shadow of that dark, deep cloud which then overspread the house in Buccleuchplace. The man who went "sobbing along the empty streets" from the deathbed of a sister, angry with the rising sun and singing birds, and more than willing to put off life and follow her who never looked so lovely as now that "she lay still, still and calm, with her bright eyes half closed, and her red lips half open”— | he could not but write them with pathos and the eloquence of grief, though his theme were of the hardest secularity. Still less was it possible he should not challenge the world to put on sackcloth with him, when the hope of fatherhood was suddenly dashed into the deep despair of the widower. The readers of the "Edinburgh" may have never heard of its editor's bereavement, but they must have been inoculated with the tenderness of the man who wrote thus to his brother : "My dear John,-I am at this moment of all men the most miserable and disconsolate. It is just a week to-day since my sweet Kitty died in my arms, and left me without joy, or hope, or comfort, in this world. Her health had been long very delicate, and during this summer rather more disordered than usual; but we fancied she was with child, and rather looked forward to her complete restoration. She was finally seized with the most excruciating headaches, which ended in an effusion of water on the brain, and sunk her into a lamentable stupor, which terminated in death. It is impossible for me to describe to you the feeling of lonely and hopeless misery with which I have since been oppressed. I doated upon her, I believe, more than man ever did on a woman before; and, after four years of marriage, was more tenderly attached to her than on the day which made her mine. I took no interest in anything which had not some reference to her, and had no enjoyment away from her, except in thinking what I should have to tell or to show her on my return; and I have never returned to her, after a half-day's absence, without feeling my heart throb and my eye brighten, with all the ardor and anxiety of a youthful passion. All the exertions I ever made in the world, were for her sake entirely. You know how indolent I was by nature, and how regardless of reputation and fortune. But it was a delight to me to lay these things at the feet of my darling, and to invest her with some portion of the distinction she deserved, and to increase the pride and the vanity she felt for her husband, by accumulating these public tests of his merit. She had so lively a relish for life, too, and so unquenchable and unbroken a hope in the midst of protracted illness and languor, that the stroke which cut it off forever appears equally cruel and unnatural. Though familiar with sickness, she seemed to have nothing to do with death. ... I have the consolation to think that the short time she passed with me was as happy as love and hope could make it. In spite of her precarious health, she has often assured me that she was the happiest of women, and would not change her condition with any human creature. Indeed, we lived in a delightful progress of everything that could contribute to our felicity. Everything was opening and brightening before us. Our circumstances, our society, were rapidly improving, our understandings were expanding, and even our love and confidence in each other increasing from day to day. Now, I have no interest in anything, and no object or motive for being in the world. . . . O, my dear John, my heart is very cold and heavy, and my prospect of life every way gloomy and deplorable. I had long been accustomed to place all my notions of happiness in domestic life; and I had found it there, so pure, perfect, and entire, that I can never look for it anywhere else, or hope for it in any other form. Heaven protect you from the agony it has imposed upon me! Write me soon to say that you are happy, and that you and your Susan will love me. My heart is shut at this time to everything but sorrow, but I think it must soon open to affection." We will add, for the sake of the many who may be feeling all this, though they cannot say it, that the shrinking heart did "A high day! and a holiday! the long-eminently marketable in those days. A est and brightest of the year! the very middle day of the summer-and the very day when Maggie first opened her sweet eyes on the light! Bless you ever, my darling, and bonny bairn. You have now blossomed beside us for six pleasant years, and been all that time the light of our eyes, and the love of our hearts,—at first the cause of some tender fears from your weakness and delicacy-then of some little provocation, from your too great love, as we thought, of your own will and amusement-but now only of love and admiration for your gentle obedience to your parents, and your sweet yielding to the wishes of your younger sister and brother. God bless and keep you then forever, my delightful and ever-improving child, and make you not only gay and happy, as an angel without sin and sorrow, but meek and mild, like that heavenly Child who was once sent down to earth for our example." | Such, then, was the man Jeffrey-of the critic and the publicist we can but briefly speak. He has himself admirably distinguished between the literary and political vocations, in a letter to Mr. Empson, touching Macaulay's reasons for preferring the former. "A great