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little child was standing in the road directly before the wagon, with no time for escaping. The whole train of cattle passed directly over the child, throwing it down, and apparently crushing it into jelly. Every spectator thought it dead; its life was not worth a pin's fee; the anxious mother ran to rescue her offspring; but, alas, too late; and her piercing shrieks spoke her despair. But lo, when the little urchin was picked up, instead of being found a corpse, as was by all expected, its roguish smile seemed to say that it regarded the event as a good joke, which it would willingly see repeated. Every one of the beasts, though moving so rapidly, had contrived to shun the child; and this event, together with the Bird's Nest in the Moon, have convinced me, that verily there is a God, and that he governs the world by a particular providence.

I have often thought it was unfortunate that some of the great geniuses, who have undertaken to enlighten the world by their infidelity, were not married men. It would have done more to help them to digest the venom of their spleen, than all the long volumes of rejoinders which have been written by metaphysical theologians. For, to say nothing of the powerful smiles of a woman, when that woman is your wife, reflecting and beaming the very benevolence of a creating God,-there are some things in a married life, which are enough to overthrow the faith of the most stubborn infidel, that ever apportioned his incre

dulity to his ignorance. I myself was rather inclined to infidelity when I was first married. But the smiles of the honey-moon softened me, and I bought a Bible to lie in our parlor. When my wife first sent me after the doctor, at midnight, my faith began to waver; and I was absolutely staggered when I heard the new-born infant cry. As I looked on the little miracle, I was ashamed, and renounced my former faith; and every new prattler, that has risen around me, has made me a better Christian. I now actually read the Bible with my children, and we pray over it. I sometimes tell my former companions in infidelity, when they try to flout me out of my religion, that they are welcome to our old belief-to all its wisdom and all its comforts. They are old bachelors still.

And no wonder that such an unnatural life should lead to such an absurd faith. Hume was an old bachelor, and every page of his philosophy smells of his folly. Hobbs was an old bachelor, and so was Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Jeremy Bentham, and Tom Paine. I have always thought it a thousand pities, that Mademoiselle Curchod did not wind her chains more effectually around Gibbon's heart. I imagine that Cupid, the little god of love, might have expelled a great deal of Paganism from the pages of his splendid history. Some, to be sure, will be infidels in the bosom of wedlock, as some would be fools in the very palaces of Solomon. But this is not the order of nature. Her virtuous instincts lead to truth.

In that beautiful dialogue which Plato has written, in which he describes the closing scene in the life of Socrates, Plato makes his master Socrates, in the course of the discussion, attempt to account for the existence of skepticism; and he traces it to the same cause as that which produces misanthropy. He thinks that men of rash judgments and irritable tempers, when they have once confided in a character superficially virtuous, and have found themselves deceived, pass a judgment on the whole species, and spend the rest of their lives in revenging their disappointment by railing at mankind. · In like manner, he supposes, that when a hasty mind has been deceived by an apparent demonstration, and afterwards discovers that the demonstration is false, it loses its confidence in all reasoning, and views all things in the universe as floating, like the waters of the Euripus, without order and without end. Such a man is των τε ὄντων τῆς ἀληθείας ςερηθείη, deprived of the certainty of real existence, and imputes to reason the darkness of his own mind.

I have generally noticed that infidelity and misanthropy have an affinity for each other, and are often combined in the same heart. But how is a man to

ever became a misan

avoid misanthropy? No man thrope under the smiles of an affectionate wife, and surrounded by a family of ruddy children. These are tender chains, which connect us with the universe; they bind us in harmony with our species;

they lead us to feel our need of a higher protector,— to see the glory and the goodness, and therefore to believe in the existence of God.

When a man is once on a wrong track, every step he takes only leads him so much farther out of the way. God, when he built the world, designed to pack men together in families; and it is the only way in which you can throw the human species together, without impairing their principles and endangering their virtue. A man goes into a splendid city,-he becomes too licentious, or too lazy, or too proud to establish a family. He passes his time among the rubicund inmates of a fashionable boarding-house. He spends his evenings at the theatre or billiard-table. He rails at women, and hates children, because he only knows the vilest of the sex, and has never seen a child which was his own. His affections become warped, his heart is insulated; and, because he has lost his humanity, he has never found his religion. O how I should like, before such a fellow goes to his lonely grave, and his rotten carcass manures the ground, to throw into his narrow heart, one straw from my Bird's Nest in the Moon!

THE PURITAN.

No. 55.

King Stephen was a worthy peer,
His breeches cost him but a crown;
He held them sixpence all too dear,
With that he called the tailor-lown;

He was a wight of high renown,

And thou wert but of low degree;

"Tis pride that pulls the country down,

Then take thine auld cloak about thee.

Old Ballad.

To John Oldbug, Esq.

In

SIR,-Shall I tell you my story? You will find it exemplify an error too prevalent in our land. I was the son of a very frugal family; my father was a farmer in the county of Worcester, who suffered nothing to be done in a slow or drivelling manner. summer we were up with the sun, to hear the Bob O'Lincon, to follow the plough and tend the hay; and in winter I went to school, to improve my mind, and to prepare to be a good republican. I was peculiarly apt in the mysteries of arithmetic; wrote

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