And, slow as growth Above!-the clond, Below-the steed, The ostrich, next, Triumphant cope; While, far behind, And bounding tread Yet, long before Far, far away, And loud huzzas Are coming near, As if in fear; And each makes panse The news to hear, And as he hears He shouts on high, Is the cry The storm cloud takes the lead among the things that fly. And on the rapid tidings fly. CANTICLE IV. But, hush! they come, Take up their stand. A VISIT TO OLNEY. down. The savage wins The celestial judges come for. ward to proclaim the issue between the sun-car and the angel. A row of tall trees fringe the river brink, and disclose at intervals, through their foliage, the quiet stream BUSINESS having lately called us into the northern district flashing in the sun-light. The southern wall of the church of the county of Buckingham, we resolved to fulfil an in- is covered with the Chinaaster rose, which being, at the tention, long cherished, of visiting the small town of Olney, time we visited it, in full bloom, imparted to the whole one of the meanest and most insignificant of English mar-place a singularly pleasing effect. ket-towns, but hallowed for ever in the affections of every But the Cowperian feature in Newport is an unpretendadmirer of genius, as the residence for so many years of ing house in the main street, about two storeys high, and Cowper, who has immortalised the scenery in its neigh-holding out, in its exterior features, no sign that would atbourhood in his poems, and not less the daily life of its inhabitants in his letters. Olney is five miles from Newport Pagnell, which again is nearly four miles distant from the Wolverton station of the London and Birmingham Railway. The portion of the country thus intersected by the iron-way forms a sort of peninsular triangle, protruding itself between the two adjoining counties of Bedford and Northampton. Of this triangle Olney forms the apex, being in part the most northerly town in Bucks. But the interest of the district to the lovers of Cowper's gentle spirit, begins at Newport Pagnell. This is a respectable country town of about 5000 inhabitants, with several good inns in it, and a fine old church, in the Gothic style, situated with even more than the usual attention to the picturesque which is usually displayed in the sites of English churches. Newport church stands upon a natural terrace, on the left bank of the river Quse, towards which stream the churchyard gently slopes tract the notice of a stranger. This was the residence of the Rev. William Bull, Independent minister at Newport Pugnell, a friend of Newton, who, on his leaving that part of the country, introduced him to Cowper, and between whom a friendship, distinguished by all the warmth and strength of Cowper's affections, soon sprang up. The Independent minister was a man after Cowper's own heart-a man of cousiderable erudition, with an active fancy, and a vein of quiet humour, which was sure to recommend itself to the author of John Gilpin.' By way of eking out a salary, which must at all times have been scanty, Mr Bull took a few pupils into his house as boarders, with a view to prepare them for the Dissenting ministry. Out of this humble beginning has since arisen an institution of some note among the English Dissenters, being in fact one of their academies for the education of their pastors. In this respect, it may be remarked, the English Dissenters are not so fortunate as their Scottish brethren. The English universities being closed against them, they have to educate their candidates for the ministry, not only in systematic divinity, but even in the elementary studies necessary to fit them for their sacred profession. The college at Newport Pagnell has been much extended of late years, and several eminent ministers now flourishing in the Independent denomination, have received their education there. The extension of the college has caused the extension of the premises, but these additions have been all in the rear of the old house; in front it maintains the same appearance as when Mr Bull resided in it, and when Cowper, footsore and weary with his walk from Olney, came, by appointment, to dine with the minister, who had forgotten all about the invitation, and had dispatched his wife some miles into the country. Between two such spirits, however, ceremony was not wanting, and these little cross purposes, no doubt, only served to enhance the mirth and enjoyment of their meeting. In the back of the house, however, things are altered. Long unsightly brick buildings, intended, we suppose, as the private apartments of the students, rear their heads and appear to occupy altogether the place of the small garden, which, at great labour and expense, Mr Bull had reduced into something like cultivation, and where, Cowper tells us, he took him, after the dinner above alluded to, and showed him his favourite