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ON NEWSMONGERS.

"For all the Athenians and strangers, which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.”—Acts xvii. 21.

ATHENS, when visited by the apostle, was literally a barber's shop. The inhabitants, instead of examining the doctrines of the saints, asked only if they were new, without enquiring whether they were wholesome. Even the philosophers of the Areopagus, like the philosophers of France, were curious only of the fanci ful and the strange, and left the true and the useful to the honest worshipper in the synagogue, or the humble saunterer in the marketplace. "What will this babbler say?" impatiently demanded the lounging epicurean, and the captious stoic. Will he amuse us with tales of a fairy land of devotion, or will he interest us with a terrible and mysterious mythology of strange gods? Supine in the porticoes and temples of our city, we want something to ruffle

or enchain the mind. Has the apostle travelled; has he taken a turn in the hanging gardens of Babylon, or plunged into Roman baths; has he frolicked with the voluptuous Syrians, or ascertained the altitude of the pyramids of Egypt; are the beauties of Corinth familiar to his memory; and has he heard the song of Persian. bards? If he can narrate wonderful adventures, even the Diogenes of our tribe shall resign half his tub to the apostle. But if the good, the perfect and the fair, are the trite themes of his lecture, we will leave him, "in the midst of Mars's hill," and inquire in the gymnasium, how the last wrestling match concluded.

But we have been in Greece long enough. Athens is no more; and recollecting an old adage, we will not insult her ashes. The busy curiosity of that city still survives; a kind of tutelary saint of every country. Though Solomon has protested against the search for novelty, men still ask" what news?" and the quidnunc of Murphy's "Upholsterer," in every country, reads gazettes, lingers in coffee-houses, haunts tea tables, and demands of politicians, barbers, and women, "the strange, the passing strange.'

In America, the impertinent eagerness for news should be scolded or laughed into moderation. The country gentleman, at peace on his farm, asks for translations from the Paris Moniteur, absurdly anxious for the welfare of Frenchmen, skipping over the carcase of their king and country. Others are solicitous for the emperor Alexander and the grand Turk, and are not a little relieved to learn, that the first traverses St. Petersburg at nine, and that the last uses more opium than sherbet. I have known profound calculators, so busy with Mr. Pitt and the bank of England, that they utterly neglected their own debts, and, proving a national bankruptcy abroad, were thoughtless of their own at home. One would suppose, that, from the general enquiries respecting European affairs, that Columbus had never discovered America; and that our interests, our hopes, and our fears, grew in the streets of Paris and London, or on the banks of the Rhine and Po.

In France, the "pleached bower," and the vines of the south, have been forsaken; and men hurry to the auberge, to enquire if the first consul has ordained a new calendar, or compiled a new constitution.

In Ireland, the giddy sons of Ulster, instead of "uniting" to sow flax, and urge the loom, have congregated tumultuously, studious of pernicious novelties. Desperate insurgents, dissatisfied with the old harp, pretended its string was too tense and its tone too bold; and wanted a new and vulgar instrument, grumbling harsh and loud.

England, proverbial for its spirit of inquisitiveness, resembles a bumpkin, absurdly curious, asking what is this, what is that? Men lift the awful veil of the church, and the curtain of the cabinet; not to venerate the ancient establishments, but to ask bishop and king, for new lawn, and a new minister. Letters, as well as politics, are subjected to the rage for novelty. Shakspeare is rejected, for flimsy farce and monstrous pantomime; for Hamlet is as old as the times of" Good Queen Bess," and the last dumb show was acted but yesterday.

Ye querists, ye quidnuncs, check your impertinent curiosity. Devote not life to hearing and telling new things. If ye have business, mind it; are you masters of families, stay at home. Your heads are too shallow to contain the myriads of novel ideas ye wish. Action, not tattle, is the business of life.

ON THANKSGIVING.

"Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour; and make a fat offering."-Eccles. xxxviii. 2.

YESTERDAY as I was pondering a theme for my next discourse, with an aching head, which checked invention, my hair dresser entered my chamber with the daily papers in his hand. Men of his class being naturally fond of politics, anxious for the public weal, eager to ask, and no less eager to tell the news, he therefore, after a few preliminary queries, informed me, with an Englishman's pride, that sir Sidney Smith had destroyed the gun-boats of the usurper, and that the thunder of British cannon was rocking the whole coast of France. He uttered this in a tone so cheerful, and with such sparkling eyes, that for a moment, in spite of my rigid republicanism, I actually participated in his pleasure. While he was occupied in chattering with the volubility of his profession, and in combing my gray locks, I picked up some of the papers, and as it behoved a preacher,

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