had gained a new friend: when I read over a book I have perused before it resembles the meeting with an old one.

What is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.

In science, read by preference the newest works; in literature the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

Studious let me sit,

And hold high converse with the mighty dead.

If we encountered a man of rare intellect we should ask him what books he read.

"My early and invincible love of reading," says Gibbon, "I would not exchange for the treasures of India."

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep, moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Make the Greek authors your supreme delight,

Read them by day and study them by night.-Horace. What we read with inclination makes a stronger impression. If we read without inclination half the mind is employed in fixing the attention, so there is but half to be employed on what we read. If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may, perhaps, not feel again the inclination.

Give a man a taste for reading, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him happy. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history. You make him a denizen of all nations-a contemporary of all ages.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

While reading pleases, but no longer, read.
Deem it not trifling while I recommend
What posture suits: to stand and sit by turns
As nature prompts is best; but o'er your leaves
To lean, for ever cramps the vital parts,
And robs the fine machinery of its play.

Religion.

By religion I mean the religion of the Evangelical and Protestant Church of England.

Intellectual attainments and habits are no security for good conduct, unless they are supported by religious principles. Without religion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the possessor more dangerous, if he be ill-disposed; if well-disposed, only more unhappy.

True religion abhors all violence; she owns no arguments but those of persuasion.

There are two things in the truths of our holy religion-a Divine beauty which renders them lovely, and a holy majesty which makes them venerable.

All would reign with Christ, but would not suffer with Him. Many would only hear of Christ's dying for sin, of His being crucified for them; but to hear of their dying to sin and their own corrupt will, of their being crucified with Him, and suffering their wills to be resigned to the will of the Father as Christ's was; to hear of making an entire oblation of themselves to God-this is a hard saying, few will hear it; it is very unpleasing to flesh and blood; it is too spiritual a gospel for the carnal mind to relish.

When families read together the Holy Scriptures, and offer up daily prayer and praise in their dwellings, every sorrow is assuaged, every comfort heightened, every endearment refined.

Religion obviously leads to habits of industry, order, and economy. The Christian is required to be diligent in business, as well as fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. By a wise improvement of his time and talents, he avoids many dangers which would otherwise be incurred, and secures many comforts which would otherwise be lost. He is taught to use what Providence bestows, with moderation and prudence. His veracity and faithfulness engage the esteem and win the confidence of his superiors. He guides his affairs with discretion, and adorns the doctrine of God his Saviour in all things.

There is no way in which true religion more effectually tends to better the condition of the poor than in its sanctifying and salutary influence over the social feelings. We are bound to each other by various relative ties. When these ties are strengthened by the power of religion, moral virtues have the

best soil and the best safeguard. A peasant or artizan who fears God, and loves our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, will feel toward his wife and children a tenderness and warmth of affection not to be found, or rationally expected, in the graceless profligate.

Where the gospel is cordially received, whether in the mansions of the great or the cottages of the poor, it raises a barrier against the temptations to a profligate course; it calls the mind to higher objects and hopes, and thus diminishes the force of sinful allurements. Conscience, awake and alive, causes a man to shrink from the contact or approach of those vices which produce the keenest and deadliest stings.

Every man of property and influence ought, with all the weight both of counsel and example, to lead his own servants and dependents into the ways of God-ordering himself according to God's Word, hallowing God's Sabbaths, and reverencing His sanctuary.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

Religion is equally the basis of private virtue and public faith; of the happiness of the individual, and the prosperity of the nation.

The Christian religion enlightens the mind, comforts the heart, and establishes the welfare of society.

It is rare to see a rich man religious; for religion preaches restraint, and riches prompt to unlicensed freedom.

A man should be religious, not superstitious.

Seeming devotion does but gild the knave,

That's neither faithful, honest, just, nor brave.

If my religion is the true one it will make me kind-hearted and open-handed.

'Tis religion that can give

Sweetest pleasures while we live;

'Tis religion must supply

Solid comfort when we die.

Retribution.

THERE is no nation, though plunged into never so gross idolatry, but has some awful sense of a deity, and a persuasion of a state of retribution to men after this life.-South.

It is a strong argument for a state of retribution hereafter, that in this world virtuous persons are very often unfortunate, and vicious persons prosperous.-Addison.

All who have their reward on earth, the fruits
Of painful superstition, and blind zeal,

Nought seeking but the praise of men, here find
Fit retribution, empty as their deeds.-Milton.
Even this present state is a state of retribution.
The Governor of all-has interposed,

Not seldom, His avenging arm, to smite

The injurious trampler upon nature's law.

The end of Pope Alexander VI. was a meet sequel to his life. Cæsar Borgia and the Pope had plotted to poison a rich Cardinal that they might seize his wealth. All the Cardinals were invited to a banquet, and among the wines provided one bottle of poison was carefully prepared and set apart. But the Pope and his son coming in before supper called for some wine, and the servant presented them by mistake with the bottle containing the poison. Borgia had largely diluted his wine, and being young and vigorous he recovered under the use of proper antidotes; but Alexander died the same evening.

God strikes some that He may warn all, and He sometimes does it suddenly.

God stays long, but strikes at last.

That high All-seer, which I dallied with,

Hath turned my feigned prayer upon my head,
And given in earnest what I begg'd in jest.
Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men

To turn their own points on their masters' bosoms.

The historian Nicephorus says that Salome, daughter of Herodias, as she walked over a frozen river the ice broke and she fell in, and the pieces of ice cut off her head—the lex talionis being righteously exercised.

Blood marks the path to his untimely bier;
The curse of widows and the orphan's tear
Cry high to heaven for vengeance on his head;
Alive detested, and accurst when dead.

There is an eye of vengeance which sees all things.
Remember! Heaven has an avenging rod :

To smite the poor is treason against God.

Christ substituted His own body in our room, to receive the, whole stroke of that dreadful retribution inflicted by the hand of an angry omnipotence.

Never yet was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution.

You may expect from one person that which you have done

to another.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;

The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

Mazentius built a bridge to entrap Constantine, and was overthrown on that very spot.

Bajazet, surnamed The Thunderer, Sultan of Turkey, was carried about by Tamerlane, Emperor of Tartary, in an iron cage in which he had intended to carry Tamerlane.

Adoni-bezek had cut off the thumbs and great toes of seventy kings and as he did so it was done to him.-JUDGES i. 6, 7.

Samuel tells Agag: "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women."-1 SAM. xv. 33.

Haman built a new gallows for Mordecai, and was hanged on it himself.

It is perfectly equitable that God should in the course of Hist providence make it appear that He regards the conduct of men, and will retaliate upon all tyrants and oppressors the innocent blood they have shed.

God warns Edom by His prophet Obadiah, “As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee.'

With what measure ye mete," says our Lord, "it shall be measured to you again.'

And St. James assures us, "He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy."

The sinner's suffering is so very like his sin that he cannot but discern the finger of God.

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."-ROM. xii. 19.