NATURE AS A GREAT THEATRE.

And mourns those lips that waked their sweetest sound. brought about. It is only perhaps some

Milesian Thales urged that 'None should e'er a surety stroy the reputation of antiquity.

EXCESS OF HAPPINESS OVER
MISERY.

is rendered more conspicuous-by its very diffusion, its commonness, its cheapness; by its falling to the lot and forming the happiness of the great bulk and body of our

[WILLIAM PALEY, D. D., born at Peterborough, Eng- species, as well as of ourselves. Nay, even

land, July, 1743; died May 25, 1805. He was tutor and lecturer on Moral Philosophy and Divinity in Christ's Church College, Cambridge, and Archdeacon of

Carlisle. He published Principles of Moral and Political

Economy (1785); Horæ Paulinæ (1790); View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794); and Natural Theology (1802).]

But

when we do not possess it, it ought to be
matter of thankfulness that others do.
we have a different way of thinking. We
Court distinction. That is not the worst;
we see nothing but what has distinction to
recommend it. This necessarily contracts
our views of the Creator's beneficence with-
in a narrow compass, and most unjustly.
It is in those things which are so common
as to be no distinction, that the amplitude
of the Divine benignity is perceived.

Throughout the whole of life, as it is diffused in nature, and so far as we are acquainted with it, looking to the average of sensations, the plurality and the preponderancy is in favor of happiness by a vast excess. In our own species, in which, perhaps, the assertion may be more questionable than in any other, the prepollency of good over evil, of health, for example, and ease, over pain and distress, is evinced by the very notice which calamities excite. What inquiries does the sickness of our friends produce; what conversation their misfortunes! This shows that the common course of things is in favor of happiness; that happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed our attention would be called to examples of health and compe-Chancellor of the University of Paris. Among his best tency, instead of disease and want.

THE CAUCASIAN RACE. [GEORGE CHRÉTIEN LEOPOLD FREDERIC DAGOBERT, BARON CUVIER, the celebrated French naturalist, was born at Montbéliard, Aug. 23, 1769; died May 13, 1832. His enthusiasm for natural history was manifested at an early age. In 1795 he became Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Museum of Natural History, Paris; in 1796 he was made a member of the Institute, and in 1818 a member of the Academy. He was also

known works are The Animal Kingdom and Natural His

The

One great cause of our insensibility to the tory of Fishes. He was created a peer of France in 1831.] goodness of the Creator is the very extensiveness of his bounty. We prize but little what we share only in common with the rest or with the generality of our species. When we hear of blessings, we think forthwith of successes, of prosperous fortunes, of honors, of riches, preferments, i. e., of those advantages and superiorities over others, which we happen either to possess, or to be in pursuit of, or to covet. The common benefits of our nature entirely escape us. Yet these are the great things. These constitute what most properly ought to be accounted blessings of Providence; what alone, if we might so speak, are worthy of its care. Nightly rest and daily bread, the ordinary use of our limbs, and senses, and understandings, are gifts which admit of no comparison with any other. Yet because almost every man we meet with possesses these, we leave them out of our enumeration. They raise no sentiment, they move no gratitude. Now herein is our judgment perverted by our selfishness. A blessing ought in truth to be the more satisfactory-the bounty at least of the donor

The name Caucasian has been affixed to the race from which we descend, because tradition and the filiation of nations seems to refer its origin to that group of mountains, situated between the Caspian and Black Seas, whence it has apparently extended by radiating all around. nations of the Caucasus, or the Circassians and Georgians, are even now considered as the handsomest on earth. The principal ramifications of this race may be distinguished by the analogies of language. The Armenian and Syrian branch, spreading southward, produced the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the hitherto untamable Arabs, who, after Mahomet, expected to become masters of the world; the Phoeni cians, the Jews, the Abyssinians, which were Arabian colonies, and most probably the Egyptians. It is from this branch, always inclined to mysticism, that have sprung the most widely-extended forms of religion. Science and literature have sometimes flourished among its nations,

TRADITIONS OF THE CREATION.

379

but always in a strange disguise and figurative style.

TRADITIONS OF THE CREATION.

published a Hand book of the Geography and Natural History of Nova Scotia; The Story of the Earth and Man, and other works. Since 1850 he has been Principal of Magill College, Montreal.]

The Indian, German, and Pelasgic branch is much more extended, and was much [JOHN WILLIAM DAWSON, LL. D., an eminent geoloearlier divided, notwithstanding which, the gist, born at Pictou, Nova Scotia, October 1820. Besides most numerous affinities have been recognumerous contributions to periodicals and to the pronized between its four principal languages:--ceedings of the Geological Society of London, he has The Sanscrit, the present sacred language of the Hindoos, and the parent of the greater number of the dialects of Hindostan; the ancient language of the Pelasgi, common parent of the Greek, Latin, many tongues that are extinct, and of all those of the South of Europe; the Gothic or Teutonic, from which are derived the languages of the North and North-west of Europe, such as the German, Dutch, English, Danish, Swedish, and their dialects; and finally, the Sclavonian, from which are descended those of the North-east, the Russian, Polish, Bohemian, and that of the Vandals.

It is by this great and venerable branch of the Caucasian stock, that philosophy, the arts and sciences, have been carried to their present state of advancement; and it has continued to be the depository of them for thirty centuries.

SAYINGS OF TERENCE.

