permanently or incidentally attaching to human nature; language, the least falfacious of historians, which, while it notes the revolutions of empires, is the enduring type of the visible world, and the shadow of the invisible-the mirror of the universe, as known to man, language never lies: how should it do so; seeing that it is itself the creature and reflection of nature? As well deny that the trees, buildings, rocks, and clouds, painted on the bosom of a tranquil lake are images of realities, as well do this, as assume that language, in the abstract, has ever belied humanity, or presented any elements foreign to our constitution. Philosophers or teachers may have affirmed, and the multitude may have believed, far more than could be proved; meantime, the vehicle they have employed in defining and promulgating such illusions, has faithfully embodied the permanent verities of philosophy and religion; just as a wonder-loving traveller, while he tells a thousand tales of griffins and dragons, sets us right by the dumb testimony of the specimens he has brought with him. Men might as easily create to themselves a sixth sense, as fabricate, and retain in use a system of terms, having no archetypes in nature. And what is true of language generally, respecting human nature at large, is true in particular of the language of each race, respecting its particular characteristics, and even its history. For example, were we, as some have done, to reject, as a tissue of arrogant fables, what we learned at school concerning the early conquests of the Roman people; and if Livy were dismissed as a mere romancer, yet, in taking up the Latin language, as a whole, and in running through its vocabulary, and in considering its idioms, we should find no room left for a question, whether the people to whom the language of Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, was vernacular, were a military people: is it possible to believe them to have been the inert cultivators of the soil, or a nation of shopkeepers? Let the entire Roman history be repudiated; yet give us only the Roman language, and we should readily recover, from that source alone, an authentic record of those successive triumphs, which at length made the Cesars the lords of the world. Aristotle may have taught a false system of the universe, and Plato may have dreamed in politics and morals; but can we turn over the pages of a Greek lexicon, and affect to doubt whether the Greek mind was of philosophic cast? With the Greek language before us, in its mere words and idioms, we want no historians, we want no poets, we want no marbles, we want no temples, to assure us that the race of men using that tongue, were, in mind and taste, all that historians, poets, marbles, temples, show them to have been. And it deserves particularly to be noted, that, while the languages of civilized races at large furnish evidence on all points touching man's nature, physical, intellectual, and moral, so those especial refinements, which characterize this or that language, and which have resulted from the eminent attainments of the people using it, serve to exhibit that one rudiment of human nature as we might say magnified, and its inner structure expanded. It is not in the rude speech of nomadic hordes, or in the talk of the fish eaters of a desolate shore, that we are to look for the record of the genuine rudiments of human nature; but rather in the copiousness of tongues which have conveyed the choicest refinements of those rudiments. Were it questioned whether man be an imaginative being, formed to catch analogies, and to be charmed with resemblance; three-fourths of every language, barbarous or civilized, attests the fact; nor is this evidence touched by any instances of what may be false in taste, or factitious, in the literature of the people. Or is the question, "Am I responsible-am I a moral agent-am I to be held accountable for my temper, dispositions, and conduct; and am Í so constituted as that a future retribution will be a fit issue of my present course of life?" If this be the question, it is answered at once concisely, and conclusively, by simply appealing to the mere words that must be employed to express it. But if, on any account, we should think it well seriously to go into controversy with one propounding so strange a doubt, it could be thought nothing more than reasonable to require him to spread out so formidable a query in some variety of terms. We should ask him then to favour us with synonymes, and equivalents; and to set his difficulty clear of ambiguity, by a liberal adduction of instances and illustrations. Who could decline so equitable a request ? If we suppose, then, our objector to have complied; he stands convinced : at least, if his mind have been trained to habits of logical inquiry, he will not fail to see that, in describing the moral nature, with the intent to deny it, he has unwittingly affirmed it; and we might say to him, "More convincing than any syllogisms, or than any discursive argument, in proof of the reality of that moral scheme which you call in question, are the words (considered as products of the human mind) to which you have been compelled to have recourse in enouncing your scepticism. The system we live under is, in fact, a moral system in the highest sense; because among all people with whom human nature has been at all expanded, a copious vocabulary of terms is found, to which no sense could be assigned in a world of beings, either purely animal, or purely intellectual. If man be not a moral agent, and if his sphere in this respect do not immeasurably transcend that of the sentient orders around him, how comes he to talk as if he were? If, in regard to a moral system, he be only a brute of finer form, born of the earth and returning to it, whence is it that, in respect of virtue and vice, of good and evil, the dialect of heaven rolls over his lips? When was it, and how, that he stole the vocabulary of the skies? You may choose to say, That men's notions of virtue and vice are, and ever have been, contorted; that they have been used to call good evil, and evil good. You may say, That the notions attached to these terms are variable, and the terms themselves convertible; you may