seat, where he sits and smokes, with his back against one brick wall and his nose against another.' The chapel of which Mr Bul was the minister is still farther in the rear of the house, and though it is a large and commodious place of worship, and apparently numbering many of the most respectable inhabitants among its hearers-at least if one might judge from the number of elegant monumental marble tablets which were ranged along its walls--yet, hidden as it is, and enveloped on all sides by other buildings, a stranger might easily pass through every street of the town, without knowing that it possessed a Dissenting chapel at all. This modest character of Dissenting chapels is almost universal over England-even in London itself, and still more in country towns. The old Dissenting churches are hidden in yards or back lanes, or, as here, in the rear of private premises, never coming openly to the front, and challenging the notice of the passers by. This is in all probability a relic of the persecuting days of the Stuarts, when conventicles in market-towns were strictly forbidden and eagerly hunted down, and when the Puritans were constrained to hold their meetings in secret places, concealed as much as possible from their lynx-eyed perse cutors. The Ouse, on leaving Newport, takes a bend to the north, forming an arc of some compass between that town and Olney, of which the highway may be described as the chord. The road presents nothing of much interest, until, about halfway, the crest of some considerable rising ground is gained, whence the first view of Olney, with its tall church-spire conspicuous in the landscape, bursts upon the view. The fertile vale of the Ouse lies at your feet, and a country, beautiful indeed, and rich in suggestions of plenty and comfort, but possessed of few bold or striking features, is spread out before the spectator. It is, in fact, the opposite ridge to that on which Merton is situated, and would have afforded to the poet as good materials as those which the view from the above furnished him, when he drew that fine description of woodland scenery which occurs in the first book of the Task.' With expectations heightened from this first view of the poet's home, we hastened forward, and on reaching the bottom of the hill, we were able to extract another reminiscence of Cowper from a signpost that pointed out the road to Clifton. Clifton is a neighbouring parish, on the opposite side of the river to Olney, and was for some time the residence of Lady Austen, a woman whose name will always be associated with Cowper, along with Mrs Unwin and Lady Hesketh. She it was who first incited him to the writing of the Task,' and gave him the sofa for his subject. It was an abortive attempt to visit her in miry weather which gave occasion to his sportive ballad, so truly revealing the gentle and playful character of the man 'I sing of a journey to Clifton We would have performed if we could, Without cart or barrow to lift on Poor Mary and me through the mud, Stuck in the mud! Oh, it is pleasant to wade through a flood!' But we had no time to visit Clifton, and therefore, contenting ourselves with chanting the ballad (as Burns says, crooning till a body's sell does weel aneuch'), we turned in the opposite direction, through the rich meadows that led to Olney. A short time brought us to the bridge, no longer the one That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood;" 6 for that, it is well known, was, even in the days of Cowper himself, considered a nuisance from its old age and decay, and many allusions are made to it in his letters, where we find an attempt was made to assess the Olney people for its renewal, which Cowper, with true burghal feeling, helped to resist. The old bridge, however, is not wholly gonea portion of it still remains, and even does duty. The wearisome' length of the bridge was needful, not because the river is a very broad one-it is, in fact, rather insignificant at this part of its course-but because the meadows on the south are so low that in winter they are generally overflowed, and therefore a bridge is necessary to pass not only the ordinary channel of the river, but the flooded bottoms that are contiguous to it. It appears that after much litigation, a compromise was come to; the county trustees having been at the expense of a smart new bridge across the meadows, while that portion of the old bridge which spans the ordinary channel of the river still remains. Like all patched pieces of work, the result has been unsatisfactory. There is a raised causeway between the two bridges, and they do not stand parallel to each other; so that a man who should hold a straight course on leaving the old bridge, would, instead of entering on the other, tumble right over into the bottom below. It seems that the old bridge is the property of the Earl of Dart-¦ mouth, lord