pendent is mind upon material organization, the functions and manifestations of the soul upon the condition of the body it inhabits,—that the materialist hardly states the matter too strongly when he affirms that thought and passion, wit, imagination and love are only emanations from exquisitely organized matter, just as perfume is the effluence of flowers, or music the ethereal product of an Æolian harp.-HORACE MANN..

Recreation.

EAR Recreation claims her hour

DEAR

To keep the lamp of life a-trim,
Our drooping faculties in flower,
The spirit's eye from growing dim.

She calls thee to the glassy lake,
To join the merry skaters there,
Or, it may be, thy place to take
Among the singers free from care:

In spring, to stroll through woodland
bowers

When birds are at their even-song;

Or pluck the beauty of the flowers,
To which all seasons may belong.

Do not deny her wise request,
Ye toilers through the busy day;
Ye valiant seekers of the best,
Turn not in weariness away.

She brings a pleasing, gentle change,
And like a schoolboy's glad recess,
In which the mind is left to range
In free and playful joyousness.

And when her season of delight

Has passed like music through the air,
We find ourselves refreshed and bright,
And once again the world is fair.

There are people in the world who would, if they had the power, hang the heavens about with crape; throw a shroud over the beautiful and lifegiving bosom of the planet; pick the bright stars from the sky; veil the sun with clouds; pluck the silver moon from her place in the firmament; shut up our gardens and fields, and the flowers with which they are bedecked; and doom the world to an atmosphere of gloom and cheerlessThere is no reason or morality in this, and there is still less religion.

ness.

A benevolent Creator has endowed man with an eminent capacity for enjoyment-has set him

in a fair and lovely world, surrounded him with things good and beautiful, and given him the disposition to love, to sympathize, to help, to produce, to enjoy; and thus to become an honorable and a happy being, bringing God's work to perfection, and enjoying the divine creation in the midst of which he lives.

Make a man happy, and his actions will be happy too; doom him to dismal thoughts and miserable circumstances, and you will make him . gloomy, discontented, morose, and probably vicious. Hence, coarseness and crime are almost invariably found among those who have never been accustomed to be cheerful; whose hearts have been shut against the purifying influences of a happy communion with nature, or an lightened and cheerful intercourse with man.

Man has a strong natural appetite for relaxation and amusement, and, like all other natural appetites, it has been implanted for a wise purpose. It cannot be repressed, but will break out in one form or another. Any well-directed attempt to promote an innocent amusement is worth a dozen sermons against vicious ones. If we do not provide the opportunity for enjoying wholesome pleasures, men will certainly find out vicious ones for themselves. Sydney Smith truly said, "In order to attack vice with effect, we must set up something better in its place."

Temperance reformers have not sufficiently considered how much the drinking habits of the

country are the consequences of gross tastes, and of the too limited opportunities which exist in this country for obtaining access to amusements of an innocent and improving tendency. The workman's tastes have been allowed to remain uncultivated; present wants engross his thoughts; the gratification of his appetites is his highest pleasure; and when he relaxes, it is to indulge immoderately in beer or whiskey. The were at one time the drunkenest of nations; they are now among the soberest. "As drunken as a German boor," was a common proverb. How have they been weaned from drink? Principally by education and music.

Germans

Music has a most humanizing effect. The cultivation of the art has a most favorable influence upon public morals. It furnishes a source of pleasure in every family. It gives home a new attraction. It makes social intercourse more cheerful. Father Matthew followed up his temperance movement by a singing movement. He promoted the establishment of musical clubs all over Ireland; for he felt that, as he had taken the people's whiskey from them, he must give them some wholesome stimulus in its stead. He gave them music. Singing-classes were established, to refine the taste, soften the manners, and humanize the mass of the Irish people. But we fear that the example set by Father Matthew has already been forgotten.

"What a fulness of enjoyment," says Chan