"I was fond of sleep; it robbed me of a great deal of my time, but my poor Joseph (his domestic servant) was of great service in enabling me to overcome it. I promised to give Joseph a crown every time that he could make me get up at six. Next morning he did not fail to awake me, and to torment me, but he only received abuse. The day after he did the same, with no better success, and I was obliged at noon to confess that I had lost my time. I told him that he did not know how to manage his business, that he ought to think of my promise, and not The day folto mind my threats lowing he employed force, I begged for indulgence, I bid him begone, I stormed, but Joseph persisted. I was therefore forced to comply, and he was rewarded every day for the abuse which he suffered at the moment when I awoke, by thanks accompanied by a crown, which he received an hour after. Yes, I am indebted to poor Joseph for fourteen or dozen a volumes of my works." INDIAN VERACITY. of the At a late Indian treaty, an old Indian related to some white people an extraordinary adventure of his son in one of his hunting excursions. The circumstances were so uncommon as to excite doubts in the minds of some of the by-standers, who pertly asked him if he believed what he had related to be true. "I do," replied the Indian, "my son told me it himself, and my son has never seen a white man.” LIBERALITY OF CATHOLIC COLONIZERS UNJUSTLY REQUITED. The following observations founded on the extracts taken from "An account of the European settlemen's in America," attributed to Edmund Burke, 3rd Ed. 1760, Vol. II. p. 226-231, appeared in the last number of the Repository of Theology and General Literature. They are transplanted into these pages with a view to counteract the spirit of intolerance, which characterizes so many of the adversaries of Catholic Emancipation. They may assist in removing some prejudices which endeavour to stamp one church as peculiarly prone to persecution, when in reality all churches have, when in the possession of power, been persecutors in their turn. Persecution is not the exclusive er ror of any one sect, but arises from mistaken notions of the right of interfering with private judgment. In the year 1632, Lord Baltimore foreseeing a storm rising against the Roman Catholics in England, obtained a grant of lands in North America, now known, as the province of Maryland. He was a and was conscientious Catholic, induced to attempt this settlement in America, in hopes of enjoying liberty of conscience for himself, and for such of his friends to whom the severity of the laws might loosen their ties to their country, and make them prefer an banishment with freedom to the conveniencies of England, embittered as they were by the sharpness of the laws, and the popular odium which hung over them." The court indeed was favourable to the Roman Catholics, but the easy laws were against them, and the tyrannies of the court had so weakened it in popular estimation, that so far from being able to protect its friends, it was not able to defend itself. "The settlement of the colony cost Lord Baltimore a large sum. It was mace under his auspices by his brother, and about 200 persons, Roman Catholics, and most of them of good families." As the court party declined in England, and the Roman Catholics came to be more rigo rously treated, numbers constantly emigrated to replenish the settlement. On the triumph of the parliament over the king, Lord Baltimore was displaced, and a new governor appointed, first by the parliament, and afterwards by the protector. The restoration re-instated Lord Baltimore in his rights and possessions, "and his Lordship, wil ling that as many as possible should enjoy the benefits of his mild and equitable administration, gave his con sent to an act of assembly, which he had before promoted in his province, for allowing a free and unlimited toleration for all who professed the Christian religion, of whatever denomination. This liberty, which was never in the least instance violated, encouraged a great number, not only of the church of England, but of Presbyterians, Quakers, and all kinds of Dissenters to settle in Maryland, which before that was almost wholly in the hands of Ro. man Catholics." In the arbitrary reign of James II. this Lord was harrassed by a suit, the object of which was to deprive him of the colony and in this state he found himself at the revolution, which left him the profits of his province, but deprived him of all his jurisdiction. Reader, mark what follows, and say if persecution be the badge of any one denomination, the accompaniment of any particular system of faith! "When, upon the revolution, power changed hands in that province, the new men made but an indifferent requital for the liberties and indulgences they had enjoyed under the old administration. They not only deprived the Roman Catholics of all share in the government, but of all rights of freemen; they have even adopted the whole body of the penal laws of England against them; BELFAST MAG. NO. XL. they are at this day meditating new laws in the same spirit." INSTANCES OF THE SEVERITY OF PUNISHMENT DEFEATING THE PROPER COURSE OF JUSTICE. Some years ago an act was pas sed in Ireland, by which it was made a capital felony to cut down a tree by night or by day. A gentleman who dedicated much of his property, and most of his time to agricultural improvements, who had planted much, and was much attached to his plantations, was the first to rejoice at this additional security to his property, and having before the act passed, suffered much from these depredations, he again and again declared, that, in the event of detecting any offender, the law should be put in force. An occasion soon occurred. An offender was detected in the very act of destroying his plantation, and was committed for trial at the ensuing assizes. The prosecutor was a man of the highest worth, and of undaunted public spirit; he never relaxed in his resolution to enforce the law: he prepared to proceed, and did proceed to the assizes, but there his fortitude at last failed; he declared that, after the most agonizing deliberation, he could not reconcile to his notions of justice, the propriety of being the cause of the untimely death of a fellow-creature, for having cut down a tree, and that, great as he sidered the injury to society in suffering a criminal to escape with impunity, yet he could not be in strumental in procuring his condemnation, even though the crown might remit the punishment. Such was the mode in which a man, far above the weakness likely in most cases to interfere, decided. con. Lord Suffolk in a debate in the house of Lords, on Sir Samuel Romilly's bills, adduced the following Eee cogent argument against too great severity of punishment. was "It happened to me, my lords, about four or five years since, to leave my house in town for the purpose of going into the country. An old and faithful servant left in care of it, till my return. In about four or five days I came to town again, and