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in a westerly direction till they reached the mouth of | hundred, but perhaps considerably more, for the the Copper Mine river, on the western coast. They narrowness of the chasm into which it fell prevented then embarked in two canoes, and made their way us from seeing its bottom, and we could merely discern eastward, along the northern shores of the continent the top of the spray far beneath our feet. The lower for nearly 600 miles, till they found it impossible to fall is divided into two, by an insulated column of proceed further; and, their canoes being destroyed, rock which rises about forty feet above it. The whole they returned by land to the Copper Mine river, from descent of the river at this place probably exceeds two whence they made their way home after an absence hundred and fifty feet. The rock is very fine sandof three years. Captain Parry, meanwhile, having stone. It has a smooth surface and a light red colour. entered Baffin's Bay, sailed westward along the nor- I have named these magnificent cascades 'Wilberforce thern coast till his progress was stopped at Melville Falls,' as a tribute of my respect to that distinguished Island, a point at no great distance from that which philanthropist and christian. Messrs. Back and Hood Franklin reached from the opposite direction. But, took beautiful sketches of this majestic scene, though Parry afterwards made attempts, the barrier which are combined in the annexed plate." between these two points remains impassable. The last attempt is that of Captain Ross, whose long absence gives rise to the most serious apprehensions for his safety.

Captain Franklin's work is not surpassed (if indeed, it is equalled) by any book of voyages or travels whatever. The hardships and dangers which he and his companions underwent excite the deepest interest; while the energy with which they surmounted every obstacle, and the undaunted courage with which they braved every danger, raise the warmest admiration. A great lesson of virtue is also contained in the patience, and pious resignation, with which they bore the most frightful calamities. The habitual influence of religion, and its effects on the mind, are exhibited with a beautiful simplicity. We cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing the following passage, from Dr. Richardson's narrative, in which he describes the feelings of his small party, in the most dreadful circumstances that can be conceived :

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Through the extreme kindness and forethought of a lady, the party, previous to leaving London, had been furnished with a small collection of religious books, of which we still retained two or three of the most portable; and they proved of incalculable benefit to us. We read portions of them to each other as we lay in bed, in addition to the morning and evening service, and found that they inspired us on cach perusal with so strong a sense of the omnipresence of a beneficent God, that our situation, even in these wilds, appeared no longer destitute; and we conversed, not only with calmness, but with cheerfulness, detailing with unrestrained confidence the past events of our lives, and dwelling with hope on our future prospects." During the whole of their perils, they were animated by the same spirit; and their example strikingly illustrates the observation, that the most heroic courage is that which is founded on true piety. The Arctic regions abound in grand and sublime scenery. Few objects in nature can be more magnificent than the Falls of Wilberforce, in the Hood River; of which we subjoin a copy of the engraving from CAPTAIN BACK's spirited drawing. They are thus described by Captain Franklin.

"We pursued our voyage up the river, but the shoals and rapids in this part were so frequent, that we walked along the banks the whole day, and the crews laboured hard in carrying the canoes thus lightened over the shoals or dragging them up the rapids, yet our journey in a direct line was only about seven miles. In the evening we encamped at the lower end of a narrow chasm or rent in the rocks, through which the river flows for upwards of a mile. The walls of this chasm are upwards of two hundred feet high, quite perpendicular, and in some places only a few yards apart. The river throws itself into it over a rock, forming two magnificent and picturesque falls close to each other. The upper fall is about sixty feet high, and the lower one at least one at least one

ON THE DUTIES AND ADVANTAGES OF SOCIETY.

No. III.-ABUSES OF BENEFIT SOCIETIES. BENEFIT Societies confer power upon their members, and as any abuse of power is an evil, the society may prove to the members an injury instead of an advantage. Let us see how this evil may arise; because that will be the most certain way of arriving at the means of prevention.

A Benefit Society being a mutual association for raising money to be applied to certain purposes, which purposes are commonly very praise-worthy, there are only the following ways in which it can, generally speaking, be injurious to the members.

First, the Society may hold its meetings in an improper place.

Secondly, it may admit improper members; or may be in the hands, or under the control, of improper managers.

Thirdly, the funds may be insecure, improperly applied, or not sufficient for the purposes set forth to induce members to join the Society.

Fourthly, the meetings of the Society may be converted to other and mischievous purposes.