of the manor of Olney, and to him it should fall! to renew this relic of the olden time, which, besides the inconvenience we have mentioned, is so narrow that two horsemen could scarcely pass each other. But, whether it be from reverence for its association with Cowper, or whether it be from the more vulgar motive of saving his money, his lordship retains the bridge as it is, to the annoyance of the inhabitants-an annoyance, however, in which the poetical visitants of the place will hardly share. Olney is a smaller town than Newport-in fact, though possessed of a weekly market, it has more the appearance of a large village than anything else. It consists chiefly of one large street, stretching to the north-east. At the upper end, the street opens out on the right, and forms a triangular area, which constitutes the Market-hill.' At the upper end of this Market-hill, and upon the right hand, stands Cowper's house. It is in some respects of more ambitious pretensions than its neighbours, being a storey higher than any of the others, as well as being much longer, but without any pretensions to superior elegance of style or convenience of accommodation-in fact, it is exactly what Dickens would call an old, large, rambling house.' Its eight windows in a row are all of the same dull common-place style; and, looking at the monotonous appearance of the old house, with the mean accessories that surrounded it, and recolleeting all the poverty and distress which Cowper himself describes as surrounding him, we could not feel surprised that a man of his exquisite and morbid sensibilities should have deeply felt the depression these daily scenes were calculated to inspire. The house is so large that it is a marvel how the small establishment of Cowper and Mrs Unwin could have occupied it; though certainly its size explained at once how it was that the poet was able to entertain so many of his friends at the same time, and to assure the Johnsons and the Roses, that, though Lady Hesketh and her servants were with him, there was still room for their accommodation. It is now no longer in the occupation of one family. At thoroughfare by a lane that was narrower than any wynd in the High Street of Edinburgh. The accounts that are scattered through Cowper's correspondence of the deep poverty of the people, seemed, as far as we could judge by this hasty glance, to be borne out to the letter. The hovels of the people were small and ruinous, though in most cases scrupulously clean; while, through the open doors, it could be too plainly discerned that their huts were almost destitute of furniture. In one case, an aged woman sat at the door of her cottage with her needles and her pillow, in the act of lace-knitting-the very picture of the cottager whom Cowper so finely contrasts with Voltaire as one who 'Just knew, and knew no more, her Bible true, A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.' the one end is a grocer's shop, at the other an infantschool (and the noisy lessons of the children swelled pleasantly in our ears as we stood in the street on that summer's day), while between them, is a sort of arched gateway, apparently intended for a carriage-entrance, leading to a yard, up which a straw-plait manufacturer carries on his trade. From the market-place, a narrow lane leads down towards the vicarage. This is Silver End, famous in Cowper's correspondence as the abode of most of the idleness and depravity of Olney. The vicarage itself stands in another street, and nearly opposite to Cowper's house, each house having a garden behind it, with one wall at the upper end, serving for the boundary of both; and it was that Cowper might meet the Olney curate-that curate was John Newton-without encountering the stare of the Silver End blackguards,' that a door was broken out in the wall aforesaid, to allow the two friends to communicate through their respective gardens. The vicarage is a sweet and pleasantly situated house, forming a strong contrast to the gloomy old mansion on the Market-hill. Its front is nearly hidden with evergreens and flowering shrubs. We were told that the inmates of Cowper's house, as well as the person who now holds possession of the garden, were very courteous to strangers, and willing to show the relics that still remained of him. There, it was said, are to be seen the hole he cut in the parlour-door to allow of the uninterrupted gambolling of his tame hares on the carpet, and also the greenhouse in the garden, in which he composed the greater part of the 'Task,' and trans-old Geary Ball'-have become enshrined in the memory of lated the Iliad,' and which is kept up much as he left it: while, though the door broken out in the garden-wall to communicate with the vicarage was closed again when Mr Newton left for London, still the patching was visible. These were tempting objects to gaze upon; but, on