whispering with another young lady, in time of service, and her father, you know, is a Minister of high standing; and, of course, he had taught her how to behave in church.

Mr. Cultus. We may presume he had, my son; but some Christians, and even Ministers, are very negligent of their duty in this matter. You remember the case of Eli and his

sons.

Mary. Yes, papa; and I do not exactly understand it. In one place it is said that Eli reproved them for their profanity, though they hearkened not unto their father; and immediately after he is reproved himself by a man of God, for the sins of his sons, and is charged with honouring them above Jehovah; and again, he is threatened with wrath "because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not."

Mr. Cultus. There is no inconsistency in these statements. Eli was culpably indulgent of his children: he suffered them to grow up without the salutary discipline of the rod; and when they had become entirely profligate, instead of severely reprehending them for their crimes, and forbidding them, as their father, and also as the High-Priest and Judge in Israel, to profane the sanctuary and service of God, he contented himself with a simple reprimand, which had as much effect upon them as the old man's grass upon the young sauce-box in the apple-tree.

Mary. I suppose, then, he ought to have tried what virtue there is in stones! But, papa, I wish you would tell us exactly how to behave in church.

Mr. Cultus. A well-bred person, my child, needs no specific directions: such behaviour as would be improper in a drawing-room, would be improper in a church. What should you think of a lady that would yawn, or loll on the sofa, or turn over the leaves of a book, when on a visit to your mamma; or a gentleman that would take out his comb to comb his hair, or his toothpick to pick his teeth, or his pccket-knife to trim his nails, or that would put his feet on the rounds of the chair, or shuffle them on the floor, or that would mistake the parlour for a bedroom, and the rocking-chair for a bed, and indulge himself in a nap?

Mary. O papa, you make me smile: no one could render himself so ridiculous. I am sure I should not want such ladies and gentlemen to repeat their visits at our house.

Mr. Cultus. Well, do you suppose that less decorum becomes the house of God than what is required in genteel society?

Mary. Of course not, papa. I suppose that good manners require conformity to the rules and customs of those with whom we associate.

Mr. Cultus. Precisely: provided they do not involve anything in itself improper; if they do, we must abstain from such associations [whether in England or America].

Mary. But, papa, Mrs. Anger sits all the time of service.

Mr. Cultus. I know she does; but this is because of affliction: she would gladly conform to the rules of the church, if she could. But did you ever see her looking about, or going to sleep, or timing the sermon with her watch? I will answer for you: I know you never did. She enters the house of God with a solemn air and a measured step, as if she had come to the holy place to attend upon the Lord without distraction. How reverently she opens her Hymn-book and sings, making melody in her heart unto the Lord! How devoutly she bows her head, if she cannot bow her knees, and joins in the addresses to the throne of grace! How eagerly she listens to the word of life, appropriating every sentence suited to her case, and laying up the precious treasure in her heart, instead of dozing through the discourse, or listening to it merely to note its excellences or defects, or to see what passages will suit her delinquent neighbours! Have you never noticed the venerable old saint?

Mary. Many a time, papa: I am sure she keeps her foot when she goes to the house of God.

Mr. Cultus. Well, my children, if you do not want to give the sacrifice of fools," and to suffer with them the consequences of their profanity, you had better imitate the old lady's example; only bearing in mind that you cannot plead bodily infirmity as an apology for not complying with the decent and edifying rules of public worship in the church to which you belong. But do not forget, that it is very possible

to be punctilious in observing all the proprieties of conduct which become the house of God, and yet be entirely destitute of the spirit of devotion. O remember that

"God abhors the sacrifice

Where not the heart is found!"

-American Paper.

THE POPE AND HALLEY'S COMET.

GALILEO's treatment by the Inquisition is well known. He maintained the heresy of the earth's rotation, and in doing so he was sufficiently imprudent to show that the infallible head of the Church might talk absurdities on a subject which he did not understand. For such daring conduct he was given in charge to the Holy Office; and because no truth but the truth as it is in Jesus can support a man intelligently and comfortably in the prospect of martyrdom, certain it is that Galileo professed to abjure a physical truth in the belief of which his mind was firmly established. By the way, has M. Foucault, who is so notoriously guilty of holding Galileo's heresy, nothing to fear from the Inquisition in our day?