say, That conscience is a fallacious adviser; that notions of honour impel men to acts of shame; and that reward and punishment fall as often inversely, as directly, upon merit and demerit. Or you may affirm, That man's actual position, creature of circumstances as he is, and yet held responsible, is severe, undesirable, and melancholy in its consequences. You may say this, or more of the sort; and yet you cannot even murmur your complaints, without establishing the very principles on the ground of which, first, a moral system may be incontestably proved; and, secondly, the actual moral system shown not to contradict the Divine attributes: and, clearly you can never affirm it to be unjust to treat man as responsible for his dispositions and actions, without virtually admitting every postulate of the most refined moral science; for, plainly, there can be no injustice within a system which admits of no justice: there can be no cruelty, where there might not be goodness; nor could any abstractions of this order have been named, or discoursed of, except in a community of beings, who, in fact, are conversant with whatever necessitates the inference that they are held accountable to supreme justice, and will hereafter be reckoned with. Certain modes of treatment may be severe, only on the supposition-that they have place in a system which would have admitted lenient modes of treatment; and such a system, by the very statement, is abstractedly good; it is a benevolently constructed system, and therefore the conception of a benevolent mind.-Isaac Taylor. VILLAGE CHARACTERS.-No. I. THE ATHEIST. "Are there still more amazing-who resist Of instinct, reason, and the world against them SON of song, there are! And they say, moreover, in their blindness, that the substance of the world existed from all eternity; and that all parts of it being in motion, after various trials, so assembled themselves together, as to form the beautiful world exhibited to our view. They say, further, that men sprang like mushrooms out of the mud and slime of the earth; and that their thoughts, and what is called soul, are only the various actions and repercussion of small particles of matter. Again, they say of the system of this beautiful world, that it is composed of nought else but matter and motionmatter, dividing itself into such and such a figure; and motion, directing into such and such tracks, and turnings, and deviations, that they dance about at will, and yet keeping due order; while there is no God to superintend them, or Such opinions did Reuben Flint hold, who, but a few years ago, was the pest of our village. But whence arose these opinions? As I have looked upon his emaciated form, something ever whispered within me that it was guilt. There was something, indeed, in that form, which conveyed a sense of guilt unpardoned, to every one who could spell human nature. The restless motion of his downcast eye was a true index of a guilty conscience; and this, no doubt, worked him into the belief that there was no God in heaven or earth, no soul in man, and no future existence. while the dreamy god, like the fabled | part of our village community, when Somnus, charmed by poppies and som- Reuben condescended to mingle in their niferous herbs, sleeps in some dark cave, society. The poison of his principles on a bed of down, encircled by black spread through their veins in as subtile a curtains, and never takes part in mun- manner, as does the poison of the asp dane affairs. through the veins of the hapless being who receives its bite. Many, through his influence, were led into the paths of immorality and irreligion, and walked hand in hand with him, through the hazy wilds of atheism. Apt to learn that which is evil, they learned to laugh at our good old rector, to forsake his fold, and to term his holy occupation priestcraft. They were not, however, so skilful as Reuben in the dark subject. When pressed for a reason why they thought chance made the world, that there was no God, and that they had no soul; their only reply was, "Reuben Flint tells us so, and you know he is a wonderfully clever man. "Besides," some of them would add, "Reuben is a good man, he is not above taking his glass with us, as the saints are. Let them show themselves as humble, and we will listen to what they say; we will then hear both sides of the question over a full glass." In former years Reuben moved in the higher classes of society. He was, indeed, beloved by them, and courted for his wit and humour. His education, morever, entitled him to a place in that society. Deeply versed in the classic lore of the ancients, and not less so in that of the moderns, he could interest you by rich quotations from those treasures of learning. But it has been said, "Not lofty intellect the heart keeps clean From moral taint, or yet illumes the mind This was verified in the character of Reuben. By degrees he began to lead a profligate life; and still, as he advanced step by step in the path of vice, he proceeded further and further into the night of atheism, and descended lower and lower in the scale of society. His latter years were spent, indeed, amongst the rustics of our village, although he had the means of supporting himself in a higher style of life. But we cannot wonder at this conduct, for, as Reuben promulgated his views publicly on the subject of the composition of man; that they were all composed of perishable matter, it would have been folly in him to have kept himself aloof from the lowest society. Besides, he held the notion that mankind should possess all things in common. This notion, however, he did not carry into practice; for, though he idled away his time on the same alebench with the meanest sot, he reserved to himself the right of emptying his own glass. That was an evil day for the rustic The reader may be sure that Reuben was a thorn in the sides of our rector. He was indeed, and one of a severe nature. He wished to turn him into the right way; but Reuben avoided all his counsel by declining to confer with him. If he saw him in the distance, Reuben would turn into some other road; or, if there was an alehouse near, he would take shelter there. Once, however, they fairly had a race, and nimble as were the