and families. The large branches might hold out the first--the smaller branches connected with them, the second--and those combinations of collateral leaves, which specify the acacia might represent families composed of individuals. It was now late in the year, and the autumnal tints had taken possession of great part of the tree.

As I sat looking at it, many of the yellow leaves, (which having been produced earlier decayed sooner) were continually dropping into the lap of their great mother. Here was an emblem of natural decay--the most obvious appearance of mortality.

As I continued looking, a gentle breeze rust. led among the leaves. Many fell, which in a natural course might have enjoyed life longer. Here malady was added to decay.

The blast increased, and every branch which presented itself bowed before it. A shower of leaves covered the ground. The cup of retri bution, said I, is poured out upon the people. Pestilence shakes the land. Nature sickens in the gale. They fall by multitudes. Whole fa milies are cut off together.

Among the branches was one entirely withered. The leaves were shrivelled, yet clinging to it. Here was an emblem of famine. The nutriment of life was stopped. Existence was just supported, but every form was emaciated and shrunk.

In the neighbourhood stretched a branch, not only shrivelled and withered, but having been more exposed to winds, it was almost en. tirely stripped of its leaves. Here and there hung a solitary leaf just enough to show that the whole had lately been alive. Ah! said I, here is an emblem of depopulation. Some via.

lent cause hath laid waste the land. Towns and villages, as well as families are desolated. Scarcely ten are left alive to bemoan a thousand.

How does every thing around us bring its lesson to our minds! Nature is the great book of God. In every page is instruction to those who will read. Morality must claim its due. Death in various shapes hovers round us.--Thus far went the heathen moralist. He had learned no other knowledge from these perishing forms of nature but that men like trees are subject to death.

Better instructed, learn thou a nobler lesson. Learn that the God who with the blast of winter shrivels the tree and with the breezes of spring restores it, offers it to thee as an emblem of thy hopes! The same God presides over the natural and moral world. His works are uniform. The truths which nature teaches are the truths of revelation also. It is written in both these books, that the power which revives the tree will revive thee also like it, with increasing excellence and improvement."

Gilpin.

FIRST PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION, MUST be attended to before we can raise a superstructure possessing any degree of strength or beauty; they are here happily explained.

"HITHERTO you have "thought as a child, and understood as a child; but it is time to put away childish things," and store your mind with those principles which must direct your conduct and fix your character. Virtue and happiness are not attained by chance, or by a

cold and languid approbation; they must be sought with ardour, attended to with diligence, and every assistance must be eagerly embraced that may enable you to obtain them. Consi⚫ der, that good and evil are now before you ; that, if you do not heartily choose and love the one, you must undoubtedly be the wretched

victim of the other.

The first step must be to awaken your mind. to a sense of the importance of the task before you. This is no less than to bring your frail nature to that degree of christian perfection which is to qualify it for immortality, and with out which it is necessarily incapable of happiness; for it is a truth never to be forgotten, that God has annexed happiness to virtue, and misery to vice, by the unchangeable nature of things; and that a wicked being, while he. continues such, is under a natural incapacity of enjoying happiness, even with the concurrence of all those outward circumstances which in a virtuous mind would produce it.

The only sure foundation of human virtue is religion, and the foundation and first principle of religion is the belief of the one only God, and a just sense of his attributes. To form wor. thy notions of the Supreme Being, as far as we are capable, is essential to true religion and morality; for, as it is our duty to imitate those qualities of the Divinity which are imitable. by us, so is it necessary we should know what they are, and fatal to mistake them.

. How lamentable it is, that so few hearts. should feel the pleasures of real piety! that prayer and thanksgiving should be performed, as they too often are, not with joy, and love, and gratitude; but with cold indifference, me. lancholy dejection, or secret horror!--Let your

numerable stars; the moon, rising in clouded majesty, unveils her peerless light; whilst the silent solemnity of the scene fills the mind with sentiments and ideas beyond the power of lan guage to express.

Variety is the source of every pleasure; and the bountiful Author of nature, in the magnificent display of his wisdom and power, has afforded us every possible means of entertain. ment and instruction. What a pleasing succession of scenes results from the gradual vicissi tudes of the seasons! Summer, Winter, Spring, and Autumn, lead us insensibly through the varied circle of the year; and are no less pleasing to the mind, than necessary towards bringing to maturity the various productions of the earth. Whether the sun flames in the solstice, or pours his mild effulgence from the equator, we equally rejoice in his presence, and adore the omniscient Being, who gave him his appointed course, and prescribed the bounds which he can never pass !"---Bonnycastle.

ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE CREATION,

Is replete with wonders--its variety is im

mense-its treasures are inexhaustible.

"THE Earth is covered with vegetables and animals, the entire vocabulary of which no scholar, no academy, no one nation has ever been able perfectly to acquire. An intelligent naturalist, at Paris, some years ago announced, that he was in possession of more than thirty thousand distinct species of animals, while his herbals contained only eighteen thousand spe. cies of plants. This number of animals, however, so superior to that of vegetables, is a

mere nothing, in comparison with what exists on the globe.

When we recollect that every species of plant is a point of union for different genera of insects, and that there is not perhaps a single one but which has peculiar to itself a species of fly, butterfly, gnat, beetle, lady-bird, snail, and the like; that these insects serve for food to other species, and these too exceedingly numerous, such as the spider, the dragon-fly, the ant, the formica-leo and to the immense families of small birds, of which many classes, such as the wood-pecker and the swallow, have no other kind of nourishment; that these birds are in their turn devoured by birds of prey, such as kites, falcons, buzzards, rooks, crows, hawks, vultures, and others; that the general spoil of these animals, swept off by the rains. into the rivers, and thence to the sea, becomes the aliment of almost innumerable tribes of fishes, to the greatest part of which the naturalists of Europe have not hitherto given a name; that numberless legions of river and sea fowls prey upon these fishes--we shall have good ground for believing, that every species. of the vegetable kingdom serves as a basis to many species of the animal kingdom which multiply around it as the rays of a circle round its centre.

I have not included in this superficial representation, either quadrupeds, with which all the intervals of magnitude are filled, from the mouse which lives under the grass, to the camelopard, who can feed on the foliage of trees at the height of fifteen feet; or the amphibious tribes; or the birds of night; or reptiles or polypuses, of which we have a knowledge so slender; or sea insects, some families of which,