I. As to the place of meeting. Attendance there should consume as little time as possible; it should hold out no encouragement to spend money; and should have no enticements to dissipation. At the same time, it should admit of that freedom of meeting, and free and friendly intercourse, promote sociality and improvement, and dispose men to help each other as well with deeds as with counsel. It is quite clear that an alehouse is about the worst place at which such a society can hold its meetings, although, in cities and great towns, it is usual to meet at such houses. Even if there were nothing suspicious in the connexion with the landlord, there are objections enough to the place itself. To the young, who are not encumbered with families, the ale-house is a place of peculiar danger, and there should be no motive to justify their going there. Their experience is less, their passions warmer, and they have not the same home feelings to draw them away as married men have. But young men are the best members of Benefit Societies, and therefore care should be taken that bad habits are not given them in return for their contributions.

But the society is often a scheme of the landlord's, got up, not for the sake of the 'Benefit,' but of the custom which the meetings bring to the house; and in these cases, whatever it may be in name, it is in reality a nuisance.

In towns there may be some difficulty in avoiding the evil of the public-house meetings, from the want of other places; but the hiring of an apartment in a private house, though seemingly more costly, would be cheaper in reality. At such a place, refreshments

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and trades, in a well regulated society, should be like the colours into which the rain-drop separates the beams of the sun, when the bow of heaven is set in the cloud.' The middle of the tints should be clear and bright, but they should so blend with each other, that no observation can say where the one begins and the other ends; and the whole should be so tempered as to form, by their union, that pure white light which is the true glory of nature. It is the perfect union of all those variously tinted rays which produces that light by means of which we are enabled to see natu. ral objects in their true colours; and it is even so with the varied classes of which a nation is composed.

Every man must feel for himself, and for the class to which he belongs; and, within due limits, nothing can be more proper and praiseworthy; but it is not merely by his love of himself, nor even by his attach ment to his class or his craft, that the value of a man must be tried. The real standard of social man is his feeling toward the whole of the society in which he lives, and to which he is indebted for civilization-for the means of supporting himself.

II. As to improper members and managers. There are two kinds of the former-those who enter the society merely for the personal benefit that they expect to derive from it, and those who are unruly in their conduct. In as far as the age and bodily state of the parties are concerned, the rules of the society may, to a considerable extent, meet the case; but it is not so easy to make regulations with respect to character. Age is no objection; for the payment and the allowance may be equally settled for any age; though it should always be borne in mind that the younger the member enters, the better, both for the society and for himself. The proper feeling at the time of entry, is that the member is doing so for the benefit of others; and the feeling to be kept up while he is in health is, that he is a steward for the The very object of a Benefit Society is to ensure the needy and the diseased; and that if he comes upon independence of the members; but they must not the fund through idleness or misconduct, he falls into mistake the kind of independence. It is not indethe lowest of all conditions-that of 'a beggar of beg-pendence of the rest of society which is the object, but gars.' If that be made the general feeling of the society, there is little danger of greedy and lazy members; and calm neglect is by far the best means of curing the turbulent.

Improper managers are more dangerous, as they have more power. It is generally unwise to have a lawyer as secretary: it is never necessary; and as the society cannot, without paying more than it can afford, have a lawyer of character, it is better not to have one at all; for after the rules of the society have been approved by the proper officer, there is no law wanted. There are some lawyers who promote such societies for the sake of their fees as secretaries; and others, who do the common duty gratis, but contrive to pay themselves, by encouraging law-suits about trifles. These should be avoided. It is a good rule never to employ a man in the profession by which he lives, without paying him for his services.

Managers who are fond of spouting in public are generally bad managers. Where there is a great deal of speech, there is usually as great a lack, both of reflection and of action. Such parties convert the society into an engine of their own false glory, and scheme for dinners and other assemblings, at which that glory may be shown off.

III. The misapplication of the funds by the managers may be guarded against by the vigilance of the society and the enactments of the law. The sufficiency of the funds, unless in very ordinary cases, may be calculated from the common probabilities of life and health, and from what may arise out of the business of the members.

it is independence of the accidents and changes of
life; and the very fact that a man is more secure
against these by being a member of the Benefit Soci-
ety, should teach him that he has a more general se-
curity in being a member of a civilized country, for it
is that which enables him to be a member of the other.
Great care should therefore be taken, that the Bene-
fit Society does not, in any way, degenerate into a
combination; and though by means of it workmen
may mutually benefit each other, they must be care-
ful that they do not make it a means of separation
between themselves and their employers.
nexion between workman and employer is far more
important than any that can exist between one work-
man and another, because the bread of the workman
depends upon it; and therefore, when workmen make
use of any association as a means of combining
against their employers, they turn it from its natural
and useful purpose, and make it an engine against
their own best interests.

