especially those details which relate to pecuniary matters, constitutional diseases, family differences. All these are personal: and there is a want of true goodbreeding, a want of consideration and deference, in speaking freely of these things even when your friend is unconscious of the liberty.

It seems paradoxical to observe that the art of listening well forms a part of the duty of conversation. To give up the whole of your attention to the person who addresses himself to you is sometimes a heavy tax; but it is one which we must pay for the privileges of social life, and an early practice will render it almost an involuntary act of good-breeding, whilst consideration for others will give this little sacrifice a merit and a charm of which the lowest proof of Christian feeling can never be devoid.

To listen well is to make an unconscious advancement in the power of conversing. In listening we perceive in what the interest, in what the failure of others consists; we become, too, aware of our own deficiencies, without having them taught through the medium of humiliation. We find ourselves often more ignorant than we could have supposed it possible. We learn, by a very moderate attention to the sort of topics which please, to form a style of our own. The "art of conversation" is an unpleasant phrase. The power of conversing well is least agreeable when it assumes the character of an art.

In listening, a well-bred gentlewoman will gently sympathize with the speaker; or, if needs must be,

differ as gently. Much character is shown in the art of listening. Some people appear to be in a violent hurry whilst another speaks; they hasten on the person who addresses them as one would urge on a horse with incessant "Yes, yes-very good-ah!" others sit on the full stare, eyes fixed as those of an owl, upon the speaker. From others, a loud and long laugh is at intervals produced, and all the company turns round to see what was the cause of the merriment.

But all these vices of manner may be avoided by a gentle attention and a certain calm dignity of manner, based upon a reflective mind and humble spirit.

NOT TO DESPAIR.

THE mercies of the Lord to his chosen are from everlasting; yet so long as his decree of mercy runs hid, and is not discovered to them in the effects of it, they are said not to have received or obtained mercy ; and when it begins to act and work in their effectual calling, then they find it be theirs. It was in a secret way moving forward towards them before, as the sun after midnight is still coming nearer to us, though we perceive not its approach, till the dawning of the day.

THE SAVIOUR'S GIFT.

PEACE was the song that angels sang,
When Jesus sought this vale of tears,
And sweet the heavenly prelude rang,
To calm the watchful shepherds' fears.
WAR is the cry that man doth raise,
As frantic in Bellona's train,
He bids her vengeful altars blaze,

While tears and blood his garments stain.

PEACE was the prayer the Saviour breathed,
When from this earth his steps withdrew,
The gift He to his friends bequeathed,
With Calvary, and the Cross in view.
Oh! ye, whose souls have felt His love,
Guard day and night this rich bequest;
The watch-word of Heaven's host above,
The passport to their realms of rest.

ON THE VERBENA.

WHEN rudely handled, or severely pressed,
How sweet the fragrance from thy leaves expressed;

Injured by man, a lesson here we learn,

For malice, love-for evil, good return.

CUVIER'S FIRST STEP INTO NOTICE.

It was at this period,* that some terebratulæ having been dug up near Fecamp, the thought struck him of comparing fossil with recent species, and the casual dissection of a species of cuttle-fish led him to study the anatomy of mollusca, which afterwards conducted him to the development of his great views on the whole of the animal kingdom. The class "vermes," so called by Linnæus, included all the inferior animals, and was left by him in a state of the greatest confusion it was by those that young Cuvier first distinguished himself; he examined their organization, classed them into groups, and arranged them according to their natural affinities. A little society met every evening in Valmont, near Count d'Hericy's residence, for the purpose of discussing agricultural topics. M. Tessier, who had fled from the Reign of Terror at Paris, and who was concealed under the office of an army surgeon, was present at these meetings, being then quartered at Valmont. He spoke so well, and seemed so much master of the subject, that Cuvier recognised him as the author of the articles in the Encyclopedie Méthodique. On saluting him as such, M. Tessier, whose title of Abbé

* Cuvier, then about nineteen years old, was residing at Caen, in Normandy, in the family of the Count d'Hericy.

had rendered him suspected at Paris, exclaimed, "I am known, then, and consequently lost." "Lost!" replied Cuvier: "no, you are henceforth the object of our most anxious care.' Tessier wrote thus to his friend Jussieu, on his first acquaintance with Cuvier. "On the sight of this young man, I felt the same delight as the philosopher, who, when cast away upon an unknown shore, there saw traces of a geometrical figure. M. Cuvier is a violet which has hidden itself under the grass. He has great acquirements; he makes plates for your work; and I have urged him to give us lectures this year on botany. He has promised so to do, and I congratulate my pupils at the hospital on his compliance. I question if you could find a better comparative anatomist, and he is a pearl worthy of picking up. I assisted you in drawing M. Delambre from his retreat, and I beg you to help me in drawing M. Cuvier from his; for he is made for science and the world."

CONTENTION.

IT cuts the sinews and strength of prayer, makes breaches and gaps as wounds at which the spirits fly out, as the cutting of a vein, by which, as they speak, it bleeds to death. When the soul is calm and com posed, it may behold the face of God shining on it.