blank book, and write a separate page for every day of the week, let the plan for each day's reading be written by the parent. This will give a variety, and secure the very desirable object of a suitable proportion of the various kinds of reading. When they are able to write with sufficient facility, the keeping of a journal, and writing, in a concise form, the substance of what they read, will also greatly facilitate the desired object. I subjoin, as a specimen, the following extract from the Note Book of a little girl of eight years, with whom the plan has been tried with considerable success. Each column below represents a page in The selection will of course be made, and the quantity regu lated, to suit the views and taste of the parent who makes it. And other books, as these are read through; and gradually advance in the character of the books as the child's capacity advances. Some effort, and considerable firmness will be required, to secure continued attention to this course; but, if nothing further is secured than establishing the habit of reading something every day, in pursuance of a regular plan, a great point will be gained. Who is there, who could not find an hour every day to devote to reading? And how much useful knowledge might be acquired, in the course of one's life, by the judicious employment of this time in useful reading? One might easily read twenty pages in this time; and in the course of a year, this would amount to seventy-three volumes, of two hundred pages each; and in ten years, to more than seven hundred volumes. But I will not pursue the subject further here. Those who wish for additional suggestions on this subject, especially for those advanced beyond the age of childhood, are referred to the Young Lady's Guide, chapter xi The almost overwhelming grandeur of these views, is heightened by contemplating the worlds which attend upon the sun, and which, while they receive from it both light and heat, are anchored to it by the unjointing bands of gravitation. The earth upon which we dwell, weighty as it may seem, is but one of the smaller planets. As before stated, it is 24,000 miles around it, and as it revolves on its axis every 24 hours, each tree and house and man, and animal, goes with it, at the rate of one thousand miles an hour! Nay, more, this earth, with all its lands and waters and inhabitants, goes round the sun once a year. Its distance from the sun is 95 millions of miles. The whole distance it travels in a year is about 570 millions of miles. This is about one million six hundred and sixteen thousand miles every day, sixty-seven thousand two hundred miles every hour, one thousand one hundred and twenty miles every minute, nineteen miles every time your pulse beats! But these are only a few of the wonders of the Heavens. The planet Uraneus, is 17 times as large as our world; it is 1,800,000,000 of miles from the sun, and flies along in its path at the rate of 240 miles a minute. Jupiter is as large as 1,281 of our VOL. VIII. NO. 12. 12 worlds; and Mercury hurries forward in its swift career at the rate of 21 miles in a second. Strange and startling as these statements may be, they are still indisputably true. The familiar shining of the sun, its rising and its setting, are not more surely demonstrated, than are the astronomical facts I have presented. And, I might indeed add to these, still more amusing realities, for I have not told you of the comets, those strange, mysterious, wandering worlds which are ever coursing through the regions of space, with fiery trains, some of which are twelve millions of miles in length, and whose velocity outstrips even the speed of the swiftest planets. Yet these worlds of our sytem are but eleven of those thousand stars that glitter in the sky; and far beyond those we can see, is an endless path, familiar to the footsteps of God, glittering with stars whose very light has not yet travelled down to man. these, no doubt, are suns, around which other worlds revolve; and He who made the insect is the Maker of them all! And He who made the humble violet of our earth, made the sun, and gave it anchorage in the eternal sea of space; he who made the butterfly to go forth, and dance upon the breeze-made that planet Mercury to hurry forward 21 miles every time that your heart beats; he who made the little familiar sparrow, made that planet Jupiter which is 1,281 times as large as our world; he who made the playful squirrel of the woods, framed those fiery comets which course the heavens, like celestial ships driven from their moorings by the maddening tempest. He who made man, built the ocean and the land, and strewed the heavens with stars, as the sea with pearls. And now let us contemplate these things as all the work of one Being; and let us consider that they are not only made by Him, but that every moment they call upon him to sustain them. Let us remember that God has not only made plants and animals, but that if not continued, supported and carried forward by Him, they would instantly perish; let us remember that but for Him the rivers would cease to flow, the air would be still, the planets would halt, the stars would be quenched from the sky. It is God who gives to all, life and motion. Let him take his power from them, and the kingdoms of Nature would be shrouded with everlasting forgetfulness. God then is the maker and sustainer of all things. The kingdoms of nature, are but his machine shops: and his works, as surely prove design and action, as the productions of the forge and the anvil! A single nail, in a steam ship, as clearly displays the work of the mechanic, as the ponderous engine, or the complicated wheel. A single blade of grass, is as surely the work of the great Machinest, as the wheeling planet. In contemplating the vegetable kingdom, we know then, that every leaf and stem, and fibre, is made by Him. Each flower is woven by his fingers. Day by day, God is attending every moment to every one of them, and not to them only, but to all others that are in the universe! Let us impress our minds with the amazing extent of animated nature. "Every part of the world is filled with living things. There are extensive marshes, impenetrable forests, deep caverns, and the more elevated parts of lofty mountains, where human feet have never trod. There is a vast body of water which covers more than two thirds of the surface of the globe, and the greater part of the atmosphere which surrounds the earth, which men cannot occupy as permanent abodes; yet these regions of our world are not left destitute of inhabitants. Numerous tribes of animals range through the uncultivated deserts, and find ample accommodation, suited to their nature, in rocks and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. "The regions of the air are filled with winged creatures of every kind, from the ostrich and the eagle to the numerous tribes of flying insects almost invisible to the unassisted eye. The ocean teems with myriads of inhabitants which no man can number, of every form and size, from the mighty whale to the numerous tribes of medusa, of which several thousands of billions are contained in one cubical mile of water. Every sea, lake and river is peopled with inhabitants; every mountain and marsh, every wilderness and wood is plentifully stocked with birds and beasts and numerous species of insects, all of which find ample accommodation, and every thing necessary for their comfort and subsistence. "In short, every part of matter appears to be peopled; almost every green leaf and every particle of dust has its peculiar inhabitants. Not only are the larger parts of nature occupied with liv ing beings, but even the most minute portions of matter teem with animated existence. Every plant and shrub, and almost every drop of water, contains its respective inhabitants. Their number, in some instances, is so great, and their minuteness so astonishing, that the light seen on the surface of the ocean during the nights of summer is owing to an innumerable multitude of small luminous worms or insects sporting in the water!” To each of these he is every moment giving heat and light and moisture, and to each of these he is attending, more carefully than a nurse to an infant. and the Where There Let us consider the insects. There are four hundred thousand species of these, and countless myriads of each species. The air, the land, the very depths of the sea are filled with them, Creator must attend to each one of them every moment. there is life and motion, there must He be, to sustain it. He must be to mould the eggs, to endow them with life, to frame all the nice mechanism of the young, and to preserve that of the old. And beside, they must all be endowed with their several instincts. Every bee must be taught the wonderful art of making and storing honey; every ant must be instructed in the political economy of the hill; each spider must be enabled to spin his thread of four thousand strands. The birds of the air claim the attention of their Maker. He must construct every feather, and mark it with the hues of its kind; he must preside over the nice machinery of every wing— the whole internal structure must be his. Every egg must derive the principle of vitality from his touch. Think of the myriads of the feathered tribes, that are scattered over the earth, in vale and meadow and mountain and marsh, along the pebble shore of the deep-upon the lonely seaward isles-upon the bosom of the |