blame in the first instance; but they find such ready scholars in the credulous and indulgent mammas, that I think the fault lies mainly with them.

It is becoming, too, so huge a moral evil, that I really think the " Society for the Suppression of Vice" should take it up. To live for nothing else but to rub the hands, and say, "Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire," seems to me very unworthy of that intellectual standing which your race has always claimed. And this overweening indulgence, and dread of air, will presently settle down to some such standard. It has already, indeed, wrought marvels of mischief amongst the young. Works of philanthropy and Christian love are neglected through this foolish fear. Even the privileges of the sanctuary are foregone because the place is too hot, too cold, or too full of draughts. I remember when it used to be thought that the place of duty was the place of safety; and that soul-prosperity was best promoted by active and self-denying labours in Sabbath-school rooms, and local prayer meetings, and visitings from house to house. Many, to be sure, think so still; and I look upon them as the salt of the earth. But many have left their best and first love for flannel and fleecy hosiery and closed windows and muffled doors, afraid to do good abroad, till by self-indulgence they become gradually incapacitated for the work, and doubly susceptible of those very influences for fear of which their whole lives are passed in bondage. The luxury, even, of a glazed window, was unknown in apostolic times. In the airy attic, by the breezy river-side, out of doors and in doors, the earliest and best Christians were instant, in season and out of season, doing good to their own souls and the souls of others. Man does not live by bread alone. He has more to do than to vegetate, like a fern, in a closed glass case; and will soon die off if careful only for the things of the body.

You may smile, perhaps, at my dogmatism, and wonder how I learned to talk like a philosopher. But I have a long and active experience in my favor-have always been a great traveller-and was, until the last few years, accredited to every home and hearth in England. But now your wadded ones wage war with me, not only at home, but elsewhere. Church, chapel, theatre, public

hall, and office-are combining against my hereditary rights. It was but a few weeks since, sir, that I stole into one of our public buildings, on which some ten thousand pounds had been expended for the sake of keeping me out. A window had been broken, however, and I gained admission; but soon wished myself back again. The money had answered its object; for, till my arrival, no fresh air had found entrance for a long while. The windows had been doubled, door-cases had been set up, the floors pierced and tunnelled, and a large laboratory constructed underneath for the express sake of manufacturing an atmosphere. I could have supplied the original article on infinitely cheaper terms than the substitute, and "warranted fresh," as your buttermen say; but who would have it on those terms? It was damped, and strained, and medicated, choked with wet charcoal, and riddled through canvas, pumped in and pumped up, and pumped out to the snort and grunt of a steamengine, of ten-horse power. Pooh! I could have sent it in with tempest power! Or they might have had it soft as milk, through a simple plate of perforated zinc. But how, if I had had my way, could Doctor Whistle have raised the wind, or his friend, the engineer, have glorified himself ?

One of your leading journals, sir, sometime since took up my cause, as affected by the present arrangements of the Central Criminal Court, and said what I thought perfectly true," that many a poor prisoner had been found guilty through these abominable attempts to imitate Nature in her matchless system of ventilation." I have sometimes applied a similar remark to our churches or chapels. Let me speak of two now in my mind's eye. One of them is light, lofty, cheerful, and airy. God's sunshine, and God's air, fill and gladden it. No one, but a testy old bachelor, was ever known to turn up his coat-collar for fear of draughts. The cause flourishes, the hearers are learners, and live happily and usefully, as Christians should do. The other place is a secluded chapel in the suburbs. If Truth lie at the bottom of a well, no wonder that people look for it there. You have no sooner entered than you hear the earnest whizzing of a steam-engine; and, if your wife be with you, it will be well if she should not be carried away like a fire-balloon in walking over the gratings, through which the medicated

What a dismal

air is pumped, before you reach the seat. swamp the whole place seems! The green Venetians are closed all round you; and your first impression is, that you are just so deep in a duck-pond as to be able to catch a glimpse of daylight through the green weeds on its surface. The weather out of doors is bright and sunny. I am myself happy among the blossoms of the apricot, scattering them in a rosy shower on the grass below. The birds are singing, and all things look lively. But what a dismal picture is that "well-ventilated" chapel! The sunshine must never glide in there, for fear of interrupting the wonderful arrangements of Dr. Warmblast. I peep in through the vestry door; but the grim old stoker drops a green-baize portcullis, and keeps watch over it throughout the service.

But I can waste no more time, for a glad mission is still before me; and the poor of the land, uninitiated in the mysteries of the suffocating art, are looking out on hill, and in valley, and twilight woodland, for the still grateful offices of your injured friend, FRESH AIR.