The con

To make the funds, or even the meetings of a Benefit Society serve for purposes of general excitement, is still more unwise; as that is making it a combination against society generally—a direct warfare upon that to which they owe everything they possess.

Such are some of the abuses to which Benefit Societies may be subject; they may be avoided by good sense and honesty of intention, and by the judicious countenance and help of those members who do not personally need the assistance of the funds. We shall, on a future occasion, consider how these may promote the benevolent object of the Societies under conIV. The society may be turned to improper purposes.sideration, so as to make them blessings to the neEvery purpose, however praiseworthy it may be in it- cessitous, and bonds of union to society generally. self, is improper, if it be different from those expressly stated in the rules; because, if necessary and consistent, it should be brought in by the lawful means. But there are supposable cases, where the funds may be applied to purposes absolutely bad-and yet the letter of the law not be absolutely broken.

Tendencies of that kind may arise upon different occasions, those which more immediately strike us, are, the party feeling among a society, who are all, or nearly all, of the same rank and business; and floating opinions during times of public excitement.

To guard against the first of these, it should be borne in mind that the different ranks, professions,

EPHEMERA, OR DAY-FLIES.

"The waters brought forth abundantly."-GENESIS. It is in the small things of nature that we most strikingly see the wonderful power of nature's God, and how superior in kind his works are to the most ingenious works of man. We estimate by weight and measure; and hence we associate strength with size, and perfection with time spent in labour. We can produce nothing but by the change of something that exists; and we can obtain no motion, but by the ap

plication of a motion, or moving force, which is still greater. The man who carries a hundred weight, carries his own body at the same time. The horse that is yoked, and the arms that bend and draw the bow, are fatigued to a far greater extent than the swiftness given to the coach or the arrow. Gunpowder can send a bullet unseen through the sky, or rend the hardest rock in pieces; but in order that it may do so, we must burn it; and then, great as is the effect produced by the burning, to collect all the parts, and obtain powder again, is beyond the power of man. He must wait till nature works for him, in the formation of nitre and sulphur, and the growth of wood for charcoal; and nature makes all these substances out of the common air, or of matters dissolved in it, so as to be insensible to the touch and invisible to the eye.

The powers of nature are, on the other hand, independent of both weight and measure. One life produces millions of lives, each of which is as productive as the first one; and they are productive without end. There are few more striking instances of this fact, than the Ephemera, or Day-Flies, which are, in the heat of summer, ever sporting over rivers, pools and streams, so thick, that they, in some instances, absolutely darken the sun, or make its light fall red upon the ground, as during an eclipse. The cut represents the female of the common day-fly, (ephemera vulgata.)

The Common Day-Fly.

There are many species of these insects, some larger and some smaller, some longerlived and some shorter, but as few of them live to behold the rising and the setting sun, they are all called ephemera, or 'things of a day," their name is used to express all things that are very fleeting.

The cut will shew the form of the insect; and at the present time, (August) any one who walks by the water-side when the air is still, especially towards morning or evening, may catch them by thousands. They have four wings, of a beautiful transparent membrane or film, spread out upon a fine net-work, of a substance very similar to horn. These fibres in the wings are called nerves, and the insects which have such wings are by naturalists called neuroptera, which is the Greek for " nerve-winged;" but these are not nerves. Nerves are understood to be organs of feeling or sensation; whereas, the fibres in the wings of those insects, merely support the membrane, just as the arm-frames of a windmill, or the masts and yards of a ship, support the canvas.

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The eggs of the day-flies are all laid in the water, and hatched there; so that they so far partake of the nature of the eggs, or race of fishes, that they come into active life" in less heat than land eggs, and do not need any incubation, or sitting, of the mother. Each female lays from 700 to 800, and she does it in less time than it takes to speak the words. The eggs are expelled in two portions, one of each at a time; but so fast, that the eggs seem two little knotted rods; but they separate and sink to the bottom undiscovered by the keen eyes of the fish. The female instantly dies, exhausted by the effort, which appears to be the only labour of her winged state of existence; if, indeed, she is not captured in the midst of her maternal duty by some darting fish, or skimming swallow; both of which prey upon countless thousands of the day-flies. When the fly lights to

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deposit her eggs, she raises her wings over her back, till they are nearly touching; and, at the same time, she elevates the hinder part of her body, and erects the three setæ, or bristles, in which it terminates. The wings and these bristles support her so that she barely touches the water, and so rises and falls with the ripple.

