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selt up in his study, and took no other nourishment than bread and water, that he might the more uninterruptedly pursue his labors."

8. The records of English jurisprudence contain scarcely a name more distinguished than that of Sir Matthew Hale." And it is the testimony of history, that "his decided piety and rigid temperance laid him open to the attacks of ridicule; but he could not be moved." In eating and drinking, he observed not only great plainness and moderation, but lived so philosophically that he always ended his meal with an appetite.

9. Perhaps no man accomplishes more for the world than he who writes such a commentary on the Scriptures as that of Matthew Henry. And it is, indeed, an immense literary labor. But the biographer's account of that writer's habits shows that temperance and diligence were the secret of his

success.

10. Few men have accomplished more than John Wesley;" and it is gratifying to learn that it was "extraordinary temperance which gave him the power to do so much, and to live so long."

d

11. In reading the works of Milton, we are not so much delighted with the play of imagination as with the rich and profound, though sometimes exceedingly anomalous views, which he opens before us. The fact is, he was a man of powers and attainments so great as justly to be classed among the leading intellects of his generation. Nor were such powers and attainments disjoined from temperance.

12. Europe, as well as America, has been filled with the fame of Franklin; and no less wide-spread is the history of his temperance. Early in life he adopted a vegetable diet; and thus he not only gained time for study, but “I made the greater progress," says he, "from that greater clearness of head and quickness of apprehension which generally attend

& Sir Matthew Hale; an English judge, of brilliant talents and great piety. b Mat. thew Henry; an eminent English divine. c John Wesley; a distinguished English divine, and founder of the denomination called Methodists. d Milton; one of the greatest of the English poets. e Franklin; one of the greatest of philosophers, born in Boston, 1706.

temperance in eating and drinking." The habit of being contented with a little, and disregarding the gratifications of the palate, remained with him through life, and was highly useful.

LESSON XXXII.

ASTRONOMY.a

WIRT.

1. It was a pleasant evening in the month of May, and my sweet child and I had sauntered up to the castle's top, to enjoy the breeze that played around it, and to admire the unclouded firmament, that glowed and sparkled with unusual luster from pole to pole.

2. The atmosphere was in its pu est and finest state for vision; the Milky Way was distinctly developed throughout its whole extent; every planet and every star above the horizon, however near and brilliant or distant and faint, lent its lambent light or twinkling ray to give variety and beauty to the hemisphere; while the round, bright moon seemed to hang off from the azure vault, suspended in midway air; or stooping forward from the firmament her fair and radiant face, as if to court and return our gaze.

с

3. We amused ourselves for some time in observing through a telescope the planet Jupiter, sailing in silent majesty with his squadron of satellites along the vast ocean of space between us and the fixed stars, and admired the felicity of that de sign by which those distant bodies have been parceled out and arranged into constellations; so as to have served not only for beacons to the ancient navigators, but, as it were, for landmarks to astronomers at this day; enabling them, though in different countries, to indicate to each other with ease the place

a The most ancient observations upon astronomy which have come down to us are those of the Chinese and Chaldeans. Milky Way; a bright belt or zone encompassing the heavens, supposed to be composed of stars, of which our sun is one c Jupiter; the greatest of the gods among the Greeks and Romans, after whom this planet was named.

and motion of those planets, comets and magnificent meteors which inhabit, revolve, and play in the intermediate space.

4. We recalled and dwelt with delight on the rise and progress of the science of astronomy; on that series of astonish ing discoveries through successive ages, which display in so strong a light, the force and reach of the human mind; and on these bold conjectures and sublime reveries, which seem to tore: even to the confines of divinity, and denote the high destiny to which mortals tend.

5. That thought, for instance, which is said to have been first started by Pythagoras," and which modern astronomers approve, that the stars which we call fixed, although they appear to us to be nothing more than large spangles of various sizes glittering on the same concave surface, are, nevertheless, bodies as large as our sun, shining, like him, with original and not reflected light, placed at incalculable distances asunder, and each star the solar center of a system of planets which revolve around it, as the planets belonging to our system do around the sun.