poet, or great original writer," he says, "is above all other glory. But who would give much for such a glory as Gibbon's? Besides, I believe it is in the inward glow and pride of consciously influencing the great destinies of mankind, much more than in the sense of personal reputation, that the delight of either poet or statesman chiefly consists." And this double glory he might claim for himself. It is but a limited world that is ruled or affected by his canons of taste and that world has almost unanimously confirmed his judgments, while it accepts his confessions of severity and petulance. But the great social and political worlds-the immortal interests of freedom, industry, education-extend, as they enlarge their ever-widening circles, the glory of the man who helped to break up the immobility of ages and overcome the resistance of leagued obstructives. Jeffrey was among the chief of those who did this. He stood, at his start in life, so near the foot of the ladder of preferment, that it would have been easy to have risen sign of adhesion to things as they were, would have secured him sinecures and promotions. He had many temptations to such a course, besides that pricking thorn of necessity that sometimes made him think, "I could sell myself to the minister or to the devil." A father's hopes and prejudices were shocked and disappointed at every indication of the son's adhesion to the hated revolutionaries-and only he who has been in such a case knows how strong is that temptation to silence or falsehood. He had seen Moir transported and Harry Erskine degraded for their reforming zeal. He had heard it declared, in so many words, from the bench before which he was training to plead, that the British constitution was a faultless one; and that he who touched it even with the profession of a desire to amend, must expect the penalties of a destroyer. The constitution thus eulogized and defended, consisted, so far as Scotland was concerned, in a constituency of about two thousand, returning forty-five members, absolutely and without exception in the hands of the ministry of the day; permitted Great Britain to be dragged into a war that had doubled the annual taxation within ten years, and was loading posterity with debt; while none could complain without danger of prison and death. Happily, Jeffrey's sense of the absurdity and wickedness of all this was stronger than his filial piety, or his ambition, or his wants. He gave himself to the people's-though not then the popular-cause. Rejecting, erroneously, as we think, the radical reform schemes of that day as unreasonable and extreme, he espoused the principles and policy of the then Whigs with all the wealth of his intellect and the ardor of his soul. His "Review" was faithful to the original design of a political organ, when abstinence from politics would have continued to it undisputed literary eminence. Lord Cockburn is right in saying, "Whoever exults in the dropping away of so many fetters, and in the improvement of so many parts of our economy, and in the general elevation of the public mind, must connect all these with the energy and intelligence of this journal. There is scarcely one abuse that has been overthrown which, supported as every one was, might not have still survived, nor a right principle that has been adopted which might not have been dangerously delayed, had it not been for the well-timed vigor and ability of this Review."" The originators and controllers of so mighty a power for good, have raised for themselves a monument more imposing and durable than any which admiration for genius and gratitude for public services can prompt or purchase; and on that monument must stand distinctly and permanently graven, the name of Francis Jeffrey. We think we hear it asked-and the question is but the echo of our own heart -was there no religious aspect to the man thus eulogistically pictured? Has the biographer nothing to say of his friend's faith and hope toward the invisible and the eternal ? Does the reviewer forget how this mighty "power for good" railed at missions and other forms of Christian earnestness? Ah, no! the biographer is silent, or nearly so, on these great matters; and the reviewer does not forget. We must confess there is nothing in these volumes to indicate that Jeffrey was a religious man, in the higher acceptation of that term, or that he had what is called an evangelical creed. But we have learned that a man can cast out devils only in the power of Christ, though he use not that adjuration; and that nothing is more unchristian than to refuse the Christian name to those who would wear it. In the old man of Craigcrook, we think we see some traces of likeness to that " heavenly Child" whom he commends as an example to his little Maggie; and when he breathes the prayer that he may yet know Arnold, whom he never saw in the flesh, we can but answer to the pious wish," Amen!" EIN' FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTTE: Our shield his arm, our sword his rod, That Ancient Enemy His gathering powers we see, Yet victory, with its spoils, Not earth, but Heaven, shall send us! This translation is in the peculiar metre of the original. Though, wrestling with the wrath of hell, And angel-comrades hail us! And God shall never fail us! Though earth by peopling fiends be trod, And though their proud usurping