The moment that the females are in a condition to lay their eggs, they hasten to the waters, so that they are not so often seen as the males, whose only occupation is to sport in the air, in the neighbourhood of the cradle of their future offspring. Of these the little day-fly, which is born after dawn, produces her eight hundred, and is dead and gone, before the first gleam of the sun breaks over the eastern hill!

The following cut shows the natural position of the female fly on the water, and also the artificial fly made in imitation of it, for catching trout. That fly is most successful when it just touches the water, and when the line does not touch the water at all. The hook keeps it in the proper position, and, being under the fly, is not seen by the fish.

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How long the eggs remain in the water before they are hatched, is not known; but possibly it varies with the season and the weather. The larvæ or young, in their first state, not only burrow, or make holes in the mud, but live on it; they are consequently not so numerous in sand and gravel as in places that are fat and oozy. They are of the following form:

In summer the ponds, brooks, and ditches, are full of these larvæ, and so are water tanks, cisterns, and butts, if they are not kept clean. They (with the larvæ of other speLarva of the Day-fly. cies (are among the chief summer impurities in the water at London and other places. If the water is not settled, they may come from the river; but the mud and sediment will enable them to breed in vessels, and the parent flies are every where. In themselves they are not unwholesome,

and, as they are alive, they cannot render the water putrid. The mud that breeds them, is putrid, however, as it contains dead animal and vegetable matter; and thus, though the young flies are not in themselves unwholesome, they are accompanied by substances that are so.

The larvæ remain in the mud two or three years; but in that they probably vary. The banks of rivers, in some parts of the continent, are so full of them, that to the depth of some inches, they actually contain more living matter than dead. They are all, however, lower than the surface of the water, and they breathe water, like fishes, by means of little gills on their sides. At length they attain their full size, and change into nymphæ, which are not unlike the larvæ, only they have wings folded up under their coats, of which they still have two, and must get out of both before they appear as flies.

The time that they remain nymphs is uncertain, and must vary, as the weather is one element in bringing about their last change. When that is to take place, they come out of the water, in vast numbers, and leave their old coats so abundant as to cover the water like a scum. After a little while they cast their inner coat; their wings stretch and become firm, and

they mount into the air, to spend the hour, or the day, which is to them the whole period of air-breathing life.

That period is short; but that is necessary: for, in some places, if they were to live long, there would absolutely not be room for them. They eat nothing, and so destroy nothing; but there are places in France and Germany where, if they lived but for a month on the wing, they would build up the air solid to the tops of the trees. As it is, they sometimes fall on the ground near the rivers in showers like snow, and the people collect them in heaps as manure to the fields. Altogether, they are curious and interesting little creatures; and those who wish to know more about them, will find a collection of the best accounts in the

thirty-second part of CUVIER's Animal Kingdom, by GRIFFITHS.

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THESE letters, which, as we have before said, form the newly published number of the Family Library, contain a comprehensive and highly interesting account of the circumstances, in nature and art, which are calculated to raise impressions of supernatural agency. Accustomed to derive our knowledge of the material world, chiefly from our faculties of sight and hearing, we are little aware of the extent to which these faculties deceive us. The eye gives to objects forms and colours different from those they usually wear; and the cheats of the fancy are so vivid as not to be distinguishable from the real views of sight. We are, too, constantly liable to be deceived by the imagination into the belief that we hear sounds which either do not exist at all, or are of a totally different nature from what we suppose them to be. Human ingenuity has availed itself of these illusions, and heightened their effect by a thousand contrivances, which, though used in former times to work on the superstitious belief of the world, now contribute only to the harmless amusement of a more enlightened age. Dr. JOHNSON has often been ignorantly sneered at, for his tendency to a belief in apparitions; but it is impossible to read this book without being convinced that that great man reasoned as soundly on this as on other subjects. He maintained that there were cases of apparitions, which were proved, according to the strictest laws of evidence. This opinion is fully confirmed by Dr. Brewster; who, however, explains away, upon scientific principles, unknown in the days of Dr. Johnson, many cases of the supposed appearances of ghosts which were well authenticated at the time. His belief therefore, under the circumstances, was in truth more philosophical than the general unbelief of other men in his day.

One of the most valuable parts of this work is, the clear descriptions it contains of many mechanical contrivances for deceiving the senses, and for imitating the actions of living beings.

Of these, the celebrated exhibition of the Invisible Girl was one of the most remarkable. "As the mechanism employed," says Dr. Brewster, was extremely ingenious, and is well fitted to convey an idea of this class of deceptions;" we shall give a detailed description of it.

