To account for the miraculous precision with which such stupendous creations are regulated, it has been suggested that the infinitudes of time and space may constitute the sensorium of the Deity, whose omnipresence, combined with omnipotence and omniscience, will afford some clue to a mystery avowedly inscrutable, but the solution of which we may reverently attempt to guess. A grand idea-so grand, indeed, that in the difficulty of bringing it down to the level of human apprehension, it has found only a very limited acceptance. From the paramount, the inconceivable magnitude and importance of the operations constantly claiming the exercise of the divine mind, men hesitated to believe that its powers required to be simultaneously exerted upon all the petty details of each inhabited planet, upon the minute distinctions in the genera of an animalcule, or the varieties in the form and colouring of a weed. Reasoning from the analogy of human governments, they imagined, that while the supreme autocratic authority directed and upheld the grander arrangements of the universe, the management of its inferior processes was delegated to subordinate ministers, whose various natures and attributes were adapted to the different duties with which they were intrusted. This notion, in the abstract, presents nothing irrational, nothing inconsistent with the divine power and supremacy. Remarkable is the fact, that all nations, in ancient as well as modern times, have believed in the existence of supernatural beings, who exercised a direct influence upon mundane affairs, and whose functions rendered them the coadjutors, or, to speak more reverently, the agents of the Deity.

Though there is nothing irreligious in this creed, it has led to a variety of fantastical and even impious superstitions. That the stars, those bright sentinels stationed around the throne of the Supreme, were also, though in a subordinate degree, administrators of his decrees, and exercised a direct influence upon human affairs, found wide credence in a very early age of the world, until it assumed a regular form, under the designation of Astrology. This science of knaves for the deception of fools was divided into two branches, natural and judicial, the former regulating the physical effects of nature, the latter having reference to moral events, and enduing its possessors, as they pretended, with a prophetical power. Superstitions have a marvellous tenacity of life, and simpletons are still found who believe that the stars of their nativity are the inexorable Fates, who decide their whole future destiny, a comfortable doctrine in one respect, since it enables them to plead, in extenuation of their own follies and vices, that "Their stars are more in fault than they."

At a very early age, however, the spirit of Fatalism descended from the sky, and received incarnation either in an animal or human form. From a supposed analogy between certain productions of nature and some of their subordinate deities, the ancient Egyptian priests consecrated these objects, and such types were addressed by the vulgar as symbolised divinities, just as in other countries pictures aud statues receive the homage which should be reserved for the originals whom they represent. From this pregnant fount of idolatry sprang the twenty thousand deities of Greece and Rome, who were, nevertheless, supposed to be the representatives of one supreme authority, by which they were deputed to superintend the various departments of nature, animate and inanimate, human, animal, and vegetable. So numerous an army of celestials could not only afford tutelary and administrative guardians for hills and dales,

fountains, woods, and seas, but could supply a supernatural resident, under the title of the Genius Loci, for each individual locality.

Northern nations, borrowing their mythology mostly from the Orientals, can lay little claim to originality; but the invention of those fanciful beings, the sylphs and gnomes, which supplied the beautiful machinery for Pope's "Rape of the Lock," is attributed to the Rosicrucian philosophists, who spread themselves over Germany towards the close of the sixteenth century. They maintained the existence of various ranks of supernaturals, divided into the two orders we have named, to whom separate and specific duties were assigned, the former executing their pleasant and beneficent offices as they hover in the air, while the latter often discharge their less amiable functions in mines and other depths of the subterranean world. In such abodes the "Swart Fairy of the Mine" is still believed to exercise a favouring or malign influence in the revealment or secretion of the ore.