god And darken all the field,- Their triumph hath forbidden. The crown of life forever! ONE A WORD IN SEASON. NE day as Felix Neff was walking in a street in the city of Lausanne, he saw at a distance a man whom he took for one of his friends. He ran up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder before looking in his face, and asked him, “What is the state of your soul, my friend?" The stranger turned; Neff perceived his error, apologized, and went his way. About three or four years after, a person came to Neff, and accosted him, saying, he was indebted to him for his inestimable kindness. Neff did not recognize the man, and begged he would explain. The stranger replied: "Have you forgotten an unknown person whose shoulder you touched in a street in Lausanne, and asked him, 'How do you find your soul?' It was I your question led me to serious reflection, and now I find it is well with my soul." This proves what apparently small means may be blessed of God for the conversion of sinners, and how many opportunities for doing good we are continually letting slip, and which thus pass irrecoverably beyond our reach. One of the questions which every Christian should propose to himself on setting out on a journey is: "What opportunities shall I have to do good?" And one of the points on which he should examine himself on his return is, "What opportunities have I lost?"-James. A INSECT WINGS. NIMALS possess the power of feeling, and of effecting certain movements, by the exercise of a muscular apparatus with which their bodies are furnished. They are distinguished from the organizations of the vegetable kingdom by the presence of these attributes. Every one is aware, that when the child sees some strange and unknown object he is observing start suddenly into motion, he will exclaim: "It is alive!" By this exclamation, he means to express his conviction that the object is endowed with animal life. Power of voluntary and independent motion and animal organization are associated together, as inseparable and essentially connected ideas, by even the earliest experience in the economy and ways of nature. The animal faculty of voluntary motion, in almost every case, confers upon the creature the ability to transfer its body from place to place. In some animals, the weight of the body is sustained by immersion in a fluid as dense as itself. It is then carried about with very little expenditure of effort, either by the waving action of vibratile cilia scattered over its external surface, or by the oar-like movement of certain portions of its frame especially adapted to the purpose. In other animals the weight of the body rests directly upon the ground, and has, therefore, to be lifted from place to place by more powerful mechanical contrivances. In the lowest forms of air-living animals, the body rests upon the ground by numerous points of support; and when it moves, is wriggled along piecemeal, one portion being pushed forward while the rest remains stationary. The mode of progression which the little earthworm adopts, is a familiar illustration of this style of proceeding. In the higher forms of air-living animals, a freer and more commodious kind of movement is provided for. The body itself is raised up from the ground upon pointed columns, which are made to act as levers as well as props. Observe, for instance, the tiger-beetle, as it runs swiftly over the uneven surface of the path in search of its dinner, with its eager antennæ thrust out in advance. Those six long and slender legs that bear up the body of the insect, and still keep advancing in regular alternate order, are steadied VOL. I, No. 3.-Q and worked by cords laid along on the hollows and grooves of their own substance. While some of them uphold the weight of the superincumbent body, the rest are thrown forward, as fresh and more advanced points of support on to which it may be pulled. The running of the insect is a very ingenious and beautiful adaptation of the principles of mechanism to the purposes of life. But in the insect organization, a still more surprising display of mechanical skill is made. A comparatively heavy body is not only carried rapidly and conveniently along the surface of the ground, it is also raised entirely up from it at pleasure, and transported through lengthened distances, while resting upon nothing but the thin transparent air. From the top of the central piece-technically termed thoracic -of the insect's body, from which the legs descend, two or more membraneous sails arise, which are able to beat the air by repeated strokes, and to make it, consequently, uphold their own weight, as well as that of the burden connected with them. These lifting and sustaining sails are the insect's wings. The wings of the insect are, however, of a nature altogether different from the apparently analogous organs which the bird uses in flight. The wings of the bird are merely altered fore-legs. Lift up the front extremities of a quadruped, keep them asunder at their origins by bony props, fit them with freer motions and stronger muscles, and cover them with feathers, and they become wings in every essential particular. In the insect, however, the case is altogether different. The wings are not altered legs; they are superadded to the legs. The insect has its fore-legs as well as its wings. The legs all descend from