service and heard of the goodly attendance of the most eminent of the nation-and how officers of state, and the titled dignitaries of the land, were charioted in splendour to the scene of expectation, as to the joys of an approaching holiday-yes, and were told too, that the bells of the surrounding villages were all in readiness for the merry peal of gratulation, and that the expectant metropolis of our empire, on tiptoe for the announcement of her future monarch, had her winged couriers of despatch to speed the welcome message to the ears of her citizens, and that from her an embassy of gladness was to travel over all the provinces of the land; and the country, forgetful of all that she had suffered, was at length to offer the spectacle of one wide and rejoicing jubilee. O death! thou hast indeed chosen the time and the victim, for demonstrating the grim ascendency of thy power over all the hopes and fortunes of our species! -Our blooming Princess, whom fancy had decked with the coronet of these realms, and under whose sway all bade so fair for the good and the peace of the nation, has he placed upon her bier! And, as if to fill up the measure of his triumph, has he laid by her side, that babe, who, but for him, might have been the monarch of a future generation; and he has done that, which by no single achievement he could otherwise have accomplished-he has sent forth over the whole of our land, the gloom of such a bereavement as cannot be replaced by any living descendant of royalty he has broken the direct succession of the monarchy of England-by one and the same disaster, has he awakened up the public anxieties of the country, and sent a pang as acute as that of the most woful visitation into the heart of each of its families.

Amongst the rich, there is apt at times to rankle an injurious and unworthy impression of the poor-and just because these poor stand at a distance from them— just because they come not into contact with that which would draw them out in courteousness to their persons, and in benevolent attentions to their families. Amongst the poor, on the other hand, there is often

a disdainful suspicion of the wealthy, as if they were actuated by a proud indifference to them and to their concerns, and, as if they were placed away from them at so distant and lofty an elevation as not to require the exercise of any of those cordialities, which are ever sure to spring in the bosom of man to man, when they come to know each other, and to have the actual sight of each other. But, let any accident place an individual of the higher before the eyes of the lower order, on the ground of their common humanity-let the latter be made to see that the former are akin to themselves in all the sufferings and in all the sensibilities of our common inheritance-let, for example, the greatest chieftain of the territory die, and the report of his weeping children, or of his distracted widow, be sent through the neighbourhood-or, let an infant of his family be in suffering, and the mothers of the humble vicinity be run to for counsel and assistance-or, in any other way, let the rich, instead of being viewed by their inferiors through the dim and distant medium of that fancied interval which separates the ranks of society, be seen as heirs of the same frailty, and as dependent on the same sympathies with themselves and, at that moment, all the floodgates of honest sympathy will be opened-and the lowest servants of the establishment will join in the cry of distress which has come upon their family-and the neighbouring cottagers, to share in their grief, have only to recognize them as the partakers of one nature, and to perceive an assimilation of feelings and of circumstances between them.

Let me further apply all this to the sons and the daughters of royalty. The truth is, that they appear to the public eye as stalking on a platform so highly elevated above the general level of society, that it removes them, as it were, from all the ordinary sympathies of our nature. And though we read at times of their galas, and their birth-days, and their drawing-rooms, there is nothing in all this to attach us to their interests and their feelings, as the inhabitants of a familiar home -as the members of an affectionate family. Surrounded as they are with the glare of a splendid notoriety, we

scarcely recognize them as men and as women, who can rejoice, and weep, and pine with disease, and taste the sufferings of mortality, and be oppressed with anguish, and love with tenderness, and experience in their bosoms the same movements of grief or of affection that we do ourselves. And thus it is, that they labour under a real and heavy disadvantage.