From the Peri of the Arabs, and other Orientals, has sprung the fantastical creation of our fairies, to whom we are indebted for the charming and exquisitely romantic machinery of Shakspeare's “Midsummer Night's Dream." Even these imaginary sprites are supposed to be ministers of a higher power, and to perform a duty somewhat analogous to that of the Grecian nymphs who presided over woods, mountains, and springs. Fairy genealogies are difficult to trace, but we cannot help suspecting that the Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, who still haunts our villages, may be a dwarfed descendant from the Agatho-demon of Socrates. The tiny elves, whose dances were supposed to make magic circles in the grass, were generally considered subservient to a superior authority, and to perform duties similar to those rendered to Prospero by Ariel, whose office it was, when so commanded, "to tread the ooze of the salt deep,-to run upon the sharp wind of the north,-to do business in the veins of the earth,-to dive into the fire,-to ride on the curled clouds,—to fetch dew from the still vexed Bermoothes."

Though we may reject the forms, the qualities, and functions of these various existences, as the vain phantasy of poets, dreamers, and visionaries, there is nothing irrational in the supposition that intelligent and invisible beings, ancillary to the subordinate purposes of the Divinity, are perpetually hovering around us. We have scriptural authority, indeed, for the existence of millions of angels, whose names of thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, suggest an order among them, though we know not its nature; and of whose interference in human affairs very numerous instances are supplied by the pages of holy writ. Some have thought that every kingdom, every element, every individual is under the ministration of a guardian angel,-a salutary and hallowing belief, which cannot be disproved, though it may not have sacred warrant for its support. Sterne's beautiful fancy about Uncle Toby's oath may have been more than a pious conjecture; it may have been literally true, that "when the Accusing Angel flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, let fall a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever." Traditions of the Rabbis, assigning very undignified occupations to some of the fallen angels, who are allowed to infest the earth, relate that Asael, having

A name said to be derived from the arms of Luther, which were a cross placed upon a rose.

engaged in an amour with Naamah, the wife of Ham, and continuing impenitent, is condemned still to preside over the women's toilets; a manifest prefiguration of the sylphs, who performed a similar office for Pope's Belinda.

Well would it be if we could persuade ourselves that spiritual emissaries and invisible agents encompassed us round about, that we stood in the constant presence of unseen witnesses, specially commissioned to follow us like living shadows, to take note of all our truant wanderings, to be planted as sentinels at the portals of our lips, and commit all that passes them to their indelible tablets! Gentle, but, perchance, not altogether impeccable, Reader! you start at the thought of having all your unguarded utterances registered and perpetuated, for "conscience doth make cowards of us all;" but presently recovering your self-possession, you dismiss the thought as a mere bugbear of the imagination. Be it so away with the fear of these supernatural eaves-droppers; let the earth hide them! But are you sure that nature, by one of her laws, has not subjected you to a tell-tale apparatus, giving an unlimited and irrepressible echo to every syllable you utter? Plunge your hand into the English channel, and you raise the level of the sea, however imperceptibly, at the Cape of Good Hope. Plunge an exclamation into silence, and you disturb silence at the extremities of the universe, if there be any truth in the theory of Dr. Babbage, that as sound is communicated and renewed by perpetual undulations of the air, it never dies, becoming gradually audible in the distances of space, as it ceases to be heard at the point of its original emission. Oh! if all our oaths and imprecations, all our angry and uncharitable outbursts, all our expressions of falsehood, folly, and ribaldry, have been constantly carried on the wings of air, in all their unabated sinfulness and loudness, to the throne of heaven, I know not how we could evince a proper sense of our past utterances, except by the future and constant reiteration of the word-"pardon! pardon!"

YOUTH-MANHOOD-AGE.

WHAT is thy glory and thy triumph-youth?
A crown'd untruth!

What bubble bright! thine evanescent, crude
Beatitude?

The victory of wild corporeal sense

Over the godlike spirit's pure intelligence.

A child no more, thou deem'st thy freedom's state
Inviolate,

And proudly sayst-" I am master of myself."—
Deluded elf!

O'er thine imprison'd mind thy body reigns;

The worst of slaves is he who weareth Pleasure's chains.

