During the early ages of the world, the Jews were in all respects the most extraordinary people in the world. To them only was the knowledge of the true God communicated, and among them only did his spiritual worship exist. Dim as were their conceptions of that religion which beams in the fulness of light and purity from the New Testament, they were, nevertheless, a moral oasis amidst the desolation of surrounding idolatry. The seductive example of their neighbours, and the singular depravity of their own disposition, were for ever precipitating them into sin, and causing them to degrade themselves by abrupt departures from the living God; nothing but a constant course of miracle and chastisement could keep them in any de gree to their duty. Still the knowledge of the glorious Jehovah, however unwillingly they obeyed his precepts, conveyed to their character a vast elevation above that of the whole world around them. The Deity himself was the Supreme Ruler of their state. The knowledge that they were the chosen people and congregation of Jehovah, animated them with an intense patriotic feeling. The expectation of an Omnipotent Messiah, whose coming was declared to be the capital object of their separate existence as the people of the Lord, powerfully strengthened and sustained as well as sanctified their native attachments. Almost every passage in their history, every ruler of their country, every circumstance in their military annals, and every ceremony in their worship, were connected with the expected Deliverer, and pointed forward to his advent.

The Jewish government was a theocracy, and the idea of their Heavenly King was intimately connected with all their employments.

They were a pastoral and agricultural rather than a commercial people, though in Solomon's time they seem to have had a small navy. In respect of local situation they were the most highly-favoured people in the terraqueous globe. The extent of the country was indeed narrow, yet, being intersected with numerous ranges of hills that were capable of cultivation to the summit, its surface was in reality extensive, and the variety of its climate multiplied. At the foot of the hills grew the products of the torrid zone; on their side those of the temperate; on their summit the robust vegetation of the north. The ascending rotation of the orange-grove, the vineyard, and the forest, covered them with perpetual beauty; and there was no want of an aqueous supplyfountains and rivulets—most grateful to the inhabitants of the East.

An air-pump is an ingenious instrument made for making experiments on air. By its means you may extract the air from a vessel placed upon it, and make what is called a vacuum or void. In a vacuum, that is a space in which there is no air, a bell emits no sound; water boils at a low temperature; and a guinea and a feather fall with equal rapidity to the ground. An animal cannot live in a vacuum, air being necessary to the existence of all animals. A light cannot burn in it, air being also necessary to burning.

The Bastile is the name of a celebrated state-prison in France. From the atrocities that have been committed in it, the Bastile has come to signify a place of cruel captivity.

Cicero, or, as he is often called, Tully, was the most distinguished orator among the Romans; and Demosthenes among the Greeks. The latter had great natural defects to struggle against before he attained to distinction in his art; but by self-denial and perseverance he made himself the greatest orator the world ever saw. He got over a defect in his articulation by speaking with stones in his mouth; and he strengthened his voice by reciting his orations on the seashore amidst the noise of the waves. He was accustomed to say that the first and second and third parts of oratory was delivery. The great Roman orator, whose eloquence was chiefly distinguished by its grace and elegance, is thus beautifully described by Pope :

Gathering his flowing robe, he seemed to stand

In act to speak, and graceful stretched his hand.

The ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews embalmed the bodies of the dead. The process of embalming was to render the body incorruptible; and the process chiefly consisted in removing the brain and bowels, and filling the cavities of the body with astringent drugs. It is generally supposed that embalming was first practised in Egypt,

and that it became necessary in that country by reason of the inundations of the Nile, which covered the flat country for two months of the year, and rendered interment in the ordinary way impracticable.

Geometry teaches the properties of figures, or particular portions of space, such as triangles, squares, circles, &c. The most celebrated writer on this science is Euclid, who flourished at Alexandria about three hundred years before Christ. Natural Philosophy teaches the nature and properties of natural substances, as air, water, light, the stars, &c.—their motions-their connexions-and their influences on one another. It is sometimes also called Physics, or Physical Science, from the Greek word signifying nature, though that Greek word is more frequently, in common speech, confined to one particular branch of the science, concerning the bodily health. The greatest natural philosopher the world ever saw is Sir Isaac Newton, an Englishman, who was born in 1642, and died in 1727. Though he made more discoveries than almost all other philosophers together, and actually carried, as it has been finely said, the line and plummet to the outskirts of creation, he was yet so humble, that he is reported to have said, a little before his death," I don't know what I may seem to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

You have often seen a man raising a stone by means of a strong bar of iron. This bar is a lever. The spoke by which a sailor turns the windlass of a ship, or by which a carpenter turns a log of wood, is also a lever. In short, any long bar or beam by which another body is moved is entitled to this appellation. Archimedes, the celebrated philosopher of Syracuse, is reported to have said, that, with a sufficient lever and prop to rest it upon, he could move the globe.

