hour. There is an eventide in human life, a season when the eye becomes dim, and the strength decays, and when the winter of age begins to shed upon the human head its prophetic snow. The spring and summer of your days are gone, and with them, not only the joys they knew, but many of the friends who gave them. You have entered upon the autumn of your being; and whatever may have been the profusion of your spring, or the warm intemperance of your summer, there is yet a season of stillness and of solitude which the beneficence of Heaven affords you, in which you may meditate upon the past and the future, and prepare for the mighty change you are soon to undergo. If it be thus you have the wisdom to use the decaying season of nature, it brings with it consolations more valuable than all the enjoyments of former days. It is now that you may understand the magnificent language of Heaven-it mingles its voice with that of revelation-it summons you, in these hours when the leaves fall, and the winter is gathering, to that evening study which the mercy of Heaven has provided in the Book of Salvation; and while the shadowy valley opens which leads to the abode of death, it speaks of that hand that can comfort and can save, and which can conduct to those "green pastures, and those still waters," where there is an eternal spring for the children of God.-ALISON's 'Sermons.' THE FALL OF THE LEAF. Blighted when like us he fell; U |