make thee more capable of following my future instructions, I will unfold to thee the grand mystery of wisdom, by which she leads her votaries to happiness. See," said he, pointing to a river in which several young swans were eagerly swimming after their own shadows in the stream, "those silly birds imitate mankind: they are in pursuit of that which their own motion puts to flight; behold others, which have tired themselves with their unnecessary labours, and sitting still, are in possession of what their utmost endeavours could never have accomplished. Thus, my son, happiness is the shadow of contentment, and rests or moves for ever with its original.”

As the morality in this story is so good, my dear children, I shall not attempt to enlarge on it, but go on to read you one equally good, which gave me great pleasure in the perusal; and with two short ones that occur to my memory, will be as much as the time will allow."

THE

THE

DISPENSATIONS

OF

PROVIDENCE.

AN EASTERN TALE.

BOZALDAB, califf of Egypt, had dwelt

securely for many years in the silken pavillions of pleasure; and had every morning anointed his head with the oil of gladness, when his only son Aboram (for whom he had crowded his treasures with gold, extended his dominions with conquests, and secured them with impregnable fortresses) was suddenly wounded as he was hunting with an arrow from an unknown hand, and expired in the field.

Bozaldab,

Bozaldab, in the distraction of grief and despair, refused to return to his palace, and retired to the gloomiest grotto in the neighbouring mountain; he there rolled himself in the dust, tore away the hairs of his hoary beard, and dashed the cup of consolatior, offered him by patience, to the ground. He suffered not his minstrels to approach his presence: but listened to the screams of the melancholy birds of midnight, that fit through the solitary vaults and echoing chambers of the pyramids. "Can that God be benevolent," he cried, "who thus wounds the soul, as from an ambush, with unexpected sorrow, and crushes his creature in a moment with irremediless calamity? Ye lying Imans, talk no more of the justice and kindness of an all-directing providence! He, who you pretend reigns in heaven, is so far from protecting the miserable sons of men, that he perpetually delights to blast the sweetest flower

flower in the garden of hope; and, like a malignant giant, to beat down the strongest tower of happiness with the iron mace of his avenging anger. If this Being possessed the goodness and the power with which flattering priests have invested him, he would, doubtless, be inclined and enabled to banish those evils which render the world a dungeon of distress, a vale of vanity and woe-I will continue in it not longer!"

At that moment he furiously raised his hand, which despair had armed with a' dagger, to strike it deep into his bosom ; when suddenly thick flashes of lightning shot through the cavern, and a Being of more than human beauty and magnitude, arrayed in azure robes, crowned with amarinth, and waving a branch of palm in his right hand, arrested the arm of the trembling califf, and said with a majestic smile, "Follow me to the top of yonder mountain." "Look

"Look from hence," said the heavenly conductor, "I am Colae, the angel of peace; look from hence into the vale below."

Bozaldab obeyed, and beheld a barren, sultry, and solitary island, in the midst of which sat a pale, meagre, and ghastly figure: it was a merchant just perishing with famine, and lamenting that he could find neither wild berries nor a single spring in this forlorn, uninhabited desart; and begging the protection of heaven against the tygers that would certainly have destroyed him, since he had consumed the last fuel he had collected to make nightly fires to affright them. He then cast a casket of jewels on the sand as trifles of no use, and crept, feeble and trembling, to an eminence where he was accustomed to sit every evening to watch the setting sun, and to make a signal to any ship that might fortunately approach the island.

"Inhabitant