Martyr is a Greek word, and means witness; but in ordinary language it is applied to one who seals his testimony with his blood. Those who submitted to death rather than retract or disavow their Christian principles, are the persons most commonly described by the title martyrs.

The Muses were fabled by the ancients to be certain goddesses who presided over poetry, music, dancing, and all the liberal arts. They were supposed to be nine in number; and they were believed to inspire all who excelled in any of the arts over which they presided. Parnassus, Helicon, Pindus, &c., are names often mentioned by the poets in connexion with them, as being the places where they commonly dwelt ; and certain trees, as the palm, the laurel, &c., were held in veneration as being sacred to them. However excusable it might be in the ancients to refer to these fabulous beings as the authors of their poetry, history, music, &c., it is surely very absurd in the moderns to invoke the Muses in their writings.

They are

It is not

Every one has seen prints of the Pyramids of Egypt. among the oldest and most famous structures in the world. precisely known when, or by whom, or for what purpose, they were erected; but it is commonly supposed that they were intended as

burying-places for the Egyptian kings. Next to Egypt, Greece and Italy are the countries most celebrated for specimens of ancient archi

tecture.

Vizier and Satrap are titles which occur frequently in books, which, like “The Arabian Nights' Entertainments,” relate to Oriental, that is, Eastern, or Asiatic countries. The former is the title of the prime-minister of the Turkish empire; the latter is the title of the governor of a province in Persia.

A sacrifice is an offering made to God on his altar by the hand of a lawful minister. Sacrifice differs from oblation: in a sacrifice there must be a real change or destruction of the thing offered; whereas an oblation is but a simple offering or gift. Abel offered the firstlings of his flock-this was a sacrifice: Cain offered the fruits of the earth -this was an oblation. Animal sacrifices were appointed by God himself immediately after the fall, and were meant to be a memorial of the first promise-a type of the Lamb of God who was to take away the sins of the world—and a confession on the part of the offerers of their sinfulness and their need of salvation through the merits of another.

hill-top, and enjoy the You assent to the pro

Shall we ride up this gentle ascent to the charming scene which may be seen from it. posal! How mild the air, and how bright the sun, and how beautiful that blue sky! Who can sufficiently admire the goodness of God in making the Son of Man the heir of nature! See, in the distance, the sea as calm as if the wind never blew, and as silent as if the waves never dashed on yon sandy beach. The very fishermen are forced from want of wind to hale their boats to the shore. How hale these hardy sons of Neptune are! Yet, doubtless, they have often been out in storm and calm, in hail and hurricane. Oh, how much do we owe to the adventurous men, who weigh their anchors and make their way across the pathless waters, that we who sit idly by in our quiet homes may have only to buy all the luxuries of life.

And what a landscape is beneath our eye! I cannot even recount its beauties. See the very road by which we rode up, coarse and rugged as it then appeared, seems now, in its winding course, to be a girdle of beauty. How rich the foliage of the wood that stretches along the

sea-beach. It is of every hue from the delicate green of the larch to the gorgeous olive of the sycamore. Long may it be ere the woodman come to hew down that pensive yew which you love to celebrate, or to lop the boughs of that noble oak that bows with the load of its foliage to the earth, or to mar the princely beauty of that glossy beech which, placed apart from the rest, one fain would feign to be the sentinel of the beach.

And is not the church, with its little spire and gilded vane, embosomed nest-like among the trees, a lovely object? A person of a poetical vein might describe it as a temple, where the soul that is sore of this vain life, and whose sole hope is in Heaven, is taught to pray and to soar above all the ills that prey upon us. How pleasant would it be, did our time permit, to linger here until the hour of eveningto hear the birds bid adieu to the sun as he set in his veil of clouds behind the western vale-and to scent the thyme and the heath flower as they sent out their due odour in the dew of evening.

THE DILIGENT EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.

"PRAY of what did your brother die?" said the Mar

quis Spinoli one day to Sir Horace Vere.

"He died,

"Alas!

Sir," replied he, "of having nothing to do."

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