Now, if through an accidental opening, the public should be favoured with a domestic exhibition-if, by some overpowering visitation of Providence upon an illustrious family, the members of it should come to be recognized as the partakers of one common humanity with ourselves-if, instead of beholding them in their gorgeousness as princes, we look to them in the natural evolution of their sensibilities as men-if the stately palace should be turned into a house of mourning-in one word, if death should do what he has already done, he has met the Princess of England in the prime and promise of her days, and as she was moving onward on her march to a hereditary throne, he has laid her at his feet. Ah! my brethren, when the imagination dwells on that bed where the remains of departed youth and departed infancy are lying-when, instead of crowns and canopies of grandeur, it looks to the forlorn husband, and the weeping father, and the human feelings which agitate their bosoms, and the human tears which flow down their cheeks, and all such symptoms of deep affliction as bespeak the workings of suffering and dejected nature what ought to be, and what actually is, the feeling of the country at so sad an exhibition ? It is just the feeling of the domestics and the labourers at Claremont. All is soft and tender as womanhood. Nor is there a peasant in our land, who is not touched to the very heart, when he thinks of the unhappy stranger, who is now spending his days in grief, and his nights in sleeplessness-as he mourns alone in his darkened chamber, and refuses to be comforted-as he turns in vain for rest to his troubled feelings, and cannot find it as he gazes on the memorials of an affection that blessed the brightest, happiest, shortest year of his existence-as he

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looks back on the endearments of the bygone months, and the thought that they have for ever fleeted away from him, turns all to agony-as he looks forward on the blighted prospect of this world's pilgrimage, and feels that all which bound him to existence, is now torn irretrievably away from him! There is not a British heart that does not feel to this interesting visitor, all the force and all the tenderness of a most affecting relationship; and go where he may, will he ever be recognised and cherished as a much-loved member of the British family. Chalmers.

Sitting in the Chair of the Scorner.

The third and last stage of impiety, is "sitting in the chair of the scorner," or laughing at all religion and virtue. This is a pitch of diabolical attainment, to which few arrive. It requires a double portion of the infernal spirit, and a long experience in the mystery of iniquity, to become callous to every sense of religion, of virtue, and of honour; to throw off the authority of nature, of conscience, and of God; to overleap the barrier of laws divine and human; and to endeavour to wrest the bolt from the red right-hand of the Omnipotent. Difficult as the achievement is, we see it sometimes effected. We have seen persons who have gloried in their shame, and boasted of being vicious for the sake of vice. Such characters are monsters in the moral world. Figure to yourselves, my brethren, the anguish, the horror, the misery, the damnation, such a person must endure, who must consider himself in a state of enmity with heaven and with earth; who has no pleasant reflection from the past, no peace in the present, and no hopes from the future; who must consider himself as a solitary being in the world; who has no friend without to pour balm into the cup of bitterness he is doomed to drink; who has no friend above to comfort him, when there is none to help; and who has nought within him to compensate for that irreparable and that irredeemable loss. Such a person is as miserable as he is wicked. He is insensible to every emotion of friendship; he is

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lost to all sense of honour; he is seared to every feeling of virtue.

In the class of those who sit in the chair of the scorner, we may include the whole race of infidels, who misemploy the engines of reason or of ridicule to overthrow the Christian religion. Were the dispute concerning a system of speculative opinions, which of themselves were of no importance to the happiness of mankind, it would be uncharitable to include them all under this censure. But on the Christian religion, not only the happiness but the virtue of mankind depends. It is an undoubted fact, that religion is the strongest principle of virtue with all men, and with nine-tenths of mankind is the only principle of virtue. Any attempt, therefore, to destroy it, must be considered as an attempt against the happiness, and against the virtue of the human kind. If the heathen philosophers did not attempt to subvert the false religion of their country, but, on the contrary, gave it the sanction of their example, because, bad as it was, it had considerable influence on the manners of the people, and was better than no religion at all, what shame, what contempt, what infamy ought they to incur, who endeavour to overthrow a religion which contains the noblest ideas of the Deity, and the purest system of morals that was ever taught upon earth? He is a traitor to his

country; he is a traitor to the human kind; he is a traitor to Heaven, who abuses the talents that God has given him, in impious attempts to wage war against Heaven, and to undermine that system of religion, which, of all things, is the best adapted to promote the happiness and the perfection of the human kind. Blessed then is the man who hath not brought himself into this sinful and miserable state, who hath held fast his innocence and integrity in the midst of a degenerate world; or if, in some unguarded hour, he hath been betrayed into an imprudent step, or overtaken in a fault, hath made ample amends for his folly, by a life of penitence and of piety. Logan.

The Plurality of Worlds not an Argument against the Truth of Revelation.

Keep all this in view, and you cannot fail to per