"IN WISDOM HAST THOU MADE THEM ALL.” THE eye is a natural telescope; and artificial telescopes have been brought to the highest perfection by imitating the provisions which are made in the eye for colourless vision. The animal frame is an apparatus of mechanical powers, of levers, ropes, pullies, and the like, most exquisitely adapted to the mechanical relations which animals sustain to the objects around them. The human skull, by what we may term the groining at its base, the density of some of its parts, and the structure and joinings of the dome itself is most exactly adapted to resist all ordinary pressure, and to diminish vibration from blows. Sir Charles Bell, alluding to the sutures, remarks that "the finest tools of the carpenter could make nothing so perfect and so demonstrative of design." What are we to think of the boatshaped insects called the water beetle, and the water boatman which row themselves through the water by the successive impulses of their natural oars or jointed levers, shaped like paddles? What shall we say of that ship-fish the nautilus,

which spreads an expansible membrane for a sail to catch the breeze, and which it can retract at will, when its elegant little shell bark is in danger from the storm? Why are the eyes of fishes so constructed as to bear much more pressure than those of animals that live in air? Why is the eel, which has to worm its head through compact sand and gravel, furnished with a transparent horny substance placed at uniform distances before the eye, answering the purpose of a strong immoveable pair of spectacles? Go to the solar microscope, and behold myriads of animalcules swimming and revelling in a single drop of water: the minutest of the whole tribe being possessed of a complicated system of digestive organs. Examine the vegetable world. Here we see life, under a new form; but still preserved and sustained by assimilation, by a kind of circulation and respiration, by excretion, by absorption, and by the actual conversion of nutriment into the solids of the vegetable body. Here, too, are to be found admirable mechanical contrivances. Witness the pitcher plant of the East, a plant on which grow a kind of natural pitchers, or tankards, holding from a pint to a quart of pure water, which is prevented from evaporating in dry weather by the close shutting of the lid of the pitcher; and when the pitcher becomes full, and requires additional support, a hook which grows behind the lid seizes on a neighbouring tendril and holds by it.

HOPPUS.

DILIGENCE.

MAN'S industry cannot be successful without God's blessing, and God's blessing is not bestowed without man's industry. The Lord's providential visits are never granted to loiterers. Moses, David, and the Shepherds of Bethlehem were all keeping their flocks, and Gideon was at his threshing floor when God's revelations were made to them. How is slothfulness exposed, condemned, branded, in God's book. Let a man have ever so good a knowledge of his business-let him begin with the advantage of capital, connexions, and situation-yet if he be of an indolent or self-indulgent habit-a late riser—a lover of pleasure-a gossipping neighbour-a zealous political partizan, more busy in reforming the state than in minding his own

concerns he will soon furnish another evidence of the truth of Solomon's words, "He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand."

Weigh well, then, young men, the import of that momentous word, "Diligence." You remember the anecdote of Demosthenes, who, on being asked the first grace of elocution, replied "Action.” The second? "Action." The third? "Action." So if asked, "What is the first qualification of a successful tradesman ?" I answer, "Diligence." The second?

"Diligence." The third? "Diligence." Write it on your

hearts. Keep it ever before your eyes. Let it be ever sounding in your ears. Let it be said of you, as was affirmed of that memorable and holy missionary, Henry Martyn, when he was at college. "That he was known as the man who never lost an hour."-James's Young Man's Friend.

"IT MEANS ME."

NOTHING shows more clearly the sovereignty of God's grace than those apparent contingencies by which the great work of conversion is often brought about. No sooner does Paul leave the shores of Anatolia, and cross over to Philippi, than his message opens the heart of Lydia of Thyatira. His first European convert is a woman of Asia. In our own day instances of the same kind are not wanting. Dr. Reed mentions the case of an aged individual, who, for more than three score years and ten, had been indifferent to religion, but who, during a visit of only three days to the neighbourhood, was led to visit his chapel; heard the Word and believed.

"She was, says he, "drawing to the close of life, and in the confirmed neglect of religion, after many struggles with her own conscience. She was visiting her daughter, who resided in the vicinity of Wycliffe Chapel for two or three days. Her daughter pressed her to go with her in the evening, when the second of a series of sermons, to the unconverted, was preached. She came. The text was read, "I gave her space to repent and she repented not." It was to her as a voice from heaven. means me," she said, "it means me!" She was full of distress during the night of the following day.

"It

In the evening she