Letters on Natural Magic, addressed to Sir Walter Scott, by Sir David Brewster. Family Library, Vol. XXXIV. London: John Murray

"The machinery, as constructed by M. Charles, is shown in Fig. 1 in perspective, and a plan of it in Fig. 2. The four upright posts A, A, A, A, are united at top by a cross rail, B, B, and by two similar rails at bottom. Four bent wires, a, a, a, a, proceeded from the top of these posts, and terminated at c. A hollow ball, M, about a foot in diameter, was suspendA ed from these wires by four slender ribands, b, b, b, b, and into the copper ball were fixed the extremities of four trumpets,

B

T

A

A

Fig. 1.

T, T, T, T, with their mouths outwards.

"The apparatus now described was all that was visible to the spectator; and though fixed in one spot, yet it had the appearance of a piece of separate machinery, which might

B

Ꭺ Fig. 2.

have occupied any other part of the room. When one of the spectators was requested by the exhibitor to propose some question, he did it by speaking into one of the trumpets at T. An appropriate answer was then returned from all the trumpets, and the sound issued with sufficient intensity to be heard by an ear applied to any of them, and yet it was so weak that it appeared to come from a person of very diminutive size. Hence the sound was supposed to come from an invisible girl, though the real speaker was a full-grown woman. The invisible lady conversed in different languages, sang beautifully, and made the most lively and appropriate remarks on the persons in the room. "The ball M and its trumpets communicated with nothing through which sound could be conveyed. The spectator satisfied himself by examination that the ribands b, b, were real ribands, which concealed nothing, and which could convey no sound; and as he never conceived that the ordinary piece of framework A B, could be of any other use than its apparent one of supporting the sphere M, and defending ing the origin of the sound, and his surprise was increased it from the spectators, he was left in utter amazement respectby the difference between the sounds which were uttered and those of ordinary speech.

"Though the spectators were thus deceived by their own reasoning, yet the process of deception was a very simple one. In two of the horizontal railings, A, A, Fig. 2, opposite the trumpet mouths T, there was an opening communicating with a pipe or tube which went to the upright post B, and descending it, as shown at T A A, Fig. 3, went beneath the floor ff in the direction p, p, and entered the apartment N, where the invisible lady sat. On the side of the partition about h, there was a small hole, through which the lady saw what was going on in the exhibition room, and communicawho attended the machine. When one of the spectators tions were no doubt made to her by signals from the person asked a question by speaking into one of the trumpets T, the sound was reflected from the mouth of the trumpet back to the opening at A, in the horizontal rail, Fig. 2, and was

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"The surprise of the auditors was greatly increased by the circumstance, that an answer was returned to questions put in a whisper, and also by the conviction that nobody but a person in the middle of the audience could observe the circumstances to which the invisible figure frequently adverted.

This ingenious contrivance suggests to Dr. Brewster the following remarks on the subject, the deceits of the sense of hearing.

sound, indeed, seemed to come in a different direction, and from a greater distance.

"When sounds so mysterious in their origin are heard by persons disposed before-hand to a belief in the marvellous, their influence over the mind must be very powerful. An in the hope of confirming than of removing the original iminquiry into their origin, if it is made at all, will be made more pression, and the unfortunate victim of his own fears will also be the willing dupe of his own judgment,

We shall, in a subsequent Number, continue our extracts from this interesting work.

CROPS IN ENGLAND.