6. That this is not only the case with all the stars which our eyes discern in the firmament, or which the telescope has brought within the sphere of our vision, but according to the modern improvements of this thought, that there are probably other stars whose light has not yet reached us, although light moves with a velocity a million times greater than that of a cannon ball.

7. That those luminous appearances, which we observe in the firmament, like flakes of thin, white cloud, are windows, as it were, which opened to other firmaments, far, far beyond the ken of human eye, or the power of optical instruments lighted up, like ours, with hosts of stars or suns.

8 That this scheme goes on through infinite space, which is filled with thousands upon thousands of those suns, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid motion, yet calm, regular, and harmonious, invariably keeping the

Pythagʻo-ras; a Grecian philosopher and nathematician, the inventor of the multiplication table.

paths prescribed to then.; and these worlds peopled with myriads of intelligent beings. One would think that this conception, thus extended, would be bold enough to satisfy the whole enterprise of the human imagination.

9. But what an accession of glory and magnificence does Dr. Herschel superadd to it, when, instead of supposing all those suns fixed, and the motion confined to their respective planets, he loosens those multitudinous suns themselves from their stations, sets them all into motion with their splendid retinue of planets and satellites, and imagines them, thus attended, to perform a stupendous revolution, system above system, around some grander, unknown center, somewhere in the boundless abyss of space!

10. And when carrying on the process, you suppose even that center itself not stationary, but also counterpoised by other masses in the immensity of space, with which, attended by their accumulated trains of

"Planets, suns and adamantine spheres,

Wheeling unshaken through the void immense,"

it maintains harmonious concert, surrounding, in its vast career, some other center, still more remote and stupendous, which in its turn "You overwhelm me," cried my daughter, as I was laboring to pursue the immense concatenation; "my mind is bewildered and lost in the effort to follow you, and finds no point on which to rest its weary wing."

11. "Yet there is a point, my dear, the throne of the Most High. Imagine that, the ultimate center, to which this vast and inconceivably magnificent and august apparatus is attached, and around which it is contiually revolving. Oh! what a spectacle for the cherubim and seraphim, and the spirits of the just made perfect, who dwell on the right hand of that throne, if, as may be, and probably is the case, their eyes are permitted to pierce through the whole, and take in, at one glance, all its order, beauty, sublimity and glory, and their

a Sir William Herschel, (her'shel;) an eminent English astronomer, the discoverer of the planet Herschel, or Uranus.

ears to distinguish that celestial harmony, unheard by us, in which those vast globes, as they roll on in their respective orbits, continually hymn their great Creator's praise!"

LESSON XXXIII.

URSA MAJOR."

WARE.

1. WITH what a stately and majestic step
That glorious constellation of the north
Treads its eternal circle! going forth
Its princely way among the stars, in slow
And silent brightness. Mighty one, all hail!
I joy to see thee, on thy glowing path,
Walk like some stout and girded giant, stern,
Unwearied, resolute, whose toiling foot
Disdains to loiter on its destined way.

2. The other tribes forsake their midnight track,
And rest their weary orbs beneath the wave;
But thou dost never close thy burning eye,b
Nor stay thy steadfast step. But on, still on,
While systems change, and suns retire, and worlds
Slumber and wake, thy ceaseless march proceeds.
The near horizon tempts to rest in vain.
Thou, faithful sentinel, dost never quit

Thy long-appointed watch; but, sleepless still,
Dost guard the fixed light of the universe,
And bid the north forever know its place.
Ages have witnessed thy devoted trust,
Unchanged, unchanging.

3. Ages have rolled their course, and time grown gray,
The earth has gathered to her womb again,

■ Ursa Major, (great bear;) one of the northern constellations, which may be known by its seven stars forming the figure of a dipper. b Ursa Major being near the north pole, does not set to us. c Fixed light; the north star, or Cynosúra.

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