the under surface of the thoracic piece, while the wings arise from its upper surface. As the wings are flapping above during flight, the unchanged legs are dangling below, in full complement. The wings are, therefore, independent and additional organs. They have no relation whatever to limbs, properly so called. But there are some other portions of the animal economy with which they do connect themselves, both by structure and function. The reader will hardly guess what those wing-allied organs are. There is a little fly, called the May-fly, which usually makes its appearance in the some of those leafy gills he pulls a delicate crumpled-up membrane, which soon dries and expands, and becomes lace-netted and brown-fretted. The membrane which was shut up in the gills of the aquatic creature, was really the rudiment of its now perfected wings. month of August, and which visits the districts watered by the Seine and the Marne in such abundance, that the fishermen of these rivers believe it is showered down from heaven, and accordingly call its living clouds, manna. Reaumur once saw the May-flies descend in this region like thick snow-flakes, and so fast, that the step on The wings of the insect are then a sort which he stood by the river's bank was of external lungs, articulated with the body covered by a layer four inches thick in a by means of a movable joint, and made to few minutes. The insect itself is very subserve the purposes of flight. Each beautiful it has four delicate, yellowish, wing is formed of a flattened bladder, exlace-like wings, freckled with brown spots, tended from the general skin of the body. and three singular hair-like projections The sides of this bladder are pressed closehanging out beyond its tail. It never ly together, and would be in absolute contouches food during its mature life, but tact but for a series of branching rigid leads a short and joyous existence. It tubes that are spread out in the intervening dances over the surface of the water for cavity. These tubes are air-vessels; their three or four hours, dropping its eggs as it interiors are lined with elastic, spirallyflits, and then disappears forever. Myriads rolled threads, that serve to keep the chancome forth about the hour of eight in the nels constantly open; and through these evening; but by ten or eleven o'clock not open channels the vital atmosphere rushes a single straggler can be found alive. with every movement of the membraneous organ. The wing of the May-fly flapping in the air is a respiratory organ, of as much importance to the well-being of the creature in its way, as the gill-plate of its grub prototype is when vibrating under the water. But the wing of the insect is not the only respiratory organ: its entire body is one vast respiratory system, of which the wings are offsets. The spirally-lined air-vessels run everywhere, and branch out everywhere. From the egg which the parent May-fly drops into the water, a six-legged grub is very soon hatched. This grub proceeds forthwith to excavate for himself a home in the soft bank of the river, below the surface of the water, and there remains for two long years, feeding upon the decaying matters of the mould. During this aquatic residence, the little creature finds it necessary to breathe; and that he may do so comfortably, notwithstanding his habits of seclusion, and his constant immersion in fluid, he pushes out from his shoulders and back a series of delicate little leaf-like plates. A branch of one of the air-tubes of his body enters into each of these plates, and spreads out into its substance. The plates are, in fact, gills-that is, respiratory organs, fitted for breathing beneath the water. The little fellow may be seen to wave them backward and forward with incessant motion, as he churns up the fluid, to get out of it the vital air which it contains. When the grub of the May-fly has completed his two years of probation, he comes out from his subterranean and subaqueous den, and rises to the surface of the stream. By means of his flapping and then somewhat enlarged gills, he half leaps and half flies to the nearest rush or sedge he can perceive, and clings fast to it by means of his legs. He then, by a clever twist of his little body, splits open his old fishy skin, and slowly draws himself out, head, and body, and legs; and, last of all, from The insect, in fact, circulates air instead of blood. As the prick of the finest needle draws blood from the flesh of the backboned creature, it draws air from the flesh of the insect. Who will longer wonder, then, that the insect is so light? It is aërial in its inner nature. Its arterial system is filled with the ethereal atmosphere, as the more stolid creature's is with heavy blood. If the reader has ever closely watched a large fly or bee, he will have noticed that it has none of the respiratory movements that are so familiar to him in the bodies of quadrupeds and birds. There is none of that heaving of the chest, and outand-in movement of the sides, which constitute the visible phenomena of breathing. In the insect's economy, no air enters by the usual inlet of the mouth. It all goes in by means of small air-mouths placed along the sides of the body, and exclusively appropriated to its reception. Squeezing the throat will not choke an insect. In order to do this effectually, the sides of |