to the utmost, without the intolerable burden, the soul-sickening persuasion, that we have parted. with our friends for ever?

Surely the cup of sorrow that every sincere mourner has to drink is bitter enough, without the gall and the wormwood of an eternal separation! Blessed be God, for his gracious promises of an eternal world, for they are as unchangeable as eternity itself!

Here have I

What poor creatures we are! received tidings that a highly respected and dearly beloved friend has been removed from the gloom of earth to the glory of heaven, and yet I cannot rejoice. My selfish heart will brood over what it has lost, and will not exult over what my friend has gained. In our day we had shared both joy and sorrow. We had taken "sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in company," Psa. lv. 14. We had encouraged each other to endure worldly trouble patiently, and to rejoice in the hope set before us of eternal glory; and yet for all these things I cannot help visiting his resting-place in

sorrow.

But the spirit is not there! It is a better employment, and more likely to be successful, to prepare to follow our Christian friends to the heaven of heavens, than to wish to drag them

once more down to this poor perishable world. I am ashamed of myself, for every now and then a tear rolls down my cheek, and tells me that my earthly affections are opposing my heavenly desires and consolations.

ON ALMANACKS.

"TIME and tide," it is said, "stay for no man ;" and one might suppose that the rapid progress of time much occupied men's minds at the present period, for never was there such an attempt made, as there is now, to divide time, and set its months, weeks, and days continually before us.

This is the age of almanacks: go where I will, if a stationer's shop is to be seen, the window is crowded with almanacks. You may buy one to put in your book-case, another to lie on your study table, a third to pin against the wall, and a fourth to paste in your hat-crown; so that whether at home or abroad, you never need be without an almanack.

As I pass through the world, I cannot but notice what is going on in it; and when inclined for reflection, a little thing is enough to furnish me with a subject. A molehill will do just as well as a mountain, and an almanack is as suitable as the library in the British Museum.

After standing, a short time, at a stationer's

window, the other day, sometimes gazing on the different publications that were there, and sometimes peeping between them at other things, I walked away, musing on the subject of almanacks. "Well," thought I, " no doubt almanacks are good things, when put to a good use; but it otherwise, they leave us worse than they find us, because every one who does not grow better as he grows wiser, is a spendthrift of that time which is more precious than a king's ransom."

There are usually in almanacks so many chronological, astronomical, and meteorological observations, that with the little knowledge Old Humphrey possesses, he can hardly make top or tail of one half of them. Then there is that comet of Halley; when I think of it, it so puzzles my poor brains, that it seems to take me with it into the wide region of space, whirling me millions of miles in so short a space of time, that I am quite giddy, and am glad enough to get back to something more simple, and better suited to my plain understanding. Keep to common words, such as sun, moon, and stars, and I can get on pretty well; but talk to me about "the horizontal parallax,” “the place of perihelion on the orbit," and "the mean terrestrial radiation," and I am as much lost as if wandering without a guide in the Black Forest of Germany. Often do I think to myself, What an

unspeakable mercy it is, that the ever-blessed book of truth, the word of God, is written in such plain language! "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him?" Ps. viii. 3.

It is very well to be told of the festivals, both fixed and moveable, but there is hardly one in ten of us that thinks any thing about them, except it be Christmas-day, Good Friday, Shrove Tuesday, Easter and Whit Mondays, and Gunpowder Plot; and the words and deeds that are said and done on these days are too often of a kind not to be commended. Then there is Hilary Term, and Easter Term, and Trinity Term, and Michaelmas Term; but if one has neither a law-suit on hand, nor a son at one of the universities, these terms pass by as the idle wind, that we regard not." As to the eclipses of the sun, folks had rather by half look at them through a smoked glass, than read of them in an almanack; but then if it were not for the almanack, they would not know when to look. That will be a glorious time, or rather a glorious eternity, when we shall be able to look not only on God's creatures, but on God himself. We now see "Him through a glass darkly," but then we shall behold him "face to face."

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