[TERENCE (PUBLIUS TERENTIUS AFER), the famous Latin poet, was born in Carthage about B. c. 195; the date of his death is uncertain. He was once a slave, and was freed on account of his talents. Six of his comedies have been preserved.]

Obsequiousness begets friends, Truth,

A strange and startling confirmation of the antiquity of the old Chaldæo-Turanian legends, and of their wide distribution, comes from the traditions of the American tribes, which everywhere include ideas of the creation of the world and of man, often most crude and grotesque, but in almost every case retaining some of the features of the Chaldæan Genesis. No one can believe that the scribe who reduced to writing the Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Ancient Quichés of Central America, had access to the tablets recently deciphered by Mr. Smith, yet he has the same order and sequence of creation, and the same ideas of cosmological gods, and of the introduction of man upon the earth. . . . It has been customary to throw doubt on the American traditions of the Creation and Deluge, as probably in part borrowed from Christian sources; but their relationship to the old Chaldæan theogony and cosmogony is so striking, that it seems necessary to regard these traditions as a common inheritance of the great Turanian race on both continents.

What shall we say of these traditions in their ultimate source? They are not histhey relate to what preceded the advent of tory in the ordinary sense of the term, for man. We can scarcely believe that they I take it to be a principal rule of life, not are the dim memories of past states of a beto be too much addicted to any one thing.ing, who, in the lapse of geological time has

hatred.

He who indulges in liberty of speech, will hear things in return which he will not like.

It is a fault common to all, that in advanced age we are too much devoted to our interest and property

Human nature is so constituted, that all see and judge better in the affairs of other

men, than in their own.

Wisdom consists, not in seeing what is directly before us, but in discerning those things which may come to pass.

Can they be the results of a prehistoric scibeen developed up from a protozoan to man. ence or philosophy? Must they not, rather, be regarded as the traces of an early revelation, from the Creator himself, to the first intelligent beings placed upon the earth? The least that we can say is, that far back before the great flood of Noah or Sisit, in the beginning of human history, perhaps there dived some seer or sage, so gifted with divine insight that he could say or sing the story of Creation, in such terms that it fixed itself, as a primary article of faith, in the religion of every people; and, handed down

to us through the oldest line of monotheistic | tions of their indulgent grandfathers, and reformers, still molds our beliefs, lies at the the like. foundation of our creeds, and in its few bold outline touches of the plan of the Creation, challenges comparison with the revelations of modern geology.

SHE IS NOT FAIR TO OUTWARD
VIEW.

She is not fair to outward view,

As many maidens be;

Her loveliness I never knew

Until she smiled on me:

O, then I saw her eye was bright,—
A well of love, a spring of light.

But now her looks are coy and cold;
To mine they ne'er reply;
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:

Her very frowns are better far
Than smiles of other maidens are!

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 1796-1849.

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.

[JACQUE HENRI BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE was born at Havre, France, Jan. 19, 1737. He studied engineering, and for a time practised that profession. with

intervals of soldiering. In 1771 he devoted himself to

literature. In 1773 he produced Voyage to the Isle of France, and subsequently, Studies of Nature (1784), Paul and Virginia (1788), etc. The work last named has been translated into every European language and still retains all its popularity. He died Jan. 21, 1814. We quote from "Studies of Nature":]

The love of country seems to strengthen in proportion as it is innocent and happy. For this reason savages are fonder of their country than polished nations are; and those who inhabit regions rough and wild, such as mountaineers, than those who live in fertile countries and fine climates. Never could the Court of Russia prevail upon a single Samöiède to leave the shores of the Frozen Ocean, and settle at St. Petersburg. Some Greenlanders were brought, in the course of the last century, to the Court of Copenhagen, where they were entertained with a profusion of kindness, but soon fretted themselves to death. Several of them were drowned in attempting to return to their country in an open boat. They beheld all the magnificence of the Court of Denmark with extreme indifference; but there was one in particular, whom they observed to weep every time he saw a woman with a child in her arms; hence they conjectured that this unfortunate man was a father. The gentleness of domestic education, undoubtedly, thus powerfully attaches those poor people to the place of their birth. It was this which inspired the Greeks and Romans with so much courage in the defence of their country. The sentiment of innocence strengthens the love of it, because it brings back all the affections of early life, pure, sacred, and incorruptible.

But among nations with whom infancy is rendered miserable, and is corrupted by irksome, ferocious and unnatural education, there is no more love of country than there is of innocence. This is one of the causes which sends so many Europeans a rambling over the world, and which accounts for our having so few modern monuments in EuThey have in Switzerland, an ancient rope, because the next generation never musical air, and extremely simple, called the fails to destroy the monuments of that ranz des vaches. This air produces an which preceded it. This is the reason that effect so powerful, that it was found neces- our books, our fashions, our customs, our sary to prohibit the playing of it in Holland ceremonies, our languages, become obsolete and in France, before the Swiss soldiers, so soon, and are entirely different this age because it set them all deserting, one after from what they were in the last; whereas, another. I imagine that the ranz des vaches all these particulars continue the same must imitate the lowing and bleating of the among the sedentary nations of Asia, for cattle, the repercussion of the echoes, and a long series of ages together; because other local associations, which made the children brought up in Asia with much blood boil in the veins of those poor soldiers, gentleness, remain attached to the estabby recalling to their memory the valleys, lishments of their ancestors, out of gratitude the lakes, the mountains of their country, to their memory and to the places of their and at the same time, the companions of birth, from the recollection of their happitheir early life, their first loves, the recollec-ness and innocence.