heels of Reuben naturally, and spurred on as he was by coward fear, our rector overtook him just as he was hiding himself in a nook in the wall. There, it is said, he read Reuben such a lecture as made him tremble, to the no small amusement of some truant boys who had joined in the race. This fact, for a short time, seemed to shake the faith of some of his followers; but their leader rallying over his glass, so as to term him "bigot," they rallied over theirs, and matters went on as before. Our rector, at length, despaired of ever reclaiming Reuben by his own skill; and knowing full well that Reuben deemed and called his sacred office priestcraft, he called in laymen to his aid, hoping thereby to effect his holy purpose. Among those whose aid he solicited, I was one. It was some time, however, before I had an opportunity of conversing place of torment, which your saints are | tion, continued: Suppose we select so fond of apportioning to those they are pleased to designate sinners." "Has the bard made such a remark ?" I asked. "He has,” replied Reuben. "Then," I continued, "I maintain he knew but little of its contents. What did good old Israel mean, when in the prospect of death, he exclaimed, 'I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord?' Gen. xlix. 18. Would he have termed an oblivious sleep salvation? What, again, did the patriarch Job mean, when he said, 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me," Job xix. 25-27. Does not this passage prove the fallacy of the poet's assertion, and breathe a sweet hope of a hereafter? And would you, rather than possess such a hope, persuade yourself that you are upon an equality with the brutes that graze around us? Think of how much comfort you deprive yourself; and reflect, have you never had a bosom friend, whom you would wish to meet again, if not in this, in some better world? I know you have. And would you not possess this hope? I know you would. Reuben, the whole tenor of the Old Testament proves that there is a future state; and I would recommend you to give it an attentive perusal, and after that, to read its faithful commentary, the New Testament. You will I was going on to say, that he would find the latter elucidate the former most happily; but Reuben looking fiercely upon me, exclaimed, "I have no time to listen to your sermon, or to attend to your advice. I thought, when I commenced a conversation with you, that I should find you a rational being, and that you would have met me on my own classic ground, and have quoted rational authors, such as you know I love, in defence of your opinions, that man has a soul; but instead of that, I find you are a supporter of priestcraft." "Reuben," I replied, "if a passage from any profane author would put you into a good humour again, I would quote it with pleasure." And putting myself into a proper attitude for recita one, by way of trial, from the immortal Shakspeare:" and I commenced Hamlet's Soliloquy on Death. "To be, or not to be: that is the question- rub! For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, For who would bear the whips and scorn o' the time The oppressor's wrong; the proud man's contumely; The pangs of despised love; the law's delay; Now, whether the conscience of Reuben was awakened out of its slumbers, and was transforming him into a coward, cannot aver; but certain it is, that, dearly as he loved Shakspeare, before the recitation was concluded, he turned himself round, and walked hastily away. It is certain, also, that the conversation was lost upon him, for he trod the same wild round of atheism as before. He was indeed the "Grey-beard corrupter of our listening youth;" and heads older than his own, looked to him for his opinion of death and eternity. But there is one remarkable fact, which must not be omitted, and that is, that not one who had led a moral life, sought comfort at his hands; the profligate alone wished to be convinced that there was no hereafter: a fact which confirms the poet's supposition, "that guilt is the parent of atheism.' With such characters as these Reuben would lounge over the ale-bench for hours together, carousing and holding up death as a bugbear to frighten old women and children, but at whom wise men, like themselves, laugh. Thus it was that they boasted over their cups; but when death came, many of them, it is said, trembled, and wished to avoid his grasp, a "little space," that they might repent. Reuben THEBES. No, No-Ammon, Diospolis, or Thebes, was the most ancient capital and renowned city of Egypt. It was most probably built by the first settlers, Mizraim and his family; whence Egypt is generally styled, "The land of Mizraim," in the original Scriptures, though usually rendered, "The land of Egypt." The origin of the city is certainly lost in the remote infancy of human settlements and institutions. The Egyptian name of the city was No, Ezek. xxx. 14; to which was added Amon, or Amoun, which, according to Herodotus, was a title of Jove among the Egyptians. This would suggest that the city denoted was the chief seat of the worship of Jupiter Ammon. And such was No; for the Septuagint renders Ezek. xxx. 15, by Diospolis, "the city of Jove," on account of its devotion to the worship of Jupiter. The Grecian name of the city was Thebes, which was probably derived from thetch, 66 an ark," like Noah's, the memory of which would naturally be preserved by the first settlers after the deluge in all parts of the earth. Bruce, indeed, observes, that "the figure of the temples in Thebes do not seem to be far removed from the idea given us of the ark." In B.C. 87, Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, sought to murder her son Alexander ; who, discovering the design, caused her to be put to death, when the people revolted, and placed Lathyrus, his elder brother, on the throne. In the course of the war, Thebes was taken and demolished by the conqueror, B.C. 82, after a siege of three years. From that time, this extensive city, once more than twenty miles in circumference, went to decay. But so massive and substantial were the structures, that the ruins now, after two thousand years of dilapidation and neglect, fill the beholder with surprise, and have preserved most inter C |