Years roll, youth wanes-reform is the result.
The sage adult

Doffs Folly's cap and bells ;-no more beguiled
By licence wild,

He dedicates his faculties and time

To the proud hopes and duties high of manhood's prime.
What are they? mark!-not freedom, but renew'd
World-servitude.—

As Merchant-toss'd upon a sea of chance
And circumstance,

He doubts the smile of Fortune that he woos,

And gains with toil and fear what, gain'd, he fears to lose. As son of Mars, the hireling homicide

With abject pride

Struts on parade, a shoulder-knotted slave,
Or, blindly brave,

Breaking God's law to execute man's will,

Cause, foe, and fate unknown, goes forth to die or kill.

As Barrister-he shields the rich and strong
In every wrong,

Stifles his conscience, holds a willing Brief
For rogue or thief,

Prisons the righteous, sets the felon free,
Truth, justice, honour, law, sold for a paltry fee.

As Senator-the factious partisan,

Self-seeking man!

Courts a mob-master, breaks the pledge he gave,
Becomes the slave

Of every Premier who hath gold to shower,

And sells his country's cause for hope of place and power.

Oft in extinct volcanoes may be seen

A lake serene,

Home, music, books, friends, kindred, nature, art,
Making life's winter spring, still bloom for head and heart.

While past vicissitudes and storms increase

His present peace,

The calm and well-prepared old man when death

Claims his last breath,

With radiant visions of the future bless'd,

Sinin his cradle-coffin happily to rest.

THE PERILS OF THE POOR; OR, THE LOST SNUFF-BOX.

BY JAMES WILLYAMS GRYLLS, ESQ.

AUTHOR OF THE "OUT-STATION; OR, JAUNTS IN THE JUNGLE.”

IT WAS a lovely morning in June

The air, exulting in its freshness and perfume, as if just loosed from Heaven's portals, played joyously around the hills of the Lowlands, entrancing all who felt its influence, from the noble invalid in his pillowed chariot, to the sunburnt goat-herd reclining on the heather, into a deeper love of nature than their physical compositions were apparently adapted

to imbibe.

And have you never felt the influence, most amiable reader, of such a morning? whose very buoyant freshness has found a way into your currency-cased soul in spite of yourself, making you oblivious of all your earthly troubles, and filling you with a deeper love for your neighbour than you ever felt yourself capable of being guilty of indulging in?

Yes! that you have! and so vividly does it now re-appear to your imagination, that you are full of kind thanks to me for conjuring it up; and, in return, make up your mind to "wade through the article" (as you are contemptuously pleased to style it), instead of indulging in your usual characteristic of "skimming" and "skipping"("Skimming and skipping," indeed! Heigh-ho!

O! fortunati nimium, sua si bona nôrint

Lectores!

Who would be an author, after all? to enjoy, perhaps, the gratification of hearing your most intimate friend (who cannot himself string two words grammatically together) talk of having "skimmed through, or skipped over," and possibly pronounced "not so bad," the article you flatter yourself to be about the best thing you have ever produced in all your born days, as if you were but a bee (sic vos non vobis), created but to mellificate for such drones! For instance, there was that bullet-headed Chubb, an Ensign of ours (he is on the Mess committee, and spells "claret" with two "r's), criticised my last production in a manner that I need not wound my vanity by a repetition of; suffice it to say, I registered a vow to be influenced no more by the "cacoëthes scribendi" for a clear twelvemonth; and it is yourself, worthy Reader, not I, that have been the sufferer in consequence.)

It was indeed a glorious, heavenly morning. The fleecy clouds seemed loth to glide across the blue infinity above, and joyously did the sun illumine the little enclosure (yclept "the garden") that lay before a whitewashed cot at the foot of one of the Lowland mountains.

It was the only habitation in sight, and so clean and white it looked, as if it had been built only to make its appearance on such a day as

this.

Within the garden, binding in rope-yarn bonds a wayward sweet-pea, was a delicate girl who had numbered some twenty summers or thereabouts; but however much care her present foster-child might demand at