the ardour of enthusiasm, "How is it possible that men who look upon that glorious orb can worship any other being than the one who created it!"

Rousseau, in his last illness, was heard to ejaculate, "Oh! how beautiful is the sun! I feel as if he called my soul towards him!" Indeed, the sun is so glorious a body, that it can hardly excite our wonder that, in the more early and ignorant ages, it should have received the honours of deification. Josephus informs us that the people of Judah issued out of the eastern gate of the city to salute the sun on its first rising. The sun, as well as the moon, was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians and Germans, and by the British Druids. The Persians worshipped it also; but they did not for many ages permit any symbol to be made of it. Such was the creed of the first Zoroaster;* the second, however, commanded the erection of temples, and the institution of the sacred fire.

In Egypt the sun was regarded as hieroglyphical of the fructifying power; in Greece it was an emblem of human life, and in Rome of the sovereign majesty of the empire.

In the finest of all soliloquies-that of Satan on contemplating the splendour of the sun-the hatred of the fiend does not debar him from acknowledging how worthy that luminary is of wonder and admiration :

O thou, that with surpassing glory crown'd,
Looks from thy sole dominion, like the GoD
Of this NEW WORLD; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O SUN, to tell thee how I hate thy beams;
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell; how glorious once above thy sphere.

Worship of the Sun.-The Persians worshipped

* There appear to have been five Zoroasters: 1st, the Chaldean; 2d, the Bactrian; 3d, the Persian; 4th, the Pamphylian; and, 5th, the Armenian.

the sun under the name of Mithras: a deity who, in the times of Statius and Claudian, was venerated at Rome. On his altar was inscribed Soli Deo invicto Mithra. But there existed in Persia a sect which thought higher and more nobly. When they looked at the sun, therefore, they were accustomed to ejaculate, "Oh, thou master of yon glorious orb! enlighten my mind, and keep me this day from evil.” The fire-worshippers of Persia and India do not believe the sun itself to be the deity, but that his throne is centred there.

By the Massagetæ, the Germans, the British Druids, and, indeed, by nearly all the nations of ancient times, the sun seems to have been venerated as a god. The Chaldeans worshipped him under the name of Baal; the Egyptians, under that of Osiris ; the Syrians, of Adonis; the Greeks and Romans, of Apollo. The Massagetæ, the Scythians, and the Romans sacrificed white horses to him; the Greeks, wolves, lambs, bullocks, and hawks; and Alexander offered up the elephant which had fought with him so bravely in his war with Porus.

The Peruvians were accustomed to dip the tip of their fingers in their cups, then lift their eyes to heaven, and offer the sun thanks for what they were about to drink indeed, the sun was their principal deity. He was once adored, also, in Macassar, the natives of which likewise venerated the moon and the stars. One of their kings, however, became at length weary of this national worship, in consequence of some Christian and Mohammedan missionaries having arrived in that island. After listening attentively to both, the king ascended a high mountain, accompanied by a great multitude, and, stretching out his hands, invoked the Deity, declaring, at the same time, that he would embrace that religion, the ministers of which should first arrive in his dominions; and that, as the winds and waves rose and fell by the express power of the Deity, the Deity would

himself be to be blamed if, under these circumstances, he should cause him to adopt an erroneous faith. After this declaration he sat down, and with his people waited the result. Mohammedan missionaries soon after arrived, and the natives of Macassar immediately embraced their religion, in which they have continued to this day.

We are told that, when a native of Sumatra beheld a clock, and was made sensible of its uses, he said, "The sun is a machine of similar construction." "But who winds it up?" inquired one of his companions. "Who but Allah ?" was the reply.

The Arabs of South Barbary pray five times a day; and, though they no longer pay adoration to the sun, they are regulated by its motions in the observance of their religious duties. At the first blush of morning they thank heaven for the repose they have enjoyed during the night; at the rising of the sun they pray to be blessed through the day; at noon, that the day may terminate to their profit; at the setting they give thanks for the day past; and at evening they pray for a calm and quiet sleep.

"Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath." Alluding to this injunction of St. Paul, Bishop Horneck relates from ecclesiastical history, that two bishops having quarrelled in a most intemperate manner, one of them sent to the other the following message: "Brother, the sun is going down." Upon receiving this message, the offended bishop forgot his anger, ran to the house of his episcopal brother, fell upon his neck, and kissed him.

When the sun reluctantly sinks beneath the horizon, and the glow of heaven sits, as it were, upon the mountains; when the whole concave is robed in purple splendour, how soft, how soothing and serene are all the objects of the vast creation! As the evening advances, the faith of astronony insinuates itself into the soul, like the soft vibrations of the most delicate music, emanating from amid the

compass and grandeur of the noblest and sublimest of harmonic sounds. In this repose of the passions evening diffuses a fascinating charm, and every star, as it were, becomes the mother of devotion.

Sweet is the lucid morning's op'ning flower,
Her choral melodies benignly rise,

Yet dearer to my soul the shadowy hour,
At which her blossoms close, her music dies;
For then mild Nature, while she droops her head,
Wakes the soft tear 'tis luxury to shed.

Watching the emersion of Jupiter's satellites, contemplating the two thousand five hundred stars in the constellation of Orion, or viewing the whole capacious firmament, every system that we see hymns, as it were, an unceasing hallelujah.

AUTUMN, the most solemn and affecting season of the year, succeeds; and the soul, dissolving, as it were, into a spirit of melancholy enthusiasm, acknowledges that silent pathos which governs without subduing the heart. For Nature now robes herself in a more sober mantle; the mountains assume a deeper hue, the torrent a bolder swell; the woods are coloured with every variety of tint, and the clouds roll themselves into a thousand magnificen volumes.

This season, so sacred to the enthusiast, has been in all ages selected as a favourite theme for poetic description and moral reflection; since now, all nature, verging towards decrepitude, reminds the young as well as the old of the shortness of life and the certainty of its decay. This reflection gave occasion to many of the ancient poets to draw a comparison between the succession of the seasons and the progress of human life; and, since they were unenlightened on the great argument of futurity, the subject in their hands became pensive and ungrateful. Melancholy allusions to the renovation of natural objects and the eternal sleep of man are, therefore, but too frequent among the ancient poets, a stri

king instance of which occurs in the poem of Moschus on the death of Bion, imitated by Horace in the eighth ode of his fourth book. To these complaints the whole doctrine of the Christian Testament furnishes a beautiful reply, and in no part of that consolatory book more than in the writings of St. Paul. Whatever may have been his reading, and whatever may be his faith, we may triumphantly challenge the boldest of critics to produce a poem more admirable in the choice of language, more strikingly uniting the solemn and magnificent in manner, and more productive of sublimity of feeling, than the 15th chapter of St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians. To those whose hopes of immortality rest upon so firm a basis, AUTUMN, presenting nothing from analogy that ought to excite their fears or to weaken their confidence, affords additional argument for their hopes, by animating the future with the promise of an eternal spring.

WINTER, ushered in by the howling of storms and the rushing of impetuous torrents, clozes the year, still affording ample means of enjoyment (which the vicious never dream of), where sympathy and social endearment spread their charms around. Seated by the cheerful fire, among friends, loving and beloved, our hopes, our wishes, and our pleasures are all there concentrated, and the world-vain, idle, and offensive as it for the most part is—presents little to the imagination, and still less to the judgment, that can induce the enlightened and the good to regret their seclusion from it.

BEAUTIFUL SOUNDS.-SUBLIME SOUNDS.

WHO has not listened with satisfaction to the song of the lark, the hum of bees, and the murmuring of rivulets? Mecænas was cured of continual