the other hand, we hate to exhibit our enthusiasm before-Reedon, the schoolmaster, who had made his prayer to strangers; we must either indulge our fancies in the presence of a friend or in solitude; and we turned away to those objects of interest which lay accessible to all, and where we needed no cicerone. Among these was the tall and solitary elm which grows at the bottom of the marketplace, and which forms so conspicuous a feature in all the pictures we have seen of the poet's residence; and near it there stands the identical pump of whose erection Cowper so humorously complains in one of his letters, as entailing expense on the inhabitants, while it would benefit no one but the shoemaker, opposite whose door it was erected. We repeated the lines with which he commemorated the event 'Let Bannister now lend his aid To furnish shoes for the baker, The pump is now in a state of dilapidation, arising from In wandering through a strange town, it is always instructive to get into its back streets and lanes. We have no faith in the appearance which the main thoroughfares present, as revealing the character of the place or the condition of its inhabitants. They are always sure to put the best face on the matter; they wear a starched, hypocritical demureness, as if to cheat the stranger into a belief in their respectabilty. But in the back streets, and still more in the narrow lanes, you have the character of the place presented to you without disguise or any effort at concealment. There is no painful struggle there between poverty and respectability; want, and beggary, and profligacy feel that there they are upon their own ground, and that they have no occasion to hide their heads. Animated by such feelings as these we turned down Silver End, and through a back street, and emerged again upon the main From the town we bent our steps to the churchyard, and, pacing in its quiet walks, we mused upon the exalted privilege of genius, which could confer upon an insignificant village like this, and its no less insignificant inhabitants, an immortality for which thousands have struggled in vain. What a satire upon the restless schemes of ambitious men, that in a few years oblivion, in spite of all their efforts, closes over the names and memories of so many of them! while here, without an effort, and without even the intention, the routine business and the petty squabblings carried on in an obscure village, with the petty actors in these ignoble affairs-the Reedons, the Rabans, the Peares, and the Pages, poor Nat Gee,' and every reader of sensibility and taste, and their names have received an immortality as lasting as the English language can bestow. And now where were they all? Daniel Raban, the baker, who would not tolerate Thomas Scott the commentator's preaching, and set up a rival meeting himself God that he might become acquainted with some talent, and now, in the acquaintance of this worthy gentleman (meaning me, says Cowper), had found that prayer fulfilled'-Thomas Ashburner, the joiner, who, at a county election, had courageously throttled the ringleader in a riot, and quelled the disturbance-all of them, unknowing and reckless of the fame which had been secured for their memories, slept beneath the turf we trod, without even a stone that we could find to mark their graves. Musing on these sobering recollections, we turned our steps outside the town, paused again on the old bridge, and gazed on Weston, about a mile and a half up the river, and which is truly what its name indicates, underwood,' reached the division of the road that leads to Clifton, gained the crest of the hill, and, pausing long on its summit, where the best view of the town could be obtained, we turned at last, and bade farewell to Olney. Ꮃ Ꭺ Ꭱ . WAR! who that has witnessed it in its loathsome and revolting details would not, if a single spark of humanity has survived the ordeal, deprecate all that may, by possibility, lead to it? What more fearful scourge can light upon our race? See how, upon its first appearance, myriads of households are invaded by dark forebodings, heartwasting anxieties, and spirit-killing fears! Where is he that can compute the sum of daily duties left unfulfilled, the amount of daily enjoyments spilt upon the ground, in consequence of the flurry and apprehension excited by the unleashing of the dogs of war? In how many bosoms, at the first shrill cry of their hated voices, does tenderhearted charity faint away, and leave an open door for the entrance of malignant and cruel passions! What a strain does the fierce excitement of the public mind bring to bear upon those gentler sympathies which Christianity has nourished! How many rules of inward morality give way beneath the pressure, and to what a vast extent is injury inflicted upon the whole existing breadth of spiritual sense and feeling! Follow an army in its