found to my surprise, that my servant had fled during my absence, carrying off with her a considerable quantity of plate and other property. Now, my lords, there were many causes which operated with me to abstain from prosecuting this unfortunate woman. She was aged, and the course of nature had already marked her by many infirmities, for a speedy but natural dissolution— she had been the dupe of a designing villain, who instigated her to the theft; she was friendless, and she was poor. My lords, public duty pointed out the course I ought to take. I knew I ought immediately go before a magistrate, who would have committed her for trial. I must have appeared in a court of justice, as the prosecutor against her, and have embittered my own life by the consciousness of having shortened hers. My lords, humanity triumphed over justice and public duty. I was constrained to turn loose upon the public, an individual certainly deserving of punishment, because the law of the land gave me no opportunity of visiting her with a castigation short of death. My lords, upon this ground alone, and for the sake of public justice, this law ought, in my opinion, to be amended, For the sake of the injured, and not of the guilty, I am an enem, to inordinate severity. The prosecutors are those who fear death, and not the persons oflending." Perhaps there never was so much satire condensed in a single line, as in the following, characterising the King and Queen of Naples, and their late favourite Acton, whose lady is said to be on her way to England. "Hæc REX,hic REGINA, hic et hæc ACTON." INDEPENDENCE OF THE CLERGY. The independence of the clergy in Scotland was secured by moderate and equal provisions; and its extreme frugality should still recommend the constitution of the church, as the cheapest establishment, if not the most economical dispensation of the gospel. But the clergy were dignified, not degraded, by an honourable poverty remote from indigence. Satisfied with their humble mediocrity, they renewed the instructive examples of ancient sages; and, in a refined and luxurious age, amidst the pursuits of a commercial people, their lives might inculcate this salutary lesson, that happiness resides in a contented mind, and acknowledges no dependence on wealth and splendour. History of Scotland, by Malcolm Laing. A LACONIC LOVE-LETTER WHICH FEW LADIES WOULD BE ABLE TO RESIST; WRITTEN BY HENRY IV. OF FRANCE, TO GABRIELLE D'ESTREES. My Beauteous Love, Two hours after the arrival of this courier, you will see a Cava lier who loves you much. They call him king of France and Navarre, which are certainly very ho that of being your subject is innourable, though very painful titles: finitely more delightful. All these together are good, and let what will happen, I have resolved never to yield them to any one. A REFLECTION FOR DEVOTEES. So fearfully, and wonderfully are we made, that man in all con ditions ought perhaps to pray that be may never be led to think of his Creator, or of his redeemer, either too little or too much. A COMPEND OF GEOLOGY. new Of this earth we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. A new Heaven and a Earth. The mountain is worn down to the ocean; the land gradually tends to a destruction which, in a course of ages, is inevitable. But there is a re-productive operation. Nothing is stable, and of permanent endurance, Inferior animals have existed longer than the human race; and relics of sea animals are of a long previous existence. Water, winds, tides produce the solid body by separation (sand), by attrition (gravel), by deposition (marly and argillaceous strata. Calcareous bodies are animal exuvia, closely connected with these strata, all which strata belonged to the sea, and were produced by it. These strata are evident in the most solid parts of the earth, which therefore were formed after the ocean was thus inhabited by marine animals. All marbles and limestone indicate marine origin. The sparry structure is a dissolution and crystallization of calcareous matter. All the strata, those that are calcareous, and those superincumbent, have had their origin at the bottom of the sea. Mountains of granite are more ancient still, and are excepted from this general rule. Thus the solid land compo. sed at the bottom of the sea. But how are our continents elevated so far above its level. By the agency of fire with water. The silicious and calcareous strata (which prevail much more than the bitu minous or coal strata) are consolidated by a fusion of their substances. It is the various agency of fire which produces the various solidity and degrees of hardness. The agent that elevates, is matter actuated by extreme heat, and expanded with amazing force. All the earth we see, was then originally formed at the bottom of the sea, and while this land was forming, there was another land containing materials similar to the present earth, and marine animals like the present. Every genus now existing, and many others not now known, are found in strata, and probably there was a former world in respect to plants as well as animals. The present earth is composed of the materials of a former world. Productive causes are now laying the foundations of a new earth in the depths of the ocean, which, in the course of time, al ways young, will give birth to new continents. An indefinite succession of worlds in past time, and a similar succession in future, to be repeated without end. LEIBNITZ represented the universe as a machine that should proceed for ever, by the laws of mechanism, in the most perfect state, by an absolute and inviolable necessity. From the wisdom and goodness of the deity, and his principle of "a sufficient reason,' he concluded the universe to be a perfect work, or or the best that could possibly have been made, and that other things which are evil or incommodious, were permitted as necessary consequences of what was best, but he thought that the material system, considered as a perfect machine, can never fall into disorder, or require to be set right. La Place, the first astronomer of the age, seems, in his Me canique Celeste, to have practically proved the theory of Leibnitz. MELANCTHON. "Whilst I live, I will endeavour to preserve my liberty, or at least not consent to the destroying it. I hope I shall die in the same principles I have lived, and I will live no longer than they can preserve me. I have in my life been think of no meanness, I will not guilty of many follies, but as I blot and defile that which is past by endeavouring to provide for the future. I have ever had in my mind, that when God should cast me into such a condition, as that I cannot save my life but by doing the time is come an indecent thing, he shews me when I should resign it." FRANGIPANI, A man learned without ostentation, and too wise to think himself infallible resolute, but never rash; mild, yet never timid: opposing what he thought wrong in one poor during a famine. An antient and truly noble family. Their name was derived from a distribution of bread to the |