ment. is engaged, the intellect must also be the subject of moral treatA revelation of moral purity and beauty must be made sufficiently glorious to attract the loftiest aspirations of the mind, and sufficiently practical to afford a model for imitation in all the details of human life. Without this the moral progress will be slow and sombre. Christianity profoundly meets this want of our nature. The individuality of our Divine Redeemer, the truths he lived and spoke, are the new life to which the moral process tends, and in the perfect development of which it must result. That noble principle, ambition, is duly appealed to in the Christian system. Not the poor ambition that rises no higher than the applause of men, or the wealth and the honours of time, but that which impels the soul to wing loftier flights beyond the narrow sphere of earth, to hold communion with the past and the future, with nature, and eternity, and God; to aspire to wealth which cannot perish, and to honours which cannot fade. All this does Christianity, to stimulate the moral recovery, to fix the upward, heavenward gaze of man. But still more is needed, and given, to make up the glorious fulness of this godlike provision for our salvation. God must be personally known. Let us speak this great truth with becoming reverence. From a being not personally known, our nature shrinks, or at least it can cherish but a cheerless and benighted love. There is an instinctive craving in man, or perhaps I should say there is a moral necessity for a personification of any being whom we are to love. The fullest possible revelation of morals to man, must of necessity be expressed, and man's highest love must of necessity be won, by an impersonation of the Deity, in our own nature; and this deepest want of humanity is met in the Christian system. All these provisions constitute together a perfect and profound means of moral recovery. But the power to apply the means is still wanting. The mysterious all pervading life giving energy that clothes the earth with ever changing beauty, and holds the heavenly worlds in their resistless noiseless mighty course, must impart moral life and sustain moral growth; how, we see not. As we know not how the leaf is made to unfold, and the flower to bloom, so are we ignorant of the mysterious processes by which moral life is given and sustained. The Giver and Sustainer of life, is provided and revealed in Christianity; He is called THE HOLY SPIRIT. Such is Christianity. It meets the wants, solves the difficulties, and fills the ever expanding hopes of man. It is, beyond all doubt, the religion, and the only religion, adapted to his nature. And what is Sceptisism? Sceptisism leaves man with an unknown God, an unchanged heart, a pointless, resultless, troubled life, bounded only by the impenetrable darkness of the tomb. It affords no consolation for the present, no hope for the future. It shrouds in gloom the moral condition and the destiny of our race, it quenches in eternal night our brightest and noblest aspirations. Wonder and sorrow are our mingled emotions towards those who can deem Sceptisism consistent with the reason or the dignity of man. Beaven is Fair. WHEN dull are thy garments with citizen dust, Come thou from the tainted air, Come to the pastures green, Are they not fair? When hard on the pathway of blistering tears— Come thou from the spoiler's lair, Are they not fair? When weary thy senses with cloying delight, Dance-pallid and haggard flit by, And through the close shutters there stealeth God's light, From pleasure's high prelates, there! Come by the gurgling brook! Is it not fair? When dull is thine eyesight with scanning the page, That grows o'er the tombstone where sleepeth the sage; Throw off the vile cynic-cloak! Burst thou from the lettered snare, Come to the cottage door, Nature is fair!!! When low in the hour-glass have run thy life-sands, And from the wide casement the breeze Sweeps over thy damp-spotted brow- Thy fast chilling hands Look out on the land of thy birth, Beauty and glory are there- Remembrance. As the garden bears the leaflets Rudely though fate bade us sunder When our hearts were pure and fresh-- Of our fancy, with his fingers- Yes! remembrance ever freshning As the dew on withered ground, J. J. B. Speed. WE remember in our remote days, not, indeed, those far-distant ones when our life's pathway was spotted with teeth-cuttings and chicken-pox, and our pinafores with castor oil and jam-for their pleasures have been too long left behind to remember-and their disagreeables are too vividly nausetted upon our memory for us to discuss on no! the period to which I refer is that, when the young mind gradually begets a desire for out-of-door sports and pastimes—when the future half-pay lieutenant may be seen array-. ing his mimic fleet in the largest washing-tub, and pouring fearful volleys of pebbles upon the decks of the enemy-when the future Wellesley or Napier, or Moore, may be detected marshalling his troop of three, or four, or five younger and admiring companions, with perhaps a larger girl to carry an apron upon a broom-stave for a banner in the rear-when the latent railway director exerts all his talents for getting, in the acquisition of "pot" or "stone" marbles, eager to lend a rifled companion, on the promise of an "alley" for interest, and rigorously attentive to the laws of the game-and when the taste for the turf developes itself in the desire of possessing the fleetest stud of human steeds. It was in this age, this "golden time," that we first heard the epithet "fast." -It was applied, if we remember rightly, to one who had secured to himself an undue quantity of the "pots" alluded to, and was suddenly detected-from thence we inferred that the word, properly taken, meant miserly, covetous, or grasping, and that, therefore, every "fast" man was, of necessity, a hermit, or a miser. Fatal mistake! We grew upwards-our long legs required to be hidden by the shrouding "tails," our collars pricked up their ears pertly, and a gentle harvest of cheek-hairs was laid every other morning upon a scrap of paper on our toilet-table; in short, we became mature, and mixed with the mature. It was, perhaps, in the second " that we "translation," again met with a practical illustration of the term "fast." Walking on the promenade of a distinguê watering place with a friend, our attention was called to a beautiful and elegant jennet that was year of our scraping up the soft sea sand, and fretting its broad chest with the ends of the bit, in impatience of being held in. Naturally enough we turned from the nag to its rider, a tall, thin young man, attired in a modest snuff-coloured suit, but evidently in the altitude of the "mode." Carelessly and unstudiously were his garments seated on his back, and his face looked thin and wrinkled beneath his short, well-adjusted locks; we admired that person-we followed him with our eyes; he put his barb to a canter; we were enraptured; such ease, such grace, such ennui in his manner of bestriding him. Who was he?-a gentleman, we were certain! We enquired, and found our conjecture correct; he was a gentleman, and the son of an earl-an honourable. "But," added our enlightener, "he has all but run through his fortune, large as it is; for, from school to college, and from thence, he has always been a "fast" man!!!" We were amazed, how different from our old estimate was the accomplished rake that we could yet see in the distance! How different from the hermit and recluse whom we had pictured!! We inwardly cursed our mistake, were grateful for our acquired knowledge, and, henceforth, every high-bred gentleman was, to us, a "fast" man. On our commencement of London life, at a city eating-house, we were thrust into the company of several individuals, at whom we gazed in unmitigated disgust. Indeed we can hardly say as to which was the more repulsive to our country eyes, their attire or their breeding and wit-for the one was composed of shambling bulky sporting-jackets, of vivid colours, with wonderful buttons of steel or horn, varied by an occasional garment of pinkish lion'sskin, luminously-chequered collars of a vast magnitude, and ties of every description of stuff and form; while the other (viz., their breeding) appeared to consist of eating with their heads hatted, discoursing swiftly, at length, and in a melo-dramatic tone, and singing snatches of song with their mouths full,—and their wit exhausted itself in calling the waiters by strange and outrè names, chucking one or two under the chin, and remarking to a third "How fat you get," and emptying the mustard over a neighbour's mutton. As soon as these unpleasant persons had taken themselves and their bright colours from our presence, I turned to my friend, an old staid Londoner, remarked the relief I felt at their abdication. 66 Ah," said he, "they are, to be sure, great nuisances, |