march! Mark the recklessness of soul that spreads from man to man throughout the ranks! and, as the fear of death is gradually surmounted by pride and passion, see, too, how usually the fear succumbs with it! Onward sweeps the walking pestilence, ruthlessly devastating the fields of patient industry, scattering the seeds of demoralisation in countless families along its course, trampling down weakness without pity, and leaving behind it a broad wake of physica! and moral ruin. And then, the battle, who shall describe its hideous features? Involved in a cloud of dust and smoke, thousands of men are plying the engines of death. Maddened with the fever of the hour, and choked with thirst, they deal out and receive momentary destruction. Hot blood bounds through their veins, and makes them deaf alike to the moans of suffering and the promptings of compassion. The dying are beneath their feet, the dead are before their eyes-neither are regarded. To and fro rock the living billows of ruin, leaving the soil, wherever they meet, deluged with blood, and covered with the broken and battered wrecks of poor humanity. The fortune of the day is decided-the smoke and dust clear away-and the setting sun, perhaps, or the rising moon, looks upon a spectacle of carnage, which not the stoutest-hearted can contemplate without sickening horror and dismay. Such is war! Who would not labour with all his energies of body and of mind to avert it, if possible.-Nonconformist. ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE: BEING GLEANINGS FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS. In recent times much new and valuable light has been thrown upon the manners, customs, and facts recorded in sacred Scripture. Apparent inconsistencies have been removed, obscurities elucidated, difficulties explained, and allusions, once ill understood by gifted theologians, have been made clear to the wayfaring man. This is a matter of unmingled delight to every Christian. That knowledge, which illuminates the sacred page, and throws out its glorious truths in more prominent relievo, must be hailed as no ordinary blessing. In fact, the more widely and thoroughly the Bible is understood, the more majestic and overpowering will the claims of Christianity appear. The glory of the sacred volume, like the glory of its Author, needs only to be seen as it really is in order to be felt as no earthly emanation. The Bible is ever regarded as most glorious where it is best known. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.' (Matt. xix. 24.)-With regard to this passage, it has been advanced that, owing to a slight error in translating, the sense is misconstrued; and that our Saviour's illustration was as natural and obvious, as he evidently intended his meaning to be plain and simple. It has been urged that the word in the original signified cable,' as well as 'camel,' the former of which would render the sense more in accordance with common expression-thus, 'It is easier for a cable to go through the eye of a needle,' &c. Had this been the case, however, it is most likely the attention of some scholar would have been directed towards it. In fact, the Rev. W. S. Gilly was aware of this surmise, and in his valuable work, 'The Spirit of the Gospel,' although he neither refutes nor admits the supposition, considers it was more probable that our Saviour's words were intended to apply to a gate in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, called The Needle's Eye,' through which, on account of the narrowness of the pass, the loaded camels could not go. He takes occasion to point out the force and beauty of this illustration, which compares the riches with which the worldly-minded are encumbered, and which obstruct their entrance into heaven, to the wide-spread burdens which render it impossible for the camels to pass through the Needle's Eye, on the way they are destined to journey. The words, 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,' were proverbial among the Jews; they used them to signify a thing of great difficulty, next to an impossibility. His meat was locusts and wild honey.' (Matt. iii. 4.) -Dr Clarke has related that a tree grows in the Holy Land which is called the locust-tree (Ceratonia siliqua), and which produces a fruit somewhat similar to that of the bread-fruit tree; and this fact was previously known to those who had been in the Mediterran an. In the stems of the locust-tree, wild bees deposit their honey. Wild bees, in Palestine, we are informed by Mr Moore, fre- || quent hollow trunks and branches of trees, and also clefts of rocks; hence it is said, in Psalm lxxxi., 'honey out of the stony rock.' We should naturally have concluded that the fruit thus mentioned so peculiarly in connection with honey, was the food of the Baptist in the wilderness, were we not assured, on the authority of modern and