It must be admitted that the "Vicar on Earth" might very naturally feel indignant at the idea of the earth's moving round its axis and round the sun without his knowledge or consent; and did His Sinfulness possess the power, we might expect an arrest to be put on the earth's rotation, by way of retaliation for its using such unasked liberties. One feels, however, more at a loss to conceive how the Pope could find any plausible excuse for waging war with a comet. Yet the fact of his doing so is well attested, and we believe it should be more noticed. We were made aware of it in listening to prelections from a professorial chair several years ago. We find it referred to in Olmsted's "Mechanism of the Heavens," page 305; and as that work may not be in the hands of many of our readers, we shall give the extract. "In the year 1456, a comet is stated to have appeared of unheard-of magnitude; it was accompanied by a tail of extraordinary length, which extended over sixty degrees, (a third part of the heavens,) and continued to be seen during the whole month of June.

The influence which was attributed to this appearance renders it probable that, in the record, there is more or less of exaggeration. It was considered as the celestial indication of the rapid success of Mohammed II., who had taken Constantinople, and struck terror into the whole Christian world. Pope Calixtus III. levelled the thunders of the Church against the enemies of his faith, terrestrial and celestial, and in the same Bull excommunicated the Turks and the comet! And in order that the memory of this manifestation of his power should be for ever preserved, he ordained that the bells of all the churches should be rung at mid-day; a custom which is preserved in those countries to our times."

As astronomy is the most perfect of the sciences, we would respectfully recommend some proficient in it to favour the public with an exact estimate of the weight and influence of Papal excommunication-weighed in the balances of the skies. The frequent and regular appearance of Halley's comet, and the long period of time that the excommunication has been in taking effect, afford no ordinary facilities for estimating the force of this disturbing element. We propose another problem, and are done. If the Pope's excommunication be a matter of moonshine to a comet, why should our solid planet pay any regard to it?-The Bulwark.

SCENERY OF MEXICO.

As to the extreme natural beauty we beheld during the almost magical journey from Vera Cruz to the capital, no words, I feel, can adequately describe it. We passed through every variety of climate, each with its own peculiar productions, with splendid snow-topped mountains crowning the scene, themselves crowned with the gorgeous magnificence of the resplendent tropical heavens. Such mornings; such sunrises! Heaven and earth seemed meeting, as it were, and mingling in glory without end. Such nights; heaving and blazing with stars! Those glorious masses of stars seemed almost coming down on our little world; nearer and nearer they seemed to shine, as if drooping under the weight of their immense glory and majesty, and sinking towards us. You

know what the Neapolitan Ambassador said to George II,; that the moon of the King, his master, was far better than his Majesty's sun. I wished he had seen the stars of Mexico; which I think are not very unlike Italian moons,—and her moons like great white suns, and her suns like the skies on fire. Certainly the heavens in the tropics are marvellously glorious but earth is so beautiful here, too. One morning, at sunrise, coming from Puebla, we saw the great mountain Orizava reflecting the light of the rising luminary, and looking as if it was literally made partly of gold and partly of fire, so gloriously was it beaming back those dazzling splendours from its huge crest of glittering snow. Between Jalapa and Peroté, and still more between Vera Cruz and Jalapa, the astonishing prodigality and unutterable magnificence of the tropical vegetation is perfectly overpowering. I could not have believed, without beholding it, that such a paradise remained to this world. Such colours! such blooms! such forests of flowers! such inconceivable luxuriance of foliage and fruit! You cannot, for a moment, " begin to imagine" the glories of these scenes, their inexhaustible variety, their indescribable exuberance, their extraordinary and matchless brilliancy of colouring. Nature seems like a perpetual miracle there. It made us think of the sumptuous Sultana in the "Arabian Nights" tales, who changed her regal dress twelve times a day. Just try to fancy in those marvellous regions endlessly-spreading colossal bowers, under a green overhanging firmament of uptowering trees; and such bowers, too! Myriads of flowers, of a hundred colours, crowding coronal upon coronal; and these again intertwined and overtwined, and round and through and sub and super twined with others, and others still. It seemed as if there was really going to be a flood of flowers, and this was the first flow of the dazzling deluge; a gorgeous deluge, indeed, that would be its own rainbow. There were innumerable roses, interwreathed with convolvuluses, flowering myrtles, aloes, cherimoyas, floripundias, (a magnificent, sculpture-like, bell-shaped flower,) the verdant liquidamber, jessamines, and others, with creepers and parasitical plants, festooning and trailing themselves about with the very wildest luxuriance, so that often the