"Although the performances of speaking heads were generally effected by the methods now described, yet there is reason to think that the ventriloquist sometimes presided at the exhibition, and deceived the audience by his extraordinary powers. There is no kind of deception more irresistible in its effects than that which arises fromthe uncer- THE quantity of corn raised per acre varies of course tainty with which we judge of the direction and distance according to the soil. The produce of wheat at some of sounds. Every person must have noticed how a sound spots amounts to 6 quarters, but in others to only 1 in their own ears is often mistaken for some loud noise mode-quarter per acre; but 2 quarters for wheat, 4 for rated by the distance from which it is supposed to come; barley, and 44 for oats may be considered a fair averand the sportsman must have frequently been surprised at the existence of musical sounds humming distantly in the age. The average weight of a bushel of good English wide heath, when it was only the wind sounding in the wheat is about 58lbs; in bad seasons it does not exbarrel of his gun. The great proportion of apparitions that ceed 56 or 57, but in good years it sometimes weighs haunt old castles and apartments associated with death, from 60 to 62, and in some places 64lbs. The bushel exist only in the sounds which accompany them. The ima- yields 43lbs. of flour, for standard wheaten bread; or gination even of the boldest inmate of a place hallowed by 46lbs. for household bread. superstition, will transfer some trifling sound near his own The culture of rye and person to a direction and to a distance very different from buck wheat in England has of late years been much the truth; and the sound which otherwise might have diminished. The quantity of hops raised is very flucnothing peculiar, will derive another character from its tuating, but may be computed at an annual new situation. Spurning the idea of a supernatural origin, 20,000,000lbs. average of he determines to unmask the spectre, and grapple with it in its den. All the inmates of the house are found to be asleep -even the beasts are in their lair-there is not a breath of wind to ruffle the lake that reflects through the casement, the waning crescent of the night; and the massive walls in which he is inclosed, forbid the idea that he has been disturbed by the warping of panneling or the bending of partitions. His search is vain; and he remains master of his own secret, till he has another opportunity of investigation. The same sound again disturbs him, and, modified probably by his own position at the time, it may perhaps appear to come in a direction slightly different from the last. His searches are resumed, and he is again disappointed. If this incident should occur night after night with the same result;-if the sound should appear to depend upon his own motions, or be any how associated with himself, with his present feelings, or with his past history, his personal courage will give way, a superstitious dread, at which he himself perhaps laughs, will seize his mind, and he will rather believe that the sounds have a supernatural origin, than that they could continue to issue from a spot where he knows there is no natural cause for their production.

"I have had occasion to have personal knowledge of a case much stronger than that which has now been put. A gentleman, devoid of all superstitious feelings, and living in a house free from any gloomy associations, heard night after night in his bed-room a singular noise, unlike any ordinary sound to which he was accustomed. He had slept in the same room for years without hearing it, and he attributed it at first to some change of circumstances in the roof or in the walls of the room; but after the strictest examination no cause could be found for it. It occurred only once in the night; it was heard almost every night, with few interrup: tions. It was over in an instant, and it never took place till after the gentleman had gone to bed. It was always distinctly heard by his companion, to whose time of going to bed it had no relation. It depended on the gentleman alone, and it followed him into another apartment with another bed, on the opposite side of the house. Accustomed to such investigations, he made the most diligent but fruitless search into its cause. The consideration that the sound had a special reference to him alone, operated upon his imagination, and he did not scruple to acknowledge that the mysterious sound always produced a superstitious feeling at the moment. Many months afterwards it was found that the sound arose from the partial opening of the door of a wardrobe which was within a few feet of the gentleman's head, and which had been taken into the other apartment. This wardrobe was almost always opened before he retired to bed, and the door being a little too tight, it gradually forced itself open with a sort of dull sound, resembling the note of a drum. As the door had only started half an inch out of its place, its change never attracted attention. The

CHOLERA.

The wrath of God rides on the rushing gales,
The glutton quakes, the cowering drunkard quails;
A deadly vapour lurks unseen in air,

By day and night the winds its poison bear,
Blasting the breath of all the human race,
Changing man's dwelling to a burial place.
Not all the medicines the druggists keep
Can shield us from the grave's long dismal sleep;
Not all the sapient Faculty protect

One life one day;-ah! never then neglect
To watch and pray, and buckle for the fight,
For Azrael cometh like a thief by night;
And man's cold corse is crush'd beneath the sod,-
His spirit in the presence of its God:
Ere he hath time to breathe a fervent pray'r,
He perishes-the victim of the air.

By the Author of THE NATURAL Son.

INFANT EDUCATION

dency to produce a too early separation of children IT has been supposed that Infant Schools have a tenfrom their parents-weakening, on the one side, the due sense of parental care, and hindering, on the other, the growth of natural affection.

of this objection. For this purpose, let us place before It will be useful to examine practically the weight us the case of a mother who puts her child to an Infant School, and see what occurs.

The mother has to bring the child to the school, neat and clean, by nine in the morning. There she leaves it till twelve, when she takes it home to dinner. it remains, in summer, till five, in winter, till four, At two the child is brought back to the school, where when it again returns to the mother's care. who cannot conveniently take their children home to dinner, are permitted to leave their food with them in the morning, and the children are allowed to remain in the school.

Parents

of separation varies, according to the respective cases, It will be seen, therefore, that the actual amount from five to eight hours per day.

Under what circumstances does this separation take place? The mother has her daily labour of one kind or other to perform, During those hours she is

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