intelligent travellers, that the locust of the insect tribe is still used as an article of food. The Bedouins eat locusts,' observes the Rev. C. B. Elliot, in his instructive book of travels; these they fry on an iron plate, and then preserve in bags of salt. Some cut off the head and tail, which others eat with the rest of the insect.' Pliny mentions that some of the Ethiopians, in his day, lived only on locusts salted and dried in smoke;' and of the Parthians he observes, that they were very fond of locusts;' and St Jerome notices the same taste among the Libyans. There can 'e little doubt that it was the animal and not the vege table locust, which constituted the frugal fare of the Baptist, for, while the former is universally eaten on both sides of the Jordan, the latter is given only to cattle. 'Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.' (Matt. ix. 6.)-In Syria, Turkey, and Greece, we are informed by travellers that the bed, instead of being the heavy and cumbrous article it is with us, merely consists of one or two! light coverlets, which might be thrown down in any corner for immediate use, and which it was easy for the owner to remove in his arms. This accounts for the command of our Saviour, which sometimes, to the young and unlearned, throws considerable obscurity on this passage. That which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops.' (Luke xii. 3.)-In the villages in the East, the houses are built of bricks dried in the sun; the roofs are composed of mud laid over branches of trees, supported on trunks of aspen. Each is furnished with a stone roller, and rolled after heavy rain; the falling in of a roof from wet is an event of ordinary occurrence. The houses are all of the same height, never exceeding one storey, and their tops, communicating with one another, form a favourite promenade, as well as a sleeping-place for the men in summer. A knowledge of these facts, and of the construction of Syrian dwellings, throws light on the narrative of the paralytic, whose friends uncovered and broke up the roof of a house to let down his bed before our Lord. It was not unusual to place a sick man's couch on the roof; to open a hole in it was a simple operation, and to repair the damage scarcely more difficult The roofs of houses are even converted into thoroughfares; and mules frequently pass over the tops of the dwellings. The right to do this is so generally admitted at Safet, that an amusing anecdote is told of a native, who brought an action against a fellow-citizen, for breaking through the roof of his house, by conducting over it a mule very heavily laden; and was met by a counter-suit for the value of the beast, whose leg he had been the means of fracturing, by not making his roof of sufficient strength to sustain the weight of the animal. The custom of growing corn upon the flat-roofed houses also occasioned the sacred writers to speak of the grass which groweth upon the house-top, which in dry seasons, on account of its insufficient rooting, 'withered before it was plucked up; or, in other words, fit to harvest. 'If the salt loseth its savour.' (Luke xiv. 34.)—What was meant by salt losing its savour has puzzled many. There is found in Syria a peculiar kind of fossil or rock salt, which, in progress of time, by exposure to air and moisture, loses almost entirely its taste, except in the very centre of the lumps. This is probably a mixture of salts crystallised, sulphate of lime (gypsum), and common salt-the first, quite tasteless, and nearly insoluble in water, is consequently but little altered by exposure; but the common salt mixed with it readily dissolving away, its savour would be gone. 'The sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.' (John x. 3.)-The flocks of sheep in Asia Minor are all led, not driven, by the shepherds. The sheep are perfectly acquainted with the voice of their pastor, whom they obey; and when the flocks are not too numerous, they have their distinctive names, and answer to them. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles.' (Matt. ix. 17.)-Vessels used to hold water are sometimes the skins of calves, sheep, or goats, with the orifices carefully sewed up, while smaller utensils of the same material frequently attract the eye of the traveller, and explain this Scriptural allusion, unintelligible to a European. In the East, indeed, at every turn, the Christian student meets with illustrations of the inspired writings. The expressions, parallels, and imagery of the Bible are peculiarly adapted to this holy land; and Syria may be regarded as a local commentary on the sacred volume. 'Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days.' (Eccles. xi. 1.)-This was a plan literally followed in the East, by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of the great rivers, which in the rainy season overflowed their banks; and itwas customary, before the waters retired, to throw over them the seeds of maize, which had sprung up by the time the land appeared, and yielded fruit after many days. 'An ark of bulrushes daubed with slime and with pitch.' (Exod. ii. 3.)—The papyrus, or paper-reed (Cyperus papyrus of Linnæus), is, in Scripture, the rush or bulrush. We find mention made of ships, boats, or canoes, composed of the papyrus, in the book of Job, in Isaiah, and in Exodus; in ancient writings, such are mentioned by Herodotus, Pliny, and Flutarch; in modern writers, by Bruce, and others. Pliny says (according to Bruce), that the whole plant together was used for making boats-a piece of the acacia-tree being put at the bottom to serve as a keel. The vessels that were formed of the papyrus, in the earliest times, as a means of navigating the Nile and the Red Sea, are still in use among the primitive inhabitants of Eastern Africa. The ark of the child Moses was a small vessel of this description. ment, may be termed universal. The pious and moral sentences usually hung in our infant schools partake of this character; and as the design is to promote the cause of religion and virtue, we may hope, however humble the means, that it may be sanctified and blessed by the approval of the Most High. WILD FLOWERS OF THE MONTHS AND BY H. G. ADAMS. Hark! amid the shivery leaf sounds' of the forest comes a voice, From the vale, and from the upland; and it saith: Rejoice! rejoice! climb; Shout ye hills, and shout ye valleys, 'tis the bounteous harvest time!' cold? Now commences what Keats poetically terms 'the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,' and before the month is over, in the more southern parts of Europe, the corn, which lately rustled to every passing breeze, and glorified the landscape with its rich golden hue, will be cut down, and stacked or gathered into the barn, for the sustenance of man. Now is the time which Tennyson describes, when he speaks of Youngest autumn in a bower Grape-thicken'd from the light, and blinded And the crag that fronts the ev'n Being rich arrayed With garment all of gold down to the ground;' and with great propriety, for the whole face of nature seems this month transmuted, as by some alchemical process, into the richest and most precious of all metals. The flowers are nearly all decked in a golden livery, and one of them-the Marigold-the Soliesqua (sun-follower), and Solis sponsa (spouse of the sun), as ancient writers have termed it, appears to have gazed upon the great luminary of day, and drunk in his aureate beams, until they have become part of its very existence; But all their works they do to be seen of men, they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments.' (Matt. xxiii. 5.)-The phylacteries of the Jews were strips of parchment, with passages from the law written upon them. Sometimes they were scrolls, on which were inscribed the ten commandments. They were worn round the hem of the garment, fastened to the forehead or wrist, or sometimes pinned on the left sleeve. They were thus worn, that the laws of God might be continually before their eyes and in their remembrance; and Spencer describes August as the custom evidently originated in a pious desire to regard habitually the law, however it might have been abused by the hypocritical Pharisee. They complied with the command of Moses, in the 11th chapter of Deuteronomy-Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your hearts, and in your souls, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.'-Customs similar to this were not confined to the Jews. Mohammedans are very careful to enforce the observance of their prophet's laws, and render them familiar to the people. Sentences from the Koran are profusely inscribed in the interior of their mosques, on their tombstones, and fountains; while the Moolla from the tops of the minarets and the doors of the mosques proclaims, in the deep bass voice and solemn accents of the Arabic tongue, that God is great and merciful, and Mohammed is his prophet.' The custom of the Jews' writing Scripture passages in their apartments, and on the 'door-posts of their houses,' has also descended to their more immediate successors. During the travels of the Rev. C. B. Elliott, in the East, he visited the Archbishop of Philadelphia, throughout whose palace he found inscriptions in Greek, containing such sentences as- Know thyself,' 'Respect old age, Honour thy parents.' The feeling of mankind to place before their own eyes, or the eyes of others, objects which may conduce to their instruction or improve The Marigold that goes to bed with the sun, And with him rises weeping,' as Shakspeare describes it, alluding to the action of light Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, His steeds to water at those springs Marybuds-buds dedicated to the Virgin Mary-appears |